"I am sorry that I am compelled to deprive Mrs. Mortimer not only of her husband but of her tea as well."
—Dr. Armitage
"The Elixir of Life" is a Short Story blending soft Science Fiction with Horror. It was written by Charles Langton Clarke and debuted in the December 1903 issue of The Argosy. Of Clarke's approximately fifty contributions to the magazine, it's one of only two stories dabbling in fantastical themes, the other being "The Telephonogram". For its part, "The Elixir of Life" concerns a Mad Doctor extracting the life force of others to extend his own life and his dealings with his tenth intended victim.
Some time ago, Jim Allerlee went missing. His friend Allan Mortimer discusses the case with another friend, Atkinson, when at his place. As it becomes late, Mortimer takes his leave, but not before Atkinson returns to him a tea canister half-filled with gunpowder he borrowed a while back. On his way home, Mortimer witnesses an old man injure himself in a fall and offers to help him back home. The man, Dr. Armitage, gratefully accepts and invites Mortimer inside for a good bottle of whisky. Mortimer is offered a chair that Armitage explains he designed himself. He presses a button and a hinged steel shutter locks Mortimer in the chair. The doctor drops all pretense at this point and reveals that he will kill Mortimer to extract his vitic force to extend his lifespan with. He also admits that he is behind Jim Allerlee's disappearance, the man being his previous unwilling donor. To his annoyance, Mortimer discovers that Dr. Armitage, in addition to his vitic force, also really wants to talk about his amazing discoveries and inventions. Mortimer bears it all until Armitage shows him the actual distillation device, which operates by means of extreme heat and powerful electric currents and leaves nothing but ash and the elixir of life. Dr. Armitage is provoked into demonstrating the device, selecting the package Mortimer had with him when the latter falsely claims it contains tea powder. Surprisingly, both men survive the subsequent explosion and are taken to the hospital, where Dr. Armitage regains conscious a week before Mortimer does. He is therefore long gone when Mortimer can get the police involved.
"The Elixir of Life" provides examples of the following tropes:
- Affably Evil: Notwithstanding a medium sadistic streak, Dr. Armitage only kills to extend his own lifespan. He regrets the needlessness of deaths he caused without being able to extract the vitic force. He also asks his victims if they have any dependents they leave behind, because if so he'll make them recipients of an annuity. Armitage also takes pride that his method of killing is painless and feels no worse than falling asleep.
- The Ageless: The elixir of life does not rejuvenate, but it prevents further aging and instills vitality. Armitage, who is estimated to be sixty by Mortimer, laments that he didn't make his discoveries and inventions thirty years earlier in his life.
- Ambiguous Ending: Dr. Armitage survives the explosion and due to the excess vitic force in his body he wakes up in the hospital one week before Allan Mortimer, meaning that the one person who knows he's a murderer cannot tell anyone yet. He leaves the hospital quickly and is never seen again, not even when the police set out a diligent search for him after Mortimer's testimony. He may have gotten away and gone on to live many lifetimes more thanks to the elixir of life, but it's also possible that Armitage lost everything in the explosion and died because he no longer could artificially sustain himself. Both his chair trap and the machine to extract the life force were destroyed in the explosion and at that time Armitage had the glass vial containing the elixir in his pocket, making it very likely it broke. Still, all that is for certain is that even a police investigation into his whereabouts yielded no results.
- Bookends: "The Elixir of Life" opens with Mortimer and Atkinson discussing the disappearance of Allerlee. It closes with Mortimer and Atkinson discussing the disappearance of Armitage.
- Chekhov's Gun: When Allan Mortimer leaves Atkinson's house, a stray comment about the missing Jim Allerlee reminds Atkinson that Mortimer had lent him a tea canister full of gunpowder to fill some shells. Half the canister has been laying untouched for a while now and so Atkinson insists that Mortimer takes it home with him. This annoys Mortimer, but turns out to be a blessing in disguise when Dr. Armitage has him trapped. Defiant to the end, Mortimer insists that Armitage's distillation device, which operates by means of extreme heat and powerful electric currents, is sure to leave something behind that will eventually catch up with the doctor. Annoyed, Armitage proposes to give a demonstration of his machine's thorough destructive potential using an object and asks about the package Mortimer had with him. Thinking quickly, Mortimer answers it contains tea.
- Confirmed Bachelor: Allan Mortimer seems to favor staying single. He is older than his friend Atkinson, who calls him "old man" and who already is married himself. Armitage expresses surprise when Mortimer lies that he has a wife, noting that he never would have suspected Mortimer to be the domestic type. And when he accepts that he'll die soon, Mortimer thinks about who will mourn his disappearance and notes that there is a girl whom he hopes would be moved to feel sorry about his loss in lieu of a wife he's glad not to have given his predicament.
