Page:Weird Tales Volume 24 Issue 4 (1934-10).djvu/39

"But you said he was old."

"Yes, but he's going to work in his room, too, like you, only his work might be a little noisy. He’s an inventor, he says."

"An inventor?"

"Yes. He had a lot of boxes and crates moved in. I don't see where he'll put all the things, big as the room is."

An inventor. I was doubtful for a moment. Perhaps he would hammer and drill metals all day.

"He's paying a fine price," said Mrs. Stong apologetically. "He's arranged to pay my electric bill, too. All of it. He says he'll use so much current that my part won't amount to anything."

"Of course it'll be all right," I told her. "His stuff can't be heavy or he couldn't install it on the second floor of a frame house. I don't suppose he'll make much noise. Glad you got the extra income."

I went upstairs then, and forgot the newcomer in a rush of work. I rather expected to see him when I went down to dinner; but he wasn't there. Mrs. Stong explained that he was going to take all his meals in his room. There would continue to be only the two of us at table.

About dawn next morning I woke up. A faint, deep humming noise was coming from the room next to mine. It was that which had wakened me. My new neighbor had evidently got his equipment, whatever it might be, set up and running. I sighed with relief. If that faint hum was all the noise his work produced I'd have no trouble. I went to sleep again, with the hum in my ears, idly wondering what made it.

I didn't lay eyes on the newcomer for six days. And for most of that time I didn't hear him: he worked always at night, and the hum sounded only in the early hours before dawn.

Mrs. Stong continued to be nervous about him.

"There's such a strange, far-off look in his eyes," she said at breakfast of the sixth day. "And it's funny—he won't let me come into his room at all, not even to clean up. He says he'll take care of that himself. When I take up his meals I set the tray in the hall outside his door and then knock and go away. Later I come up for the empty dishes."

"So much less trouble for you," I said carelessly.

"Yes, but—you don't suppose he can be doing anything—anything criminal, do you?"

I laughed.

"He probably has a new perpetual-motion machine and is afraid somebody will see it and steal the idea."

That afternoon I saw him for the first time. We both came out of our rooms together, dressed for the street.

My first glance went past him and into his room. I was curious to see what made the hum. But the maze of unfamiliar equipment I saw told me nothing.

In the center of his room was a long, plain table. Over this were arched many hoops of copper, wired together, I think; I couldn't be sure. At each end of the table was a tall, flat cabinet of metal, painted black, with dozens of wires coming out of insulated apertures and connecting with the copper hoops. Sticking up at either side of the table was a long, narrow glass tube—a vacuum tube, probably—and these two tubes were slanted slightly as though one might lie on the table and manipulate them like gear-shift levers. To carry out that supposition, I got a hasty glimpse of a pillow on the end of the table nearest the tubes, and saw that the pillow was indented as though a head had recently rested there.

Then the door was slammed with such