When I look back, I realize what a peculiar friendship it was. First,
there was Lloyd Inwood, tall, slender, and finely knit, nervous and
dark. And then Paul Tichlorne, tall, slender, and finely knit, nervous
and blond. Each was the replica of the other in everything except color.
Lloyd’s eyes were black; Paul’s were blue. Under stress of excitement,
the blood coursed olive in the face of Lloyd, crimson in the face of
Paul. But outside this matter of coloring they were as like as two peas.
Both were high-strung, prone to excessive tension and endurance, and
they lived at concert pitch.
But there was a trio involved in this remarkable friendship, and the
third was short, and fat, and chunky, and lazy, and, loath to say, it
was I. Paul and Lloyd seemed born to rivalry with each other, and I to
be peacemaker between them. We grew up together, the three of us, and
full often have I received the angry blows each intended for the other.
They were always competing, striving to outdo each other, and when
entered upon some such struggle there was no limit either to their
endeavors or passions.
This intense spirit of rivalry obtained in their studies and their
games. If Paul memorized one canto of “Marmion,” Lloyd memorized two
cantos, Paul came back with three, and Lloyd again with four, till each
knew the whole poem by heart. I remember an incident that occurred
at the swimming hole—an incident tragically significant of the
life-struggle between them. The boys had a game of diving to the bottom
of a ten-foot pool and holding on by submerged roots to see who could
stay under the longest. Paul and Lloyd allowed themselves to be bantered
into making the descent together. When I saw their faces, set and
determined, disappear in the water as they sank swiftly down, I felt
a foreboding of something dreadful. The moments sped, the ripples died
away, the face of the pool grew placid and untroubled, and neither black
nor golden head broke surface in quest of air. We above grew anxious.
The longest record of the longest-winded boy had been exceeded, and
still there was no sign. Air bubbles trickled slowly upward, showing
that the breath had been expelled from their lungs, and after that the
bubbles ceased to trickle upward. Each second became interminable, and,
unable longer to endure the suspense, I plunged into the water.
I found them down at the bottom, clutching tight to the roots, their
heads not a foot apart, their eyes wide open, each glaring fixedly at
the other. They were suffering frightful torment, writhing and twisting
in the pangs of voluntary suffocation; for neither would let go and
acknowledge himself beaten. I tried to break Paul’s hold on the root,
but he resisted me fiercely. Then I lost my breath and came to the
surface, badly scared. I quickly explained the situation, and half a
dozen of us went down and by main strength tore them loose. By the
time we got them out, both were unconscious, and it was only after much
barrel-rolling and rubbing and pounding that they finally came to their
senses. They would have drowned there, had no one rescued them.
When Paul Tichlorne entered college, he let it be generally understood
that he was going in for the social sciences. Lloyd Inwood, entering
at the same time, elected to take the same course. But Paul had had
it secretly in mind all the time to study the natural sciences,
specializing on chemistry, and at the last moment he switched over.
Though Lloyd had already arranged his year’s work and attended the first
lectures, he at once followed Paul’s lead and went in for the natural
sciences and especially for chemistry. Their rivalry soon became a noted
thing throughout the university. Each was a spur to the other, and they
went into chemistry deeper than did ever students before—so deep, in
fact, that ere they took their sheepskins they could have stumped any
chemistry or “cow college” professor in the institution, save “old”
Moss, head of the department, and even him they puzzled and edified more
than once. Lloyd’s discovery of the “death bacillus” of the sea toad,
and his experiments on it with potassium cyanide, sent his name and that
of his university ringing round the world; nor was Paul a whit
behind when he succeeded in producing laboratory colloids exhibiting
amoeba-like activities, and when he cast new light upon the processes
of fertilization through his startling experiments with simple sodium
chlorides and magnesium solutions on low forms of marine life.
It was in their undergraduate days, however, in the midst of their
profoundest plunges into the mysteries of organic chemistry, that Doris
Van Benschoten entered into their lives. Lloyd met her first, but within
twenty-four hours Paul saw to it that he also made her acquaintance.
