Page:Weird Tales v02n04 (1923-11).djvu/6

Rh -was reduced to a cloud of dust, the surface of the earth-stuff would, it is obvious, be incalculably increased; but the mass of it would not be changed at all. If the particles fell below a certain size, the light-pressure would overcome the pull of gravitation, and that which had been the earth would be blown away into space.

All this I understood perfectly well. But when he launched into a little lecture on molecules, atoms and corpuscles; energy corpuscular, atomic and molecular; to say nothing of cathode, ultra-violet and infra-red rays, alpha, beta and gamma rays, mysterious somethings called ions, negative and positive charges and goodness only knows what else besides-well, it all was very strange and wonderful, but I could not make head or tail of it.

And then he went on to explain that the atom itself-instead of being, as scientists had supposed, the smallest particle of matter-is in reality a solar system. In this space so inconceivably tiny, the planets (the corpuscles or electrons) are and around atomic sun, and with prodigious velocities. This orbital movement of the electrons it is which sets going the ether disturbances which are called radiant energy. Those electrons, said Henry Quainfan, that propagate the ether waves which, on striking matter, produce violent light, make about 800,000,000,000,000 revolutions in a single second of time!

And right there I called a halt.

"That will do!" I told him. "That's got Alice in Wonderland done to a frazzle!"

"Of course it has," said he. "The wonders of science-"

"Is that science?" I wanted to know.

Henry Quainfan said that it was.

"But eight hundred trillion times in a second?" I exclaimed. "Nobody ever saw that!" "Of course nobody ever saw it," he smiled. "Nobody ever saw a molecule even."

"Poor Alice!" I murmured.

"It is in these molecules, atoms and corpuscles, however," went on Henry, "that the great discoveries of the future will be made. Somewhere in them lies the key to gravitation, to the mystery of matter itself, space and the stars, and who knows?-maybe of the mind and death."

"Man will never unlock that door!" said I.

"There are other ways of opening doors," smiled Henry Quainfan: "he may pick the lock. Don't be too sure, Rider. For instance, Comte declared that the constitution of the stars must forever remain unknown, and then came spectrum analysis, which has made visible stars that man has never seen with the eye, and in all probability never will see, and told us of what the stars are made and even the rate of approach or recession. Lord Kelvin too, proved--with mathematics that man could never fly, and yet today he is doing that very thing.

"So don't be too sure, Rider. The scientist has eyes besides those in his head. Leverrier and Adams couldn't see Neptune, but they told the astronomers where to point the telescope, and there was a new world gleaming in the field."

"But that," put in Morgan St. Cloud, "instead of being, as is often stated, the greatest triumph of mathematical astronomy, was in reality a happy accident. Bode's law breaks down with Neptune; the elements of the planet's orbit which Leverrier and Adams had deduced were away off."

"Certainly," nodded Henry. "It was a half billion miles nearer the sun than it should have been, and its mass was only about half that predicted-and yet the planet was found within less than a degree of the spot indicated by Leverrier:"

But St. Cloud shook his head.

"How many things that scientists trumpet as triumphs," said he, "are in reality happy accidents, how often that which is stated as a fact is nothing but surmise! Why, our old friend Captain Lemuel Gulliver, of romantic memory, scored a greater triumph than did Adams and Leverrier!"*

That by the way, was like St. Cloud.

But to return to that fire-lit library.

Of a sudden Henry Quainfan straightened up in his chair. He made an odd exclamation and stared at me across the table.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed.

"What is it now?" I asked him.

"Why didn't I think of that before?"

Certainly I couldn't tell him.

"Blockhead, mole!" he cried.

"I know I am, but this is-"

"Mel!" he cried, bringing his clenched hand down on the table.

The angel and the devil danced a little, the latter moving so that the curvature of the glass distorted his grin into one strangely grotesque, and more mocking than ever. And still his look was upon me.

"But I see it now!" Henry Quainfan cried. "Rider-"

"Yes?" I suggested.

"I've got an idea!" he exclaimed.

"As though you and ideas were strangers!" I smiled.

He remained silent, plunged in thought, and I fell to wondering what discovery was going to be added now to that amazing list of his, little dreaming how momentous that discovery was to be to him, Morgan St. Cloud and myself--of that awful, unimaginable thing it was to bring to St. Cloud.





ITH Henry Quainfan lived Morgan St. Cloud, his assistant. There were, by the way, two servants-- Buttermore, the cook, and Blimper, who was everything from a sort of valet de chambre to helper in the workshop when that was necessary.

And now that I come to Morgan St. Cloud, I find my pen hesitant. How can I, with marks on paper-or in any other way for that matter-paint a portrait of Morgan St. Cloud. I despair of conveying, in any adequate manner, that picture of this dark, courtly, magnetic and mysterious man which haunts my memory in so terrible a manner, and will haunt it to my dying hour.

Mysterious I have called him, and he was. And yet here again I grope in vain for words. I can not give you an idea of that strange quality in his manner, in his dark eyes, in that dark smile of his even, which was always so puzzling-mysterious.

I give it up.

He was about fifty years of age, and strikingly handsome. He drew women's eyes as a flame draws moths. Of his past we knew virtually nothing. On that he had chosen to maintain an almost utter silence, and Henry Quainfan had not pushed inquiries.

That he was a son of Fortune fallen on evil days was obvious; but more than that we did not know.

Of his misfortune I never heard him complain. His philosophy in this seemed. to be that it is better to have a bare foot than no foot at all. And this was remarkable in that he was apt to kick up a

 