Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 01.djvu/95

 Then he would step back and survey the atmosphere again, eyes running slowly up and down as though over the lines of a quite tangible thing.

Finally he took something out of his pocket and walked with a more decisive air to the corner. I saw his hands move close together, for all die world as though he were adjusting a micrometer or other delicate measuring-device. He applied his hands to the questionable point in nothingness.

As he had done yesterday, he paid no attention to observers at his door, at first. But finally he spoke, without looking up from his task.

"Hello, Freer."

"Hello," I said. Gannet had an unimpaired memory, at any rate.

"Come for another story?"

"In a way," I evaded.

He shook his head, meanwhile stepping a foot to the right and staring critically at nothing.

"I don't see how you stand it."

"Stand what?"

"Your work. The madness and despair of humanity—that's your stock in trade. You deal in war and famine and flood, in social injustice and political and civil brutalities. They're the intimate facts of your life. I don't see how you can live among such things. I can't even read about them."

I stared at him. I'd never met a man who seemed less crazy.

"Whether you face the facts intimately or detachedly," I said, "they are still facts and they're still there. You can't avoid them."

"But you can. At least I can. And I'm going to. I'm getting out of all this."

He squatted on his haunches, and began running his hands slowly over space, up and down, then horizontally. He straightened and repeated the process. I'll swear I could make out what he had in his mind. It was a sort of chair, with a very high back and unusually high arms.

Just as I had decided this—he sat in it. You've seen stage tricksters sit in chairs widi arms folded, when there are no chairs there to sit in? Well, this was the same. I gaped at Gannet, sitting in thin air. Not an impossible stunt, but always an arresting one.

He got up and came to the door.

"I can't take life as it's lived today, Gannet. A weakness, no doubt, but there you are."

"So you're getting out of it," I nodded.

"So I'm getting out of it. It's not for nothing that I am a mathematician and an inventor."

What a shame! I almost said it aloud, but didn't. I'd conceived a positive fancy for the sad-faced Mr. Gannet.

He stared at me quizzically.

"You needn't hunt up Nick," he said. "I'm not hinting at suicide. It's a more literal escape, I mean."

"Escape? With these barred doors, the high wall outside?"

"Oh, walls! Bars!" He waved his hand, dismissing them.

He walked back to his sunny corner and resumed his critical ocular and manual examinations of—nothing.

"You may have another story tomorrow, Freer," he said mildly. And then he turned his back, thereby dismissing me as he had the walls and bolts of his confinement.

HUNTED up Nick on the way out. I felt like a traitor, but I knew it was for my new friend's own good.

"Gannet's talking of an escape," I said.

Nick's customary grin appeared on his broad face.

"Forget it. He's handed out that line before. Nobody could get out of here."

He walked to the high gate in the