Of course, they fell in love with her, and she became the only thing in
life worth living for. They wooed her with equal ardor and fire, and so
intense became their struggle for her that half the student-body took
to wagering wildly on the result. Even “old” Moss, one day, after an
astounding demonstration in his private laboratory by Paul, was
guilty to the extent of a month’s salary of backing him to become the
bridegroom of Doris Van Benschoten.
In the end she solved the problem in her own way, to everybody’s
satisfaction except Paul’s and Lloyd’s. Getting them together, she said
that she really could not choose between them because she loved them
both equally well; and that, unfortunately, since polyandry was not
permitted in the United States she would be compelled to forego the
honor and happiness of marrying either of them. Each blamed the other
for this lamentable outcome, and the bitterness between them grew more
bitter.
But things came to a head enough. It was at my home, after they had
taken their degrees and dropped out of the world’s sight, that the
beginning of the end came to pass. Both were men of means, with little
inclination and no necessity for professional life. My friendship and
their mutual animosity were the two things that linked them in any
way together. While they were very often at my place, they made it
a fastidious point to avoid each other on such visits, though it was
inevitable, under the circumstances, that they should come upon each
other occasionally.
On the day I have in recollection, Paul Tichlorne had been mooning all
morning in my study over a current scientific review. This left me
free to my own affairs, and I was out among my roses when Lloyd Inwood
arrived. Clipping and pruning and tacking the climbers on the porch,
with my mouth full of nails, and Lloyd following me about and lending a
hand now and again, we fell to discussing the mythical race of invisible
people, that strange and vagrant people the traditions of which have
come down to us. Lloyd warmed to the talk in his nervous, jerky fashion,
and was soon interrogating the physical properties and possibilities of
invisibility. A perfectly black object, he contended, would elude and
defy the acutest vision.
“Color is a sensation,” he was saying. “It has no objective reality.
Without light, we can see neither colors nor objects themselves. All
objects are black in the dark, and in the dark it is impossible to see
them. If no light strikes upon them, then no light is flung back from
them to the eye, and so we have no vision-evidence of their being.”
“But we see black objects in daylight,” I objected.
“Very true,” he went on warmly. “And that is because they are not
perfectly black. Were they perfectly black, absolutely black, as it
were, we could not see them—ay, not in the blaze of a thousand suns
could we see them! And so I say, with the right pigments, properly
compounded, an absolutely black paint could be produced which would
render invisible whatever it was applied to.”
“It would be a remarkable discovery,” I said non-committally, for the
whole thing seemed too fantastic for aught but speculative purposes.
“Remarkable!” Lloyd slapped me on the shoulder. “I should say so. Why,
old chap, to coat myself with such a paint would be to put the world at
my feet. The secrets of kings and courts would be mine, the machinations
of diplomats and politicians, the play of stock-gamblers, the plans
of trusts and corporations. I could keep my hand on the inner pulse of
things and become the greatest power in the world. And I—” He broke
off shortly, then added, “Well, I have begun my experiments, and I don’t
mind telling you that I’m right in line for it.”
A laugh from the doorway startled us. Paul Tichlorne was standing there,
a smile of mockery on his lips.
“You forget, my dear Lloyd,” he said.
“Forget what?”
“You forget,” Paul went on—“ah, you forget the shadow.”
I saw Lloyd’s face drop, but he answered sneeringly, “I can carry a
sunshade, you know.” Then he turned suddenly and fiercely upon him.
“Look here, Paul, you’ll keep out of this if you know what’s good for
you.”
A rupture seemed imminent, but Paul laughed good-naturedly. “I wouldn’t
lay fingers on your dirty pigments. Succeed beyond your most sanguine
expectations, yet you will always fetch up against the shadow. You can’t
get away from it. Now I shall go on the very opposite tack. In the very
nature of my proposition the shadow will be eliminated—”
“Transparency!” ejaculated Lloyd, instantly. “But it can’t be achieved.”
“Oh, no; of course not.” And Paul shrugged his shoulders and strolled
off down the briar-rose path.