- Convenient Coma: Neither Armitage nor Mortimer are killed by the explosion that took down much of Armitage's house despite their proximity to the source. Mortimer was at a slightly greater distance and somewhat covered, while Armitage may very well only have survived because of his increased vitic force. That same vitic force allows Armitage to wake up in the hospital and leave within two weeks, while Armitage doesn't awaken until three weeks later and is still healing.
- Creepy Souvenir: Despite claiming to only kill to get more elixir of life, Dr. Armitage has a sadistic streak. One way this comes to expression is an album he keeps that contains post-mortem photos of his victims. He even has the nerve to compare it to a family album and seemingly makes a habit of showing the photos to each new victim when they're encased in the same chair all predecessors died in. He admits it's not a wise hobby to entertain, but he can't help himself. After Mortimer's escape, he mentions the album as evidence of Armitage's crimes to the police. It's not confirmed that the album, which was stored in a safe, survived the explosion and subsequent fire in Armitage's lab, but the police do launch a diligent search for the doctor, so it may very well have.
- Defiant to the End: Mortimer is more annoyed about being toyed with than scared to be murdered and so a lot of what he says to Armitage comes down to "shut up and get it over with" and "you will be held accountable". At one point, Armitage explains that his elixir of life will give him a longer and more useful existence provided that no accident befalls him. Mortimer's response is that he hopes that the doctor will get run over on the first street corner.
- Distinction Without a Difference: Mortimer asks Dr. Armitage if he intends to murder him. Armitage objects to the brutality of that word and prefers to think of Mortimer as a soon-to-be martyr to science.
- Does Not Like Spam: Dr. Armitage expresses a dislike of tea because of its deleterious properties, fitting his obsession to live longer and healthier than humans are normally granted. He's happy to destroy the canister of tea powder that Mortimer brought so that it stops being a threat to any would-be drinker.
- Elixir of Life: Every animal is born with an amount of vitic force that decides how long their natural lifespan will be. Dr. Armitage has discovered this and specialized in the human variant, developing a drug that suspends the vitic force, which causes the body to die while the vitic force is retained. He has also developed a distillation device that extracts the vitic force in the form of a few drops of a pale amber color. Although Armitage's research is ongoing, his working theory is that one drop of this elixir of life equals five years. The elixir does not rejuvenate, but it prevents further aging and instills inhumane vitality. The only thing Armitage doesn't get around to explaining is how the elixir is to be taken, although it's implied to be through injection, and at what intervals it is to be taken, because no reason is given why Armitage keeps a vial of the elixir instead of taking it all at once.
- Eyes Never Lie: Mortimer describes Armitage as a man of about sixty years, with a waxen pallor, a close network of tiny wrinkles, and long locks of yellowish-white hair. This elderly look is contrasted by the youthful brilliance of his eyes.
- Get It Over With: Mortimer is more annoyed about being toyed with than scared to be murdered and so a lot of what he says to Armitage comes down to "you will be held accountable" and "shut up and get it over with". Armitage does not oblige him, preferring to chat with his victims for the fun of it and possibly also having to actually wait for something.
- Hospital Epilogue: Three weeks after tricking Armitage into blowing up his equipment and house, Mortimer wakes up in the hospital with Atkinson by his side. Atkinson explains what happened in those three weeks and Mortimer informs him of Armitage's crimes and gets him to get the police involved.
- Honor Before Reason: When Armitage asks Mortimer if he has anyone he leaves behind that he'd like to receive monetary support, Allen curses at him, proclaiming that he'd rather have each and every relative of his starve within a week than that they'd have any reason to have something to be grateful towards the doctor for.
- Immortality Immorality: Dr. Armitage has discovered a way to stop himself from aging and grant himself improved vitality. All that it takes is that he drains the life force from others. Armitage has set up a few things to convince himself he's being nice about it, like ensuring death is painless and any dependents of his victims get monetary aid, but he still chooses his own convenience over that of all his victims and takes pride in the trickery with which he lures them into his trap.
- Just Between You and Me: Dr. Armitage is very proud of his vitic force-suspending drug, his vitic force distillation device, his shackle chair trap, and all research and tinkering surrounding his work. Like anyone who makes such amazing scientific advances, he really wants to talk about them, but he can't because it isn't in his interest to share the secret to agelessness with anyone or reveal his activities hunting for unwilling donors. That is why he tells only his victims about his many accomplishments, because they won't live to tell the tale and deserve to know what they will die for.
