“I did,” said Miss Zapt firmly. “I suppose you’re responsible for that?”
She lifted a graceful arm and pointed overhead, as indeed she very well might, considering that she pointed at the wildly gyrating form of a superb Angora cat.
One would hardly expect to find a Persian Angora flattened, with no visible means of support, against the ceiling of a room, as this one certainly was. She hung there threshing with frantic legs at the impalpable air, with a motion not unlike a rather desperate effort at swimming, the total result of which was that she spun herself about in a circle, marked by a rapidly alternating head, from which gleamed yellow eyes and a twitching bushy tail. Her demeanor was little short of hysteria itself.
“Meouw!” she voiced her perturbation of spirit once more as she heard her mistress’s voice.
With poor tact Sargent chuckled. “Seems to have got the Angora’s angora,” he began.
Miss Zapt gave him a withering glance.
“Never mind, Fluffy pet,” she called encouragement to the glaring creature that had temporarily given over its efforts and rested with back pressed against the ceiling. And then she bore down on the little man who had once more lifted his eyes to the animal above him. “I suppose this is another of your detestable experiments,” she went on in a voice half tears and half rage. “What have you done to my cat?”
“Nothing, nothing—about the seventy-fifth of an ounce.” Professor Zapt fumbled in the pocket of a limp house-coat for notebook and pencil, opened the former and touched the latter to his lips.
“Father!” Miss Zapt seized both book and pencil. She stamped her slippered foot.
“Eh? Oh, yes, yes—exactly.” Xenophon Xerxes glanced into her flushed face. “As a matter of fact I have done nothing to your pet, my child—nothing at all worth mentioning, that is. Indeed, as you will note I have even exercised extreme caution. I have closed the windows, and the ceiling, of course, prevents her further ascension. But—if you refer to her present position—”
“It is rather unusual, don’t you fancy, professor?” said Bob. “Now if she were a flying squirrel—”
“Exactly,” Xenophon Zapt cut him short. “The term flying-squirrel is a misnomer, however, Robert. The animal so-called is incapable of sustaining itself for any considerable time in the air. As to the former part of your remark, however—hers is indeed a most unusual position, and it is that which proves the complete success of my experiment. You are now witnessing one of the marvels of the ages—voluntary levitation—the rediscovery of one of the lost secrets of the ancients. The means by which—”
Abruptly Nellie caught up the little pail. “I suppose your lost secret’s in this?”
And swiftly Xenophon Zapt put out a hand to retrieve what she had seized. “Nellie,” he commanded sternly, “replace that receptacle where you found it. As you surmise, it contains a substance of incalculable value—the first practical preparation of Zapt’s Repulsive Paste.”
“Wha-a-at!” Sargent crossed to gaze into the little bucket his fiancée was holding. “Does look sort of repulsive,” he agreed after a glance at the mess in the bottom of the pail. “But—you mean this stuff is responsible for Fluffy’s sudden elevation in life?”
“Exactly.” Professor Zapt nodded. “The animal is not injured except in her feelings, I assure you. I merely rubbed a very small portion of the paste into the fur on the under side of her body, and she assumed the position you are now privileged to behold. I am sure that in later years you will be glad to recall this evening, to remember that you were the first to witness the reapplication of those principles once before known to our race. You—”
“Just at present,” his daughter interrupted, “I’m far more interested in knowing whether having sent her up there you intend letting her remain until she starves to death.”
“Eh?” Professor Zapt frowned. “Starves? Why, certainly not. Having demonstrated to our satisfaction the efficacy of this latest addition to science, we may consider the test as ended. If Robert will obtain a step-ladder from the basement, and you will procure some water in order that we may wash off the paste—”
“Sure,” Bob assented, and departed on his errand. Nellie went with him as far as the kitchen.
Professor Zapt shook his head in depreciative fashion, retrieved his note-book and pencil from the table where Nellie had cast them, and began jotting down certain memoranda. His thin lips moved as his pencil traced its way across a page. “The seventy-fifth part of an ounce,” he muttered.
Above his graying head glared a very much disgruntled cat. It was not the first time her mistress’s father had made her the subject of some experiment.
In due season Sargent and Nellie reappeared. Bob set up his ladder and mounted to the rescue. Below Nellie waited with a basin of warm water and a soft cloth in her hands.
“Lay her on her back,” Professor Zapt advised as Sargent descended with the Angora clinging desperately to him. “That way she will not present any tendency to rise. The paste does not affect anything beneath it, but merely what is superimposed. That is the secret of its adaptability.”
“Exactly,” Bob accepted, grinning, and got down upon his knees.
Nellie knelt beside him. Together they administered to the resentful cat. While Bob held her, Nellie applied water to the body of her pet and dried her fur with the cloth. Fluffy glared, but submitted to superior force.
“Steady,” said Bob at last, and turned her over. He removed his restraining hands, and in a flash she vanished through the door into the hall.
