The Thing That Walked In The Rain by Otis Adelbert Kline Read Free Book Online

sight, then dived and swam back through the opening which leads back under the altar and into the laboratory. Here I made a quick change, putting on dry raiment that duplicated what I was wearing, and once more reappeared. I spoke a few words and made a few passes that the doctor had taught me then disappeared by means of the smoke and the revolving door.
    “You may be surprised to know that the monster was not called by the conches nor the yowling of the priests, but by tapping two stones together under water in the underground stream that communicated with the lake from the laboratory. It had been trained to respond to this signal by using it each time it was fed.
    “But it was the doctor who was the brains of the whole thing and who made everything possible. He can explain the facts of our coup better than I.”
    “Knowing what I know it was ver’ simple,” said the doctor. “First I tal you about thees Bahna. He ees well educated and ees really a descendant of an ancient race of priests—a cult that existed all over the world in olden times. In India it worshiped Narayana, the divine one, creator of all things. Narayana is pictured as a seven-headed serpent.
    “In Greece it worshiped the Hydra. Nayana Idra is evidently a corrupted combination of the two words, Narayana and Hydra, used on this continent by the old adepts whose game was stopped at this place by the advent of the Spaniards, Bahna is a contraction of Bab Narayana, or the gate, or door to Narayana—in other words, the way to God.
    “Thees Bahna was perhaps the only one in the world who knew the inner secrets of the old cult. How he learned them, I know not. Perhaps he succeeded in doing what I tried to do—deciphering the old rock inscriptions, so cleverly conceived and executed that they have one set of meanings for a neophite, a second more secret meaning for an acolyte, and a more secret symbolical meaning for an adept—a man of the inner circle.
    “They were clever biologists and chemists, those old adepts, although weeth the cleverness was meexed a certain amount of superstition.
    “They learned, somehow, that eef a certain ambulatory hydra were immersed in a solution of ipecacuanha and other herbs in just the right proportion, and later removed to pure water and well fed, its growth limitations would be removed, that ees, it would continue to grow as long as it continued to live and feed, like a reptile. Of course many of the hydras immersed in the solution died, but they believed that when one survived and began to grow, the soul of Nayana had entered into it, and that the great god was thus assuming physical shape.
    “I was learning these things by experimenting with the hydras from the reservoir, and by deciphering the inscriptions. Bahna discovered this, and as I knew too much for his safety, captured my servant and me one evening, as he was putting my meal on the table, by putting us to sleep with a glass bomb. My servant was fed to the hydra, but because of my scientific knowledge I was kept a prisoner to help the adept in his work.”
    “How did the solution remove the growth limitations of the hydras, doctor?” I asked.
    “It seems to ’ave operated by atrophying the gonads, which are situated in the ectoderm, either destroying or modifying their hormones. This type of hydra is hermaphrodite and does not bud or multiply by fission, so naturally its reproductive functions are stopped by this treatment. Reproduction begins when the limit of growth has been nearly attained in the normal creature, but by destroying the normal functions of the gonads, reproduction is eliminated, and growth continued indefinitely.
    “Having found a way to construct so awful a god, it was necessary for the adepts to find a way to destroy it when it had sufficiently terrified and subdued the populace to give the priests undisputed power. This was done, I found, by filling the body of a victim with a solution of aconite, which was deadly to the monster.