A shape—a man’s shape—strode across the room, hands outstretched, as though to show Prendick what exactly he might expect. When Mary saw him, she gasped. He was the largest man she had ever seen, at least seven feet tall, but it was not his height that struck her most. No, it was the breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of his arms and legs, muscled like the strongest of circus strongmen. He was in shirtsleeves, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, so the blue veins on his forearms were clearly visible. And then, the pallor of his face, the rough black hair, the black eyes rolling with an expression of fury . . . She had never seen anyone so frightening.
“Killing me won’t help you create the woman you want,” said Prendick. How could he be so calm? Was it desperation, or exhaustion? Certainly he seemed exhausted. “I can try to replace her brain. It will, at any rate, be easier than creating an entire woman, which was your original insane plan.”
“Keep a civil tongue in your head, or I’ll tear it out! You can create a woman for me as well dumb as speaking—and I shall enjoy your company more.”
Prendick looked down at the ground and said, “All right. I’m ready to start when you wish.”
“Do you see what you’ve driven me to, Justine?” The giant looked down at her. “I give you one final chance. Say that you love me, that you will return to me willingly, and I will spare your life.”
“I will never love you,” said Justine in a voice that sounded as though she were speaking from a great distance. “I welcome death, and willingly choose it over a life with you, Adam.”
The giant roared with displeasure. He turned to the cage where the Beast Men were kept and pounded his great fists on the bars. All the Beast Men cried out, some in fear, some in anger. The shuffling Beast Man leaped up as though startled and gave a high screech, but the Bear Man stood silent and motionless.
“Very well then! Prendick, begin the procedure. Once your brain is replaced with the brain of that girl, that governess, it will be a blank slate, ready for whatever I teach it. I shall be your Frankenstein then, not he—not the cursed father who created us both!”
He took a jar off the shelf. In it was a brain, a human brain floating in preserving fluid. “Do you see this, Justine? This is what will replace you! The brain of”—he looked at the label on the jar, where a name was written—“Susanna Moore. Your body will continue, but you—all that you are—will be gone!”
Justine looked calmly at the brain in the jar and said, “I am ready.”
With a growl, the giant handed the jar to Prendick, who put it on a cart next to the table. Still calm, he said, “I’ll need time for the ether to work. For an ordinary woman, it would take several minutes, but she isn’t an ordinary woman. I don’t know the dose that will put her under, or kill her. I’ll have to experiment.” He looked down at Justine and said, “I’m sorry.”
She did not look at him. Instead, she closed her eyes and said, “Notre Père, qui es aux cieux, que ton nom soit sanctifié, que ton règne vienne, que ta volonté soit faite sur la terre comme au ciel . . .”
Prendick took what looked like a sponge off the cart, put it on top of a bottle, and turned the bottle over so the sponge was saturated with the chemical within, then held the sponge over Justine’s nose and mouth. If she continued to pray, it was inaudible.
The giant said, “Are you sure the new brain will be blank, that I’ll be able to influence it as I wish?”
“No, of course I’m not sure,” said Prendick. “That was Frankenstein’s theory, but it seems obvious that although you lost your memories, your essential characteristics survived the process. You are the man you were before he brought you back to life—the criminal he found on the gallows, with parts of other corpses where your body had decomposed past recovery. Just as this is still essentially Justine Moritz, the virtuous servant of the Frankensteins. What you will find in the brain of Susanna Moore, I don’t know. I can guarantee nothing. Particularly not in this circumstance, when you have asked me to do the impossible with the inadequate. I’m a biologist, not a surgeon.”
“You will do as you’re told, or I’ll send the story of how you betrayed Moreau to your damned society. Do you think they will allow you to live, after learning that you took Moreau’s killer as your concubine? The next time you have a guilty conscience, Prendick, do not take opium where others are likely to overhear.”
“I’ve checked on the Italian girl.” That voice! Mary shifted position, inadvertently elbowing Holmes out of the way. She could see him: a small, twisted man standing by the door to the storage room. With a gasp, she sat down on the cobblestones, with her back pressed into the brick wall.
“What is it?” asked Holmes.
“That’s Hyde. He looks exactly as he did when I was a child. But that’s not possible. He died. My father died.”
“Hush! Let me hear!” whispered a familiar voice out of the darkness.
Startled, Mary turned toward it. Catherine was crouched beside her.
“How did you—”
“I’m a cat. I’ve been here, listening, for some time. Now hush!”
“. . . will take a while for the poison to work, but it should accumulate quickly within a locked room. The girl should be dead within the hour.”
“Wouldn’t it be quicker to kill her yourself?” said the giant, impatiently.
“Unlike you, I’m not a killer,” said Hyde. “And there will not be a mark on her. Remember that your butchery has Scotland Yard on our trail. Even after I convinced that imbecile to confess, you wanted another brain—fresher, you said! Your actions continually put us in danger of discovery.”
“Well, then you have time to assist Prendick,” said the giant.
“I’m a chemist, not a surgeon. Although I can appreciate the skill with which Frankenstein created her. A woman Prendick created for you would never have been so finely made, whatever the starting material.”
“Thank you for your confidence,” said Prendick drily. “Perhaps, as a chemist, you can help me with the ether, which does not, at the moment, seem to be working.”
Hyde bowed, a mocking, twisted bow.
“I’m surrounded by incompetents!” roared the giant, once again setting the Beast Men in the cages pacing and calling.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” whispered Mary. She had been transfixed by the spectacle, but now was the time to act. As for Hyde—she could not think about him right now. “We need to rescue Justine and Beatrice before they figure out the ether and start cutting Justine’s brain out!”
“Alice too,” said Catherine.
“Who’s Alice?” asked Mary, but Catherine waved for them to follow her and then ran across the dark road, as lightly as—yes, as a cat. On the other side, she ducked into an alley between two warehouses. There, barely visible in the darkness, stood Diana, Charlie, and Watson.
“Look who I found!” said Catherine.
“Holmes! Good to see you, old man,” said Watson. “I was wondering how you were getting on.”
“Well, I think, all things considered,” said Holmes.
“Oh bloody hell,” said Diana. “Just tell us what you saw. And next time, I’m coming too. I hate being left behind!”
In the alley, Mary described what they had seen in the warehouse office—the bottles on the shelves, the operating table, Justine’s plight. “And someone is being poisoned, we don’t know where. Are they trying to poison Beatrice? How would they do that? But it doesn’t matter—we have to rescue them as quickly as possible.”