He said, "Yes. Maybe you can talk him out of it. You were close to him.
We've sent the emergency squads over. Never know when they'll jump when
they're like that. One move at the wrong time and that makes them jump.
I'll be there in five minutes...."
I felt sick with panic and hopelessness. Then, in that moment, out of
nowhere, came the flash--the key--it shone there before me all at once,
the answer I'd been looking for! I knew it had been there all along
and my mind had gone around it time and again. And suddenly it was
there, conscious and clear.
I arranged it all in my mind as we rode over to Fifth and Pinehurst,
the police lieutenant intent on driving speedily through the heavy
traffic.
If I could get to Marsten in time, I could save him! I'd had the
explanation all along--I'd read it in a scientific journal, in reports
I'd skimmed through on ESP. Marsten would understand--if I could get to
him in time! He hadn't been wrong. And I could give him proof....
A big crowd was gathered in the early dawn, standing silently in the
street, staring upward at the small figure on the ledge. The wind was
cold and steady and in the early morning greyness I saw Marsten, thirty
stories up, hunched against the side of the building. He wasn't a man
to exhibit himself for melodramatic recognition. Therefore, I knew he
must be very far out of his normal mind.
I am sure he went up there to jump immediately. But he had been there
an hour, now. Perhaps, I thought, he was trying to figure, in a last
desperate moment, where his experiment had failed. Trying to find in
the mysterious, senseless chaos of embryonic human thought, a reason
why he should not die....
The police got me through the crowd, inside the building and into an
elevator. I ran down the hall of the thirtieth floor to the room where
policemen were working with ropes and steel hooks. I heard one of them
say, "We can't reach him. It's no use."
I stuck my head out the window, called Marsten's name. But the wind
tore the words away, sent them in the opposite direction. He didn't
turn his head. I could barely make out his features, dead white and
void of expression.
"Don't jump, for God's sake!" I called over and over. "Professor,
_you were right! The experiment was a success! Listen to me! It was a
success!_"
I could see the uplifted faces down below, a blanket, a net they had
stretched down there, both looking no bigger than a checker square.
Marsten didn't seem to hear me, but I kept yelling, trying to make him
hear. I fought the wind, and whatever barrier there was between Marsten
and myself. But he didn't turn, didn't seem to hear me, seemed unaware
of me, of anything that went on around him.