Gladiator | Page 4

cat from its perch. Mr. Hoag went forward and picked it up.
"God Almighty," he whispered. The bullet had not penetrated the cat's
skin. And, suddenly, it wriggled in his hand. He dropped it. A flash of
fur in the moonlight, and he was alone with the corpse of his Holstein.
He contemplated profanity, he considered kneeling in prayer. His joints
turned to water. He called faintly for his family. He fell unconscious.

When Danner heard of that exploit--it was relayed by jeering tongues
who said the farmer was drunk and a panther had killed the cow--his
lips set in a line of resolve. Samson was taking too great liberties. It
might attack a person, in which case he, Danner, would be guilty of
murder. That day he did not attend his classes. Instead, he prepared a
relentless poison in his laboratory and fed it to the kitten in a brace of
meaty chops. The dying agonies of Samson, aged seven weeks, were
Homeric.
After that, Danner did nothing for some days. He wondered if his
formulas and processes should be given to the world. But, being
primarily a man of vast imagination, he foresaw hundreds of rash
experiments. Suppose, he thought, that his discovery was tried on a lion,
or an elephant! Such a creature would be invincible. The tadpoles were
dead. The kitten had been buried. He sighed wearily and turned his life
into its usual courses.
Chapter II
BEFORE the summer was ended, however, a new twist of his life and
affairs started the mechanism of the professor's imagination again. It
was announced to him when he returned from summer school on a hot
afternoon. He dropped his portfolio on the parlor desk, one corner of
which still showed the claw-marks of the miscreant Samson, and sat
down with a comfortable sigh.
"Abednego." His wife seldom addressed him by his first name.
"Yes?"
"I--I--I want to tell you something."
"Yes?"
"Haven't you noticed any difference in me lately?"
He had never noticed a difference in his wife. When they reached old
age, he would still be unable to discern it. He shook his head and

looked at her with some apprehension. She was troubled. "What's the
matter?"
"I suppose you wouldn't--yet," she said. "But--well--I'm with child."
The professor folded his upper lip between his thumb and forefinger.
"With child? Pregnant? You mean--"
"I'm going to have a baby."
Soon after their marriage the timid notion of parenthood had escaped
them. They had, in fact, avoided its mechanics except on those rare
evenings when tranquillity and the reproductive urge conspired to
imbue him with courage and her with sinfulness. Nothing came of that
infrequent union. They never expected anything.
And now they were faced with it. He murmured: "A baby."
Faint annoyance moved her. "Yes. That's what one has. What are we
going to do?"
"I don't know, Matilda. But I'm glad."
She softened. "So am I, Abednego."
Then a hissing, spattering sound issued from the kitchen. "The beans!"
Mrs. Danner said. The second idyll of their lives was finished.
Alone in his bed, tossing on the humid muslin sheets, Danner struggled
within himself. The hour that was at hand would be short. The logical
step after the tadpoles and the kitten was to vaccinate the human
mammal with his serum. To produce a super-child, an invulnerable
man. As a scientist he was passionately intrigued by the idea. As a
husband he was dubious. As a member of society he was terrified.
That his wife would submit to the plan or to the step it necessitated was
beyond belief. She would never allow a sticky tube of foreign animal
matter to be poured into her veins. She would not permit the will of
God to be altered or her offspring to be the subject of experiment.

Another man would have laughed at the notion of persuading her. Mr.
Danner never laughed at matters that involved his wife.
There was another danger. If the child was female and became a
woman like his wife, then the effect of such strength would be awful
indeed. He envisioned a militant reformer, an iron-bound Calvinist,
remodeling the world single-handed. A Scotch Lilith, a matronly
Gabriel, a she-Hercules. He shuddered.
A hundred times he denied his science. A hundred and one times it
begged him to be served. Each decision to drop the idea was followed
by an effort to discover means to inoculate her without her knowledge.
To his wakeful ears came the reverberation of her snores. He rose and
paced the floor. A scheme came to him. After that he was lost.
Mrs. Danner was surprised when her husband brought a bottle of
blackberry cordial to her. It was his first gift to her in more than a year.
She was fond of cordial.