The shrill voice of a woman stabbed the steady hum
of the many machines in the great, semi-darkened laboratory. It was the
onslaught of weak femininity against the ebony shadow of Jared, the silent
negro servant of Professor Ramsey Burr. Not many people were able to get to the
famous man against his wishes; Jared obeyed orders implicitly and was generally
an efficient barrier.
"I will see him, I will," screamed the
middle-aged woman. "I'm Mrs. Mary Baker, and he—he—it's his fault my son
is going to die. His fault. Professor! Professor Burr!"
Jared was unable to keep her quiet.
Coming in from the sunlight, her eyes were not yet
accustomed to the strange, subdued haze of the laboratory, an immense chamber
crammed full of equipment, the vista of which seemed like an apartment in hell.
Bizarre shapes stood out from the mass of impedimenta, great stills which rose
full two stories in height, dynamos, immense tubes of colored liquids, a
hundred puzzles to the inexpert eye.
The small, plump figure of Mrs. Baker was very out
of place in this setting. Her voice was poignant, reedy. A look at her made it
evident that she was a conventional, good woman. She had soft, cloudy golden
eyes and a pathetic mouth, and she seemed on the point of tears.
"Madam, madam, de doctor is busy,"
whispered Jared, endeavoring to shoo her out of the laboratory with his polite
hands. He was respectful, but firm.
She refused to obey. She stopped when she was
within a few feet of the activity in the laboratory, and stared with fear and
horror at the center of the room, and at its occupant, Professor Burr, whom she
had addressed during her flurried entrance.
The professor's face, as he peered at her, seemed
like a disembodied stare, for she could see only eyes behind a mask of lavender
gray glass eyeholes, with its flapping ends of dirty, gray-white cloth.
She drew in a deep breath—and gasped, for the
pungent fumes, acrid and penetrating, of sulphuric and nitric acids, stabbed
her lungs. It was like the breath of hell, to fit the simile, and aptly
Professor Burr seemed the devil himself, manipulating the infernal machines.
Acting swiftly, the tall figure stepped over and
threw two switches in a single, sweeping movement. The vermillion light which
had lived in a long row of tubes on a nearby bench abruptly ceased to writhe
like so many tongues of flame, and the embers of hell died out.
Then the professor flooded the room in harsh
gray-green light, and stopped the high-pitched, humming whine of his dynamos. A
shadow picture writhing on the wall, projected from a lead-glass barrel,
disappeared suddenly, the great color filters and other machines lost their
semblance of horrible life, and a regretful sigh seemed to come from the metal
creatures as they gave up the ghost.
To the woman, it had been entering the abode of
fear. She could not restrain her shudders. But she bravely confronted the tall
figure of Professor Burr, as he came forth to greet her.
He was extremely tall and attenuated, with a red,
bony mask of a face pointed at the chin by a sharp little goatee. Feathery
blond hair, silvered and awry, covered his great head.
"Madam," said Burr in a gentle,
disarmingly quiet voice, "your manner of entrance might have cost you your
life. Luckily I was able to deflect the rays from your person, else you might
not now be able to voice your complaint—for such seems to be your purpose in
coming here." He turned to Jared, who was standing close by. "Very
well, Jared. You may go. After this, it will be as well to throw the bolts,
though in this case I am quite willing to see the visitor."
Jared slid away, leaving the plump little woman to
confront the famous scientist.
For a moment, Mrs. Baker stared into the pale gray
eyes, the pupils of which seemed black as coal by contrast. Some, his bitter
enemies, claimed that Professor Ramsey Burr looked cold and bleak as an iceberg,
others that he had a baleful glare. His mouth was grim and determined.
Yet, with her woman's eyes, Mrs. Baker, looking at
the professor's bony mask of a face, with the high-bridged, intrepid nose, the
passionless gray eyes, thought that Ramsey Burr would be handsome, if a little
less cadaverous and more human.
"The experiment which you ruined by your
untimely entrance," continued the professor, "was not a safe
one."
His long white hand waved toward the bunched
apparatus, but to her to the room seemed all glittering metal coils of
snakelike wire, ruddy copper, dull lead, and tubes of all shapes. Hell
cauldrons of unknown chemicals seethed and slowly bubbled, beetle-black
bakelite fixtures reflected the hideous light.
"Oh," she cried, clasping her hands as
though she addressed him in prayer, "forget your science, Professor Burr,
and be a man. Help me. Three days from now my boy, my son, whom I love above
all the world, is to die."
