David H. Keller

“ Could twenty men suffer more than one man? And then a thought came to me, a terrible, impossible thought, so horrible that I doubted my logic. But now two and two were beginning to make four. Could those men be the masters? They came and bought and left—to go to the cellar and stay there!
"Oh! Donna Marchesi!" I whispered. "How about those cat-eyes? If you had a hand in this, you are not a woman. You are a tiger."
I thought that I understood part of it. The latest master came to her for the key to the cellar, and then, when he once passed through the door he never left. ”

“ A number of the most fearful men made a dash for the elevator. They were driven back by a torrent of rats climbing up the elevator shaft. Then fear came—and panic. With gun and heel, and broken chairs for clubs, they started in to kill rats, and for every one they killed, a hundred fastened to them with chisel teeth. To make it worse, the lights went out, and they were there in the dark, with mutilation as a beginning and death as an ending, and still the rats poured into the room, up the elevator shaft and out of the hole in the wall. ”

“ And that told me a good many things, as it was the hand that had rested against the upper hinge of the door. I washed the hand, changed my clothes and drove my car to Sorona.
Fortunately, the Donna Marchesi was at home. I might have met her before, but I now saw her ethereal beauty for the first time. At least, it seemed ethereal at the first moment. In some ways she was the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen: skin white as milk, hair a tawny red, piled in great masses on her head, and eyes of a peculiar green, with pupils that were slots instead of circles. ”

“ Tucker, taking up the thread of conversation where her husband had paused, “Tommy has had a great fear of the cellar. Even now, big boy that he is, he does not love me enough to fetch and carry for me through that door and down those steps. It is not natural for a child to act like he does, and what with chinking the cracks with rags and kissing the lock, he drives me to the point where I fear he may become daft-like as he grows older.” ”

“ In deep-sea nets we gathered the tiny organisms, and then with microscope, photography, and the cinema we observed them for the future instruction of the human race. There were hundreds of species, thousands of varieties, each to be identified, classified, described, studied, and photographed. We gathered in the morning, studied till midnight and restlessly slept till morning. The only thing in which we agreed was ambition. Our solitary united emotion was a dreaded hatred of the professor. ”

“ More than one business tried to resist and more than one business awoke to find that it owned nothing but ruins. Rat protection was worthless when the enemy came by the hundred thousand and even million. The only worth-while defense against the multitudinous enemy was the payment of the weekly tribute, small enough each week, but in the course of the year taking the profits from most of the firms compelled to pay. Within a year the average business in the city was working for the gangsters and content to, at least, be permitted to stay in business. ”

“ She did not know that I had a key.
The next day I pleaded indisposition and spent most of the hours idling and drowsing in my chamber. Not till nearly midnight did I venture down. The servants were certainly asleep that time. A dose of chloral in their wine had attended to the certainty of their slumbers. Fully dressed, with an automatic in my pocket, I reached the cellar and opened the door. It swung noiselessly on its well-greased hinges. The darkness on the other side was the blackness of hell. ”

“ Children are odd, Hawthorn. Perhaps they are like dogs. It may be their nervous system is more acute than in the adult. We know that our eyesight is limited, also our hearing and smell. I firmly believe that there are forms of life which exist in such a form that we can neither see, hear nor smell them. Fondly we delude ourselves into the fallacy of believing that they do not exist because we can not prove their existence. This Tucker lad may have a nervous system that is peculiarly acute. He may dimly appreciate the existence of something in the cellar which is unappreciable to his parents. ”

“ We, chosen scientists, university graduates, hailed him as our master and hated him for admitting the mastery.
We hoped that some evil would befall him, and yet we realized that the success of the expedition depended upon his continued leadership. It was necessary for our future fame: we were struggling young men with all of life ahead of us, and if we failed in our first effort, there would be no other opportunities granted us. ”

“ Of course, that is for the coroner to say."
"Do you know who these men were?"
"I suppose they were business associates of Consuelo. At least, that is what he told me."
"They were the hundred biggest gangsters in America. They were the brains of everything vicious in American society. There is not a man there whom we have not been after for years, but we just couldn't pin anything on them. Their death in one night gives the decent people in our country a new lease on life. We can go ahead now and get the little fellows. But, tell me, Mr. Willowby, how did it happen?" ”

“ The complaint of Moyer & Perkins was only one of a dozen similar ones which reached the Chamber of Commerce that day. In a secluded room of the Manufacturers' Club a dozen wealthy men met day after day, hearing and weighing evidence against a hundred forms of racketeering which was rapidly becoming a terrible and powerful enemy to the varied industries of the Metropolis. Practically every business had been threatened and more than one captain of industry blustered openly, but paid his weekly tribute silently in order to protect his business, family, and home. ”

