As Jane was led to the back room she felt foolish for her outburst earlier. If Victor had intended to kill her he'd have done so already. They stopped in front of the tapestry where Victor slid the heavy hanging cloth to one side and opened the door, together they entered the room.

He paused at the back wall and showed her the carefully disguised finger holds. He then placed his fingers in the holds and pressed. Jane heard a clicking sound and then Victor slid the whole wall to one side and into a carved out nitch.

The hallway loomed before her as did the other door at the bottom of the hall.It also opened with ease and she was once again overwhelmed by the size of the room and the amount of machines it contained.

"Welcome to my laboratory," Victor stated with a small amount of pride.

Jane was speechless as she wandered around the room. She paused at the first of several large bookcases and opened the glass doors. As she had observed it was crammed with numerous medical books that were very old by their looks.

As she started to withdraw one of the oldest looking volumes Victor stopped her.

"Not that one."

"Why?"

"Well for lack of a better phrase it is my user manual and it is priceless," he stated with a faint smile.

"You mean The Secrets of Life and Death? I thought that book was creation of the Hollywood movie."

"Just the title. The doctor was a scientist and keep meticulous notes on all his experiments."

"These machines require power to run, but you don't have any electrical lines coming into the cabin."

"I don't need them," he stated and motioned for her to follow him to the far wall.

Once there he pressed his foot down on a hidden switch in the floor and then pushed open a concealed door. It revealed another room containing large machines and black cables running from them. Victor saw the puzzled look on Jane's face.

"Think of them as large batteries. They get recharged during the electrical storms," he told her.

"How long did all of this take to build?"

"Years. Time is one of the things I have plenty of."

"What's this?" she asked as she saw a tall cylinder tucked in the corner covered by a large tarp.

Before Victor could move or protest she tugged the heavy canvas covering it. Jane suppressed the urge to scream at the sight before her. The tall cylinder was filled with liquid and tiny bubbles of air seemed to be pumped into the container by a hidden pump and there was the body of a female inside.

With a look of sadness on his face Victor walked over and flipped a switch at the base and the inside of the container lit up so Jane could get a better look at the body suspended in the clear fluid.

Perfection was the only word that came to Jane's mind as she looked at the body. This female had perfect, arms, legs, hips and breasts. Her face was beautiful and her hair was long and flowing.

"Who is she?" Jane asked.

"She is all that remains of a plane that crashed up here in the early fifty's during a terrible Winter storm. There were four of them, all athletes by their looks. By the time I was able to reach the plane they had all been dead for a few days. All of the bodies had suffered some sort of damage and there was not a complete one among them.

"So you brought them here?"

"Yes and I salvaged any of the good limbs and assembled what you see before you."

"So you were going to make a mate?"

"I thought about it, but she lacks a brain and a heart. An unlike those old movies you just cannot send your hunchback assistant out to steal one."

Jane's leg began to throb and she began to feel woozy ,so she asked to leave. Before she could protest Victor scooped her up his arms and carried her back to the cabin. She took some more Tylenol and ate some stew and soon began to feel better.

"You did all that digging and tunneling into solid rock without excavating equipment?"

"One of the items omitted in the book and only touched on by the Hollywood movies was my strength, I am as strong as one hundred men, maybe stronger."

"How did you find the money to purchase all that equipment and everything?"

"Well I have been around awhile and traveled the world. I encountered pirates and robber barons and relieved them of their treasure. I once looted the home of a ruler in India that was killing and torturing his subjects.

His subjects begged me to eliminate him. I killed him and we looted treasure house. Half went to them and I took the other half."

"You have no scars and you look like everyone else," Jane said.

"That is courtesy of the top plastic surgeon in the world. He was paid a kings ransom to work his magic on me and then forget. I had the tattoos on my wrists done in Japan by a Yakuza tattoo artist many years ago to hide where my hands were attached to my wrist. That was before all the progress made in the plastic surgery."

"If I leave to go to town to get my leg set, how will I find you again?" Jane asked.

"You don't have to leave. I can set the leg myself and cast it," he informed her.

"But what about contacting the inn and letting them know I am all right?" It's a shame you don't have a phone," she stated.

Victor pressed a hidden button and a roll top desk appeared from a hidden recess in the wall. There was a desk top computer and a cell phone.

"Well you can't do that from here. How could you explain finding a phone in the middle of the forest? So tomorrow I will take you down to the edge of the forest. It will not be a long walk as I am sure someone will see and assist you," Victor responded.