Benjamin Witwer

“ The discriminating Marsden naturally fell in love with Venice, and to his great surprise and chagrin, was decisively repulsed by her. Never before having been refused anything he really wanted in his comfortably arranged life, he became passionately desirous of possessing her. Accordingly, my darling was shown a letter, forged with such diabolical cleverness as to be almost indistinguishable from my own hand. It purported to intrigue me with a very ordinary female at a period coincident with the time I had been so fervently courting my dear one. ”

“ Thus it was that I leased an old house not half a mile from Marsden’s pretentious “farm.” I converted the entire ground floor into a laboratory, living in solitary state upon the upper floor. I was used to caring for myself, and the nature of my experiment being of such potentialities, I felt that I wanted no prying servants about me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the telephone to radio constituted but another such step, and we are now enjoying radio broadcast from stations thousands of miles away. Every time you have an Xray photograph taken you are bombarded, not by rays, but by actual particles that go right through the walls of the tube, which particles are just as real as if they were bullets or bricks, the only difference being that they are smaller. Thus our scientists lead up to the way of sending solids through space. ”

“ Yes, after years of study and interrupted experimental research I was enabled finally to disintegrate, without the aid of heat, a solid object into its fundamental vibrations, transmit these vibrations into the ether in the form of so-called “radio waves” which I then attracted and condensed in my “receiving” apparatus, slowly damping their short kinked vibration-rate until finally there was deposited the homogeneous whole, identical in outline and displacement,—entirely unharmed from its etheric transmigration! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some weeks previously I had finally succeeded in transmitting a small wooden ball by radio. Perhaps I should say that I had “dissolved” it into its vibrations, for it was not until this later day that I had been able to materialize or “receive” it after it had been “sent.” I see you start and re-read this last sentence. I mean just what I say, and Marsden will bear me out, for as you shall see, he has witnessed this and other such experiments here in my laboratory. ”

“ My success in this, my life’s dream, was directly the result of our discoveries on that bitter expedition into Afghanistan. All my life I had been interested in the study of vibrations, but had achieved no startling successes or keen expectations thereof until we stumbled upon that strange mineral deposit on what was an otherwise ill-fated trip for me. It was then that I realized that radioactive niton might solve my hitherto insurmountable difficulty in the transmission of material vibrations into electronic waves. ”

“ It could be a boon to humanity, yet its possibilities for evil in the hands of any individual or group is so great as to render it most dangerous to the happiness of the human kind on this small globe. ”

“ Then I shall register this letter, taking care to exhibit the unusual collection of seals on the back. I shall manage to inform him also that I stamped the seals with my ring and will show him the coat-of-arms, explaining its meaning in detail. These villagers are a curiosity-ridden lot. ”