- Life Drinker: Armitage takes the vitic force from other people by first drugging them with a concoction that suspends said vitic force and then loading the corpse into a distillation device that thoroughly destroys the tissue but extracts the vitic force ad the elixir of life that can be used to stall aging and improve vitality in another body, that being the doctor's own. The elixir most likely works through injection. For his horrid crimes, Mortimer compares him to a vampire and to a ghoul.
- Mad Doctor: Dr. Armitage has discovered that every animal is born with an amount of vitic force that decides how long their natural lifespan will be. He has pursued research in the human variant solely to benefit his own lifespan and health. To this end, he has developed a drug that suspends the vitic force, which causes the body to die while the vitic force is retained. He has also developed a distillation device that extracts the vitic force in a liquid form. This elixir of life can be taken by another human, that being himself, to increase lifespan and improve vitality. He continues his work as an actual doctor so that if the neighborhood hears someone screaming, he can explain it was a difficult patient.
- Mad Scientist: Dr. Armitage has discovered that every animal is born with an amount of vitic force that decides how long their natural lifespan will be. He has pursued research in the human variant solely to benefit his own lifespan and health. To this end, he has developed a drug that suspends the vitic force, which causes the body to die while the vitic force is retained. He has also developed a distillation device that extracts the vitic force in a liquid form. After some initial attempts to drug his victims orally to make injection of the vitic force-suspending drug easier, Armitage found that the former kind of drug counteracts the latter. To amend this, he developed a chair which can trap anyone seated in it by means of a hinged steel shutter.
- Reminiscing About Your Victims: Despite claiming to only kill to get more elixir of life, Dr. Armitage has a sadistic streak and likes to recall the men he killed, but only if he actually got their vitic force. He regrets those kills that left him with nothing because those were pointless. He keeps an album that contains post-mortem photos of his victims, which he can't share with anyone despite wanting to. His solution is to show it to each of his new victims after restraining them, because they won't live to tattletale.
- Serial Killer: Dr. Armitage confesses to having killed nine men for their vitic force to extend his own life, and this number seemingly doesn't include the two cases where he got nothing out of the murder because he bungled the extraction. Allan Mortimer believes there may be more victims. Two more aspects that give Armitage a serial killer vibe is that he hunts for a specific kind of victim and that he has some creepy habits. Said victims are all young adult men. Armitage doesn't target women or children, possibly for practical reasons, possibly for moral reasons, and he needs his victims somewhat young because then they still have most of their vitic force left. And despite calling himself kindly, he photographs his victims post-mortem and keeps the photos in an album as a souvenir.
- Shackle Seat Trap: After Armitage learned that he couldn't drug his victims because that would make it impossible to extract their vitic force, he designed and built a chair that seems innocuous enough and sits comfortably, but which conceals a hinged steel shutter at the footrest that with the press of a button slides up to encase whoever is seated. Only the body from the neck upwards remains out in the open.
- Slipping a Mickey: Mortimer suspects the whisky Armitage offers him to be drugged and the latter picks up on that. The doctor turns it into a joke, daring Mortimer to drink and Mortimer, feeling embarrassed, does so. The whisky is, in fact, not drugged, but the chair he's sitting on is a shackle trap. Armitage later explains that he can't drug his unwilling donors because any such drug in the system counteracts the effects of the drug that suspends the vitic force.
- Taking You with Me: Mortimer doesn't want to die, but when he hits on an opportunity to see Dr. Armitage dead, he realizes that his desire to escape the madman is subordinate to his desire for vengeance. If he's going to die at the doctor's hands, he will have the satisfaction of knowing he'll be the last victim.
- What a Senseless Waste of Human Life: Dr. Armitage does not drug his victims because any drug counteracts the effects of the drug that suspends the vitic force, which is needed to be able to extract the liquid, which is all Armitage wants out of his murders. He learned about the drug issue through two successive failures and he regrets that he ended lives pointlessly.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: To attain unwilling donors, Dr. Armitage has developed a routine of finding lone men late at night and pretending to be a frail old man who sprains his ankle in a fall. If the target comes to his aid, he manipulates him into helping him get home and invites him inside for a drink. The goal then is to get him in a chair a hidden shackle mechanism. It's only after the victim is encased in the chair that Armitage drops the act.
- You Won't Feel a Thing!: Dr. Armitage, who considers himself a gentleman, is rather proud and boastful that his vitic force-suspending drug makes for a painless death not unlike going to sleep. His victims aren't at all impressed.