This was the beginning of it. Both men attacked the problem with all
the tremendous energy for which they were noted, and with a rancor and
bitterness that made me tremble for the success of either. Each trusted
me to the utmost, and in the long weeks of experimentation that followed
I was made a party to both sides, listening to their theorizings and
witnessing their demonstrations. Never, by word or sign, did I convey to
either the slightest hint of the other’s progress, and they respected me
for the seal I put upon my lips.
Lloyd Inwood, after prolonged and unintermittent application, when the
tension upon his mind and body became too great to bear, had a strange
way of obtaining relief. He attended prize fights. It was at one of
these brutal exhibitions, whither he had dragged me in order to tell his
latest results, that his theory received striking confirmation.
“Do you see that red-whiskered man?” he asked, pointing across the ring
to the fifth tier of seats on the opposite side. “And do you see the
next man to him, the one in the white hat? Well, there is quite a gap
between them, is there not?”
“Certainly,” I answered. “They are a seat apart. The gap is the
unoccupied seat.”
He leaned over to me and spoke seriously. “Between the red-whiskered
man and the white-hatted man sits Ben Wasson. You have heard me speak
of him. He is the cleverest pugilist of his weight in the country. He
is also a Caribbean negro, full-blooded, and the blackest in the United
States. He has on a black overcoat buttoned up. I saw him when he came
in and took that seat. As soon as he sat down he disappeared. Watch
closely; he may smile.”
I was for crossing over to verify Lloyd’s statement, but he restrained
me. “Wait,” he said.
I waited and watched, till the red-whiskered man turned his head as
though addressing the unoccupied seat; and then, in that empty space, I
saw the rolling whites of a pair of eyes and the white double-crescent
of two rows of teeth, and for the instant I could make out a negro’s
face. But with the passing of the smile his visibility passed, and the
chair seemed vacant as before.
“Were he perfectly black, you could sit alongside him and not see him,”
Lloyd said; and I confess the illustration was apt enough to make me
well-nigh convinced.
I visited Lloyd’s laboratory a number of times after that, and found
him always deep in his search after the absolute black. His experiments
covered all sorts of pigments, such as lamp-blacks, tars, carbonized
vegetable matters, soots of oils and fats, and the various carbonized
animal substances.
“White light is composed of the seven primary colors,” he argued to me.
“But it is itself, of itself, invisible. Only by being reflected from
objects do it and the objects become visible. But only that portion
of it that is reflected becomes visible. For instance, here is a
blue tobacco-box. The white light strikes against it, and, with one
exception, all its component colors—violet, indigo, green, yellow,
orange, and red—are absorbed. The one exception is BLUE. It is not
absorbed, but reflected. Wherefore the tobacco-box gives us a sensation
of blueness. We do not see the other colors because they are absorbed.
We see only the blue. For the same reason grass is GREEN. The green
waves of white light are thrown upon our eyes.”
“When we paint our houses, we do not apply color to them,” he said at
another time. “What we do is to apply certain substances that have the
property of absorbing from white light all the colors except those
that we would have our houses appear. When a substance reflects all the
colors to the eye, it seems to us white. When it absorbs all the colors,
it is black. But, as I said before, we have as yet no perfect black. All
the colors are not absorbed. The perfect black, guarding against high
lights, will be utterly and absolutely invisible. Look at that, for
example.”
He pointed to the palette lying on his work-table. Different shades of
black pigments were brushed on it. One, in particular, I could hardly
see. It gave my eyes a blurring sensation, and I rubbed them and looked
again.
“That,” he said impressively, “is the blackest black you or any mortal
man ever looked upon. But just you wait, and I’ll have a black so black
that no mortal man will be able to look upon it—and see it!”
On the other hand, I used to find Paul Tichlorne plunged as deeply into
the study of light polarization, diffraction, and interference, single
and double refraction, and all manner of strange organic compounds.
“Transparency: a state or quality of body which permits all rays of
light to pass through,” he defined for me. “That is what I am seeking.
