“Paul,” I said, “we had better return to the house. I am afraid I am
going to be sick.”
“Nonsense, old man,” he answered. “The sunshine has gone to your head
like wine. You’ll be all right. It’s famous weather.”
But, passing along a narrow path through a clump of cottonwoods, some
object brushed against my legs and I stumbled and nearly fell. I looked
with sudden anxiety at Paul.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Tripping over your own feet?”
I kept my tongue between my teeth and plodded on, though sore perplexed
and thoroughly satisfied that some acute and mysterious malady had
attacked my nerves. So far my eyes had escaped; but, when we got to the
open fields again, even my vision went back on me. Strange flashes of
vari-colored, rainbow light began to appear and disappear on the
path before me. Still, I managed to keep myself in hand, till the
vari-colored lights persisted for a space of fully twenty seconds,
dancing and flashing in continuous play. Then I sat down, weak and
shaky.
“It’s all up with me,” I gasped, covering my eyes with my hands. “It has
attacked my eyes. Paul, take me home.”
But Paul laughed long and loud. “What did I tell you?—the most
wonderful dog, eh? Well, what do you think?”
He turned partly from me and began to whistle. I heard the patter of
feet, the panting of a heated animal, and the unmistakable yelp of a
dog. Then Paul stooped down and apparently fondled the empty air.
“Here! Give me your fist.”
And he rubbed my hand over the cold nose and jowls of a dog. A dog it
certainly was, with the shape and the smooth, short coat of a pointer.
Suffice to say, I speedily recovered my spirits and control. Paul put
a collar about the animal’s neck and tied his handkerchief to its tail.
And then was vouchsafed us the remarkable sight of an empty collar and
a waving handkerchief cavorting over the fields. It was something to see
that collar and handkerchief pin a bevy of quail in a clump of locusts
and remain rigid and immovable till we had flushed the birds.
Now and again the dog emitted the vari-colored light-flashes I have
mentioned. The one thing, Paul explained, which he had not anticipated
and which he doubted could be overcome.
“They’re a large family,” he said, “these sun dogs, wind dogs, rainbows,
halos, and parhelia. They are produced by refraction of light from
mineral and ice crystals, from mist, rain, spray, and no end of things;
and I am afraid they are the penalty I must pay for transparency. I
escaped Lloyd’s shadow only to fetch up against the rainbow flash.”
A couple of days later, before the entrance to Paul’s laboratory, I
encountered a terrible stench. So overpowering was it that it was easy
to discover the source—a mass of putrescent matter on the doorstep
which in general outlines resembled a dog.
Paul was startled when he investigated my find. It was his invisible
dog, or rather, what had been his invisible dog, for it was now plainly
visible. It had been playing about but a few minutes before in all
health and strength. Closer examination revealed that the skull had been
crushed by some heavy blow. While it was strange that the animal should
have been killed, the inexplicable thing was that it should so quickly
decay.
“The reagents I injected into its system were harmless,” Paul explained.
“Yet they were powerful, and it appears that when death comes they force
practically instantaneous disintegration. Remarkable! Most remarkable!
Well, the only thing is not to die. They do not harm so long as one
lives. But I do wonder who smashed in that dog’s head.”
Light, however, was thrown upon this when a frightened housemaid brought
the news that Gaffer Bedshaw had that very morning, not more than an
hour back, gone violently insane, and was strapped down at home, in
the huntsman’s lodge, where he raved of a battle with a ferocious and
gigantic beast that he had encountered in the Tichlorne pasture. He
claimed that the thing, whatever it was, was invisible, that with his
own eyes he had seen that it was invisible; wherefore his tearful wife
and daughters shook their heads, and wherefore he but waxed the more
violent, and the gardener and the coachman tightened the straps by
another hole.
