In a little while, Molly came back. "All right, duck, come and be
measured. He's got galvanometers and electronic devices and stuff,
and he'll be able to detect anything you're emanating down to a
milli-micro-whisker."
I followed her into the lab where I was sat down, taped up and
surrounded with gadgets. McGill tried various things and read various
dials. There were buzzing sounds and little lights blinked on and off,
but at the end he shook his head.
"Nothing," he announced, "You're married to a non-ferrous,
non-conducting, non-emanating, non-magnetic writer, Molly."
"He is, too!" she said. "He's as magnetic as the dickens."
"Possibly, but he isn't emanating anything. The damn thing apparently
just likes him. As a nucleus, I mean."
"Is that bad?" Molly asked. "Could it be dangerous?"
"It's bad," I put in morosely.
"Also it could be good," McGill said, with a gleam of scientific
enthusiasm, "Why, it wouldn't surprise me, Alec, if you could do
anything you wanted to that involved chance."
* * * * *
I didn't like the guinea-pigs'-eye view of him I got, and told him so.
"Except for a couple of minor escapes, it's been highly inconvenient,"
I said. "I don't want to seem ungrateful, but I wish it would go and
help somebody else."
"But, my God, man! Do you realize if you went to the track tomorrow,
your horse probably couldn't lose?"
"I wouldn't get that far," I grumbled.
"And I bet if somebody threw a knife at you, it would miss!" McGill
went on, ignoring me. "Here, I'd like to try an experiment...."
"Now, hold on!" I said.
"_McGill!_ Are you _crazy_?" Molly cried, but he ignored her also and
opened his desk drawer, from which he took a pair of dice.
"Roll me some sevens, Alec," he said, handing them to me.
"I thought we came here for a conference," I protested. "And I don't
know whether you know about it, but there's been a Village-wide
electric power failure and I'm being blamed, according to Bill Bart."
"Holy cow! When did you hear that?"
"On your radio just now. Furthermore, he says the whole town is
gripped in 'superstitious terror.'"
"That could be true," McGill answered. "Most people haven't progressed
beyond the Dark Ages. Look what happened with Orson Welles' broadcast
about the Martians."
"Maybe we ought to leave town for a while." Molly said. "We could go to
Oyster Bay or somewhere." Then she glanced up. "What's that noise?"
Outside, I now noticed, mingled with the soughing of the wind, a
susurrus of many voices. We went to the lab windows. A crowd of two or
three hundred people was standing in the campus, staring up at the sky
over us.
"What are they looking at?" McGill asked. "No one can possibly know
we're here."
I started to lean out of the window, twisting up my head to see what it
could be.
"Don't do that, Alec! They'll see you!" McGill warned, and I pulled my
head in.
"Can we get on the roof?" I asked, but Molly suddenly said, "Look who's
here." Three squad cars drove up and several policemen got out.
"Perhaps we ought to sort of very gently turn the lights off," I
suggested.
Molly immediately snapped off the shaded bench lamp, which was all
that was on in the lab. This left McGill's office light, and I started
toward it.
"Hadn't we better run for it?" Molly said, but a loud banging on the
front door downstairs answered her.
"I hope that damn lock doesn't give again!" McGill breathed.
"They'll break it down!" Molly gasped.
"Like hell. It's University property and they can't possibly have
gotten a search warrant so quickly at this time of night."
* * * * *