Xenophon watched the entire performance, his blue eyes glowing behind their lenses. He nodded as she disappeared. He rubbed his hands together as Rob rose and assisted Nellie to her feet. “A very satisfactory experiment,” he declared; “a very satisfactory experiment, indeed. By it we have demonstrated beyond any possible cavil—”
“If you don’t let Fluffy alone,” Nellie turned upon him, “I’ll—I’ll pack up and leave home.” For years, since her mother’s death, she had taken care of the little man’s temporal wants and managed the house, but there were times when his complete attention to his scientific pursuits and his lack of attention to everything else, got badly on her nerves. And now her violet eyes were winking, and her red mouth quivered.
“Any time you feel like that, I’ll see you have another to go to,” Bob suggested as she paused, with a little catch in breath.
“Ahem!” Xenophon Xerxes Zapt glared. He did not approve so wholly of Bob as did his daughter. “Do not make any premature preparations, Robert,” he said, after a rather tense interval in which Nellie blushed. “The animal is not injured, as you yourself have seen, and as Nellie will realize in time. The main difficulty against which scientists have to contend in these days of self-interest is the conventional attitude of the average mind.
“Human beings are prone to allow some purely personal view-point to overshadow the major object to be attained. In the present instance it is consideration for a cat. It is permitted to obscure the fact that through her use we have demonstrated the rediscovery of the means by which the Egyptians built the Pyramids.”
“What? By Jove!” Sargent opened his eyes in wonder as the point struck home. “You really mean that, professor?”
“Exactly,” said Xenophon Zapt benignly, and stroked the graying whiskers on either side of his chin.
“But if that’s the case,” Bob began quickly, and came to a tongue-tied pause.
“It is the case, Robert.”
“I know—but—” Sargent floundered, “if it is, why couldn’t you have proved it just as well with a book or a rock or a box?”
For an instant the professor’s blue eyes twinkled. “I suppose I could have done so, Robert,” he replied, “but, as a matter of fact, I took the first object at hand when I was ready to make the test. I—er—that is, I didn’t, give the matter any further th
ought.
“My mind was focused on the larger point—the demonstrate which proves beyond question that Zapt’s Repulsive Paste will revolutionize the commercial world. By means of it we shall be able to accomplish marvels heretofore quite beyond any engineering scope we shall, by inserting definite quantities of the paste between the object to be transported and the Earth, be able to move enormous buildings, nullify the weight of tremendous loads, alter the entire present-day conception as appertaining to weight.
“I—don’t doubt it,” Bob agreed in actually enthusiastic fashion. “Lord, professor, it’s simply wonderful when you explain it; and it’s already sent Fluffy to the ceiling, and moved Nellie to tears.”
“You beast,” said Miss Zapt; but she smiled.
Her father frowned. “My chief objection to you, Robert, is the somewhat bizarre sense of humor which induces you to approach matters of weight in a light mood. If you would refrain from undue levity, there are times when I would be inclined to appreciate your otherwise not unintelligent apprehension of the results of scientific investigation.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” Bob apologized meekly. “What was it you were saying about the Pyramids?”
“The world has long marveled how they were built, how it was possible to transport and place in their walls monoliths of such enormous size. The answer was suggested some years ago, but never carried further, so far as I am aware. It was reserved for me to prove the truth of that suggestion and give again to the world a substance similar in effect at least to the one they used.
“That substance you have seen in operation tonight. It is in principle a screen for gravitation. Objects above it become for the moment practically devoid of weight—mere trifles light as air.”
“You—you mean it cuts off the operation of gravitation on anything above it?” Bob exclaimed. “Why, that’s marvelous, professor.”
“Exactly,” Xenophon Zapt agreed.
“Dead or alive?”
“Animate or inanimate, as you have seen.” The professor rubbed his hands. He eyed the stylish oxfords his daughter’s fiancé was wearing. “For instance, Robert, I could rub a certain amount on the soles of your shoes, and you would walk a certain distance above the floor. Depending upon the quantity employed in proportion to your weight, you would rise slightly or higher, as the centripetal force of the Earth revolutions threw you off.
“The entire action is capable of regulation by means of a calculation based upon the weight of the object to be moved. If I knew your exact weight I could cause you to lose ponderability altogether. I could even make you disappear. Still,” he sighed, “I presume Nellie would object to that even more loudly than she protested my use of the cat. However, as a matter of scientific demonstration, it would be interesting, I think.”
“Oh, very.” Bob drew his modish footwear well under the chair in which he was sitting, and Nellie stiffened.
Xenophon Zapt arose. “I think I shall go to my study now and write a brief account of my experiment. Tomorrow I shall begin the preparation of a large amount of the powder which, blended with water, constitutes the paste. I shall organize a company after a bit. If you wish, Robert, I shall permit you to purchase a reasonable amount of stock. Good night.”
“Good night, sir. Thank you,” said Bob, and watched him disappear, a quaint, little figure in his loose slippers, his iron-gray whiskers and his shapeless, flapping coat.
And after he was quite out of sight he turned to Nellie. “Lord! Do you suppose he’s really got it?” he remarked. “Something surely happened to Fluffy, and after we washed off the paste she was all right, and—I guess those old wiseacres did know something in their day. It makes a fellow feel funny—Egyptians and Pyramids, and all those things folks have pretty nearly forgotten. Say, what was that record you got the other day for the machine?”