Nor, while Paul Tichlorne was thus successfully mastering the problem of
invisibility, was Lloyd Inwood a whit behind. I went over in answer to a
message of his to come and see how he was getting on. Now his laboratory
occupied an isolated situation in the midst of his vast grounds. It was
built in a pleasant little glade, surrounded on all sides by a dense
forest growth, and was to be gained by way of a winding and erratic
path. But I have travelled that path so often as to know every foot of
it, and conceive my surprise when I came upon the glade and found no
laboratory. The quaint shed structure with its red sandstone chimney
was not. Nor did it look as if it ever had been. There were no signs of
ruin, no debris, nothing.
I started to walk across what had once been its site. “This,” I said to
myself, “should be where the step went up to the door.” Barely were the
words out of my mouth when I stubbed my toe on some obstacle, pitched
forward, and butted my head into something that FELT very much like a
door. I reached out my hand. It WAS a door. I found the knob and turned
it. And at once, as the door swung inward on its hinges, the whole
interior of the laboratory impinged upon my vision. Greeting Lloyd, I
closed the door and backed up the path a few paces. I could see nothing
of the building. Returning and opening the door, at once all the
furniture and every detail of the interior were visible. It was indeed
startling, the sudden transition from void to light and form and color.
“What do you think of it, eh?” Lloyd asked, wringing my hand. “I slapped
a couple of coats of absolute black on the outside yesterday afternoon
to see how it worked. How’s your head? you bumped it pretty solidly, I
imagine.”
“Never mind that,” he interrupted my congratulations. “I’ve something
better for you to do.”
While he talked he began to strip, and when he stood naked before me he
thrust a pot and brush into my hand and said, “Here, give me a coat of
this.”
It was an oily, shellac-like stuff, which spread quickly and easily over
the skin and dried immediately.
“Merely preliminary and precautionary,” he explained when I had
finished; “but now for the real stuff.”
I picked up another pot he indicated, and glanced inside, but could see
nothing.
“It’s empty,” I said.
“Stick your finger in it.”
I obeyed, and was aware of a sensation of cool moistness. On withdrawing
my hand I glanced at the forefinger, the one I had immersed, but it had
disappeared. I moved and knew from the alternate tension and relaxation
of the muscles that I moved it, but it defied my sense of sight. To all
appearances I had been shorn of a finger; nor could I get any visual
impression of it till I extended it under the skylight and saw its
shadow plainly blotted on the floor.
Lloyd chuckled. “Now spread it on, and keep your eyes open.”
I dipped the brush into the seemingly empty pot, and gave him a long
stroke across his chest. With the passage of the brush the living
flesh disappeared from beneath. I covered his right leg, and he was
a one-legged man defying all laws of gravitation. And so, stroke by
stroke, member by member, I painted Lloyd Inwood into nothingness. It
was a creepy experience, and I was glad when naught remained in sight
but his burning black eyes, poised apparently unsupported in mid-air.
“I have a refined and harmless solution for them,” he said. “A fine
spray with an air-brush, and presto! I am not.”
This deftly accomplished, he said, “Now I shall move about, and do you
tell me what sensations you experience.”
“In the first place, I cannot see you,” I said, and I could hear his
gleeful laugh from the midst of the emptiness. “Of course,” I continued,
“you cannot escape your shadow, but that was to be expected. When you
pass between my eye and an object, the object disappears, but so unusual
and incomprehensible is its disappearance that it seems to me as though
my eyes had blurred. When you move rapidly, I experience a bewildering
succession of blurs. The blurring sensation makes my eyes ache and my
brain tired.”
“Have you any other warnings of my presence?” he asked.
“No, and yes,” I answered. “When you are near me I have feelings similar
to those produced by dank warehouses, gloomy crypts, and deep mines. And
as sailors feel the loom of the land on dark nights, so I think I feel
the loom of your body. But it is all very vague and intangible.”
Long we talked that last morning in his laboratory; and when I turned to
go, he put his unseen hand in mine with nervous grip, and said, “Now
I shall conquer the world!” And I could not dare to tell him of Paul
Tichlorne’s equal success.
