PROFESSOR DENHAM IN EXTREME DANGER THROUGH EXPERIMENT BASED ON YOUR ARTICLE ON DOMINANT COORDINATES YOU ALONE CAN HELP HIM IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY COME AT ONCE.

A. VON HOLTZ.

The fence went on past the car. A mile, a mile and a half of narrow lane, fenced in and made as nearly intruder-proof as possible.

"Wonder what I'd do," said Tommy Reames, "if another car came along from the other end?"

He deliberately tried not to think about the telegram any more. He didn't believe it. He couldn't believe it. But he couldn't ignore it, either. n.o.body could: few scientists, and no human being with a normal amount of curiosity. Because the article on dominant coordinates had appeared in the _Journal of Physics_ and had dealt with a state of things in which the normal coordinates of everyday existence were a.s.sumed to have changed their functions: when the coordinates of time, the vertical, the horizontal and the lateral changed places and a man went east to go up and west to go "down" and ran his street-numbers in a fourth dimension. It was mathematical foolery, from one standpoint, but it led to some fascinating if abstruse conclusions.

But his brain would not remain away from the subject of the telegram, even though a chicken appeared in the fenced-in lane ahead of him and went flapping wildly on before the car. It rose in mid-air, the car overtook it as it rose above the level of the hood, and there was a rolling, squawking bundle of shedding feathers tumbling over and over along the hood until it reached the slanting windshield. There it spun wildly upward, left a cloud of feather's fluttering about Tommy's head, and fell still squawking into the road behind. By the back-view mirror, Tommy could see it picking itself up and staggering dizzily back to the side of the road.

"My point was," said Tommy vexedly to himself, speaking of the article the telegram referred to, "that a man can only recognize three dimensions of s.p.a.ce and one of time. So that if he got shot out of this cosmos altogether he wouldn't know the difference. He'd still seem to be in a three-dimensioned universe. And what is there in that stuff to get Denham in trouble?"

A house appeared ahead. A low, rambling sort of bungalow with a huge brick barn behind it. The house of Professor Denham, very certainly, and that barn was the laboratory in which he made his experiments.

Instinctively, Tommy stepped on the gas. The car leaped ahead. And then he was braking frantically. A pipe-framed gate with thinner, unpainted wire mesh filling its surface loomed before him, much too late for him to stop. There was a minor shock, a crashing and squeaking, and then a crash and shattering of gla.s.s. Tommy bent low as the top bar of the gate hit his windshield. The double gla.s.s cracked and crumpled and bent, but did not fly to bits. And the car came to a halt with its wheels intricately entangled in torn-away fence wire.

The gate had been torn from its hinges and was draped rakishly over the roadster. A tire went flat with a loud hissing noise, and Tommy Reames swore softly under his breath and got out to inspect the damage.

He was deciding that nothing irreparable was wrong when a man came bursting out of the brick building behind the house. A tall, lean, youngish man who waved his arms emphatically and approached shouting:

"You had no right to come in here! You must go away at once! You have damaged property! I will tell the Professor! You must pay for the damage! You must--"

"d.a.m.n!" said Tommy Reames. He had just seen that his radiator was punctured. A spout of ruddy, rusty water was pouring out on the gra.s.s.

The youngish man came up furiously. A pale young man, Tommy noticed. A young man with bristling, close-cropped hair and horn-rimmed spectacles before weak-looking eyes. His mouth was very full and very red, in marked contrast to the pallor of his cheeks.

"Did you not see the sign upon the gate?" he demanded angrily, in curiously stilted English. "Did you not see that trespa.s.sers are forbidden? You must go away at once! You will be prosecuted! You will be imprisoned! You--"

Tommy said irritably:

"Are you Von Holtz? My name is Reames. You telegraphed me."

The waving, lanky arms stopped in the middle of an excited gesture.

The weak-looking eyes behind the lenses widened. A pink tongue licked the too-full, too-red lips.

"Reames? The Herr Reames?" Von Holtz stammered. Then he said suspiciously, "But you are not--you cannot be the Herr Reames of the article on dominant coordinates!"

"I don't know why," said Tommy annoyedly. "I'm also the Herr Reames of several other articles, such as on the mechanics of continua and the ma.s.s and inertia of the tesseract. And I believe the current _Philosophical Journal_--"

He surveyed the spouting red stream from the radiator and shrugged ruefully.

"I wish you'd telephone the village to have somebody come out and fix my car," he said shortly, "and then tell me if this telegram is a joke or not."

He pulled out a yellow form and offered it. He had taken an instinctive dislike to the lean figure before him, but suppressed the feeling.

Von Holtz took the telegram and read it, and smoothed it out, and said agitatedly:

"But I thought the Herr Reames would be--would be a venerable gentleman! I thought--"

"You sent that wire," said Tommy. "It puzzled me just enough to make me rush out here. And I feel like a fool for having done it. What's the matter? Is it a joke?"

Von Holtz shook his head violently, even as he bit his lips.

"No! No!" he protested. "The Herr Professor Denham is in the most terrible, most deadly danger! I--I have been very nearly mad, Herr Reames. The Ragged Men may seize him!... I telegraphed to you. I have not slept for four nights. I have worked! I have racked my brains! I have gone nearly insane, trying to rescue the Herr Professor! And I--"

Tommy stared.

"Four days?" he said. "The thing, whatever it is, has been going on for four days?"

"Five," said Von Holtz nervously. "It was only to-day that I thought of you, Herr Reames. The Herr Professor Denham had praised your articles highly. He said that you were the only man who would be able to understand his work. Five days ago--"

Tommy grunted.

"If he's been in danger for five days," he said skeptically, "he's not in such a bad fix or it'd have been over. Will you phone for a repairman? Then we'll see what it's all about."

The lean arms began to wave again as Von Holtz said desperately:

"But Herr Reames, it is urgent! The Herr Professor is in deadly danger!"

"What's the matter with him?"

"He is marooned," said Von Holtz. Again he licked his lips. "He is marooned, Herr Reames, and you alone--"

"Marooned?" said Tommy more skeptically still. "In the middle of New York State? And I alone can help him? You sound more and more as if you were playing a rather elaborate and not very funny practical joke.

I've driven sixty miles to get here. What is the joke, anyhow?"

Von Holtz said despairingly:

"But it is true, Herr Reames! He is marooned. He has changed his coordinates. It was an experiment. He is marooned in the fifth dimension!"

There was dead silence. Tommy Reames stared blankly. Then his gorge rose. He had taken an instinctive dislike to this lean young man, anyhow. So he stared at him, and grew very angry, and would undoubtedly have gotten into his car and turned it about and driven it away again if it had been in any shape to run. But it wasn't. One tire was flat, and the last ruddy drops from the radiator were dripping slowly on the gra.s.s. So he pulled out a cigarette case and lighted a cigarette and said sardonically:

"The fifth dimension? That seems rather extreme. Most of us get along very well with three dimensions. Four seems luxurious. Why pick on the fifth?"

Von Holtz grew pale with anger in his turn. He waved his arms, stopped, and said with stiff formality:

"If the Herr Reames will follow me into the laboratory I will show him Professor Denham and convince him of the Herr Professor's extreme danger."