"Three days is a long time," said
Professor Burr calmly. "Do not lose hope: I have no intention of allowing
your son, Allen Baker, to pay the price for a deed of mine. I freely confess it
was I who was responsible for the death of—what was the person's name?—Smith, I
believe."
"It was you who made Allen get poor Mr. Smith
to agree to the experiments which killed him, and which the world blamed on my
son," she said. "They called it the deed of a scientific fiend,
Professor Burr, and perhaps they are right. But Allen is innocent."
"Be quiet," ordered Burr, raising his
hand. "Remember, madam, your son Allen is only a commonplace medical man,
and while I taught him a little from my vast store of knowledge, he was
ignorant and of much less value to science and humanity than myself. Do you not
understand, can you not comprehend, also, that the man Smith was a martyr to
science? He was no loss to mankind, and only sentimentalists could have blamed
anyone for his death. I should have succeeded in the interchange of atoms which
we were working on, and Smith would at this moment be hailed as the first man
to travel through space in invisible form, projected on radio waves, had it not
been for the fact that the alloy which conducts the three types of sinusoidal
failed me and burned out. Yes, it was an error in calculation, and Smith would
now be called the Lindbergh of the Atom but for that. Yet Smith has not died in
vain, for I have finally corrected this error—science is but trial and
correction of error—and all will be well."
"But Allen—Allen must not die at all!"
she cried. "For weeks he has been in the death house: it is killing me.
The Governor refuses him a pardon, nor will he commute my son's sentence. In
three days he is to die in the electric chair, for a crime which you admit you
alone are responsible for. Yet you remain in your laboratory, immersed in your
experiments, and do nothing, nothing!"
The tears came now, and she sobbed hysterically.
It seemed that she was making an appeal to someone in whom she had only a
forlorn hope.
"Nothing?" repeated Burr, pursing his
thin lips. "Nothing? Madam, I have done everything. I have, as I have told
you, perfected the experiment. It is successful. Your son has not suffered in
vain, and Smith's name will go down with the rest of science's martyrs as one
who died for the sake of humanity. But if you wish to save your son, you must
be calm. You must listen to what I have to say, and you must not fail to carry
out my instructions to the letter. I am ready now."
Light, the light of hope, sprang in the mother's
eyes. She grasped his arm and stared at him with shining face, through
tear-dipped eyelashes.
"Do—do you mean it? Can you save him? After
the Governor has refused me? What can you do? No influence will snatch Allen
from the jaws of the law: the public is greatly excited and very hostile toward
him."
A quiet smile played at the corners of Burr's thin
lips.
"Come," he said. "Place this cloak
about you. Allen wore it when he assisted me."
The professor replaced his own mask and conducted
the woman into the interior of the laboratory.
"I will show you," said Professor Burr.
She saw before her now, on long metal shelves
which appeared to be delicately poised on fine scales whose balance was
registered by hair-line indicators, two small metal cages.
Professor Burr stepped over to a row of common
cages set along the wall. There was a small menagerie there, guinea pigs—the
martyrs of the animal kingdom—rabbits, monkeys, and some cats.
The man of science reached in and dragged out a
mewing cat, placing it in the right-hand cage on the strange table. He then
obtained a small monkey and put this animal in the left-hand cage, beside the
cat. The cat, on the right, squatted on its haunches, mewing in pique and
looking up at its tormentor. The monkey, after a quick look around, began to
investigate the upper reaches of its new cage.
Over each of the animals was suspended a fine,
curious metallic armament. For several minutes, while the woman, puzzled at how
this demonstration was to affect the rescue of her condemned son, waited
impatiently, the professor deftly worked at the apparatus, connecting wires
here and there.
"I am ready now," said Burr. "Watch
the two animals carefully."
"Yes, yes," she replied, faintly, for
she was half afraid.
The great scientist was stooping over, looking at
the balances of the indicators through microscopes.
She saw him reach for his switches, and then a
brusk order caused her to turn her eyes back to the animals, the cat in the
right-hand cage, the monkey at the left.
Both animals screamed in fear, and a sympathetic
chorus sounded from the menagerie, as a long purple spark danced from one gray
metal pole to the other, over the cages on the table.
At first, Mrs. Baker noticed no change. The spark
had died, the professor's voice, unhurried, grave, broke the silence.
"The first part of the experiment is
over," he said. "The ego—"
"Oh, heavens!" cried the woman.
