A not very pleasant or kindly person. One expects such behavior in an individual seeking to compensate for marked physical deficiencies. Malcolm Orne the giant retained all these qualities, but there was added to them supreme self-satisfaction along with a wanton delight in exercising power. His sense of inferiority , which had been the balance wheel in his nature, was now gone, and the result was not very nice. And beyond all this I sensed something else—some unguessed, almost inhuman power or some equally unguessed, equally inhuman striving. Unwholesome force emanated from him. I recalled Helen's words: “...changed from a pygmy into a giant almost overnight. The psychological implications ... why it opens us all sort of vistas.” I did not like the look of those vistas.
Buford splashed stew, a great puddle of it, on the tablecloth. I looked at him. His face was muddy with fear. It was the sound from outside that was affecting him—an excited growling and yapping, growing louder every moment. Malcolm Orne, frowning, half rose. I expected him to strike Buford, but he did not. He was listening too.
“Sounds as if your mastiff’s caught something,” I remarked. Malcolm Orne impatiently motioned me to be silent.
Suddenly the sound changed in character, became a wail of terror, one vast horrid squeal that rose and fell without ever ceasing, like a siren. Moving with startling rapidity for so tall a man, Malcolm Orne darted toward the door. I rose to follow. He turned and rapped out a peremptory command, “None of you are to leave this room until I return.” Then, seeing my angry look, he added with obvious effort, “If you please, Tom. I can best handle this alone.” The door slammed behind him.
The wailing decreased in volume, though becoming more pitifully agonized. With a shrug I sat down. The Negress Milly had come in from the kitchen, and she and Buford were clinging together in abject terror, though he if anything seemed the more frightened.
“Caught another dog, I suppose—” ventured Helen. Her voice trailed off.
“Very likely,” I replied. But I was thinking that if there were a second dog involved he had a very similar voice.
“Well, I'm sure your husband knows just how to handle him, Mrs. Orne,” Helen remarked with an attempt at reassurance.
Mrs. Orne did not reply. I looked at her more closely. Her lips were moving wordlessly, as though she were seeking to reply and unable to. Beads of sweat stood out on her white forehead, and trickled from the line of her golden hair. Her whole body was trembling, so slightly that you hardly noticed it at first, but continuously. Gradually it was borne in on me that this was no mere anxiety for her husband. She was in the grip of ultimate panic.
The wailing sank to a coughing moan, then mercifully ceased. And now we heard the voice of Malcolm Orne, in sharp accents of command.
Again Mrs. Orne seemed to be attempting unsuccessfully to speak. Her eyes were fixed on Helen's beseechingly. Then, with rapid nervous movements, she spread out her tiny handkerchief on the tablecloth and began to write something on it in lipstick with shaking hand. We watched her, fascinated. There came the sound of slamming doors, and then, during one moment of stillness, a rustling, so very faint that I could hardly be sure I had heard, yet it wrung from Buford a pitiful groan of horror. I recalled the first words we had heard him speak, “Dat rustlin’ soun'—” Hardly a noise that one would associate with a mastiff.
Another door slammed. There were footsteps in the hall. In frantic haste, Mrs. Orne wadded up the handkerchief and held it out to Helen, who quickly tucked it in the bosom of her dress. Then the door opened, and Malcolm Orne stood regarding us. His shoes and trouser legs were muddied.
“A dangerous beast—to outsiders,” he remarked, breathing a little heavily. “A stray hound wandered in, and he tore it to ribbons before I could interfere.” He looked around as if challenging us to say that what we had heard hadn't sounded like a dog-fight.
“I shouldn't think you'd want to have such a brute around,” said Helen rapidly.
He seemed about to reply when his gaze lighted on Buford and Milly. “What do you mean coming in here?” he snarled at the Negress. “Get out! Buford, we will take coffee now."
His urbane manner returned when he had settled himself again at the table. “Sorry I can't offer you coffee in the living room. But I've shut it up. It's a great barn of a place two stories high, very hard to heat. Besides, before his death, my brother had begun to use it as a sort of laboratory, for his experiments.” Again the gloating, secretive smile.
Night-black coffee, in fragile eggshell china, was something I welcomed. Malcolm Orne drained his cup, refilled it and began abruptly to speak.
“I'm hardly the right one to tell this story, since I'm no scientist. But I'm the only one who knows it all.
So bear with me if I fumble for words.” His manner belied what he said. He was obviously supremely self-confident, savoring the dramatic quality of his introduction. “Well, you may have heard something of my brother's work on growth processes. His early investigating created quite a stir. But first I should try to explain something.
“Growth, as I understand it, is not a process that has any absolutely fixed stopping point. It may stop early in the teens, or continue on well into the twenties. It may seem to stop, and then start again. Moreover, there are well authenticated cases of growth during middle age. Though usually in such cases the growth is of an unbalanced or localized sort, as in acromegaly, where the bones of the hands or jaw become abnormally enlarged. Factors of heredity, diet, and climate are all of importance. Scientists today are of course able to exert some control over growth by influencing glandular secretions. If they knew enough, their control would become complete. They would know how to start growth when it had seemed to stop forever.
“Perhaps my being a midget turned my brother's mind to this problem. But once he had begun, he pursued it with a single-mindedness that crowded out all other interests. Not that he had a narrow range of thought—he was a genius!—but he saw in every phenomenon some aspect of the process of growth. His country clinic here was a part of it—he made extensive statistical studies of the sizes and growth rates of country and city people.
“Growth Factor One—that was what he called the thing he was looking for. The hormone or sub-vitamin that influenced all others. The ultimate physiological catalyst. The master-switch to turn on or shut off the whole process of growth."
Helen and I were leaning forward now, hanging on his words. He waited for a moment, relishing the suspense, then said lazily, “Well, that's about all there is to the story. Except that eventually he found it. Found Growth Factor One.” He rolled the words on his tongue.
“What was it, you ask? That's something I'd like to know too, now. But I'm no scientist. It was ... something that was injected. That much I know, since after the preliminary experiments on animals and insects, I insisted on being his first human subject. You can readily guess why."
His gloating smile and his air of utter superiority were fast becoming insufferable, but you just had to listen.
“Yes,” he repeated. “I think you can all readily imagine why a midget should want to grow. No one loves a midget, eh dear?” His words caressed his wife cruelly, like a whip dragged slowly across the naked skin. “And a midget loves no one. Or at least that midget didn't."
He seemed then to become lost in reverie, but I felt sure he was only taking time to let his words sink in, and to absorb our unwilling interest. Helen gripped my hand under the table and I could feel her shivering.
Then, staring past us, he continued in a low dreamy voice, “An interesting thing, the way this Growth Factor One works. It doesn't merely increase the size of and number of body cells already existing. After the fashion of true growth, it develops new kinds of cells. I have, for example, in my brain, neurons of a sort that probably have never existed before. Very likely they have—new powers. The same holds for muscular cells. I could demonstrate. But it would be rather melodramatic, wouldn't it, if I crumpled this coffee urn in one hand? Incidentally, the growth process would work in the same way with animals. By careful use of Growth Factor One you might make an animal, as intelligent, almost, as a man."