The metal clinked into place. Live, writhing power leaped through the wire, snarling across partial breaks. The transformers began to hum. The humming grew louder. Singing softly, the bronze globe over their heads glowed green. Dave Miller felt a curious lightness. There was a snap in his brain, and Erickson, Major and the laboratory faded from his senses.
Then came an interval when the only sound was the soft sobbing he had been hearing as if in a dream. That, and blackness that enfolded him like soft velvet. Then Miller was opening his eyes, to see the familiar walls of his own kitchen around him!
Someone cried out.
"Dave! Oh, Dave, dear!"
It was Helen"s voice, and it was Helen who cradled his head in her lap and bent her face close to his.
"Oh, thank G.o.d that you"re alive--!"
"Helen!" Miller murmured. "What--are--you--doing here?"
"I couldn"t go through with it. I--I just couldn"t leave you. I came back and--and I heard the shot and ran in. The doctor should be here. I called him five minutes ago."
"_Five minutes_ ... How long has it been since I shot myself?"
"Oh, just six or seven minutes. I called the doctor right away."
Miller took a deep breath. Then it _must_ have been a dream. All that--to happen in a few minutes-- It wasn"t possible!
"How--how could I have botched the job?" he muttered. "I wasn"t drunk enough to miss myself completely."
Helen looked at the huge revolver lying in the sink.
"Oh, that old forty-five of Grandfather"s! It hasn"t been loaded since the Civil War. I guess the powder got damp or something. It just sort of sputtered instead of exploding properly. Dave, promise me something!
You won"t ever do anything like this again, if I promise not to nag you?"
Dave Miller closed his eyes. "There won"t be any need to nag, Helen.
Some people take a lot of teaching, but I"ve had my lesson. I"ve got ideas about the store which I"d been too lazy to try out. You know, I feel more like fighting right now than I have for years! We"ll lick "em, won"t we, honey?"
Helen buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder and cried softly.
Her words were too m.u.f.fled to be intelligible. But Dave Miller understood what she meant.
He had thought the whole thing a dream--John Erickson, the "time impulsor" and Major. But that night he read an item in the _Evening Courier_ that was to keep him thinking for many days.
POLICE INVESTIGATE DEATH OF SCIENTIST HERE IN LABORATORY
John M. Erickson, director of the Wanamaker Inst.i.tute, died at his work last night. Erickson was a beloved and valuable figure in the world of science, famous for his recently publicized "time lapse"
theory.
Two strange circ.u.mstances surrounded his death. One was the presence of a German shepherd dog in the laboratory, its head crushed as if with a sledgehammer. The other was a chain of small metal objects stretching from one corner of the room to the other, as if intended to take the place of wire in a circuit.
Police, however, discount this idea, as there was a roll of wire only a few feet from the body.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Obviously this electric time impulsor is a machine in the nature of an atomic integrator. It "broadcasts" great waves of electrons which align all atomic objects in rigid suspension.
That is to say, atomic structures are literally "frozen." Living bodies are similarly affected. It is a widely held belief on the part of many eminent scientists that all matter, broken down into its elementary atomic composition, is electrical in structure.
That being so, there is no reason to suppose why Professor Erickson may not have discovered a time impulsor which, broadcasting electronic impulses, "froze" everything within its range.--ED.