"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 006 - The Death Tower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

"One of my experiments," explained Doctor Palermo. "It may develop into a great scientific discovery.
Hassan!"

His last word was a loud exclamation. It startled Burke. He could not understand its significance, until he
saw a huge brown man appear through a door at the side of the laboratory.

The man was dressed in a white robe, and wore a white head-covering. To Burke's imaginative mind, he
might have been a jinni of the "Arabian Nights," summoned at his master's command.

Doctor Palermo uttered a few words in a foreign tongue. The servant bowed. He removed the glass
bowl with his white gloved hands, and carried it into a smaller room that adjoined the laboratory.

"Hassan is my assistant," explained the physician. "He is an Arab who does not understand a word of
English. More than that, he has lost the use of his tongue and cannot speak."

"That must be a disadvantage," observed Burke.

"Not at all," returned Palermo. "In my studies of the human mind, I have noted that the loss of one faculty
invariably develops the others.

"A deaf man uses his eyes better than the rest of us. A blind man has a wonderfully keen sense of touch.
Those who cannot speak become wise because they are silent.

"Hassan is faithful, willing, andтАФnecessarilyтАФdiscreet. Come."

HE took the newspaperman to a corner of the laboratory, and showed him a row of glass jars, each
containing a mass of white substance. He brought down one of the jars, and opened the top.

"A human brain," he said. "A human brain, with its furrowed surface. A brain that once had ideasтАФthat
once created thoughtsтАФ now nothing but a mass of idle mechanism.

"This brain"тАФhe set the jar upon a tableтАФ"may have caused all types of impulses; but now one could not
identify it from another.

"Let us suppose, for instance, that this is the brain of Horace Chatham. Can you see anything that would
indicate a mind for murder?"

There was a daring challenge in Palermo's voice. Burke suddenly remembered the words of George
ClarendonтАФthat unended sentence which had led to the supposition that Chatham had suffered ill at
Palermo's hands.

Burke became suddenly tense, and suspicion surged through him. Then he caught Palermo's steady gaze.
Burke laughed.

"The police would like to have Chatham's brain in a glass jar," he said. "If they ever catch him, and give
him the third degree, his brain won't be much use to him after they are through.

"By the way, doctor"тАФBurke was artful as he changed the subjectтАФ "where do you obtain all these
brains?"