Terror stalked in this room. Asa Gregg crouched in his chair, felt the weight of Fear on him like a submarine pressure. His cigar pitched to his knees, dropped to the floor.
"You won't believe this, Jeannette." He hammered the words like nails into the darkness in front of him. "You will say that it's impossible. I know that. It is impossible. It is a physiological absurdity—it contradicts the laws of natural science.
"But I saw something on the bottom of that vat!"
He groped for the bottle. His wife would hear a long gurgle, and then a coughing gasp....
"The vat was nearly full of this transparent, oily add," he went on. "What I saw was a lot of sediment on the golden floor. And there shouldn't have been any sediment! The stuff utterly dissolves animal tissue, bone, even the common ores—keeps them in suspension.
"It didn't look like sediment, either. I looked like a heap of mold.... gravemold!
"I replaced the lid. I spent a week convincing myself that it was all impossible, that I couldn't have seen anything of the sort. Then I went to the vat again——"
Silence hung in the darkness while he sucked wind into his lungs. And the words burst—separate, yammering shrieks:
"I looked, night after night! For hours at a time I've watched the change.... Did you ever see a body decompose? Of course not! Neither have I. But you must know in a general way what the process is. Well, this has been the exact opposite!
"First, I stared at the heap of grave-mold as it shaped itself into bones, a skeleton.
"I watched the coming of hair, a yellow tangle of it sprouting from the bare round skull, until—oh, God!—the flesh began making itself before my eyes! I couldn't bear any more. I stayed away—didn't come to the office for five days."
The tube slipped from his sweating, slick fingers. Panting, Asa Gregg fumbled in the dark until he found it.
Exhaustion, not self-control, flattened his voice to a deadly monotone. "I tried to think of a way out. If I could fish the corpse out of the tank! But I couldn't smuggle it out of the plant—alone. You know that, and so do I. Besides, what would be the use? If acid can't kill her, nothing can.
"That's why I can't have the lid cemented on. It wouldn't do any good, either! Until three days ago, she hadn't the least color, looked as white as a ghost in the vat. A naked ghost, because there's been no resurrection for her clothing. . . .
"I've watched her limbs grow rosy! Her lips are scarlet! Her eyes are bright—they opened yesterday—and her breasts were rising and falling—oh, almost imperceptibly—but that was last night.
"And tonight—I swear it—her lips moved! She muttered my name! She turned—she'd been lying on her side—over onto her back!"
The record would be badly blurred. His hand shook violently, bobbled the tube against his lips. Gregg braced his elbow against the desk.
"She isn't dead," he choked. "She's only asleep. . . . not very soundly asleep. . . . She's waking up!"
The invisible needle quivered as it traced several noises. There was his tortured breathing, and the clawing of his fingernails rattling over the desk. The drawer clicked as it opened.
The loud click was the cocking of the revolver.