Five minutes later, while, Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt drew paper before him and dipped his pen in ink, his daughter and Sargent sat very close together on the living-room couch, while a phonographic reproduction of “Mummy Mine,” echoed softly through the house.
* * * *
True to his promise Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt spent the major portion of the succeeding day mixing and blending the ingredients of the powder which, when mixed with water, constituted the Repulsive Paste.
He heaped it upon a tray and left it on a table in the upstairs room that he habitually used as the scene of his scientific investigations—a room overlooking, from broad windows, the tree-shaded street.
And the succeeding morning he charged downstairs about ten and informed Nellie that he had nearly overlooked the fact that he meant to attend the meeting of a scientific body to which he belonged in a neighboring town. In considerable haste he arrayed himself in clean shirt and collar, the frock-coat, to which he consistently clung, and hat, and was on the point of departure for a train, when Nellie suggested that he had better wear his shoes, rather than the slippers on his feet. The professor acceding rather impatiently to the suggestion, the change of footgear was made and he departed. After that the day dragged past until four o’clock.
At that hour Bob Sargent, seated in the office where he dispensed legal advice to sundry clients, answered a ring on his phone.
“Oh, Bobby,” came the voice of Miss Zapt, “come up to dinner. Dad’s gone to one of his society meetings and he won’t be home till rather late, and with all these recent burglaries and holdups in the city, I’m sort of nervous.”
“Yes, you are,” said Sargent with a chuckle, deriding the confession of Miss Zapt’s timorous nerves.
“Yes, really I am,” she insisted. “You’ll come, won’t you, Bob?”
“I will,” said Bob without hesitation. And he did.
Because he was in love, and a dinner with his sweetheart tête-à-tête is something no true lover in his senses will pass up. He arrived about six with a box of Nellie’s favorite candy and anticipations of a pleasant evening, since Miss Zapt’s experience as manager of her father’s household had made a dinner under her supervision a thing not to be missed.
In this particular case anticipation proved no more than the precursor of realization. The dinner was a course affair of finely balanced quality, and the two young people rather dallied over it, from soup to cheese, as young people sometimes will, until a sudden deepening of the twilight sent Nellie to the window just as a peal of thunder reverberated sharply through the house.
“Goodness, it’s going to rain cats and dogs, Bob!” she exclaimed. “The sky’s as black as ink.”
“Let ’er rain,” said Sargent, content with a well-filled stomach and the society of the lady of his affections. “We’ve a good roof over our heads, so we should worry.”
“I was thinking of father,” Nellie explained and giggled as she recounted the professor’s attempt to leave home without his shoes. “He’s so absent-minded about little things. Mercy!”
A small cyclone seemed sweeping through the house, sending curtains eddying in flapping streamers, and doors banging as they were caught and slammed in the draft.
There followed a few moments of rapid effort in closing windows and making all secure, and then youth and maiden stood briefly watching the first dashing flurry of the summer shower, before they pulled down the shades and withdrew to a low-toned conversation, dealing as usual under similar conditions, quite largely with themselves.
Meanwhile, some distance up the street a large and heavy-set figure sheltered itself as best it might beneath an arching tree, while waiting for the shower to pass.
It was that of Officer Dan McGuiness, patrolman on the beat that included the Zapt house. It wasn’t a very exciting beat as a rule, but recently Danny had been nursing hopes. As Miss Zapt had said to Bob that afternoon, there had been a lot of burglaries of late and Danny really couldn’t see why fate should not be kind and send one of the as yet unapprehended prowlers
into his quiet street. He was thinking about it now as he listened to the patter of the rain among the leaves.
“Shure it would be a grand night for a poorch-climber to git in his fancy wuruk,” he soliloquized. “Th’ wind an’ th’ rain would cover any noises he might be makin’. ’Tis th’ sort of noight I’d consider as made to me order was I a burglar myself.”
And the thought having taken hold upon him was with him still, as the shower swept on across the countryside, and the moon appearing, began to flirt with the dripping landscape from behind a veil of ragged clouds. It sent him on down the street with a wary eye for any burglarious-minded individual who might have been of the same opinion as himself.
Thus he came in time to a house, with a wide front porch, above which was an open window; and rising over the top of the porch as Danny watched, an object like a human head.
With a heart beginning to beat more quickly, McGuiness drew into the shadow of a tree and waited. He knew this house as the home of Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt, inhabited by the old man and his daughter; and that open window and the head rising cautiously over the edge of the porch roof fitted in with the thoughts he had been entertaining. He thrust his club into its loop and felt for his revolver. He was convinced that at last he had been given his chance to prove himself.
The head kept on rising. It was followed by a crouching body, and a pair of legs. It became the figure of a man crawling on top of the porch toward the open window with the silent caution of stealth. Once it appeared to hesitate, to slip on the slanting surface, and then it again went on.
Officer McGuiness had seen enough. He drew his gun and started at a heavy run for the gate in the fence before the house. And, having reached it, he slipped through it without sound and following not the walk, but tiptoeing with burly caution over the dampened lawn, made his way quite close to the porch. Then and then only did he lift his voice in a heavy, authoritative summons:
The Mad Scientist Megapack Page 50