The Professor turned his glass thoughtfully in his hands.
– Let's drink to a beautiful Scam as an art object – " his Eyes lit up. – Not everyone can do that." Preparing for years, using any chance for luck, combining scientific and semi-scientific knowledge with the finest, (and sometimes, however, quite primitive) performance, a talented criminal can make a huge number of people believe in literally everything.
Let's have a drink... and then I'll tell you what I managed to dig up about the identity of Dmitry Alexandrovich Rosenthal. And something that isn't in any of the archives, but that I think would explain the nightmares associated with his name. I'm surprised it didn't occur to someone before.…
Overturning our glasses, we ate a mysterious mixture of salad plates and lit cigars, which I prudently stocked. Sharoiko blew smoke on the crystal chandelier for a while. From time to time a mischievous smile appeared on his face, then it was replaced by a frown, a stern look, and then by a wandering, absent expression. On the whole, the Professor looked like a quiet lunatic.
"Dmitri Alexandrovich Rosenthal," he began at last, " is a multi – faceted and contradictory personality. According to some sources, he was significantly ahead of the science of his, but our time, a doctor-resuscitator, on the other – a blasphemer and warlock, on the third – a necrophiliac homosexual.
Only two facts are certain. One, that no convincing explanation had ever been found for his tricks with the dead, sometimes for more than a week, lying in their graves. And the second: the disappearance after the murder of the Prince accumulated during the heyday of his career several million in gold.
– A, here is it that, - are crumbled tormented me so long doubts. Professor nodded and continued:
– In order that you may appreciate my version of events, I will give you a brief summary of the facts which I have been able to gather through several years of searching. In one serious publication was about him my article, – Sharoyko turned to the bookcase and held out us journal, - here is witness. There was a lot I didn't understand at the time, and there's still a lot I don't quite understand.
Prince Rosenthal was born in 1826. With the title of the linked story, but she's here like to do with it, dwell on it, I will not. It was a good family, though a strange one. His father, Alexander Genrikhovich Rosenthal, was a fairly well-known scientist in his youth, but later became interested in some suspicious medical experiments, and his reputation was hopelessly spoiled. In General, medical scientists who disemboweled the dead for their own pleasure were always looked upon with some disapproval. Besides, Alexander Rosenthal, with the exception of the very beginning of his career, conducted his research not somewhere at the University or the city hospital, but at home, on the estate... in remote places, such things were looked at very differently.
But the fact is that the elder Rosenthal looked askance in St. Petersburg. The questionable direction of his research gave rise to more and more rumors, and gradually over him there was a gloomy aura of the mad pervert... it is possible to Understand it. What specifically he studied-now establish already cannot be. But even at that time it could only guess. According to some sources, the interests of Alexander Rosenthal were in the process of death of the human body. First time I learned about this almost accidentally, when in archive one hospitals me have fallen individual pages manuscripts, author one of them was some A. Propulsion Rosenthal.Precise formulations his themes I not remember, but there was something Pro changes in brain, heart of and lung, occurring in the first minutes after death.
I don't know much about medicine, and I couldn't make up my mind about the value of this work for science, and I didn't have the opportunity to copy it then. When I became seriously interested in the history of the Rosenthals, returned to the archives and tried again to find these manuscripts, I failed. They disappeared.
But it's not that important. What happened next with Alexander Rosenthal – it is easy to imagine... Even if I had no information about him (and I did find something), his fate is quite predictable, it is typical for that time ... Having received a decent education and not having to earn a private practice, Rosenthal Sr. began to conduct independent research. His quick temper, his tendency to seclusion, and the peculiarities of his scientific interests led him to leave the laboratory at the hospital and work in his house, in the deep forest, quite far from the city. Rosenthal had money, though small, so he didn't have much trouble at first…
But imagine what you could think of a secluded house, which is constantly brought the necessary material for the work-fresh corpses, dying peasants from neighboring villages? What did they say about Rosenthal spending all day in the company of the dying and the dead? Add to this a very gloomy view of the house, large oddities in the psyche of the Prince... And please note that what I have told you about his scientific work still remains speculation and nothing more. There is no clear evidence of this... There was none then.
Talked about the Prince different. Some considered him a harmless fanatic, spending all his time and money on science... Such were common at the time, but Rosenthal fell into that category very few.
There was talk of satanic rites taking place on the estate, dinners with the flesh of the dead, and other nonsense.
But there were other rumors... it was hard to Believe them even then, and in General, except for hopeless dummies and drunken alcoholics, no one believed. But they talked about it more often. In a nutshell, the talk boils down to the fact that Alexander Rosenthal is looking for ways to return to life dead bodies.and in some cases, he succeeded.
"Damn it! Do you believe that?"
"No, of course not. And here is his son Dmitri this in a certain sense managed. But about this later.
You know, in the history of the many moments I will never be able to know exactly about them we can only guess. Everyone can offer their own understanding of events... But I'm sure my solution to the Rosenthal case is infallible. No one has ever been able to explain all the facts, without exception, associated with this dark personality ...