At home I found a note from Paul, asking me to come up immediately, and
it was high noon when I came spinning up the driveway on my wheel. Paul
called me from the tennis court, and I dismounted and went over. But the
court was empty. As I stood there, gaping open-mouthed, a tennis ball
struck me on the arm, and as I turned about, another whizzed past my
ear. For aught I could see of my assailant, they came whirling at me
from out of space, and right well was I peppered with them. But when
the balls already flung at me began to come back for a second whack, I
realized the situation. Seizing a racquet and keeping my eyes open, I
quickly saw a rainbow flash appearing and disappearing and darting over
the ground. I took out after it, and when I laid the racquet upon it for
a half-dozen stout blows, Paul’s voice rang out:
“Enough! Enough! Oh! Ouch! Stop! You’re landing on my naked skin, you
know! Ow! O-w-w! I’ll be good! I’ll be good! I only wanted you to see
my metamorphosis,” he said ruefully, and I imagined he was rubbing his
hurts.
A few minutes later we were playing tennis—a handicap on my part, for I
could have no knowledge of his position save when all the angles between
himself, the sun, and me, were in proper conjunction. Then he
flashed, and only then. But the flashes were more brilliant than the
rainbow—purest blue, most delicate violet, brightest yellow, and all
the intermediary shades, with the scintillant brilliancy of the diamond,
dazzling, blinding, iridescent.
But in the midst of our play I felt a sudden cold chill, reminding me
of deep mines and gloomy crypts, such a chill as I had experienced that
very morning. The next moment, close to the net, I saw a ball rebound in
mid-air and empty space, and at the same instant, a score of feet away,
Paul Tichlorne emitted a rainbow flash. It could not be he from whom
the ball had rebounded, and with sickening dread I realized that Lloyd
Inwood had come upon the scene. To make sure, I looked for his shadow,
and there it was, a shapeless blotch the girth of his body, (the sun was
overhead), moving along the ground. I remembered his threat, and felt
sure that all the long years of rivalry were about to culminate in
uncanny battle.
I cried a warning to Paul, and heard a snarl as of a wild beast, and an
answering snarl. I saw the dark blotch move swiftly across the court,
and a brilliant burst of vari-colored light moving with equal swiftness
to meet it; and then shadow and flash came together and there was the
sound of unseen blows. The net went down before my frightened eyes. I
sprang toward the fighters, crying:
“For God’s sake!”
But their locked bodies smote against my knees, and I was overthrown.
“You keep out of this, old man!” I heard the voice of Lloyd Inwood from
out of the emptiness. And then Paul’s voice crying, “Yes, we’ve had
enough of peacemaking!”
From the sound of their voices I knew they had separated. I could not
locate Paul, and so approached the shadow that represented Lloyd. But
from the other side came a stunning blow on the point of my jaw, and I
heard Paul scream angrily, “Now will you keep away?”
Then they came together again, the impact of their blows, their groans
and gasps, and the swift flashings and shadow-movings telling plainly of
the deadliness of the struggle.
I shouted for help, and Gaffer Bedshaw came running into the court. I
could see, as he approached, that he was looking at me strangely, but he
collided with the combatants and was hurled headlong to the ground. With
despairing shriek and a cry of “O Lord, I’ve got ‘em!” he sprang to his
feet and tore madly out of the court.
I could do nothing, so I sat up, fascinated and powerless, and watched
the struggle. The noonday sun beat down with dazzling brightness on the
naked tennis court. And it was naked. All I could see was the blotch of
shadow and the rainbow flashes, the dust rising from the invisible feet,
the earth tearing up from beneath the straining foot-grips, and the wire
screen bulge once or twice as their bodies hurled against it. That was
all, and after a time even that ceased. There were no more flashes, and
the shadow had become long and stationary; and I remembered their set
boyish faces when they clung to the roots in the deep coolness of the
pool.
They found me an hour afterward. Some inkling of what had happened got
to the servants and they quitted the Tichlorne service in a body.
Gaffer Bedshaw never recovered from the second shock he received, and
is confined in a madhouse, hopelessly incurable. The secrets of their
marvellous discoveries died with Paul and Lloyd, both laboratories being
destroyed by grief-stricken relatives. As for myself, I no longer care
for chemical research, and science is a tabooed topic in my household. I
have returned to my roses. Nature’s colors are good enough for me.