"You've driven the poor creatures mad!"
She indicated the cat. That animal was clawing at
the top bars of its cage, uttering a bizarre, chattering sound, somewhat like a
monkey. The cat hung from the bars, swinging itself back and forth as on a
trapeze, then reached up and hung by its hind claws.
As for the monkey, it was squatting on the floor
of its cage, and it made a strange sound in its throat, almost a mew, and it
hissed several times at the professor.
"They are not mad," said Burr. "As
I was explaining to you, I have finished the first portion of the experiment.
The ego, or personality of one animal has been taken out and put into the
other."
She was unable to speak. He had mentioned madness:
was he, Professor Ramsey Burr, crazy? It was likely enough. Yet—yet the whole
thing, in these surroundings, seemed plausible. As she hesitated about
speaking, watching with fascinated eyes the out-of-character behavior of the
two beasts, Burr went on.
"The second part follows at once. Now that
the two egos have interchanged, I will shift the bodies. When it is completed,
the monkey will have taken the place of the cat, and vice versa. Watch."
He was busy for some time with his levers, and the
smell of ozone reached Mrs. Baker's nostrils as she stared with horrified eyes
at the animals.
She blinked. The sparks crackled madly, the monkey
mewed, the cat chattered.
Were her eyes going back on her? She could see
neither animal distinctly: they seemed to be shaking in some cosmic
disturbance, and were but blurs. This illusion—for to her, it seemed it must be
optical—persisted, grew worse, until the quaking forms of the two unfortunate
creatures were like so much ectoplasm in swift motion, ghosts whirling about in
a dark room.
Yet she could see the cages quite distinctly, and
the table and even the indicators of the scales. She closed her eyes for a
moment. The acrid odors penetrated to her lungs, and she coughed, opening her
eyes.
Now she could see clearly again. Yes, she could
see a monkey, and it was climbing, quite naturally about its cage; it was
excited, but a monkey. And the cat, while protesting mightily, acted like a
cat.
Then she gasped. Had her mind, in the excitement,
betrayed her? She looked at Professor Burr. On his lean face there was a smile
of triumph, and he seemed to be awaiting her applause.
She looked again at the two cages. Surely, at
first the cat had been in the right-hand cage, and the monkey in the left! And
now, the monkey was in the place where the cat had been and the cat had been
shifted to the left-hand cage.
"So it was with Smith, when the alloys burned
out," said Burr. "It is impossible to extract the ego or dissolve the
atoms and translate them into radio waves unless there is a connection with
some other ego and body, for in such a case the translated soul and body would
have no place to go. Luckily, for you, madam, it was the man Smith who was
killed when the alloys failed me. It might have been Allen, for he was the
second pole of the connection."
"But," she began faintly, "how can
this mad experiment have anything to do with saving my boy?"
He waved impatiently at her evident denseness.
"Do you not understand? It is so I will save Allen, your son. I shall
first switch our egos, or souls, as you say. Then switch the bodies. It must
always take this sequence; why, I have not ascertained. But it always works
thus."
Mrs. Baker was terrified. What she had just seen,
smacked of the blackest magic—yet a woman in her position must grasp at straws.
The world blamed her son for the murder of Smith, a man Professor Burr had made
use of as he might a guinea pig, and Allen must be snatched from the death
house.
"Do—do you mean you can bring Allen from the
prison here—just by throwing those switches?" she asked.
"That is it. But there is more to it than
that, for it is not magic, madam; it is science, you understand, and there must
be some physical connection. But with your help, that can easily be made."
Professor Ramsey Burr, she knew, was the greatest
electrical engineer the world had ever known. And he stood high as a physicist.
Nothing hindered him in the pursuit of knowledge, they said. He knew no fear,
and he lived on an intellectual promontory. He was so great that he almost lost
sight of himself. To such a man, nothing was impossible. Hope, wild hope,
sprang in Mary Baker's heart, and she grasped the bony hand of the professor
and kissed it.
"Oh, I believe, I believe," she cried.
"You can do it. You can save Allen. I will do anything, anything you tell
me to."
"Very well. You visit your son daily at the
death house, do you not?"
She nodded; a shiver of remembrance of that dread
spot passed through her.
