There Lies the Danger...

BASIL COPPER

I

As Joshua Arkwright sat at the typewriter in his study one bright April day he was in reflective mood. One of the world’s most successful novelists, he had achieved much in his long and vigorous life. He had published over one hundred books in his lifetime, many of which had been acclaimed as classics, but now, at eighty-five, he was aware of his waning powers. It was not that he had a morbid fear of death, but he knew that he had many more fine works of fiction to give the world and, not for the first time, he regretted the inevitable approach of mortality.

He had, in fact, written a number of works which touched on the subject and he eagerly devoured medical journals which contained articles on efforts currently being made by scientists in the study of prolonging life. He had been particularly interested in recent newspaper reports on experiments being done by Professor Conrad Voss in Switzerland, which were apparently yielding remarkable results. On impulse, he had asked his secretary to contact Voss, and now he was impatiently awaiting a reply to his queries.

He was interrupted by a deferential tapping at his study door and the somewhat flushed face of Yvonne appeared.

‘Professor Voss is calling. I will put him through.’

Arkwright nodded, without a flicker of emotion on his face, though his pulse was a little erratic as he picked up the telephone.

‘Voss here. Many thanks for your enquiries.’ The voice was low and modulated and he spoke perfect English.

‘I am grateful for your call, Professor. You know my age, of course.’

There was a muffled chuckle from the other end of the wire.

‘Naturally, my good sir. I keep an extensive reference library here and I have long been an admirer of your works.’

Arkwright felt a wave of gratification sweeping over him.

‘And I have followed your own career with interest, Professor. My questions stem from the fact that I feel I have a good deal yet to give the world, but time is pressing and my powers - physical, of course, not imaginative - are waning. I have excellent medical advice, but it seems to me that no one has ever approached the reported success of your experiments ... I could come over if you thought there was a possibility . . .’

‘Certainly. And I could accommodate you in my private quarters. A social visit to all intents and purposes. And strictly no publicity.’

‘Naturally, Professor. And I will have the necessary arrangements put in hand immediately. I cannot get away at once, but shall we say in a week’s time? On the fifteenth, if that would be convenient for you?’

‘Admirable, Mr Arkwright. If you let me know the flight time, I will have you met at the airport at Geneva.’

When Arkwright put the receiver down he sat for a long time staring out of the window, not seeing the landscaped gardens below, but with many strange thoughts whirling through his brain. But the die was cast and what could he lose? For Voss had experimented not only on animals, but on human beings, with astonishing results, if the reports in the leading British and Continental medical journals were anything to go by. He picked up the extension and asked Yvonne to come in immediately.

* * * *

II

‘You understand I cannot promise you immortality. That is quite beyond medical science at the present time, and perhaps for all time, but what I can promise - even at your advanced age - is another forty or fifty productive years, during which you will feel and behave like a much younger man.’

Professor Voss, a striking-looking person in his early fifties, with dark hair cut en brosse, sat behind a vast desk in his consulting room and spread well-manicured hands on the blotter in front of him. The sun was slowly declining behind the snow-capped mountains and casting great shadows over the town and placid lake below, while the well-regulated life of his household went smoothly on behind the grey metal door which led to the main building.

Voss hesitated as he regarded the other, his faded grey eyes sparkling behind gold-rimmed spectacles. ‘You have not asked me the most important question, Mr Arkwright. Though I am sure it is at the forefront of your mind.’

Caught off balance, the prospective patient was at a momentary loss. But Voss immediately put him at his ease.

‘You were going to ask me, surely, that if my treatment is so successful, why have I not experimented on myself?’

Arkwright put up his hand in protest, but the Professor cut him short, though still with an amiable smile on his face. ‘But I have, my dear sir.’ He indicated the rows of metal filing cabinets against the far wall. ‘My experiments have been far more thorough and extensive than the world believes. And I have all the patients’ birth certificates available.’

