Chapter 3

The laboratory was found to be empty. All the windows were closed and
locked, and the key was on the inside of the door. In a heap on the
floor lay a peculiar collection of objects, consisting of Mr. Cabot’s
watch and chain, pocket knife, signet ring, cuff links and tie pin,
some coins, a metal belt buckle, two sets of garter snaps, some safety
pins, a gold pen point, a pen clip, a silver pencil, some steel
buttons, and several miscellaneous bits of metal. There was a smell in
the air like one notices in electric power houses. The fuses on the
laboratory power line were all blown out.

The butler immediately phoned to police headquarters, and Detective
Flynn was dispatched to the scene. He questioned all the servants
thoroughly, and confirmed the foregoing facts.

The police are working on the case.

WAS PROMINENT RADIO ENTHUSIAST

Myles S. Cabot, whose mysterious disappearance yesterday has shocked
Boston society, was the only son of the late Alden Cabot. His mother
was a Sears of Southboro.

The younger Cabot since his graduation from Harvard had devoted
himself to electrical experimenting. Although prominent in the social
life of the city, and an active member of the Union, University, New
York Yacht, and Middlesex Hunt Clubs, he nevertheless had found time
to invent novel and useful radio devices, among the best known of
which is the Indestructo Vacuum Tube.

He had established at his Beacon Street residence one of the best
equipped radio laboratories in the city.

His most recent experiment, according to professional friends, had
been with television.

Mr. Cabot substituted two circuits for the usual television circuit,
one controlling the vertical lines of his sending and receiving
screens, and the other the horizontal, thus enabling him to enlarge
his screen considerably, and also to present a continuous picture
instead of one made up of dots. The effect of perspective he obtained
by adding a third circuit.

The details of this invention had not been given out by Mr. Cabot
prior to his disappearance.

His nearest relatives are cousins.

The last was a particularly gentle touch, it seemed to me. Well, his
cousins hadn’t yet inherited his property, although they had tried
mighty hard; and perhaps this mysterious message from the void would
prevent them from ever doing so. I hoped that this would be the case,
for I liked Myles, and had never liked those cousins of his.

Myles had been a classmate of mine at Harvard, though later our paths
drifted apart, his leading into Back Bay society and radio, and mine
leading into the quiet pastoral life of a farm on Chappaquiddick Island
off the coast of Massachusetts. I had heard little of him until I read
the shocking account of his sudden disappearance.

The police had turned up no further clues, and the matter had quickly
faded from the public sight. I had kept the _Post_ clipping as a memento
of my old college chum.

I was anxious to learn what had become of him these four years. So I
opened the manuscript and proceeded to read aloud.

In the following chapters I shall give the story contained in that
manuscript—a story so weird, and yet so convincingly simple, that it
cannot fail to interest all those who knew Myles Cabot. It completely
clears up the mystery surrounding his disappearance. Of course, there
will be some who will refuse to believe that this story is the truth.
But those of his classmates and friends who knew him well will find
herein unmistakable internal evidence of Myles Cabot’s hand in this
narrative conveyed to me in the golden heart of a meteorite.

_2_
stranded in space

Thus wrote Myles Cabot:

My chief line of work, since graduating from Harvard, was on the subject
of television. By simultaneously using three sending sets and three
receiving sets, each corresponding to one of the three dimensions, any
object which I placed within the framework of my transmitter could be
seen within the framework of my receiver, just as though it stood there
itself.

All that prevented the object from actually being made to stand there
was the quite sufficient fact that no one had yet, so far as I was then
aware, invented a means for dissolving matter into its well-known
radiations, and then converting these radiations back into matter again.

But at just this time, by a remarkable coincidence, there came into my
hands a copy of an unpublished paper on this subject by Rene Flambeau.

The prior experiments of De Gersdorff are well known; he had succeeded
by means of radio waves, in isolating and distinguishing the
electro-magnetic constituents of all the different chemical elements.
Flambeau went one step further, and was able to transmit small formless
quantities of matter itself, although for some reason certain metals,
but not their salts, appeared to absorb the electrical energy employed
by him, and thus be immune to transportation.

As I could already transmit a three-dimensional picture of an object,
and as Flambeau had been able to transmit formless matter, then by
combining our devices in a single apparatus I found I could transmit
physical objects unchanged in form.

But this apparatus produced one unexpected phenomenon—namely, that
whenever I employed excessive power, my sending set would transmit
objects placed slightly outside its normal range, and certain small
quantities thereof would turn up in other portions of my laboratory than
within my receiving set.

To test this phenomenon further, I secured some high voltage equipment
and arranged with the Edison Company for its use.

On the afternoon when the installation was completed, I started to place
a small blue china vase in position to send it. Something must have
become short-circuited, for there came a blinding flash, and I knew no
more.

How long the unconsciousness lasted, I have no means of telling. I was a
long time regaining my senses, but when I had finally and fully
recovered I found myself lying on a sandy beach, beside a calm and
placid lake, and holding in my hand the small blue vase.

The atmosphere was warm, moist and fragrant, like that of a hothouse,
and the lap-lapping of the waves gave forth such a pleasing musical
sound that I lay where I was and dozed off and on, even after I had
recovered consciousness.

I seemed to sense, rather than really to see, my surroundings. The sand
was very white. The sky was completely overclouded at a far height, and
yet the clouds shone with such a silvery radiance that the day was as
bright as any which I had ever seen with full sunlight on earth, but
with a difference, for here the light diffused from all quarters, giving
the shadowless effect which one always notes in a photographer’s studio.