Page:Weird Tales v02n04 (1923-11).djvu/9

8 "It seems to me that there is some thing odd there," I remarked.

"Where, Rider?" St. Cloud wanted to know.

"Why, planning a journey when he is so deep in this business of throwing people into hysterics."

"That's just the way it struck me," said St. Cloud. "And that's why I couldn't help thinking, though the idea seems utterly fantastic, that it-this mysterious journey he so vaguely speaks about is somehow connected with this."

"This?"

"Precisely," nodded St. Cloud; "this terrible research of his, Rider, for it is that terrible and more than terrible."

"But good heavens!"

I stared at him.

"Well?" he queried.

"How can this have anything to do with that?"

"I wish I knew, Rider. However, in all likelihood it is only a wild fancy of mine; but it persists. All I know is this; if it's so, it is a journey in which I for one certainly have no desire to accompany him."

"I should say so! Not with swords of green light, with something that makes eagles fall down out of the sky and gulls vanish into nothingness-and Heaven only knows what else. Excuse me!"

St. Cloud smiled and sat gazing into the flames.

And then of a sudden out of the storm he came-Henry Quainfan, bareheaded, out of breath, in that long yellow work coat, just as he had quitted. the laboratory, his cheeks flushed, his eyes shining in a way that made me feel queer.

Thus he burst in upon us - the water running from him in streams.

Henry Quainfan laughed, and that laugh of his, I thought, was tinged with something hysterical; but that might have been only a fancy.

"It's finished, Rider!" he exclaimed. "It's solved; I've done it-done it at last!"

I thrust forth my hand in congratulation, and the force with which he gripped it made me wince. St. Cloud's slender fingers, it was patent, were seized in a grip equally crushing.

"So you've got it?" said I, wondering what on earth it was that he had got.

"Padlocked, as it were," Henry Quainfan smiled. "I've solved the whole business, and everything's worked out, too-decided!"

"Decided?" I echoed. "Everything?"

"Just so," he nodded. "But that will be my little secret for the present."

He sank into the chair I had drawn up.

"Heavens," said he, "but I'm tired damnably tired!"

The golden head sank forward, and he covered his eyes with his hand.

Of a sudden he uttered an exclamation and straightened up.

"Great guns!" he said. "Here I am tearing around like a wild man!" He stood up.

"Bareheaded!" he exclaimed. "And I've ruined your carpet, Rider. But, now that I have made a fool of myself, I'm going home."

I protested.

"No," said he. "Why, I'll be asleep in two minutes."

"Sleep here," I told him.

But he shook his head.

"Sit down!" I commanded. "I'm going to get something to warm you up."

He smiled his thanks, but said:

"No, Rider; I'm going home."

"But, man, it's coming down in torrents, and--"

"Let her come!" said Henry-Quainfan.

And out he went into the rain and storm.

And out with him went Morgan St. Cloud and Rider Farnermain, the former (with arm linked in his) on his left, the latter (ditto) on his right-as if to protect this indomitable one from the puny elements.





"THAT's all right, too!" said Morgan St. Cloud. "I can't explain it, though that doesn't mean that I haven't got an explanation. But there the riddle is-and none the less a riddle, I admit, because it's a fact. Whether by accident or design, here we are in the very center of the Universe!"

I may remark that (besides being in the center of the Universe) we were in Henry Quainfan's library. This, too, was the second night after that in which he burst in upon us out of the storm. However, he had as yet thrown no light whatever on that achievement the consummation of which had sent him to St. Cloud and me, bareheaded and excited, through the wind and the rain-or on that "little secret" of his.

"There you are!" said I to Henry. "Why are we here-in the very center of the starry stage?"

"Why," he smiled, "aren't we in the constellation Sagittarius, or Draco, or Canis Major, or the Big Dipper?"

"I find it hard," I persisted, "to believe that this anomalous position of our sun and his planets is simply a fortuitous one."

"And I find it more than hard, impossible," said Henry Quainfan,"to believe that the Universe was made for man."

"Oh, I don't say that," St. Cloud explained. "But I don't believe that man is as the beasts that perish. And as for this central position of our solar system, I can't help fancying that-that it does mean something."

"It is true that our sun seems to be in the center of that vast space ringed round by the Milky Way," said Henry, "but in reality he may not be. For in"No," said he. "Why, I'll be asleep stance, we find Professor Newcomb himself expressing a doubt that these things are as they seem. After instancing Ptolemy's proof that the earth was fixed in the center of the Universe, Newcomb says:

"May we not be the victims of some fallacy, as he was?'

"But granting that we are in the very center of Creation?" Henry went on. "What then? What does it prove? That the heavens were made for man? Why, how often does that noble creature even look at them? Does it prove that we must look at a human being-a thing a brother to the tiger and the ape, and like as not more beastly than either-if we would behold the noblest work of the Almighty God?"

"I don't know," answered Morgan St. Cloud. "I wouldn't go so far as that. All I say is this: that the greatest mystery which ever confronts a human being is-humanity."

"But Rider goes that far."

"I do," I told him. "I believe, with Dr. Wallace, that this position of our earth in the center of the Universe (along with a thousand other things) goes to prove just that."

"But it doesn't prove anything at all," IIenry Quainfan said, "Dr. Wallace and Rider Farnermain to the contrary notwithstanding. For our sun wasn't always here. He too is on his way. Every morning of our lives finds him over a million miles farther on that journey of his towards the glorious star in the northern heavens known to men as Alpha Lyrae."

"That our sun is making a journey through space, and a stupendous one, no one can doubt," said St. Cloud. "But one can doubt that the apex of the sun's way is Alpha Lyrae-indeed, that there is any apex or anti-apex at all. That's