Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 03.djvu/57

248 be cheaper to buy it off me than him. Anyway, I'm after the paper with the makeup of this explosive when I jimmied the laboratory window.

I'm sayin' this right here: Proctor may be a nut, but he's no boob. I was expecting burglar alarms, scientific thief traps, all that kind of stuff. And I was all fixt for an electrified box. Proctor put one over on me just the same. And if he didn't do it with the mind machine, how in Hell else do you account for it?

I was workin' on the old can. She was a fairly respectable affair, and I make up my mind to blow her. I was drillin' away when click goes a switch and the sudden flare of light dazzled me. Were you ever caught working on a guy's safe, brother? No? Well, take it from Oscar, it's like nothing you ever felt before.

Even before I can see right my mind's workin' overtime hunting for a way out. And then I can see again, and there stands Proctor, a long cord trailing behind him and 'phones over his ears like the wireless men. And I notice with joy that he ain't got a gat—not that I can see.

Anyway, I risk it. Just as quick as I can draw I flashes my automatic. I point it right at his head, and makin' my voice as hard as I can I says, tense-like, "You speak one word and you'll eat your breakfast in Hell."

And Proctor smiles. Get that? With my gat at his head he smiles. And, fellow, when Proctor smiles it gives you the creeps. And then he says—s' help me—I'm not bullyin' you—"Put your gun away, my man, its not loaded."

Can you beat that? It wasn't either, but how did he know it? Bluffing? That's what I thought, and I sees his bet and raises him. "You move," I growls, "and you'll discover you're a bad guesser."

He smiles again. Say, I can feel my flesh creep yet. "It's not loaded," he says, very calm, and he walks a few steps toward me. I don't shoot. You can't you know, with an empty gun, and I see that he's called my bluff.

"You win," I says. "It ain't. But I can beat the life out of you with it."

That smile again. His hand goes to his pocket. He pulls out a little bottle, just about the size they sell you pills in. "That, my friend," he says, "is full of Chero. If I just toss it at your feet, you'll never attempt to steal a formula again on this planet."

Does he win? He owns the building. "Call the officer," and I chucks the gun on the floor, "I'll go quietly."

"Sensible," he remarks; "very sensible. You possess judgment, even if you do lack courage. Who sent you here?"

"Call in the bulls," I growls. "I'm not squealing."

He takes no notice, "I know who sent you, I knew you were coming."

"Look here," I blurts, "if that gang framed me, I'll talk. They sent for me, I didn't go to them. I"

"No one informed me, if that's what you mean," he says, coldly. "It is not necessary for any one to inform me of anything. The world is an open book to me."

(That's just what he told that gang of saw-bones afterwards, and they said he was looney. But if they had seen him as I seen him)

He was talking again. "My man," I wriggled when he spoke, "the men for whom you work are imbeciles. I have named my price for Chero, and they don't want to pay it. They believe they can wrest it from me by force or trickery. You are their first emissary, and it is my wish that you be their last. I am going to convince them that it is useless to attempt anything of the kind with me. I am not going to turn you over to the police. I am going to show you something, and then I am going to send you back to your masters to tell them what you have seen. After that," he smiled, "I don't think I shall be troubled by them. Come!"

He stalked into the next room, me at his heels. There wasn't much in that room—just a table covered with apparatus. I have seen a wireless set. It looked something like that, only—well there was something different about it.

He pointed to it. Oh! I can see him yet, with his flashing eyes, and his big dome. "There," says he, "is the mind machine. And you, a criminal, are the first man to see it except its creator."

I'm getting on my feet again, and not so scared, and so I gazes at it curious. "What is it, Doc?" I asks.

"It reads your thoughts," he says, just as solemn as an owl.

That's right, laugh, I don't blame you. I grinned myself. He saw me grin, and he turned on me like a tiger.

"Dolt," he hollers. "Clod! You doubt. Pig! Your type has retarded the progress of mankind throughout the ages. You sneer—you imbecile!"

Well, just then I'm like the doctors. "A nut!" I thinks, "and loose with that bottle of Chero in his pocket!" And it's up to me to soothe him.

"How does it work?" I asks, to gain time. When you're in a room with a nut that's nursin' a bottle of H. E. your one thought is to go away from there. And this particular nut don't want me to. But I have hopes.

By dumb luck I hits the right chord. "How does it work?" gets results. Right away he seems to forget he's mad. He seems to forget I'm a yegg, he gets kind of dreamy, and he runs a caressin' hand over the shiny brass of the nearest instrument.

"Simple," he says, "very simple. It is based on the electro-magnetic wave and the conducting ether theories." It's over my head, but I listen. "Have you ever considered just what happens when you think intensely? By an effort of what you call the Will, you concentrate on what you are thinking. Emotion, too, plays its part. You are intensely angry, intensely worried, intensely interested. This concentrating acts physically on the brain. There is a call on the heart for more blood. And the heart responds, sending a thicker, faster stream to the affected locality. Now what happens?" He turns to me like my teacher used to do in school when there was a question to be answered.

"Search me," I murmurs.

But he doesn't even see me, I guess. "The increased stream, rushing at an unusual rate, rubs against the walls of the veins and arteries of the head, producing friction."

"I see," I says, politely. But I don't.

"This friction is the physical result of the mental action. Your purely mental process has, by the membership of the rushing blood and its attending