Eando Binder: Anton York, Immortal

“Well?” It was a challenge.

The biochemist’s dry lips parted but no sound came. Then with an effort he gasped: “Death! If your wife dies, think of the responsibility, the guilt!”

If York had not been so preoccupied with his own problems, he would have demanded the truth. For Vinson had not spoken what was crawling in his mind—something of far greater significance than the mere fate of one woman.

“The responsibility is all mine,” snapped York. “I have her full consent to this. We have also made out a legal document absolving me from all blame in case of her death under the serum. According to law, this is not contestable in court any more, so long as the parties concerned are mentally sound. You are not an accessory to a crime in any sense, for there is no crime. When can you have the stuff ready?”

“In about three days,” answered Vinson voice curiously hushed. His face looked fevered, his hand trembled. “You see, I want to do my best with the serum for your wife. Purify it as much as possible. Increase the odds in our favour.”

York put a hand to the biochemist’s shoulder.

“Come, don’t take it so hard,” he said, vaguely aware that the man was more than normally moved.

Vinson smiled weakly. York left, to tell Vera of the near approach of the great moment when they would look down the interminable hall of the future together. When the door had closed behind him, the biochemist’s face gave way to pent-up emotions he no longer had to hide. A twisted smile came over the thin lips that hissed “Fool!” in the direction of the vanished York.

If there is some repetitious twist to the workings of fate, certainly it became manifest in the events that occurred three nights later. For in broad detail it was the ancient story of eternal love, of Romeo and Juliet, re-enacted.

Tall, handsome, physically perfect, Anton York stood over the body of his wife, his face marked with grief. She lay on a couch, her beautiful face moulded in the peaceful lines of death. Dr. Vinson stood to one side, like a dumfounded Balthazar, breathing hard. He stared mutely from the hypodermic in his hand to the pair before him.

Just a few minutes before, with York holding his wife’s hand, he had injected the serum into her arm. The reaction had been sudden and startling. Her breathing had grown hard, her eyes had flown wide. With a little half sob and half smile to her husband, she had fallen back on the couch.

Then a few racking gasps, after which an ominous stillness had come over her relaxed form.

Vinson dropped the hypodermic and stepped beside the couch. He leaned over to listen for heart beats. Then he looked up.

“Dead!” he whispered huskily, “The odds were not quite even, for her!”

York’s face was a blur of overwhelming, repressed despair. Though Vinson had repeatedly warned him that this could be the result, he had not been prepared for it. He dashed from the room suddenly, without a word.

Alone with the body, Vinson stared at the sweet face somewhat fearfully. It shook his resolve to try the Elixir himself, which was necessary for the furtherance of certain plans he had made. Immortality or death! Was it worth the risk?

York suddenly burst into the room, face pale and desperate.

Ignoring the biochemist, he dropped to his knees beside the couch. For a long moment he gazed at the face so dear to him. Then, with a swift motion he brought one hand up toward his mouth. Vinson caught the glint of glass, uttered a strangled cry.

But it was already done. York gave him a wan smile. “Cyanide,” he whispered. “That is a better Elixir for eternal life.” A minute later he slumped across the body of his wife, pale blue around the lips.

Dr. Vinson gaped at the double tragedy. For a moment he was weak with horror of death. But presently he straightened up, smiled.

“Perhaps it is better this way,” he mused. “York might have resisted my plans. He is—was—the altruistic sort. He would not have approved, I’m sure. And I had determined anyway that nothing was to stand in my way.”

He laughed shortly. “The fool! With the greatest gift mankind ever had in his hand, he thought only of making his wife immortal. I suppose later he would have envisioned centuries of research for himself—to benefit mankind. He could not think of the important thing—power! The power of immortality! But I think of it. Yes. First, I’ll purify the Elixir further—give myself a greater chance to survive it. Then—”

He broke from a trance, whirled about.

“Got to get out,” he told himself. “I must not be connected with this affair. I must be left alone—to think, to plan, to build.” He rolled the phrase on his tongue, eyes gleaming with a fanatic fire. “I’ll change my name. Get all my money together and leave the country perhaps. Build in secret. This marks a new phase in my life, and in the history of the world!”

He turned once more to the still forms on the couch. With the sense of melodrama still upon him, he whispered: “We shall either meet again soon, in eternal death, or never in an eternity!”

DR. VINSON left and made his way to the laboratory in which he had duplicated the Elixir. Here he heaped all of Matthew York’s notes on the floor, set fire to them. In his brain was locked the great secret of the serum. On sudden thought he took a gallon jar of alcohol and rolled it toward the burning papers. He watched until the heat cracked the glass and sprayed liquid fire over the floor. The flames licked at the wooden workbenches, grew to a vigorous blaze.

Vinson turned away with a dark smile shadowing his face.

“From these ashes will spring my immortal empire!” he cried aloud. Then he left the place.

The eager flames became a yellow holocaust in the big building that housed the laboratory and home of Anton York. But fate had not played out its re-enactment of history’s Romeo and Juliet. In the room where a double tragedy had seemed to occur, there was a stir of life.

Vera opened her eyes and struggled to sit up on the couch. Her husband’s body slid away, fell to the floor gently. Her horrified eyes saw this and with a scream of terror she fell back again, pale as death.

But it was not the dagger-death of Juliet. She had only fainted. When York opened his eyes a moment later, his mind was an aching blank. A rush of memory brought him to his feet with a groan. He stood there a moment, trying to fathom his escape from death. He could not know that the same super-electrical quality of his flesh which resisted disease and supplied the energy of youth was also able to fight the fatal fire of life-poisons with its own youth-fires.

A thick cry of unbelief escaped him as he saw that his wife was breathing. There were two fevered spots of red on her marble cheeks. Death had passed them both by! Again it was an enigma to him that the powerful serum, producing a temporary coma, like that before death, had finally eased its stricture of the heart and lungs and allowed life to continue in her body.

A curl of smoke under the door warned York of the danger. He swung it open and as quickly closed it as a cloud of smoke swept into the room. He picked up his wife in strong arms and ran from the building. There was a faint dismay in his heart over the loss of the laboratory, but a far greater joy that they were alive. And alive as immortals, both of them!

A month later, in a hospital, York’s tired eyes lit up happily.

“The danger is over, Vera,” he told her. “You went through the same period of illness that I did when my father gave me the serum as a child. It’s like the fevers that follow vaccination. But it’s over now, and you and I together can look down the centuries!”

Three months after this, in a hotel, Vera asked about Vinson.