Farnsworth Wright

“ There was not in the whole country a man who made a more impressive appearance in court. Always expensively but conservatively dressed, with upright carriage, serious and noble countenance, heightened by a close-cropped mustache that made him look older than he was, he impressed the juries by his very appearance. Even his games of cards with Aubrey the apothecary were always conducted in the lawyer's inner office, for Aubrey Charles did not wish the public to see him in his moments of relaxation, when he stooped to so trivial a pastime as playing cards. ”

“ Her imagination conjured up frightful things—a disembodied spirit come to destroy her—a corpse from the grave, gibbering in terror because it could not tear the cerements from its face—the murdered Berkheim girl, with the knife still sheathed in her heart—or some escaped beast, licking its lips in greedy anticipation of the feast her tremulous body would provide. Or was it a murderer, who, having killed her sister, was now bent on completing his bloody work? ”

“ This country has never been settled, and except for an occasional prospector, there was nobody to kill them before the surveyors came. The Indians never bother the snakes, but pass by on the other side of a sagebrush and leave them in peace." Crimi scored these lines in red ink, word by word, as if to blazon them on his memory, and he drew little pictures of snakes on the margin. He burned out Marjorie's signature with acid, spitefully watching with minute care as the letters faded, and gleaning a savage satisfaction from seeing the paper rot away under the venomous bite of the poison. ”

“ In lieu, therefore, of a contrite apology over the telephone from Aubrey Charles, the apothecary got a severe dressing down from Mazie Lennox. It was Mazie who called him first, before the attorney got the wire.
"What under the sun did you mean by stamping out of Aubrey's office and scattering your cards all over the place?" she stormed. "Aubrey, I am downright ashamed of you. Have you no more sense than to let a disagreement over a card game lead to a quarrel between you and Aubrey? What on earth was the matter with you?" ”

“ I exclaimed, in a hushed voice. "Why can't I turn inside out that way?"
"Because you are not four-dimensional," replied the professor, a trace of annoyance in his voice. "It is a beautiful thing to have four dimensions," he rhapsodized. "Your Jupiterian is your only true intellectual, for he alone can truly reflect. He turns his gaze in upon himself." ”

“ Marjorie and her husband had been gone since sun-up, and the surveyors were all in town. Not a soul was stirring in the neighborhood of the shacks, and the men at the construction camp were mostly lying around in their bunks, or playing cards.
Crimi nailed fast the windows of Jimerson's cabin. Then he entered and secured the bed to the floor so that it could not be moved. He laboriously carried his boxes of snakes a mile or more, from his room to the little gully behind the surveyors' cabins, and hid them in the sagebrush. ”

“ He sister laughed.
"Go to sleep, Goosie," she said. "'Haunted' houses are nothing but superstition. They exist only in imagination."
"Why has nobody lived here for two years, then? They tell me that for five years every family moved out after being here just a short time. The whole atmosphere of the house is ghastly. And I can't forget how the older Berkheim girl was found stabbed to death in her bed, and nobody ever knew how it happened. ”

“ Do you think it does not know what it has done to me—that it is merely a dead thing of wood and precious stones? It knows only too well. It has turned my hair white and lined my face with suffering. I have forgotten how to smile. ”

“ I argued, "how did this—this insect get through the glass into the whisky bottle? Glass has only three dimensions, like everything else in this world."
"Don't call him an insect!" Nutt sharply reprimanded me. "He is a Jupiterian, and as such he is infinitely superior to you and me. He passed through the glass because he is four-dimensional, even though the glass isn't. If you had four dimensions, you could untie any knot by merely passing it through itself. ”

“ Across the fields, a few huddled cottages gazed through the falling rain, as if wondering what family could be so bold as to take up its abode within the gloomy walls of that old mansion, whose carpetless floors for two years had not felt the tread of human feet. ”

“ As his preparations drew near their end, he often spent whole hours gloating over the fate in store for the couple. For Marjorie, in loving Jimerson, had aroused him to insane jealousy, and Jimerson, having robbed him of his heart's desire, was included in Crimi's fierce hate for the girl who had crossed him.
When, one evening, Marjorie and her husband happened in at Crimi's cabin, Marjorie expressed her horror at the though of Crimi wandering among the snake-infested rocks of the rattlesnake ridge. The snake-hunter seated her on a box that contained a twisting knot of the venomous reptiles. ”

“ His arrival was not expected by either Jimerson or Marjorie, but it was none the less welcome, for both of them liked the genial, companionable Italian. Life on the edge of the desert had few distractions at best. Crimi’s eyes lit with genuine pleasure at sight of his prospective victims. ”

