“The curiosity of two years to be quenched in

a single moment! The nervous tension, of course, must be considerable.”

He turned back to the brown desk and opened it without further

delay. His hand was firm now, and he took out the paper parcel that lay

inside without a tremor. It was heavy. A moment later there lay on the

table before him a couple of weather-worn plaques of grey stone—they

looked like stone, although they felt like metal—on which he saw

markings of a curious character that might have been the mere tracings

of natural forces through the ages, or, equally well, the

half-obliterated hieroglyphics cut upon their surface in past centuries

by the more or less untutored hand of a common scribe.

He lifted each stone in turn and examined it carefully. It seemed to

him that a faint glow of heat passed from the substance into his skin,

and he put them down again suddenly, as with a gesture of uneasiness.

“A very clever, or a very imaginative man,” he said to himself, “who

could squeeze the secrets of life and death from such broken lines as

those!”

Then he turned to a yellow envelope lying beside them in the desk,

with the single word on the outside in the writing of the

professor—the word Translation.

“Now,” he thought, taking it up with a sudden violence to conceal

his nervousness, “now for the great solution. Now to learn the meaning

of the worlds, and why mankind was made, and why discipline is worth

while, and sacrifice and pain the true law of advancement.”

There was the shadow of a sneer in his voice, and yet something in

him shivered at the same time. He held the envelope as though weighing

it in his hand, his mind pondering many things. Then curiosity won the

day, and he suddenly tore it open with the gesture of an actor who

tears open a letter on the stage, knowing there is no real writing

inside at all.

A page of finely written script in the late scientist’s handwriting

lay before him. He read it through from beginning to end, missing no

word, uttering each syllable distinctly under his breath as he read.

The pallor of his face grew ghastly as he neared the end. He began

to shake all over as with ague. His breath came heavily in gasps. He

still gripped the sheet of paper, however, and deliberately, as by an

intense effort of will, read it through a second time from beginning to

end. And this time, as the last syllable dropped from his lips, the

whole face of the man flamed with a sudden and terrible anger. His skin

became deep, deep red, and he clenched his teeth. With all the strength

of his vigorous soul he was struggling to keep control of himself.

For perhaps five minutes he stood there beside the table without

stirring a muscle. He might have been carved out of stone. His eyes

were shut, and only the heaving of the chest betrayed the fact that he

was a living being. Then, with a strange quietness, he lit a match and

applied it to the sheet of paper he held in his hand. The ashes fell

slowly about him, piece by piece, and he blew them from the window-sill

into the air, his eyes following them as they floated away on the

summer wind that breathed so warmly over the world.

He turned back slowly into the room. Although his actions and

movements were absolutely steady and controlled, it was clear that he

was on the edge of violent action. A hurricane might burst upon the

still room any moment. His muscles were tense and rigid. Then,

suddenly, he whitened, collapsed, and sank backwards into a chair, like

a tumbled bundle of inert matter. He had fainted.

In less than half an hour he recovered consciousness and sat up. As

before, he made no sound. Not a syllable passed his lips. He rose

quietly and looked about the room.

Then he did a curious thing.

Taking a heavy stick from the rack in the corner he approached the

mantlepiece, and with a heavy shattering blow he smashed the clock to

pieces. The glass fell in shivering atoms.

“Cease your lying voice for ever,” he said, in a curiously still,

even tone. “There is no such thing as time!”

He took the watch from his pocket, swung it round several times by

the long gold chain, smashed it into smithereens against the wall with

a single blow, and then walked into his laboratory next door, and hung

its broken body on the bones of the skeleton in the corner of the room.

“Let one damned mockery hang upon another,” he said smiling oddly.

“Delusions, both of you, and cruel as false!”

He slowly moved back to the front room. He stopped opposite the

bookcase where stood in a row the “Scriptures of the World,” choicely

bound and exquisitely printed, the late professor’s most treasured

possession, and next to them several books signed “Pilgrim.”

One by one he took them from the shelf and hurled them through the

open window.

“A devil’s dreams! A devil’s foolish dreams!” he cried, with a

vicious laugh.

Presently he stopped from sheer exhaustion.