Getting to his feet he came over to us — a small, concise man with a perpetual slight smile that revealed the white of his teeth through his beard.
“Hello, Rod! Quite a little while since I’ve seen you.”
“Been busy,” I said, and promptly introduced Alice. This done, and the handshakes over, Page stood with his hands plunged in the pockets of his velvet smoking jacket whilst I gave him the story in detail. At the end of it he made no comment for a moment or two; then he looked at us with his small, keen blue eyes.
“Quite a remarkable story! Without any apparent explanation beyond the acquisition of a strange gem, you Miss Denham, start to lose weight and height, eh? Unique! Most unique! Let me have a look at it, Rod.”
I handed over the handkerchief containing the ring, and then added: “Better take care how you deal with it!”
“I can assure you that I shan’t take any chances. Come along with me, both of you.”
He led the way from his library to the small laboratory at the end of the hall. Floodlights came up automatically as the door opened. Removing the ring from the handkerchief with insulated forceps, Page put it under the electron microscope and peered intently. He spent nearly five minutes doing this, adjusting the instrument and murmuring under his breath. But the perpetual smile was still there when he glanced up.
“I assume,” he asked, “that you are under the impression that the rays from this stone are simply prismatic light rays, like those of the diamond?”
“Well, aren’t they?” I asked, surprised.
He shook his head, coming slowly forward. “No. This gem is the most amazing thing upon which I have ever set eyes … Most stones rely on their light-wave dissemination for their beauty — such as the diamond, ruby, sapphire, and so forth. On the other hand, stones of the opal class are absorptive of light. Here, however, is a gem of rare properties in that it radiates not only light waves but ether waves!”
Alice and I gazed, uncomprehending. Page continued:
“I hardly need to tell you, do I, that the air and space itself abound in different radiations such as heat, cosmic rays, radio waves, and so forth? So far we know of no mineral structure that will split up and radiate any of these radiations. Our limit is with stones which re-radiate light-waves with rare beauty. But here is a stone, apparently with natural facets, which re-radiates cosmic waves, and perhaps dozens of other radiations of which we know very little. It splits them up prismatically, hence the unholy luster and the suggestion that here and there are colors we’ve never yet encountered. The dominant blue is, I think, caused by the breaking-up of ultra-violet; and the red is derived from infra-red.”
“But what has all this to do with Alice?” I demanded.
“I don’t quite know — yet.” But I fancied from his expression that he did.
“Most certainly she had better not wear that ring again. I shall try to get a better light on its history from the jeweler from whom you bought it. The point is, that a stone like this able to re-radiate various waves may be utilizing some that are harmful to a human being. If the ring is no longer worn the trouble should cease …”
As he had been talking Page had led us back into the library. “Now,” he continued seriously, “you can rest assured that I’ll find out all I can about it. The implications of this ring may be far-reaching. Now you have ceased to wear it, Miss Denham, I think you ought to be perfectly all right.”
“Well, that’s something,” Alice admitted. “But what about the stone in weight and two inches in height which have gone into nowhere? Will they return?”
“Candidly, I just don’t know!”
Alice gave a rueful smile. “Even at five feet two I always felt pretty small. Now I feel positively microscopic!”
“Petite, and as sweet as ever,” I smiled, my arm about her shoulders.
“If there should be any further developments, come and see me immediately,” Page advised. “In fact, perhaps both of you had better drop in tomorrow evening and I’ll be able to tell you how I’ve progressed.”
On that note we left matters. Alice said little as I drove her home, but I could tell that she was still very much alarmed. Nor was I much better myself. There had been something in Earl Page’s manner, which to me — knowing him extremely well — had implied that he knew most of the truth but had not dared to tell it …
And the next day my alarm was sharpened considerably when immediately after breakfast, before I had set off for town, Alice rang me. Her voice was shaking with nervousness.
“Rod, I’m frightened! This business is still going on even though I haven’t worn the ring! I’ve lost dimensions again in the night — I had some terrible dream, too. I seemed to be flying through space, or something —”
“I’ll come right away,” I interrupted. “Keep a grip on yourself, sweetheart. I’ll soon be with you.”
I only stayed long enough to leave directions at the office, then I was on my way again to Alice’s flat as fast as the car would go and this time, as she opened the door to me, I could behold the diminution clearly.
Alice’s clothes were hanging baggily on her lessened figure. She was doll-like, fragile, and pitifully frightened. From her gaunt, weary face it was plain what sort of a night she had been through. The moment she saw me she caught hold of my arm and hung on to it as though afraid to let go.
“All right,” I murmured, embracing her gently. “Take it easy, darling. We’ll get this mess cleared up somehow. Let’s go and see Page right away.”
When we arrived at Page’s home he was in dressing gown and slippers, finishing his breakfast. His expression immediately became grim as his eyes traveled to Alice.
“Sit down, both of you …” He called for extra coffee and then proceeded slowly. “I called on the jeweler last evening but apparently he could not add anything to what you had already told me. I then browsed through the library and read up all I could find concerning gems — but without result. The ‘Sunstone’ is not even mentioned. So I had to fall back on an analysis of my own.”
