Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 67 — page 131: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION *“Miraculous!’’ shrieked the headlines of the daily news- papers. But upon being asked by a sensation-hungry journal- ist as to whether the same process of reversion could be applied to the human species, Dr. Blaise remained politely non-committal. That was all that the larger world knew about Dr. Blaise. The private lives of scientists are normally less interesting than those of film stars, and whilst the domestic secrets of an ageing Garbo continued to be speculated upon, Dr. Blaise was soon forgotten. But there was a grim secret behind the everyday facade of this man who had tapped the power of the Gods. A _ secret more subtle in its horror than any fiction hatched in the brain of an Edgar Allen Poe. And, whilst we are on the subject of Poe, was it not he who, in his excellent story ““The Cask of Amontillado” put into the mouth of his chief protagon- ist, Montresor, the irrefutable axiom that ““A wrong is un- redressed when retribution 139 overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.’’ An axiom of which Dr. Blaise was well aware—aware, too, as we shall see, that it was capable of extension. Hatred is perhaps a physical reaction as inevitable and as irrevocable as a blush, but the motive of revenge is both illogical and ignoble. Never- theless, like Montresor, Dr. Blaise, a man of high intel- lect and high ideals, had long . nurtured ideas of revenge upon one who posed as a friend. A man younger than himself, an aviator and a popular hero, but the sort of man who commits the un- pardonable crime of seducing his friend’s wife. Dr. Blaise was forty-five at the time; a small man with a large, prematurely balding head. A rather insignificant person perhaps if you took a casual glance at him, although if you took a second glance you would not fail to be held comiclbooks.corn