"Then you will tell him the plan and let him
agree to see me the night preceding the electrocution. I will give him final
instructions as to the exchange of bodies. When my life spirit, or ego, is
confined in your son's body in the death house, Allen will be able to perform
the feat of changing the bodies, and your son's flesh will join his soul, which
will have been temporarily inhabiting my own shell. Do you see? When they find
me in the cell where they suppose your son to be, they will be unable to
explain the phenomenon; they can do nothing but release me. Your son will go
here, and can be whisked away to a safe place of concealment."
"Yes, yes. What am I to do besides
this?"
Professor Burr pulled out a drawer near at hand,
and from it extracted a folded garment of thin, shiny material.
"This is metal cloth coated with the new
alloy," he said, in a matter of fact tone. He rummaged further, saying as
he did so, "I expected you would be here to see me, and I have been
getting ready for your visit. All is prepared, save a few odds and ends which I
can easily clean up in the next two days. Here are four cups which Allen must
place under each leg of his bed, and this delicate little director coil you
must take especial pains with. It is to be slipped under your son's tongue at
the time appointed."
She was staring at him still, half in fear, half
in wonder, yet she could not feel any doubt of the man's miraculous powers.
Somehow, while he talked to her and rested those cold eyes upon her, she was
under the spell of the great scientist. Her son, before the trouble into which
he had been dragged by the professor, had often hinted at the abilities of
Ramsey Burr, given her the idea that his employer was practically a
necromancer, yet a magician whose advanced scientific knowledge was correct and
explainable in the light of reason.
Yes, Allen had talked to her often when he was at
home, resting from his labors with Professor Burr. He had spoken of the new
electricity discovered by the famous man, and also told his mother that Burr
had found a method of separating atoms and then transforming them into a form of
radio-electricity so that they could be sent in radio waves, to designated
points. And she now remembered—the swift trial and conviction of Allen on the
charge of murder had occupied her so deeply that she had forgotten all else for
the time being—that her son had informed her quite seriously that Professor
Ramsey Burr would soon be able to transport human beings by radio.
"Neither of us will be injured in any way by
the change," said Burr calmly. "It is possible for me now to break up
human flesh, send the atoms by radio-electricity, and reassemble them in their
proper form by these special transformers and atom filters."
Mrs. Baker took all the apparatus presented her by
the professor. She ventured the thought that it might be better to perform the
experiment at once, instead of waiting until the last minute, but this
Professor Burr waved aside as impossible. He needed the extra time, he said,
and there was no hurry.
She glanced about the room, and her eye took in
the giant switches of copper with their black handles; there were others of a
gray-green metal she did not recognize. Many dials and meters, strange to her,
confronted the little woman. These things, she felt with a rush of gratitude
toward the inanimate objects, would help to save her son, so they interested
her and she began to feel kindly toward the great machines.
Would Professor Burr be able to save Allen as he
claimed? Yes, she thought, he could. She would make Allen consent to the trial
of it, even though her son had cursed the scientist and cried he would never
speak to Ramsey Burr again.
She was escorted from the home of the professor by
Jared, and going out into the bright, sunlit street, blinked as her eyes
adjusted themselves to the daylight after the queer light of the laboratory. In
a bundle she had a strange suit and the cups; her purse held the tiny coil,
wrapped in cotton.
How could she get the authorities to consent to
her son having the suit? The cups and the coil she might slip to him herself.
She decided that a mother would be allowed to give her son new underwear. Yes,
she would say it was that.
She started at once for the prison. Professor
Burr's laboratory was but twenty miles from the cell where her son was
incarcerated.
As she rode on the train, seeing people in
everyday attire, commonplace occurrences going on about her, the spell of Professor
Burr faded, and cold reason stared her in the face. Was it nonsense, this idea
of transporting bodies through the air, in invisible waves? Yet, she was
old-fashioned; the age of miracles had not passed for her. Radio, in which
pictures and voices could be sent on wireless waves, was unexplainable to her.
Perhaps—
She sighed, and shook her head. It was hard to
believe. It was also hard to believe that her son was in deadly peril,
condemned to death as a "scientific fiend."
Here was her station. A taxi took her to the
prison, and after a talk with the warden, finally she stood there, before the
screen through which she could talk to Allen, her son.
"Mother!"
Her heart lifted, melted within her. It was always
thus when he spoke. "Allen," she whispered softly.
They were allowed to talk undisturbed.
"Professor Burr wishes to help you," she
said, in a low voice.