Lloyd blunders up against the shadow with his perfect opaqueness. But I
escape it. A transparent body casts no shadow; neither does it reflect
light-waves—that is, the perfectly transparent does not. So, avoiding
high lights, not only will such a body cast no shadow, but, since it
reflects no light, it will also be invisible.”
We were standing by the window at another time. Paul was engaged
in polishing a number of lenses, which were ranged along the sill.
Suddenly, after a pause in the conversation, he said, “Oh! I’ve dropped
a lens. Stick your head out, old man, and see where it went to.”
Out I started to thrust my head, but a sharp blow on the forehead
caused me to recoil. I rubbed my bruised brow and gazed with reproachful
inquiry at Paul, who was laughing in gleeful, boyish fashion.
“Well?” he said.
“Well?” I echoed.
“Why don’t you investigate?” he demanded. And investigate I did. Before
thrusting out my head, my senses, automatically active, had told
me there was nothing there, that nothing intervened between me and
out-of-doors, that the aperture of the window opening was utterly empty.
I stretched forth my hand and felt a hard object, smooth and cool and
flat, which my touch, out of its experience, told me to be glass. I
looked again, but could see positively nothing.
“White quartzose sand,” Paul rattled off, “sodic carbonate, slaked lime,
cutlet, manganese peroxide—there you have it, the finest French plate
glass, made by the great St. Gobain Company, who made the finest plate
glass in the world, and this is the finest piece they ever made. It cost
a king’s ransom. But look at it! You can’t see it. You don’t know it’s
there till you run your head against it.
“Eh, old boy! That’s merely an object-lesson—certain elements, in
themselves opaque, yet so compounded as to give a resultant body which
is transparent. But that is a matter of inorganic chemistry, you say.
Very true. But I dare to assert, standing here on my two feet, that in
the organic I can duplicate whatever occurs in the inorganic.
“Here!” He held a test-tube between me and the light, and I noted the
cloudy or muddy liquid it contained. He emptied the contents of another
test-tube into it, and almost instantly it became clear and sparkling.
“Or here!” With quick, nervous movements among his array of test-tubes,
he turned a white solution to a wine color, and a light yellow solution
to a dark brown. He dropped a piece of litmus paper into an acid, when
it changed instantly to red, and on floating it in an alkali it turned
as quickly to blue.
“The litmus paper is still the litmus paper,” he enunciated in the
formal manner of the lecturer. “I have not changed it into something
else. Then what did I do? I merely changed the arrangement of its
molecules. Where, at first, it absorbed all colors from the light but
red, its molecular structure was so changed that it absorbed red and all
colors except blue. And so it goes, ad infinitum. Now, what I purpose
to do is this.” He paused for a space. “I purpose to seek—ay, and to
find—the proper reagents, which, acting upon the living organism,
will bring about molecular changes analogous to those you have just
witnessed. But these reagents, which I shall find, and for that matter,
upon which I already have my hands, will not turn the living body to
blue or red or black, but they will turn it to transparency. All light
will pass through it. It will be invisible. It will cast no shadow.”
A few weeks later I went hunting with Paul. He had been promising me for
some time that I should have the pleasure of shooting over a wonderful
dog—the most wonderful dog, in fact, that ever man shot over, so he
averred, and continued to aver till my curiosity was aroused. But on
the morning in question I was disappointed, for there was no dog in
evidence.
“Don’t see him about,” Paul remarked unconcernedly, and we set off
across the fields.
I could not imagine, at the time, what was ailing me, but I had a
feeling of some impending and deadly illness. My nerves were all awry,
and, from the astounding tricks they played me, my senses seemed to have
run riot. Strange sounds disturbed me. At times I heard the swish-swish
of grass being shoved aside, and once the patter of feet across a patch
of stony ground.
“Did you hear anything, Paul?” I asked once.
But he shook his head, and thrust his feet steadily forward.
While climbing a fence, I heard the low, eager whine of a dog,
apparently from within a couple of feet of me; but on looking about me I
saw nothing.