“ I believe in myself, and through this belief I succeed. There is nothing that a strong man can not do if he wills to do it and believes in his strength. Our ideas of space, size and time are but the fanciful dreams of children. ”

“ Of course, everybody knew something about rats—that they were supposed to be numerous around the river fronts and warehouses—but on the other hand, rats were seldom seen in daylight, and there were many New Yorkers who never saw one.
Not one of the dozen men had been raised on a farm and none had served in the trenches during the World War. They did not understand rats, so, they hesitated, and finally simply advised the merchants who had received the rat letters to use their own judgement. ”

“ Tucker take down his tool box and get out a hammer and some long nails.
“And I am going to nail the door open, Tommy, so you can not close it, as that was what the doctor said. Tommy, and you are to be a man and stay here in the kitchen alone for an hour, and we will leave the lamp a-burning, and then when you find there is naught to be afraid of, you will be well and a real man and not something for a man to be ashamed of being the father of.” ”

“ I asked carelessly.
"All."
"Was there one by the name of George Seabrook?"
"I think so. But they come and go. I am old and forget."
"And all these masters, none of them ever wrote on the walls?"
"Of a certainty. All wrote with pencil what they desired to write. Who should say they should not? For did not the villa belong to them while they were here? But always we prepared for the new master, and made the walls clean and beautiful again."
"You were always sure that there would be a new master?"
"Certainly. Someone must pay us our wages." ”

“ Then Professor Quierling told the cinema operator what he wanted done. He was to take a picture, starting from the time the professor disappeared down the brass tube of the microscope and continuing till he reappeared. No matter what happened, he was to go on taking pictures.
"It is all well enough,” said our master, "for you children to see what is happening and to talk about it later, but who would believe you? We know that the camera can not lie. That is why it is important to take a consecutive picture of what occurs. ”

“ Today is Friday, and you will not have to wait many hours."
"It will be a pleasure to do as you desire," I replied, kissing her hand. "And shall I hear you sing again? May I come often to hear you sing?"
"I promise you that," she sighed. "I am sure that you will hear me sing often in the future. I feel that in some way our fates approach the same star."
I looked into her eyes, her yellow cat-eyes, and I was sure that she spoke the truth. Destiny had certainly brought me to find her in Sorona.
I bought two dozen rat-tailed files, and dashed across the mountains to Milan. ”

“ I am a hundred per cent American. For five generations my people have been born and buried in this city. I own over two hundred million dollars worth of land here. When the dregs of Europe come over to my city and use the rats of Asia to bleed that city white, then I personally protest. ”

“ Dressed in filmy white, her beautiful body, lovely hair, long lithe limbs would have bound any man to her through eternity. She seemed to sense that beauty, for, after giving out the first supply of rolls, she varied her program. ”

“ But if I am, I will, naturally, try to destroy you. We might end up like the Kilkenny cats. But if we are allies, I have eight years of power and you have eight years of liberty in which to plunder the richest nation in the world. ”

“ He never explained just why he acted as he did. In fact, he refused to talk about it, at least to his parents, and that was just as well, because had he done so, they would simply have been more positive than ever that there was something wrong with their only child. They tried, in their own ways, to break the child of his unusual habits ”

“ It was not a room but a cavern, a cave that extended far into the distance, the roof supported by stone pillars, set at regular intervals. As far as my light would carry I saw the long rows of white columns.
And to each pillar was bound a man, by chains. They were resting on the stone floor, twenty or more of them, and all asleep. ”

“ I saw a lemming migration in Norway, but that was different," explained Rastell. "It seems to me that if we actually saw one of these nocturnal attacks, we might learn why they wanted to do it."
"He is deadly right," agreed Professor Wilson. "A few actual facts are worth a hundred theories."
"That is why I have asked you to help me," explained the richest man in New York. "I have prepared some experimental stations for your use. I can put you in a grocery warehouse and guarantee that inside of a week you will see more rats than you ever dreamed of. I have a laundry and a small hotel. ”

“ You have all seen the jelly-fish, called the Bishop's Miter. When it is magnified three hundred times under the microscope, it looks like a small balloon with a large opening at one end. It propels its way through the water by the flagellate movement of its cilia. The walls are translucent and transparent. At the top there are two specialized groups of nerve cells which we believe may serve as eyes. The opening at the bottom serves as a mouth. Smaller cells enter there and are absorbed. ”