Her son, Allen Baker, M. D., turned eyes of misery upon her. His ruddy
hair was awry. This young man was imaginative and could therefore suffer
deeply. He had the gift of turning platitudes into puzzles, and his hazel eyes
were lit with an elfin quality, which, if possible, endeared him the more to
his mother. All his life he had been the greatest thing in the world to this
woman. To see him in such straits tore her very heart. When he had been a
little boy, she had been able to make joy appear in those eyes by a word and a
pat; now that he was a man, the matter was more difficult, but she had always
done her best.
"I cannot allow Professor Burr to do anything
for me," he said dully. "It is his fault that I am here."
"But Allen, you must listen, listen
carefully. Professor Burr can save you. He says it was all a mistake, the alloy
was wrong. He has not come forward before, because he knew he would be able to
iron out the trouble if he had time, and thus snatch you from this terrible
place."
She put as much confidence into her voice as she
could. She must, to enhearten her son. Anything to replace that look of
suffering with one of hope. She would believe, she did believe. The bars, the
great masses of stone which enclosed her son would be as nothing. He would pass
through them, unseen, unheard.
For a time, Allen spoke bitterly of Ramsey Burr,
but his mother pleaded with him, telling him it was his only chance, and that
the deviltry Allen suspected was imaginary.
"He—he killed Smith in such an
experiment," said Allen. "I took the blame, as you know, though I
only followed his instructions. But you say he claims to have found the correct
alloys?"
"Yes. And this suit, you must put it on. But
Professor Burr himself will be here to see you day after to-morrow, the day
preceding the—the—" She bit her lip, and got out the dreaded word,
"the electrocution. But there won't be any electrocution, Allen; no, there
cannot be. You will be safe, safe in my arms." She had to fight now to
hold her belief in the miracle which Burr had promised. The solid steel and
stone dismayed her brain.
The new alloy seemed to interest Allen Baker. His
mother told him of the exchange of the monkey and the cat, and he nodded
excitedly, growing more and more restive, and his eyes began to shine with hope
and curiosity.
"I have told the warden about the suit,
saying it was something I made for you myself," she said, in a low voice.
"You must pretend the coil and the cups are things you desire for your own
amusement. You know, they have allowed you a great deal of latitude, since you
are educated and need diversion."
"Yes, yes. There may be some difficulty, but
I will overcome that. Tell Burr to come. I'll talk with him and he can instruct
me in the final details. It is better than waiting here like a rat in a trap. I
have been afraid of going mad, mother, but this buoys me up."
He smiled at her, and her heart sang in the joy of
relief.
How did the intervening days pass? Mrs. Baker
could not sleep, could scarcely eat, she could do nothing but wait, wait, wait.
She watched the meeting of her son and Ramsey Burr, on the day preceding the
date set for the execution.
"Well, Baker," said Burr nonchalantly,
nodding to his former assistant. "How are you?"
"You see how I am," said Allen, coldly.
"Yes, yes. Well, listen to what I have to say
and note it carefully. There must be no slip. You have the suit, the cups and
the director coil? You must keep the suit on, the cups go under the legs of the
cot you lie on. The director under your tongue."
The professor spoke further with Allen,
instructing him in scientific terms which the woman scarcely comprehended.
"To-night, then at eleven-thirty," said
Burr, finally. "Be ready."
Allen nodded. Mrs. Baker accompanied Burr from the
prison.
"You—you will let me be with you?" she
begged.
"It is hardly necessary," said the
professor.
"But I must. I must see Allen the moment he
is free, to make sure he is all right. Then, I want to be able to take him
away. I have a place in which we can hide, and as soon as he is rescued he must
be taken out of sight."
"Very well," said Burr, shrugging.
"It is immaterial to me, so long as you do not interfere with the course
of the experiment. You must sit perfectly still, you must not speak until Allen
stands before you and addresses you."
"Yes, I will obey you," she promised.
Mrs. Baker watched Professor Ramsey Burr eat his
supper. Burr himself was not in the least perturbed; it was wonderful, she
thought, that he could be so calm. To her, it was the great moment, the moment
when her son would be saved from the jaws of death.
Jared carried a comfortable chair into the
laboratory and she sat in it, quiet as a mouse, in one corner of the room.
It was nine o'clock, and Professor Burr was busy
with his preparations. She knew he had been working steadily for the past few
days. She gripped the arms of her chair, and her heart burned within her.
