Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Stories April 1932.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
[Illustration: _For a while it was kick backwards, then a shove
at the safe._]
The Einstein See-Saw
By Miles J. Breuer
* * * * *
[Sidenote: In their pursuit of an unscrupulous scientist, Phil and
Ione are swung into hyperspace--marooned in a realm of strange sights
and shapes.]
Tony Costello leaned glumly over his neat, glass-topped desk, on which
a few papers lay arranged in orderly piles. Tony was very blue and
discouraged. The foundations of a pleasant and profitable existence
had been cut right out from under him. Gone were the days in which the
big racket boss, Scarneck Ed, generously rewarded the exercise of
Tony's brilliant talents as an engineer in redesigning cars to give
higher speed for bootlegging purposes, in devising automatic electric
apparatus for handling and concealing liquor, in designing
beam-directed radios for secret communication among the gangs. Yes,
mused Tony, it had been profitable.
Six months ago the Citizens' Committee had stepped in. Now the police
department was reorganized; Scarneck Ed Podkowski was in jail, and his
corps of trusty lieutenants were either behind the bars with him or
scattered far and wide in flight. Tony, always a free spender, had
nothing left but the marvelous laboratory and workshop that Scarneck
Ed had built him, and his freedom. For the police could find nothing
legal against Tony. They had been compelled to let him alone, though
they were keeping a close watch on him. Tony's brow was as dark as the
mahogany of his desk. He did not know just how to go about making an
honest living.
With a hand that seemed limp with discouragement, he reached into his
pocket for his cigarette-case. As he drew it out, the lackadaisical
fingers failed to hold it firmly enough, and it clattered to the floor
behind his chair. With the weary slowness of despondence, he dragged
himself to his feet and went behind his chair to pick up the
cigarette-case. But, before he bent over it, and while he was looking
fully and directly at it, his desk suddenly vanished. One moment it
was there, a huge ornament of mahogany and glass; the next moment
there was nothing.
* * * * *
Tony suddenly went rigid and stared at the empty space where his desk
had stood. He put his hand to his forehead, wondering if his financial
troubles were affecting his reason. By that time, another desk stood
in the place.
Tony ran over this strange circumstance mentally. His mental processes
were active beneath, though dazed on the surface. His desk had stood
there. While looking fully at it, all his senses intact, he had seen
it vanish, and for a moment there had been nothing in its place. While
he stared directly at the empty space from which the desk had
disappeared, another desk had materialized there, like a flash.
Perhaps, there had been a sort of jar, a tremor, of the floor and of
the air, of everything. But the point was that his own desk, at which
he had been working one moment, had suddenly vanished, and at the next
moment another desk had appeared in its place.
And what a desk! The one that now stood there was smaller than his own
palatial one, and shabbier. A raw, unpleasant golden-oak, much
scratched and scuffed. Its top was heaped and piled full of books and
papers. In the middle of it stood a photograph of a girl, framed in
red leather. Irresistibly, the sunny beauty of the face, the bright
eyes, the firm little chin, the tall forehead topped by a shining mass
of light curly hair, drew Tony's first glance. For a few moments his
eyes rested delightedly on the picture.
In a moment, however, Tony noticed that the books and papers on the
desk were of a scientific character; and such is the nature of
professional interest, that for the time he forgot his astonishment at
how the desk had got there, in his absorption in the things heaped on
top of it.
Perhaps it isn't fair to give the impression that the desk was in
disorder. It was merely busy; just as though someone who had been
deeply engaged in working had for the moment stepped away. There was a
row of books across the back edge, and Tony leaned over eagerly to
glance at the titles.
"'Theory of Parallels,' Lobatchevsky; 'Transformation of Complex
Functions,' Riemann; 'Tensors and Geodesics,' Gauss," Tony read.
"Hm--old stuff. But here's modern dope along the same line. 'Tensors,'
by Christoffel; 'Absolute Differential Calculus,' by Ricci and Levi
Civita. And Schroedinger and Eddington and D'Abro. Looks like
somebody's interested in Relativity. Hm!"
* * * * *
He bent over, his constantly increasing interest showing in the
attitude of his body; he turned over papers and opened notebooks
crowded full of handwritten figures. Last of all he noted the batch of
manuscript directly in front of him in the middle of the front edge of
the desk. It was typewritten, with corrections and interlineations all
over it in purple ink.
A title, "The Parallel Transformations of Equations for Matter,
Energy, and Tensors," had been crossed out with purple ink, and "The
Intimate Relation between Matter and Tensors" substituted. Tony bent
over it and read. He was so fascinated that it did not even occur to
him to speculate on the happy circumstance that the mysteriously
appearing desk had brought its own scientific explanation with it. The
title of the paper told him that its sheets would elucidate the
apparently supernatural phenomenon, and all he did was to plunge
breathlessly ahead in his eager reading. The article was short, about
seven typewritten sheets. He took out his pencil and followed through
the mathematical equations readily. Tony's mind was a brilliant, even
though an erring one.
