are the papers," Mortimer said, pushing a few sheets of paper across the table toward him.
Williams merely glanced at them, and picked up a pen.
"Just a minute," Mortimer rang for Gable. The assistant and I witnessed the signature, and affixed our names below it.
"I am ready to begin immediately, if you like," Williams said when Gable had gone.
Mortimer eyed him reflectively for a moment. "First," he said, "there is a question I should like to ask you, Mr. Williams. You need not answer if you feel disinclined. Why are you so eager to undergo an experiment, the outcome of which even I cannot foresee?"
"If I answer that, will my answer be treated as strictly confidential?" asked Williams, casting a sidelong glance in my direction.
"Most certainly," Mortimer replied. "I speak for both myself and Dr. Claybridge." I nodded affirmation.
"Then," said Williams, "I will tell you. I welcome this experiment because, as you pointed out yesterday, there is a possibility of its resulting in my death. No, you did not say so in so many words, Prof. Mortimer, but that is the fear at the back of your mind. And why should I wish to die? Because, gentlemen, I have committed murder."
"What!" We barked out the word together.
Williams smiled wanly at our amazement. "That is rather an unusual statement; isn't it?" he asked in his tired voice. "Whom I murdered does not matter. The police will never find me out, for I was clever about it in order that my sister, to whom your $5,000, Professor, is to be paid, need not suffer from the humiliation of my arrest. But although I can escape the authorities, I cannot escape my own conscience. The knowledge that I have deliberately killed a man, even while he merited death, is becoming too much for me; and since my religion forbids suicide, I have turned to you as a possible way out. I think that is all."
We stared at him in silence. What Mortimer was thinking, I do not know. Most likely he was pondering upon the strange psychology of human conduct. As for me, I could not help wondering in what awful, perhaps pitiable tragedy this little man had been an actor.
Mortimer was the first to speak. When he did so, it was with no reference to what we had just heard. "Since you are ready, Mr. Williams, we will proceed with our initial experiment at once," he said. "I have arranged a special room for it, where there will be no other thought waves nor suggestions to disturb you."
He rose, and was apparently about to lead the way to this room when the telephone ran.
"Hello," he called into the transmitter. "Dr. Claybridge? Yes, he is here. Just a minute." He pushed the instrument towards me.
My hospital was on the wire. After taking the message, I hung up in disgust. "An acute case of appendicitis," I announced. "Of course I'm sorry for the poor devil, but he certainly chose an inopportune time for his attack."
"I will phone you all about the experiment," Mortimer promised as I reached for my hat. "Perhaps you can be present at the next one."
True to his promise, he rang me up that evening.
"I have had wonderful success!" he cried exultantly. "So far I have experimented only in a small way, but at that my theory has been proven beyond the possibility of doubt. And there was one most interesting feature, Claybridge. Williams told me what would be the nature of my experiment tomorrow afternoon."
"And what will it be?" I asked.
"I am to make his material consciousness tangent with the end of the world." was the astonishing answer.
"Good heavens!" I cried in spite of myself. "Shall you do it?"
"I have no choice in the matter," he replied.
"Mortimer, you fatalist! You—"
"No, no," he protested. "It is not fatalism. Can't you understand that—"
But I interrupted him. "May I be present?" I asked.
"Yes," he answered. "You will be there. Williams saw you."
I had a good mind to deliberately not be there, just to put a kink in his precious theory; but my curiosity was too great, and at the appointed time, I was on hand.
"I have already put Williams to sleep," Mortimer said as I came in. "He is in my especially prepared room. Come and I will show him to you."
He led me down a long hall to a door which I knew had originally given upon a storeroom. Inserting a key in the lock, he turned it, and flung the door open.
In the room beyond, I could see Williams seated in a swivel chair. His eyes were closed and his body relaxed, as if in sleep. However, it was not he that awakened my interest, but the room itself. It was windowless, with only a skylight in the ceiling to admit light and air. Aside from the chair in which Williams sat, there was no furniture save an instrument resembling an immense telephone transmitter that a crane arm held about two inches from the hypnotized man's mouth, and a set of ear phones, such as a telephone operator wears, which were attached to his ears. But strangest of all, the walls, floors, and ceiling of the room were lined with a whitish metal.
"White lead," said Mortimer, seeing my eyes upon it; "the substance least conductive of thought waves. I want the subject to be as free as possible from outside thought influences, so that when he talks with me over that telephonic device, which is connected with my laboratory, there can be no danger of his telling me any but his own experiences."
"But the skylight," I pointed out. "It is partially open."
"True," he admitted. "But thought waves, like sound waves, travel upwards, and outwards; rarely, if ever, downwards. So, you see, there is little danger from the skylight."
He closed and locked the door, and we went back to the laboratory. In one corner was what looked like a radio loud speaker, while near it was a transmitter similar to the one in the room with Williams.
"I shall speak to Williams through the transmitter," explained Mortimer, "and he shall hear me by means of the ear phones. When he answers into his transmitter, we will hear him through the loud speaker."
He seated himself before the apparatus and spoke: "Williams, do you hear me?"
"I hear you." The reply came promptly, but in the heavy tones of a man talking in his sleep.
"Listen to me. You are living in the last six days of the earth. By 'days,' I do not mean periods of twenty-four hours, but such lengths of time as are meant in the first chapter of the book of Genesis. It is now the first day of the six. Tell me what you see."
After a short interval, the answer came in a strange, high key. While the words were English, they were spoken with a curious intonation that was at first difficult to understand.
"This is the year 16,812," said the voice, "or, in modern time, 43,930 A. I. C. After Interplanetary Communication. It is not well upon the earth. The Polar Ice Cap comes down almost to Newfoundland. Summer lasts but a few weeks, and then its heat is scorching. What in early time was known as the Atlantic Coastal Plain has long ago sunken into the sea. High dykes must be used to keep the water from covering the island of Manhattan, where the world's government is located. A great war has just concluded. There are many dead to bury."
"You speak of interplanetary communication," said Mortimer. "Is the world, then, in communication with the planets?"
"In