The professor was making sure of his apparatus. He
tested this bulb and that, and carefully inspected the curious oscillating
platform, over which was suspended a thickly bunched group of gray-green wire,
which was seemingly an antenna. The numerous indicators and implements seemed
to be satisfactory, for at quarter after eleven Burr gave an exclamation of
pleasure and nodded to himself.
Burr seemed to have forgotten the woman. He spoke
aloud occasionally, but not to her, as he drew forth a suit made of the same
metal cloth as Allen must have on at this moment.
The tension was terrific, terrific for the mother,
who was awaiting the culmination of the experiment which would rescue her son
from the electric chair—or would it fail? She shuddered. What if Burr were mad?
But look at him, she was sure he was sane, as sane
as she was.
"He will succeed," she murmured, digging
her nails into the palms of her hands. "I know he will."
She pushed aside the picture of what would happen
on the morrow, but a few hours distant, when Allen, her son, was due to be led
to a legal death in the electric chair.
Professor Burr placed the shiny suit upon his lank
form, and she saw him put a duplicate coil, the same sort of small machine
which Allen possessed, under his tongue.
The Mephistophelian figure consulted a
matter-of-fact watch; at that moment, Mrs. Baker heard, above the hum of the
myriad machines in the laboratory, the slow chiming of a clock. It was the
moment set for the deed.
Then, she feared the professor was insane, for he
suddenly leaped to the high bench of the table on which stood one of the
oscillating platforms.
Wires led out from this, and Burr sat gently upon
it, a strange figure in the subdued light.
Professor Burr, however, she soon saw, was not
insane. No, this was part of it. He was reaching for switches near at hand, and
bulbs began to glow with unpleasant light, needles on indicators swung madly,
and at last, Professor Burr kicked over a giant switch, which seemed to be the
final movement.
For several seconds the professor did not move.
Then his body grew rigid, and he twisted a few times. His face, though not
drawn in pain, yet twitched galvanically, as though actuated by slight jabs of
electricity.
The many tubes fluoresced, flared up in pulsing waves
of violet and pink: there were gray bars of invisibility or areas of air in
which nothing visible showed. There came the faint, crackling hum of machinery
rather like a swarm of wasps in anger. Blue and gray thread of fire spat across
the antenna. The odor of ozone came to Mrs. Baker's nostrils, and the acid
odors burned her lungs.
She was staring at him, staring at the professor's
face. She half rose from her chair, and uttered a little cry.
The eyes had changed, no longer were they cold,
impersonal, the eyes of a man who prided himself on the fact that he kept his
arteries soft and his heart hard; they were loving, soft eyes.
"Allen," she cried.
Yes, without doubt, the eyes of her son were
looking at her out of the body of Professor Ramsey Burr.
"Mother," he said gently. "Don't be
alarmed. It is successful. I am here, in Professor Burr's body."
"Yes," she cried, hysterically. It was
too weird to believe. It seemed dim to her, unearthly.
"Are you all right, darling?" she asked
timidly.
"Yes. I felt nothing beyond a momentary giddy
spell, a bit of nausea and mental stiffness. It was strange, and I have a
slight headache. However, all is well."
He grinned at her, laughed with the voice which
was not his, yet which she recognized as directed by her son's spirit. The
laugh was cracked and unlike Allen's whole-hearted mirth, yet she smiled in
sympathy.
"Yes, the first part is a success," said
the man. "Our egos have interchanged. Soon, our bodies will undergo the
transformation, and then I must keep under cover. I dislike Burr—yet he is a
great man. He has saved me. I suppose the slight headache which I feel is one
bequeathed me by Burr. I hope he inherits my shivers and terrors and the
neuralgia for the time being, so he will get some idea of what I have
undergone."
He had got down from the oscillating platform, the
spirit of her son in Ramsey's body.
"What—what are you doing now?" she
asked.
"I must carry out the rest of it
myself," he said. "Burr directed me when we talked yesterday. It is
more difficult when one subject is out of the laboratory, and the tubes must be
checked."
He went carefully about his work, and she saw him
replacing four of the tubes with others, new ones, which were ready at hand.
Though it was the body of Ramsey Burr, the movements were different from the
slow, precise work of the professor, and more and more, she realized that her
son inhabited the shell before her.
For a moment, the mother thought of attempting to
dissuade her son from making the final change; was it not better thus, than to
chance the disintegration of the bodies? Suppose something went wrong, and the
exchange did not take place, and her son, that is, his spirit, went back to the
death house?