‘I am impressed,’ Arkwright said.

The Professor’s smile widened. ‘That is what they all say,’ he answered gently. ‘A new age is dawning, Mr Arkwright. Greatly prolonged life, renewed activity without pain or disease. Something the world has long been waiting for.’

‘I must apologise if I have inadvertently . . .’ his visitor began.

‘There is no need for any apology. We deal in hard facts here.’

Arkwright changed the subject. ‘How long will the treatment take? Your young lady secretary told me . . .’

Voss had a satisfied expression on his face now. ‘The young lady, as you call her, is over sixty! She was one of my first patients, and has been an invaluable help to me over the past years.’

Arkwright sat back in his comfortable leather chair, lost for words for once.

‘You asked about the length of treatment. A month or so normally, give or take a few days, depending on the patient. You have kindly supplied me with your own medical records. You are in remarkably good health for a man of your age. As to the treatment, that would be expensive, of course . . .’ He paused, giving Arkwright an enquiring look.

The author brushed the hidden query aside. ‘Money is of no importance,’ he said curtly.

Voss gave him a slight bow. ‘I thought as much. But I have to ask these questions as a matter of form.’

‘Of course.’

‘As you can imagine, much of the procedures and details of the equipment used are secret,’ Voss continued. ‘I and my medical staff have spent thousands of hours, and I myself have poured a fortune into developing the finest possible equipment, to give near-perfect results.’

He spread his hands wide on the blotter again. ‘Nothing in this life is perfect, as you know,’ he said disarmingly. ‘But we come very close to it. Apart from the treatment mentioned, there are many injections to a formula arrived at over a good many years.’

Arkwright leaned forward in the chair. ‘And the results?’

‘Completely successful. I will show you some of the records here which you may peruse. Needless to say, the identities of patients will not be divulged. But I can assure you that patients I treated some fifteen years ago are alive and well and looking remarkably young for their real ages. You realise, of course, that enormous sums of money are involved. Other clinics and institutions would do anything to get hold of our formulae. That is why we have to observe absolute secrecy.’

‘How will the change take place?’

‘Very gradually, of course. About a year, in most cases. The hair will slowly turn black, or to its original colour. In bald patients, the hair grows naturally again. As they regress, wrinkles disappear, the skin becomes smooth and elastic and eventually a man or woman of about thirty emerges. Though I am afraid that some patients have had to change their identities and perhaps move to another town or even country. Some have abandoned old wives and taken young girls to their beds.’ He shrugged. ‘Regrettable, but I cannot help that.’

‘Of course not. When will we start?’

‘In two or three days, when you have settled down. I deal with only one patient at a time as the treatment takes up all the resources of the clinic. In the meantime I will show you to my private quarters, where an excellent dinner awaits us.’

* * * *

III

Arkwright returned to England some while later, after his intensive course of treatment, still a little sceptical, despite the Professor’s assurances. He had spent a considerable sum of money, but that did not bother him at all. Despite all the documentary and photographic evidence the staff at the clinic had supplied him with, he was impatient to see tangible results, though he had been assured countless times that they would be slow in coming. However, the prognosis in his case, after exhaustive medical tests, was positive.

Sure enough, over a month later Arkwright began to notice a slight darkening of the hair at the side of his head, while a certain stiffness in his limbs, which had persisted for some years, was disappearing.

Though inwardly excited, it was still too early for him to assess the progress of the treatment, but he quietly made plans to retreat to an isolated house he owned in the West Country, where the metamorphosis, if indeed it did happen, would be unnoticed by friends and colleagues.

There would be problems, he realised, if he suddenly reappeared in the world with an appearance akin to that of his own son, if he had ever had one. He would meet those contingencies in due course. So far as his literary career was concerned, his publishers had been using old publicity photographs for many years, so that would not present a problem.

