Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 6 (1926-12).djvu/5



S TO the beginning of the matter, there is information in plenty. Dusty files of yellowing newspapers yield columns about it, for it was a mild sensation at the time. And concerning the appalling climax of the business, when the machine-monsters burst upon an incredulous world, there are but few who need to be informed. But what of the four yearn between, when that monstrous menace to humanity lay hidden in the West Virginia hills, germinating, growing, reaching? Will anything more of that time ever be known than a few scrawled pages in a little diary? Shall we ever comprehend much of the story but the petty furor of its beginning and its flaming, tragic end? Well, to that beginning.

One starts with Detmold. A professor of electro-chemistry, a rather unusual professor, who was constantly advancing radical, astounding theories in almost every branch of science. A few of his theories he proved, but most of them were unprovable, wild, untrammeled speculations. Today his suggestions are genuinely interesting and stimulating, but at the time it seemed that his experiments, his statements, were becoming more and more fantastic, calling forth an ever-increasing flood of shocked protests from outraged scientists. And this was not at all to the liking of Juston University, where he taught. Juston is the third oldest college in the country, and has an ancient, scholarly tradition that it takes very seriously.

So when complaints began to come in from some of the more prosperous alumni, possible donors of buildings and the like, the middle-aged gentlemen who directed the university's