Midnight struck as he worked feverishly at the
apparatus, the long face corrugated as he checked the dials and tubes. He
worked swiftly, but evidently was following a procedure which he had committed
to memory, for he was forced to pause often to make sure of himself.
"Everything is O. K.," said the strange
voice at last. He consulted his watch. "Twelve-thirty," he said.
She bit her lip in terror, as he cried,
"Now!" and sprang to the table to take his place on the metallic
platform, which oscillated to and fro under his weight. The delicate grayish
metal antenna, which, she knew, would form a glittering halo of blue and gray
threads of fire, rested quiescent above his head.
"This is the last thing," he said calmly,
as he reached for the big ebony handled switch. "I'll be myself in a few
minutes, mother."
"Yes, son, yes."
The switch connected, and Allen Baker, in the form
of Ramsey Burr, suddenly cried out in pain. His mother leaped up to run to his
side, but he waved her away. She stood, wringing her hands, as he began to
twist and turn, as though torn by some invisible force. Eery screams came from
the throat of the man on the platform, and Mrs. Baker's cries of sympathy
mingled with them.
The mighty motors hummed in a high-pitched,
unnatural whine, and suddenly Mrs. Baker saw the tortured face before her grow
dim. The countenance of the professor seemed to melt, and then there came a
dull, muffled thud, a burst of white-blue flame, the odor of burning rubber and
the tinkle of broken glass.
Back to the face came the clarity of outline, and
still it was Professor Ramsey Burr's body she stared at.
Her son, in the professor's shape, climbed from
the platform, and looked about him as though dazed. An acrid smoke filled the
room, and burning insulation assailed the nostrils.
Desperately, without looking at her, his lips set
in a determined line, the man went hurriedly over the apparatus again.
"Have I forgotten, did I do anything
wrong?" she heard his anguished cry.
Two tubes were burned out, and these he replaced
as swiftly as possible. But he was forced to go all over the wiring, and cut
out whatever had been short-circuited so that it could be hooked up anew with
uninjured wire.
Before he was ready to resume his seat on the
platform, after half an hour of feverish haste, a knock came on the door.
The person outside was imperative, and Mrs. Baker ran
over and opened the portal. Jared, the whites of his eyes shining in the dim
light, stood there. "De professah—tell him dat de wahden wishes to talk
with him. It is very important, ma'am."
The body of Burr, inhabited by Allen's soul,
pushed by her, and she followed falteringly, wringing her hands. She saw the
tall figure snatch at the receiver and listen.
"Oh, God," he cried.
At last, he put the receiver back on the hook,
automatically, and sank down in a chair, his face in his hands.
Mrs. Baker went to him quickly. "What is it,
Allen?" she cried.
"Mother," he said hoarsely, "it was
the warden of the prison. He told me that Allen Baker had gone temporarily
insane, and claimed to be Professor Ramsey Burr in my body."
"But—but what is the matter?" she asked.
"Cannot you finish the experiment, Allen? Can't you change the two bodies
now?"
He shook his head. "Mother—they electrocuted
Ramsey Burr in my body at twelve forty-five to-night!"
She screamed. She was faint, but she controlled
herself with a great effort.
"But the electrocution was not to be until
morning," she said.
Allen shook his head. "They are allowed a
certain latitude, about twelve hours," he said. "Burr protested up to
the last moment, and begged for time."
"Then—then they must have come for him and
dragged him forth to die in the electric chair while you were attempting the
second part of the change," she said.
"Yes. That was why it failed. That's why the
tubes and wires burned out and why we couldn't exchange bodies. It began to
succeed, then I could feel something terrible had happened. It was impossible
to complete the Beta circuit, which short-circuited. They took him from the
cell, do you see, while I was starting the exchange of the atoms."
For a time, the mother and her boy sat staring at
one another. She saw the tall, eccentric figure of Ramsey Burr before her, yet
she saw also the soul of her son within that form. The eyes were Allen's, the
voice was soft and loving, and his spirit was with her.
"Come, Allen, my son," she said softly.
"Burr paid the price," said Allen,
shaking his head. "He became a martyr to science."
The world has wondered why Professor Ramsey Burr,
so much in the headlines as a great scientist, suddenly gave up all his
experiments and took up the practice of medicine.
Now that the public furor and indignation over the
death of the man Smith has died down, sentimentalists believe that Ramsey Burr
has reformed and changed his icy nature, for he manifests great affection and
care for Mrs. Mary Baker, the mother of the electrocuted man who had been his
assistant.
