CHAPTER I
Dr. Hermann Anderwelt
I had been busy all day trying to swarm the bees and secure my honey.The previous day had been February 29th, a date which doesn't oftenhappen, and which I had especial reason to remember, for it had been themost successful of my business career. I had made a long guess at theshaky condition of the great house of Slater, Bawker & Co., who had beenheavy buyers of wheat. I had talked the market down, sold it down,hammered it down; and, true enough, what nobody else seemed to expectreally happened. The big firm failed, the price of wheat went to smashin a panic of my mixing, and, as a result, I saw a profit of more thantwo hundred thousand dollars in the deal. But, in order to secure thissnug sum, I still had to buy back the wheat I had sold at higher prices,and this I didn't find so easy. The crowd in the wheat pit had seen myhand, and were letting me play it alone against them all.
After the session I hurried to my office to get my overcoat and hat,having an engagement to lunch at the Club.
"If you please, Mr. Werner, there is a queer old gentleman in yourprivate office who wishes to see you," said Flynn, my chief clerk.
"Ask him to call again to-morrow; I am in a great hurry to-day," I said,slipping on one sleeve of my overcoat as I started out.
"But he has been waiting in there since eleven o'clock, and said he verymuch wished to see you when you had plenty of time. He would not allowme to send on the floor for you during the session."
"Since eleven o'clock! Did he have his lunch and a novel sent up? Well,I can hardly run away from a man who has waited three and a half hoursto see me;" and I entered my private office with my overcoat on.
Seated in my deep, leathern arm-chair was an elderly man, with ratherlong and bushy iron-grey hair, and an uneven grey beard. His headinclined forward, he breathed heavily, and was apparently fast asleep.
"You will pardon my awaking you, but I never do business asleep!" Iventured rather loudly.
Slowly the steel-blue eyes opened, and, without any start ordiscomposure, the old man answered,--
"And I--my most successful enterprises are developed in my dreams."
His features and his accent agreed in pronouncing him German. He arosecalmly, buttoned the lowest button of his worn frock-coat, and, insteadof extending his hand to me, he poked it inside his coat, letting ithang heavily on the single button. It was a lazy but characteristicattitude. It tended to make his coat pouch and his shoulders droop. Iremembered having seen it somewhere before.
"Mr. Werner, I have a matter of the deepest and vastest importance tounfold to you," he began, rather mysteriously, "for which I desire fivehours of your unemployed time----"
"Five hours!" I interrupted. "You do not know me! That much is hard tofind without running into the middle of the night, or into the middle ofthe day--which is worse for a busy man. I have just five minutes tospare this afternoon, which will be quite time enough to tell me who youare and why you have sought me."
"You do not know me because you do not expect to see me on thishemisphere," he continued. "Nor did I expect to find you a potent forcein the commercial world, only three years after a literary andlinguistic preparation for a scholarly career. Why, the _maedchens_ ofHeidelberg have hardly had time to forget your tall, athletic figure, orceased wondering if you were really a Hebrew----"
"You seem to be altogether familiar with my history," I put in with alittle heat. "Kindly enlighten me equally well as to your own."
"I gave you the pleasure of an additional year of residence at theUniversity of Heidelberg not long ago," he answered.
"I do not know how that can be, for to my uncle I owe my entireeducation there."
"Perhaps an unappreciated trifle of it you owe to your instructors andlecturers. Do you forget that I refused to pass your examinations inphysics, and kept you there a year longer?"
"You are not Doctor Anderwelt, then?"
"Hermann Anderwelt, Ph.D., at your service, sir," he replied somewhatproudly.
"But when and why did you leave your chair at Heidelberg?"
"It is to answer this that I ask the five hours," he said slowly.
"Oh, come now, doctor, you used to tell me more in a two-hour lecturethan I could remember in a week," I answered, taking off my overcoat,and touching an electric button at my desk. My office boy entered.
"Teddy, have I had lunch to-day?" This was my favourite question on abusy day, and Teddy always answered it seriously.