“ It might be that murdered Berkheim girl! Edith, don't—"
Edith shot a glance of withering scorn at her sister, who lay on the bed with blanched face and wide, terrified eyes.
"There is something moving around downstairs, and I'm going to find out what it is," she said.
Taking the candle, she left the room. Her younger sister lay in the darkness, listening to the pattering of rain on the roof and straining her ears to catch the slightest sound. The noise downstairs ceased, but the wind rose and the rain beat upon the roof in sudden furious blasts that made her heart jump wildly. . . . . ”

“ He called me a dunce."
"What if he did?" said Mazie. "I can't let the two best friends I have in the world quarrel. Now listen, Aubrey. I am going to Klickitamas tonight over the week end. You and Aubrey, both of you, are to follow me tomorrow and forget your differences. I simply won't have you quarreling. That's flat."
With that she rang off, leaving Aubrey the apothecary jiggling the telephone and trying to get her back, wiping the perspiration from his brow as he waited for her to answer. ”

“ Even when he gazed on those whom he had consigned to a horrible death, the thought that they were alive did not penetrate his consciousness. The idea of failure had never entered his mind for even an instant. ”

“ The green moss of decay lay on its dank roofs, and the windows, set in deep cavities, peered blindly at the world as if through eyeless sockets. So forbidding was its aspect that boys, on approaching its cheerless gables, stopped their whistling and passed on the opposite side of the street. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1940, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 82 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
It is imperative that contributors search the renewal databases and ascertain that there is no evidence of a copyright renewal before using this license. Failure to do so will result in the deletion of the work as a copyright violation. ”

“ Mazie Lennox ceased to wear Aubrey Charles' ring. A year later she was married to Dr. Armitage, who had been a friend of her youth. Both Aubrey Charles and Aubrey Leclair were silent guests at the wedding. Neither had spoken a word to the other since the day when Aubrey Leclair stormed out of Aubrey Charles' office, scattering the cards about the room as he went.
The tall, dignified lawyer had never seemed so frigid and reserved as on that day when his heart's treasure was given to another. The usually jovial apothecary was as unsmiling and reserved as the other Aubrey. ”

“ The boshop took from his hands the shrine, and touched in his turn the revealing ruby. The panel slid back again, and the bishop found himself looking into the interior of the shrine.
"There is nothing here at all," he exclaimed, "but McRae has gone mad from terror." ”

“ Reasoning thus, Aubrey the lawyer refrained from telephoning to his friend, and Aubrey the apothecary went to Klickitamas alone.
Aubrey Leclair, as the closest friend and confident of the other Aubrey, regarded Mazie as a pal, but nothing closer, for she was the future wife of his friend. He liked Mazie immensely, and used to follow her about the room with his eyes, feasting them on her well-fitting nurse's garb and her mobile mouth and mysterious brown eyes, when he was recovering from the flu. But from the beginning she and the other Aubrey had taken to each other. ”

“ I repeated, for I liked to show off my knowledge of the language. "How can they pass through the glass without breaking it?"
"Through the Jupiterian steel, you mean," said Professor Nutt, severely. "I told you before that it is not glass. Jupiterian steel has four dimensions, and they pass through the fourth dimension. That is why you can't see the metal, for your eyes are only three-dimensional."
"Are the Jupiterian people four-dimensional?" ”

“ The dwarfish creatures rolled rapidly on the ground, the ears serving as legs, hands, tentacles and what not, propelling them with incredible speed. Sometimes they stood on only four or five of their ears, then suddenly pressed hard against the ground with half a thousand ears at once, thus bounding high into the air. ”

“ Racked by his thoughts, tortured by regrets, stung by hatred, he hardly noticed where he went, until he heard his name called. He drew up beside the curb. He found himself in the streets of a city twenty miles from his own. ”

“ Out of your ignorance you though they might be Martians or Venusians, but you are wrong, for Mars and Venus have people of three dimensions, like ourselves. Jupiterians are entirely different. There are six hundred thousand of them in this Jupiterian airship. ”

“ Only twelve men in the whole world understand the Einstein theory, it is said. If I had read the book, I would have been the thirteenth, and that would be unlucky. So it is just as well that it is destroyed. ”

“ Sound has no dimensions. It proceeds in waves, and bends back upon itself until it meets itself at an infinite distance from the starting point. There are three reasons why you can't hear the music of the spheres: first, because it is bent away from the earth by the force of gravity as it passes the sun ”

“ They have a disagreeable habit of coming down and killing people at the most inopportune times. That is why I was so startled when I saw a large object hurtling toward me out of the sky, as I was walking along the lake front recently in my city of Chicago. ”