LYNN.—A maniac, clad only in a nightgown, broke into the
General Electric laboratory in Lynn yesterday evening, and
frightened the night operator, who thought he was a ghost.
Patrick Mulcahy, the night operator, was seated in the radio
room with the highpowered receiving set in action, when suddenly
the intruder appeared before him. As Mulcahy jumped to his feet
in surprise, the madman approached him, muttering some
unintelligible gibberish, whereupon Mulcahy emptied his
automatic at the other, and fled.
The employment manager of the G. E. Company, when interviewed
late last evening, stated that Mulcahy was a total abstainer;
and bloodstains on the floor confirm Mulcahy’s story.
It is believed that the disturber is an escaped inmate of
Danvers, but the asylum authorities deny the loss of any of
their patients.
Whoever he is, the man is still at large.
“Such a clumsy fabrication,” thought I. “It is too bad that the _Boston
Post_ has fallen so low as to print such an old, old gag.”
Then I laid down the paper, and let my mind wander as it willed. The
episode which I had just read had occurred in the _radio_ room of the
General Electric Company. Radio! That word suggested to me the greatest
radio genius whom I have ever known: Myles Standish Cabot, of Boston.
He had been a classmate, and friend of mine. He had mysteriously
disappeared from his laboratory on Beacon Street, and nothing further
had been heard of him until one night four years later, when a hollow
projectile had dropped from the sky onto my farm, bearing in its
interior a holographic account of my friend’s adventure during the
preceding four years.
This story I had edited, and it appeared under the title “The Radio
Man.” It related how Myles, while experimenting with the wireless
transmission of matter, had accidentally projected himself through space
to the planet Venus. This accounted for his mysterious disappearance.
He had found the planet inhabited by a race of human-like
creatures—called Cupians—with antennae instead of ears, who were
living in slavery under the Formians, a gigantic breed of intelligent
black ants. Myles Cabot had devised artificial electrical antennae, so
as to be able to talk with both races, and had organized the Cupians,
and led them to victory over their oppressors, thereby winning an
honored position among them, and the hand of their princess, the lovely
Lilla.
Strange that a news item about a crazy man in a nightgown should have
reminded me of such a staid and proper person as Cabot! It would not
have done so, but for the one word “radio.”
Then I dismissed the whole matter from my mind.
* * * * *
The next evening I ran my car over to the point, and rowed across the
harbor to the village to get a small shipment of freight which was
expected by the late boat.
Meeting the boat is one of the chief summer diversions of us
Edgartonions. We line up on each side of the gang plank, and let the
arriving summer folk run the gantlet of our scrutiny, and listen
(ourselves amused) at their amused comments on the “natives.”
As I stood thus on the evening in question, watching the summer folk
walk the plank, I saw among them a strangely familiar face. Could it be?
It was none other than my old classmate Myles S. Cabot! In another
moment we were shaking hands.
Yet still I was speechless with astonishment. Cabot was the last person
in the world that I would have expected to see. I had thought he was on
another planet, millions of miles away.
Then came the reaction. If Cabot was still on earth, his story about his
adventures on Venus, which I had so recently published to the world,
must be nothing but a cleverly concocted lie. The projectile, which had
carried the manuscript to my farm, and which I had ingenuously assumed
to have been shot from the skies, may merely have been fired over from
somewhere on Cape Cod.
The accident of my finding the message had probably not been chance at
all, but rather an event planned and intended by Myles Cabot. He had
hoaxed me, and I had passed on to the editor and to the unsuspecting
general public, a mere faked-up yarn. Think what a position this would
place me in, when the editor, who in good faith had accepted my story as
a narrative of fact, should discover that Myles was not on Venus at all!
Could I ever make any one believe I had been innocent of complicity in
this hoax?