And in any case, many of his old friends and colleagues had died off as the years had passed and he had no living relatives. He had not realised this sort of situation would arise, and he had to carefully think out a plan of campaign. In the meantime he revelled in returning strength and ability, and once again he was busy at his writing desk, where the rattle of his portable typewriter was heard at ever-increasing periods as various plot points came to him.

He retained his present house and staff and would keep in touch by telephone when he reached his secondary home. He had already made arrangements to have his important correspondence sent on. A month later he was installed in his new quarters, where he had a permanent housekeeper and a gardener. Later, he would move to a hotel and change quarters from time to time until the transformation was complete. Beyond that, he had nothing worked out.

After the year was up, he looked in the mirror of his hotel room on the South Coast and saw a vigorous young man of about thirty looking back at him. His new life had begun.

* * * *

IV

Dr Poole, busy examining specimens under the microscope in the clinic in Lausanne, was suddenly interrupted by a sharp exclamation from Professor Voss, who was studying various documents at his desk on the other side of the laboratory.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Come and look at this.’

Poole crossed to peer over his colleague’s shoulder at the national newspapers spread out before the Professor. Large headings on most of the front pages gave the startling news of the sudden death of the great author, Joshua Arkwright, during a tennis match in Cannes. While Poole sat down at the desk to study the reports with increasing sadness, Voss crossed to the far corner of the huge room and dialled the international operator. He was engaged in a long conversation in English before putting down the receiver. He came back rubbing his hands.

‘This is tragic indeed,’ Poole observed.

Voss sat down in his big padded chair and said nothing for a long moment. ‘Well, he had six good years, my dear Poole. In that time he penned half a dozen wonderful books, had children by two different women, and was currently engaged to a beautiful girl of eighteen.’

Poole stared at him open-mouthed.

‘Not a bad record,’ Voss went on, ‘considering that his real age was ninety-two.’

‘But what actually happened?’ Poole asked. ‘It gives few details here, merely listing all his achievements during his lifetime.’

Voss gave him a grim smile. ‘He was playing several tennis matches under the blazing sun!’

Poole was thunderstruck. ‘But surely you warned him about overexertion?’

Voss nodded. ‘Naturally. But I can understand why this happened. He was a vigorous young man in the prime of life. I have been speaking to the pathologist who carried out the autopsy. His body had been returned for burial in England, of course, as you have just read.’ He stared at Poole, with a cynical expression on his face. ‘His heart was absolutely withered, if I may use a non-medical term. Of course he was warned. This is something we must look at for the future.’

He gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘After all, I am myself a hundred and five years old, am I not? But I know how to behave sensibly.’ He shrugged. ‘The exuberance of youth! There lies the danger . ..’

* * * *

Basil Copper worked as a journalist and editor of a local newspaper before becoming a full-time writer in 1970. His first story in the horror field, ‘The Spider’, was published in 1964 in The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories, since when his short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, been extensively adapted for radio, and collected in Not after Nightfall, Here Be Daemons, From Evil’s Pillow, And Afterward The Dark, Voices of Doom, When Footsteps Echo, Whispers in the Night and, more recently, Cold Hand on My Shoulder from Sarob Press. Along with two non-fiction studies of the vampire and werewolf legends, his other books include the novels The Great White Space, The Curse of the Fleers, Necropolis, House of the Wolf and The Black Death. He has also written more than fifty hardboiled thrillers about Los Angeles private detective Mike Faraday, and has continued the adventures of August Derleth’s Sherlock Holmes-like detective Solar Pons in several volumes from Fedogan & Bremer. As Copper explains about the preceding story, ‘It comes from recent TV and radio coverage on new scientific discoveries, using stem cells to extend lifespan. It was announced that injecting mice and other small rodents with the relevant cells had actually increased their longevity by fifty per cent, and they hoped to be able to do the same for human beings in due course. That was the premise, but first I started with the twist at the end. The genesis of the title comes from a piece of dialogue uttered by Boris Karloff in one of my favourite