The extra coffee was brought and Page resumed. “I spent most of last night making tests. As I at first thought, the gem does transmit radiations of all kinds. If a low-powered radio beam is directed at it, it reflects it again as a mirror does light. Absolutely uncanny! However, from the gem there is radiating a wavelength of such exceptional smallness that I cannot place it even with instruments — unless I accept the most unbelievable proposition ever heard of.”
“And what’s that?” I asked bluntly.
“That the wavelength is being generated from somewhere inconceivably small and invisible to us. The wavelength also has a power that has a surprising effect on flesh-and-blood organisms. A white mouse which I put beside the ring for the night has decreased in size!”
Alice and I looked at each other anxiously. The coffee cups we were holding in our hands remained ignored.
“Strangely enough,” Page continued, “the effect continues even when the ring is removed. That seems to show that once the effect — whatever it is — is absorbed into a living system it continues to exert its influence —”
“Then what happens to me?” Alice cried in horror. “At least tell me that! I’ve got to know!”
Page came forward and looked down at her seriously. “Believe me, Miss Denham, I wish I could give you the details, but for the moment I just don’t know them. I’m fighting something I never even heard of before! I will be able to form a better prognosis when I have studied the final reactions of the mouse. In the meantime, if you can make arrangements to stay here, where I can keep you under observation, I may be able to do something for you. Think you can manage that?”
“Anything! Anything at all!”
“Good! I’ll instruct my housekeeper to make the necessary arrangements. Be back here about noon with everything you require, then we’ll go into the matter thoroughly.”
He accompanied us as far as the hall, scribbled something on a card, and pushed i
t into my pocket whilst Alice’s back was turned. Once I had left Alice at her flat with the promise to return to her at noon after a call at the office, I read what had been written on the card. It was not reassuring.
Return immediately before Miss Denham. Very important that I should see you.
So, with dire expectations of something dreadful, I went back immediately to Page’s home — and he wasted no time in coming to the point now Alice was not present to hear the details.
“Rod, your fiancée is unwittingly fighting something of baleful power! Unless my guess is entirely wrong, that jewel is being operated upon by powers in the microcosm.”
“Microcosm?” I repeated vaguely. “I’m a stockbroker, Earl, not a scientist.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I’m referring to the atomic world, which on an inconceivably small scale duplicates our known universe. It is quite possible that there might be highly intelligent beings in this microcosm, existing upon an electron. An electron cannot really be likened to a planet, of course, except for the purposes of analogy. However, since an electron is basically an electric charge, the only assumption we can draw is that the denizens of such an electron-world must themselves be electrical. Possibly even electric charges possessing intelligence.”
“Intelligent electricity? Dammit, man, that’s stretching things a bit, isn’t it?”
He smiled wistfully. “Is it? We are intelligent electricity, too, remember! Maybe that startles you?”
It certainly did! Yet when I came to think of it I could see he was right. Everything material, including human and animal organisms, is based on electric forces. So after a while his idea did not seem so extraordinary after all.
“And you believe these electrical inhabitants of an electron world may be operating through the Sunstone?”
“I think so, yes. The action of the wavelength makes me think that, but the purpose of it I just do not understand! It is not remotely possible that Miss Denham was deliberately singled out. I think the whole thing was pure chance, and that she happened to be the recipient of these minute wavelengths.”
“And not only Alice,” I exclaimed, startled. “All the, other owners of the ring disappeared, too!”
“That,” Page said, “is what is so disquieting.”
A thought suddenly struck me. “What of the countless others who must have handled the gem? Even the jeweler himself for that matter! Nothing happened — least not to him.”
“As to that, they didn’t have it continuously in contact with their flesh for over twelve hours. There was no effect on the mouse either until twelve hours had passed. I had the ring fastened tightly against its body, by the way. You will recall that only the owners of the ring have vanished — that is those who must have worn it. We do not hear anything untoward about those who transferred it from place to place.”
“Of all the damnable, horrific gems to be let loose in the world!” I breathed. “It’s more deadly than the most virulent poison! It’s so — so utterly beautiful, yet so fiendishly diabolical!”
“Very true,” Page sighed, thinking.
“What you are telling me, Earl, is that somebody of incredible scientific ingenuity, living on an electronic charge — or planet — deliberately sent that gem into our vastly greater universe and thereafter used it for the transmission of certain inexplicable wavelengths which cause shrinkage. Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“I don’t see how that is possible.” I gave a frown. “This gem must be countless millions of times larger than the world from which they sent it! How do you reconcile that?”
“There’s a simple parallel,” he answered. “Our modern scientists, by a play of vibrations upon certain mineral substances, can change the mineral gradually into a totally different atomic structure. For instance, they can change carbon into hard diamonds, and that’s only one example … These electronic men of science, unseen, somewhere in the microcosm, have obviously transmitted from their world a series of vibrations to the extreme limit of their universe, knowing full well that beyond it must lie the greater macrocosm in which spins our world —”
“Why our world?” I interrupted. “Are there not tens of millions of worlds to choose from?”