"No, sir, you have an engagement to lunch at the Standard Club," hereplied.
"Telephone to Gus at the Club that I can't come up to-day. Also sendover to the Grand Pacific for a good lunch for two. Have some beer init--real Munchner, and in _steins_," I directed, and then I reclined ona long leather lounge, and motioned to the doctor to have a chair. Hedeclined, however, and walked slowly back and forth before me as hetalked, keeping his right hand inside his coat, and with the left heoccasionally ploughed up his heavy hair, as if to ventilate his brain.
"A year ago I gave up theoretical physics for applied physics; Iresigned my chair at Heidelberg, and came to this progressive city. Ibrought with me a working model of the greatest invention of thisinventive age. Yet it was then neither perfect in design nor complete indetail. But now I have hit on the plan that makes it practicable andcertain of success. I need only a little money to build it, and theworld will open its eyes!"
"But you must pardon me if instead of opening mine I shut them," Iinterrupted, seeing the point quickly, and losing no time in dodging. "Ihave no money to invest in patent rights; but still, you must stay tolunch with me."
Just here the doctor seemed to find it necessary to diverge from theorderly course of his lecture as he had prepared it, and interject a fewimpromptu observations.
"Events are difficult to forecast, but the capabilities of a youth areharder to divine. One educates his son in all the fine arts, and heturns out a founder of pig iron. One's nephew is apprenticed to awatchmaker, and in a few years, behold, he is a great barrister. Youruncle educated you thoroughly in the old Hebrew and Chaldee of therabbis, and, lo! you are now the _ursa major_ of the wheat market.
"Just now you are in the centre of the kaleidoscope of success. Slater,Bawker & Co. were there a month ago, but now they are only bits ofbroken glass in the bottom of the heap! And you? you are really atwisted bit of coloured glass like the rest, but you chance to be thrownto the middle. The mirrors of public opinion multiply your importancehalf a dozen times, and behold you are reflected into the whole picture.But the kaleidoscope turns, and the pieces of glass are shifted. Otherbroken chips now at the bottom of the heap will soon be filling thecentre!
"Permit me to change my figure of speech. You are sweeping back thewaves of the sea while the tide is falling, and the wide-mouthed publiclooks on, and whispers about that your broom makes all the waves obey,and drives them back at will. Just when you begin to believe it yourselfthe tide may turn, and neither brooms nor all the powers on earth canthen sweep it back.
"Isidor Werner, you believe yourself rich; but your wealth is likemolasses in a sieve. If you do not dip in your finger and taste thesweet occasionally, you will have nothing to show for your pains in theend. I shall ask you for but a taste of the sweet now, so that I maypreserve a little of it against that day which may come, when the sievewill be bright and clean and empty again!"
There was a knock at the door.
"Come in!" I shouted. "Nothing but this lunch can save me from youreloquence. You have already ruined me in three similes!"
The waiter arranged a bountiful and tempting luncheon on a writingtable. I commenced on it at once, but the doctor, though repeatedlyurged, persistently refused. He took a long draught at a _stein_ ofMunich beer, and continued:--
"My invention proposes to navigate the air and the ether beyond, as wellas the interplanetary spaces," he said impressively.
"Flying machine, eh?" I sneered, between bites of planked whitefish.
"Indeed no!" he growled, as if he det
ested this name. "My invention isnot a machine but a projectile. It is not self-propelling, because if itdepended upon its own propelling apparatus, it could not in thousands ofyears navigate the interplanetary spaces. It is a _gravity projectile_,and will travel at a rate of speed almost incalculable. It does not fly,but its manner of travelling is more nearly like falling."
I gave the doctor a quick searching look to see if I could discover anysigns of incipient insanity. I met a firm, steady gaze; an earnest,convincing look. Somehow, I felt there was something real and true andwonderful about to come from the great scholar before me, and that Imust hear it and hear it all; that I must lend a serious and thoughtfulattention. My eyes were rivetted upon the doctor's for fully a minute insilence.
"Go on," I said at last; "I am all attention."
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