Dartmoor erected a pavilion on his grounds, installed in it the freak, together with the apparatus for massage and exercise, and gave himself up to the study of his charge. He had me around once to witness the experiments, but I was not enthusiastic.
The creature, who was about as old as Dartmoor and myself, lay in a reclining posture on the exercising frame, staring vacantly with wide-open, blue eyes. He was full grown, but with the features of an infant—pudgy nose and pursed-up lips.
Two hinged levers worked by a crank caught his wrists as they lay extended over his head, lifted him to a sitting position, and pulled him forward until his fingers touched his feet. Then back he went, to be again swung forward. When there had been enough of this, two other levers lifted him by the ankles and brought his feet over his head, then dropped them back.
Then there were massaging and vibrating apparatus and a portable shower-bath to finish him off. All this had been going on since his infancy, and now he was fairly well developed—about six feet tall, with the muscles of an athlete.
"Dartmoor," I said, when the job was over, "this is a problem for a college of physicians and surgeons, not for one man."
"But think of the credit," he answered enthusiastically. "Think of the world's applause if I succeed in giving consciousness to this poor, animated clay."
"It may be an idiot."
"Not necessarily—an infant, perhaps."
"Where do you think the trouble lies?"
"I do not know; neither does the professor. It is something that affects the sensory, motor, and sympathetic nerves as a whole. I shall try the different absorption treatments, and various forms of radio-activity and ultra-violet rays. Mental suggestion may do it."