reply for a moment, while his eyes flashed and his face darkened. Then he said slowly:
“If you will come over to the laboratory I’ll show you what I am going to do with it.”
A Talk at the Club
Nothing could have suited us better. Ever since Edmund had shut himself away we had been curious to know what he was up to. We all got our hats and walked over to the laboratory. He led us directly into the back yard, which we were surprised to find walled and roofed, so as to form a huge shanty. Edmund opened the door and ushered us inside.
I tell you, we were startled by what we saw. In the center of the place was the queerest-looking thing you can imagine. It was not anything that I can well describe. I will call it a car, for that is what it most resembled. It was about eighteen feet long and ten feet high and broad, round like a boiler, with bulging ends. It seemed to be made of polished steel.
Edmund opened a door in the end.
“Step in,” he said, and unhesitatingly we obeyed him, all except Church, who was always a skeptical fellow, and who, for some reason, remained outside.
Edmund turned on an electric light, and we found ourselves in an oblong chamber, beautifully fitted up with fancy wood and with leather-cushioned seats all round the sides. The walls shone with polished knobs and handles.
“Sit down,” said Edmund, “and I’ll tell you what I’ve got here.”
Then, missing Church, he called out to him to come in, but there was no answer. We concluded that Church, thinking the thing would be too deep to be interesting, had gone back to the club. Edmund presently resumed:
“As I told you a little while ago, I’ve solved the mystery of the atoms. I’ve power illimitable at my command. If I chose to build the right sort of apparatus, I could drive this old planet of ours against the moon and wreck it! But I’m not going to damage anybody or anything. I’m simply going to try a little experiment. Excuse me a moment.”
Thereat he stepped outside, and we looked at one another, wondering, but still having too much confidence in Edmund to really set him down in our minds as unbalanced. We rather thought that he was going to show us some wonderful thing, as he used to do in the laboratory; something we couldn’t understand, but that would be interesting to look at. We were not prepared for what followed.
We heard Edmund outside in the shanty, making a noise that sounded like the opening of a barn door. Then he reappeared, entered the car, and closed its door.
We watched him with growing curiosity. There was an odd smile on his face as he reached at and touched a polished knob.
Instantly we felt that the car was rising. It rocked a little, like a boat in wavy water. We were startled, but not frightened.
A Visit to Edmund Stonewall’s Laboratory
Well, Edmund, what kind of a balloon is this?” Jack asked in his careless way.
“It’s considerable more than a balloon,” was the short reply.
We saw him touch another knob, and felt that the car had come to rest though it still rocked gently. Then Edmund unlocked a shutter at one side, and disclosed a many-paned window of thick glass. We all sprang to our feet and looked out. Below us were roofs and the tops of trees.
“We’re about two hundred feet up,” said Edmund. “What do you think of it?”
“Wonderful! Wonderful!” we all exclaimed.
“But,” persisted Jack, “what are you going to do with it?”
Again Edmund’s eyes flashed, and he said:
“You’ll see!”
The scene out of the window was beautiful. The city lights were nearly all below our level, and away off over the New Jersey horizon I noticed the planet Venus, near to setting, and as brilliant as a diamond. I am something of a star-gazer, and I called Edmund’s attention to the planet, as he happened to be standing beside me.
“Fine, isn’t she?” he said. “Finest world in the solar system. And Schiaparelli says she’s got two sides to her, one side always daylight and the other always night.”
I was surprised at his exhibition of astronomic lore, for I had never known that he had given any attention to the subject. But a moment later all this was forgotten, for Edmund suddenly pushed us back from the window and closed the shutter.
“Going down again so soon?” asked Jack, a little banteringly as before.
Edmund smiled. “Going,” he said simply, and put his hand on one of the knobs, pressing it gently. We felt ourselves moving very slowly.
“That’s right, Edmund,” Jack put in again. “Let us down easy; I don’t like bumps.”
Annihilating Gravity
We all expected at every instant to feel the car touch the cradle from which it had started. But we were mistaken. What really did happen can better be described in the words of Will Church, who, you will remember, had been left outside in the shanty. I got the account from him long afterward. He had written it out and put it in a safe as a sort of historic document.
Here is Church’s narrative, omitting the introduction, which read like a lawyer’s brief:
“When we went over from the club to Stonewall’s laboratory, I dropped behind the others because the four of them took up the full width of the sidewalk. Stonewall was talking to them, and my attention was attracted by something uncommon in his manner. I can’t describe it very well, but there was an indefinable carriage of the head which suggested to me the thought that everything was not exactly as it should be.
“I don’t mean that I thought him crazy, or anything of that kind, but I was convinced that he had some scheme in his mind to fool us. I bitterly repented, when things turned out as they did, that I had not whispered a word in the ears of the others. But that would have been difficult, and, besides, I didn’t think that the
