"It should be obvious," the Wizard declared. "My object is not to
destroy you, but art. Art falsifies nature in general, and light
values in particular. It is the curse of mankind. Years ago I decided
to eliminate it. But how? The answer, my friends, was not long in
coming. I determined to destroy art by rendering it commercially
worthless--which, needless to say, I am well on the way to
accomplishing!--for I know that in this world, nothing can survive the
loss of monetary value!"
The visitors trembled in their chairs. If any proof were lacking of
the old man's dementia, his wild statement had supplied it. And was
his lunacy, they wondered, to mean the end of their fees and their
stipends, and, incidentally, of painting itself? What could they do to
thwart the old fiend? Chuck him out the window, possibly, along with
his infernal machine.
But the window seemed to be fogged. A peculiar little cloud was
whirling in front of it, right behind the molecular camera. They stared
at it, greatly puzzled.
The Wizard mistook the object of their scrutiny and embraced his
invention protectively. "You want to destroy it, do you?" he cried.
"Stay where you are!" He pulled a small revolver from his pocket and
brandished it threateningly, meanwhile tugging at the machine, to roll
it away.
* * * * *
It was then that Fate intervened, as if the potential irony were too
great to be resisted. The cloud behind the camera began to take on a
recognizable shape. It became a scientifically exact depiction of the
entranceway, in fact, for the Wizard, in his excitement, had neglected
to turn off his machine, and it had dutifully gone about its business.
True, the representation of the entranceway had not quite solidified,
but it was firm enough to obscure the plate-glass window behind it, and
so when the weak-eyed Wizard hastily pulled his great camera toward the
nearest exit, his confusion was understandable.
There was a loud noise of splintering as the old gentleman propelled
his invention through the window, and a cry of vexation as he followed
it.
By the time the art experts reached street-level, sixteen stories
below, there was little left to be seen. The molecular camera was a
mere tangle of wires and metal, yet it still hummed erratically on
for a time, and before the astonished eyes of the gathering crowd, it
belched out its final and greatest creation--a magnificent melange of
all periods and styles, a triumphant distillation of man's artistic
genius through the ages, marred only by the unfortunate representation,
in one corner, of a human nose in juxtaposition with the thumb of an
upraised hand whose fingers were indelicately spread. However, this
minor annoyance was blocked out, and the masterpiece was exhibited in
the leading galleries of the civilized world, until, like the machine's
other productions, it crumbled and fell into dust.