Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 12.djvu/23

Rh “This is the effect of a metal which I carried with the gold. A metal—I don't know what you call it in your language—possibly you may never have heard of it. Here is some.”

He reached in his pocket and drew out a piece of silvery metal as large as a double eagle and dropped it on the table before M. Demetriovich. The old savant glanced at the metal, then looked more carefully.

“It's radium,” he said in a puzzled voice. “It's the largest piece of radium I ever saw—it's the only piece of pure metallic radium I ever saw. It —it's worth quite a fortune—and owned by an Indian!”

Here M. Demetriovich breached his invariably good manners by staring blankly at his guest.

“So you are acquainted with it?” observed the stranger with interest.

“Not in its metallic form. I have extracted its bromides myself. And I've seen radium burns before. I might have known it was a radium burn, but I never dreamed of that metal.”

“But that was gold that burned me,” complained Standifer.

“That's true,” agreed M. Demetriovich, “but, you see, the emanations of radium have the power of settling on any object and producing all the effects of radium itself. The gentleman carried those lumps of gold in his pockets along with about two million dollars' worth of radium.” The old savant laughed briefly at the eeriness of the situation. “The gold became charged with radium, burned your leg and whitened your hair. It also affected my electrostat.”

HE three men turned to the stranger, who apparently carried fortunes of various metals jingling loose in his pocket.

“Sir,” began the savant, “we must apologize to you for our unjust suspicions.”

“Do you mean your suspicions were incorrect?” queried the red man.

“I mean,” said the old savant with dignity, for this was no way to take an apology, “that we were morally culpable in attributing to you criminal motives without waiting for conclusive evidence.”

The stranger smiled at this long sentence.

“I can understand your idea without your speaking each word of it. But the idea itself is very strange.” He stroked his chin and some paint rubbed off on his fingers, showing a lighter yellowish skin beneath. Then he laughed. “If you should apologize for every incorrect idea you maintain, gentlemen, I should think your lives would be one long apology.”

The superciliousness, the careless disdain in thi^ observation, accented Pethwick's antipathy to the man.

At that moment the fellow asked—

“Do all your species live in cloth shelters such as these?”

Standifer, who seemed more kindly disposed toward the stranger than the others, explained that tents were temporary shelters and that houses were permanent.

The newcomer continued his smiling scrutiny of everything and at last asked:

“Can't you gentlemen even communicate with each other without using words and sentences?”

He paused then, as if to simplify what he had said, and went on— “Suppose you, Mr. Pethwick, desire to communicate with Mr.——” he made a gesture toward the scientist and added——“Mr. Demetriovich, would you be forced to articulate every word in the sentence?”

“How did you come to know my name?” asked the engineer, surprised. “Have we met before?”

The stranger laughed heartily. “I am sure we have not. I see you desire my name. Well, I have a number. In my country the citizens are numbered. I am sure when your own countries become densely populated, you, too, will adopt a numerical nomenclature.”

“What is your number?” asked Standifer, quite astonished at this, as indeed were his companions.

“1753-12,657,109-654-3.”

The secretary laughed.

“It sounds like a cross between a combination lock and a football game. Where do you come from, Mr.—Mr. Three?”

The painted man nodded down the valley casually.

“The name of my country is One, or First,” he smiled. “Of course that is a very ancient and unscientific name, but '.notation must begin somewhere, and it usually begins at home. Now I dare say each one of you lives in a country called One—no, I see I am wrong.” Then he repeated in a lower tone, “America—Rumania—Peru—very pretty names but unscientific.”

By this time Mr. Three's remarkable feat of calling the men's names and then calling the countries of their birth made the explorers realize that they had encountered an amazing man indeed.

“Do you read our thoughts before we speak?” cried Standifer.

Mr. Three nodded easily.

“Certainly; without that all study of the lower animals would be a mere cataloguing of actions and habits.”

Pethwick wondered if the fellow meant a very delicate insult to begin talking about the study of “lower animals” so promptly when the conversation naturally turned on himself and his companions. He said nothing, but Mr. Three smiled.

But M. Demetriovich was utterly charmed with the vistas of investigation the man's suggestion opened to him.

“Why, that would be wonderful, would it not!” he cried.

“Certainly, without mind-reading comparative psychology is impossible.”

“We have professional mind-readers,” cried M. Demetriovich with enthusiasm. “I wonder why the psychologists have never thought to have one try to read the minds—say of the higher simians!”

Mr. Three seemed to find all of this conversation funny, for he laughed again. But his words were quite serious.

“Besides, this ‘mentage,’ as we call mind-reading, enables one to converse with every other creature, just as I am talking to you. I take your language forms right out of your own minds and use them.