Part 2

All was set for the final act. I literally hurled myself into the completion of my improved set. The large quantities of certain minerals required caused me an unexpected delay. This I filled with demonstrations in the presence of Marsden, whom I was encouraging as a fellow radio enthusiast,--with considerable unexpected histrionic ability on my part. It was so hard to keep my fingers off his throat! I pretended to explain to him the important factors of my great secret, and drilled him in the mechanical operation of the sets. I had divulged to him also that my greatest desire was to demonstrate my principle on a human being, and like all great scientific explorers, proposed to offer myself as the subject. Venice had strenuously opposed the proposal until the demonstration on the diseased cat, and even now viewed the entire proposition with alarm. Yet I insisted that unless applied to human beings my entire work went for naught, and I finally succeeded in quieting her fears to a great extent.

At last I am ready. I have told my darling how it is impossible to transmit anything metallic by the very nature of the conflicting rays encountered. I have bemoaned the fact that, due to the softness of my teeth since boyhood, my mouth is one mass of metallic fillings and crowns, rendering it impossible for me to test the efficiency of my life’s work. As I had hoped, she has volunteered herself as the subject for the great experiment, for her white teeth are as yet innocent of fillings. I have demurred and refused to listen to the idea, permitting myself to be won over only after days of earnest argument on her part. We are not to tell Marsden, for there is no doubt that his fanatical love for her would refuse to tolerate the mere suggestion.

Tonight it shall be accomplished. There is no other way, for that accursed husband of hers seems to progress in neither direction. He will be nothing but a mud-buried anchor until the end of her days, while I--I love her. What other excuse need be offered?

But to the facts. At eight o’clock that drug-soaked love pirate comes to officiate at my transmission through space. I shall meet him with a chloroformed soaked rag. Later he will awake to find himself effectively gagged, with his hands and feet firmly shackled to the wall of a dark corner of my laboratory. These shackles consist of armatures across the poles of large electro-magnets which I have embedded in the walls. At 10:30, a time switch will cut off the current, releasing the wretch, for, above all things, he must live. I debated sending a message for his chauffeur to call for him here at the designated hour. I have decided rather to trust to mechanical certitude than lay my plan open to frustration because of some human vagary.

At nine o’clock Venice comes for the great experiment. Marsden has told her that he will remain in the city over night, at my suggestion, so that in case I fail to materialize after being “sent” he cannot be held in connection with my disappearance. She does not know that I have had my teeth extracted and have been using India rubber plates for nearly a month. By the time she has arrived, the effects of the chloroform will have entirely worn off from my would-be assistant, and I shall have had plenty of time to introduce myself properly to him and explain the evening’s program which has been so carefully arranged for his benefit.

Then he will have the excruciating pleasure of watching his beloved wife dissolve into--nothingness! Soon thereafter he will witness the same process repeated upon myself, for I have so adapted the apparatus that I need no outside assistance other than a time-clock to actuate the mechanism! Then, at the appointed hour, the current will be shut off and the frenzied wretch will rush to the distant switch controlling the receiving apparatus. As he throws the metal bars into their split receptacles there will come a blinding flash, and behold--the apparatus will have disappeared in a puff of crystalline particles! The secret has returned whence it came!

Then will come that personally prepared hell for my mean spirited forger. As I told you, he believes that he is in possession of enough of the details of my secret to reconstruct the apparatus and duplicate my success. The added details of this letter will assure him into an idiotic confidence which will lead him on and on through partially successful attempts. I know that no matter whether you sympathize with my actions or not (and I am sure that you do not, for you never have), your sense of justice will force you to show this letter to the proper authorities in order to prevent a fatal bungling.

Meanwhile that miserable sneak will be frenzied with the knowledge that at last, the lover he so long cheated of his loved one is now with her, alone,--where he, her lawful husband, can never follow. And we shall be together, unchanged, awaiting the day when some other enlightened mortal solves Nature’s riddle, when we shall once more assume our earthly forms, unhindered by other selfish manbeasts.

Farewell, Bromley Cranston.

* * * * *

Needless to say, I hurried to Eastport. But my trip was unnecessary. I found Harold Marsden in a “private sanitarium” for the hopelessly insane. There all day, and as far into the night as the opiates would permit him, he is to be found seated before a radio set, the earphones clamped to his head--listening. His statements, methodically filed away by the head of the place, corresponded wildly with the prophecies of my strange letter. Now he was listening to fragmentary messages from those two he had seen precipitated into space, he maintained. Listening.

And they had disappeared, utterly. I found the large seal ring in the inkwell on the desk. Also the slip in the hatband of the hat which had been placed in the wall safe, unlocked. The postmaster remembered the seals on the letter my cousin had mailed, and the approximate time he had received it. I felt my own reason wavering.

That is why, fantastic as is the whole affair, I cannot yet bear the sound of one of those radio loud speakers. It is when that inarticulate sound they call “static” occurs, when fragments of words and sentences seem to be painfully attempting to pierce a hostile medium,--that I picture that hunched up figure with its spidery earphones,--listening. Listening. For what?

The End

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 1927 issue of Amazing Stories Magazine.]