“Certainly, but ours — as far as we know at present — is the only one with human — I say human — life. Hence Earth was, I suggest, singled out. The concentrated force of those vibrations reacted on some part of our world, perhaps determined beforehand, to produce a combination of chemicals that formed into the Sunstone. That, I believe, is what happened …”
I must have looked very doubting, for Page added: “The fact that they can do it is proved because they can still send vibrations through it even now, no matter where it is moved. That shows conclusively that the radiations are chained by some magnetic power or other to the jewel wherever it may be. Mighty science, Rod! Science pressed to its ultimate power for a reason we do not as yet understand. But we shall! I wanted to tell you all this in private. Once Miss Denham is with us again I may not have the opportunity and it would be nonsensical to alarm her unduly. By examination, tests, and research I may yet solve the mystery and save her.”
“There are no two ways about it!” I cried. “The alternative to saving her is unthinkable!”
Page clapped me on the shoulder. “We’ll see what we can do — and needless to say, not a word to her!”
And so I departed to pick Alice up from her flat. I still do not know how I managed to keep a reasonably cheerful face on things, considering what I had heard. I was a victim to the knowledge that overwhelming forces had suddenly sprung into being, and the whole damned issue of them seemed to be concentrated entirely on the woman I held most dear …
*
Naturally, I made arrangements so that I too could stay with Page and be beside Alice in case of urgent need. There was at least a cold yet reassuring efficiency about Page, which was wonderfully heartening to both Alice and me. Indeed, her understandable fears abated considerably under Page’s calm watchfulness.
From noon onwards until early evening he was the perfect host, never once mentioning the matter closest to our minds — but in that time I noticed how skillfully he wormed his way into Alice’s confidence, how he watched her constantly whilst not appearing to be doing so, how his adding-machine brain made a note of her every movement and reaction.
We dined at seven, talked for another hour, and then at Page’s suggestion went to the laboratory. Immediately he went into action. With his quick, capable hands he set about arranging his instruments, asking for and receiving the fullest co-operation from Alice. Neither of us understood much of what he did, though we certainly watched in fascinated interest … He used X-ray screens and took several plates; he tied elastic bandages around Alice’s arm, in the fashion of a blood-pressure test — the difference being that in this case he attached electrodes to the bandage and then stood watching pensively as needles jumped in a panel of dials. He made notes by the score and went to work with other machines that bristled with tubes, wires, insulator banks, and multiple switches.
His final experiment did not concern Alice at all but the frightened and very much shrunken white mouse, and lastly the Sunstone itself. That deadly gem still shone with its unholy and transcendently beautiful luster.
At last Page was finished. He stood with his hands plunged in the pockets of his velvet jacket, beard touching his chest as he pondered.
“The facts,” he said finally, “are not reassuring! There is nothing to be gained by evasion.”
“Nothing at all,” Alice agreed quietly, a tremor in her voice. “What is it all about, Dr Page? Since I am the victim I am entitled to know. I don’t want promises or put-offs. I simply want to know, where I stand.”
“It is only because I think I might be able to save you that I am going to tell you what is happening,” Page replied. “In the first place, Miss Denham, the electric content of your body is three times that of normal. You did not k
now that, did you?”
“I certainly didn’t Would it explain a slight feeling of cramp all over me?”
“A mild pins-and-needles effect? Yes, that would explain it. Because you had that gem in close contact with your body for over twelve hours certain wavelengths have operated through it — wavelengths generated from somewhere in what we call the microcosm …” Page went into an explanation very similar to the one he had given me, except that it was ‘watered down’ especially not to frighten Alice too much; then he continued:
“This radiation has altered the normal electrical content of your body to such an extent that there is a distinct magnetism. I cannot work out the exact intricacies involved, but it seems that this magnetism is causing a closing-up of the electronic orbits that make up the molecular units of your body. As they close, you shrink, and also evidently lose weight with a kind of radiating by-product. Is that clear?”
Alice nodded, even though she looked completely bewildered. “Then what makes it progress? Why didn’t it cease once the ring was taken out of the way?”
“Because the effect was by then stabilized. The electric content had been supplied to cause the alteration and it simply goes on functioning. Therefore, we must set to work to find a counteractive radiation that will arrest the trouble, or at least produce a negative result on the extra electricity absorbed into your body. Somehow we will find it, Miss Denham. Don’t worry! This whole business has been devised by a brilliant science for an obscure reason, but I’ve one or two ideas of my own yet to try out …”
Page stood for a moment or two, considering, then he said: “I believe you mentioned you had strange dreams last night?”
“I did, yes, and I cannot understand what they meant. It seemed to me as though I were falling endlessly through space. I could see the stars and great abysses of dark. Then there were huge, empty worlds …” Alice gave a wistful smile. “It made me feel just like a goddess looking down on the universe!”
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