Free The Horror in the Museum by H. P. Lovecraft Page B

that his old mind and purpose had snapped back into place. Realising it would be of no use to delay the luncheon for him, she ate alone and set aside a bite to be kept warm in case of his return at an odd moment. But he did not come. He was making up for lost time, and was still in the great stout-planked clinic when she went for a stroll through the rose-arbour.
    As she walked among the fragrant blossoms she saw Surama fetching animals for the test. She wished she could notice him less, for he always made her shudder; but her very dread had sharpenedher eyes and ears where he was concerned. He always went hatless around the yard, and the total hairlessness of his head enhanced his skeleton-like aspect horribly. Now she heard a faint chuckle as he took a small monkey from its cage against the wall and carried it to the clinic, his long, bony fingers pressing so cruelly into its furry sides that it cried out in frightened anguish. The sight sickened her, and brought her walk to an end. Her inmost soul rebelled at the ascendancy this creature had gained over her brother, and she reflected bitterly that the two had almost changed places as master and servant.
    Night came without Clarendon’s return to the house, and Georgina concluded that he was absorbed in one of his very longest sessions, which meant total disregard of time. She hated to retire without a talk with him about his sudden recovery; but finally, feeling it would be futile to wait up, she wrote a cheerful note and propped it before his chair on the library table; then started resolutely for bed.
    She was not quite asleep when she heard the outer door open and shut. So it had not been an all-night session after all! Determined to see that her brother had a meal before retiring she rose, slipped on a robe, and descended to the library, halting only when she heard voices from behind the half-opened door. Clarendon and Surama were talking, and she waited till the clinic-man might go.
    Surama, however, shewed no inclination to depart; and indeed, the whole heated tenor of the discourse seemed to bespeak absorption and promise length. Georgina, though she had not meant to listen, could not help catching a phrase now and then, and presently became aware of a sinister undercurrent which frightened her very much without being wholly clear to her. Her brother’s voice, nervous, incisive, held her notice with disquieting persistence.
    “But anyway,” he was saying, “we haven’t enough animals for another day, and you know how hard it is to get a decent supply at short notice. It seems silly to waste so much effort on comparative trash when human specimens could be had with just a little extra care.”
    Georgina sickened at the possible implication, and caught at the hall rack to steady herself. Surama was replying in that deep, hollow tone which seemed to echo with the evil of a thousand ages and a thousand planets.
    “Steady, steady—what a child you are with your haste and impatience! You crowd things so! When you’ve lived as I have, so that awhole life will seem only an hour, you won’t be so fretful about a day or week or month! You work too fast. You’ve plenty of specimens in the cages for a full week if you’ll only go at a sensible rate. You might even begin on the older material if you’d be sure not to overdo it.”
    “Never mind my haste!” the reply was snapped out sharply; “I have my own methods. I don’t want to use our material if I can help it, for I prefer them as they are. And you’d better be careful of them anyway—you know the knives those sly dogs carry.”
    Surama’s deep chuckle came.
    “Don’t worry about that. The brutes eat, don’t they? Well, I can get you one any time you need it. But go slow—with the boy gone, there are only eight, and now that you’ve lost San Quentin it’ll be hard to get new ones by the wholesale. I’d advise you to start in on Tsanpo—he’s the least use to you as he is, and—”
    But that was