Under the first article lay a second one. One glance at the title
caused Tony to stiffen. Then he picked up the typewritten script and
carried it across the big room of his laboratory, as far away from the
desk as he could get. He put the girl's photograph in his pocket. Then
he took heaps and armfuls of papers, books and notes and carried them
from the desk to a bench in the far corner. For, as soon as he had
read the title, "A Preliminary Report of Experimental Work in the
Physical Manipulation of Tensors," a sudden icy panic gripped his
heart lest the desk and its papers suddenly disappear before he had
finished reading to the end of the fascinating explanation.
We might add that it did not. For many weeks the desk remained
standing in Tony's shop and laboratory, and he had the opportunity to
study its contents thoroughly. But it took him only a few hours to
grasp its secret, to add his own brilliant conception to it, and to
form his great resolve. Once more Tony faced the world hopefully and
enthusiastically.
PART II
_Vanishing Valuables_
The police understood Tony's share in the exploits of Scarneck Ed
thoroughly, and, chagrined at their failure to produce proof that
would hold in court, they maintained a close and constant watch on
that gifted gentleman long after crime matters in the city seemed to
have been cleaned up and forgotten. For one thing, they still had
hopes that something would turn up to enable them to round off their
work and lock him up with his former pals; for another, they did not
fully trust his future behavior. Nevertheless, for three or four
months it seemed as though Tony had genuinely reformed. He lived in
and for his laboratory and shop. All day the scouts could see him
laboring therein, and far into the night he bent over benches and
machines under shaded lights. Then, some other astonishing occurrences
distracted their attention from Tony to other fields.
One morning Mr. Ambrose Parakeet, private jewel broker, walked briskly
out of the elevator on the fourteenth floor of the North American
Building and unlocked the door of his office. He flung it open and
started in, but stopped as if shot, uttered a queer, hoarse gurgle,
and staggered against the door-casing. In a moment he recovered and
began to shout:
"Help! Help! Robbers!"
Before long, several people had gathered. He stood there, gasping,
pointing with his hand into the room. The eagerly peering onlookers
could see that beside his desk stood an empty crate. It was somewhat
old and weatherbeaten and looked as though it might have come from a
buffet or a bookcase. He stood there and pointed at it and gasped, and
the gathering crowd in the corridor wondered what sort of strange
mental malady he had been seized with. The elevator girl, with trained
promptness had at once summoned the manager of the building, who
elbowed his way through the crowd and stood beside Mr. Parakeet.
* * * * *
"There! There! Look! Where is it?" Mr. Parakeet was gasping slowly and
gazing round in a circle. He was a little gray man of about sixty, and
seemed utterly dazed and overcome.
"What's wrong, Mr. Parakeet?" asked the building manager. "I didn't
know you had your safe moved out."
"But, no!" panted the bewildered old man. "I didn't. It's gone. Just
gone. Last night at five o'clock I locked the office, and it was
there, and everything was straight. What did you do? Who took it?"
The building manager conducted the poor old man into the office, shut
the door, and asked the crowd to disperse. He sat Mr. Parakeet down
into the most comfortable chair he could find, and then barked
snappily into the telephone a few times. Then he sat and stared about
him, stopping occasionally to reassure the old man and ask him to be
patient until things could be investigated.
The building manager was an efficient man and knew his building and
his tenants. He knew, as thoroughly as he knew his own office, that
Mr. Parakeet had a medium-sized A. V. & L. Co.'s safe weighing about
three tons, that could not be carried up the elevator when Mr.
Parakeet had moved in, and had been hoisted into the window with block
and tackle. He knew that it was physically impossible for the safe to
go down any of the elevators, and knew that none of the operators
would dare move any kind of a safe without his permission.
Nevertheless, with the aid of a police-sergeant, his night-shift, and
the night-watchmen of his building and adjacent ones, it was
definitely established that nothing had been moved in or out of the
North American Building during the preceding twenty-four hours, either
by elevator or through a window to the sidewalk.
* * * * *
The newspapers took up the mystery with a shout. The prostrating loss
suffered by Mr. Parakeet, amounting to over a hundred thousand
dollars, added no little sensation to the story. A huge safe,
disappearing into thin air, without a trace, and in its place an old
wooden crate! What a mouthful for the scareheads! For several days
newspapers kept up items about it, dwindling in size and strategic
importance of position; for nothing further was ever found. Every bit
of investigation, including that by scientific men from the University
of Chicago, was futile; not a trace, not a suggestion did it yield.
Six days later the tall scareheads leaped out again: "Another Safe
Disappears! Absolutely No Trace! Some time during the night, the
six-foot steel safe of the Simonson Loan Company vanished into thin
air. In the morning a dilapidated iron oil-cask was found in its
place. The safe was so large and heavy that it could not have been
moved without a large truck, special hoisting apparatus, a crew of
men, and some hours of time. The store was brightly lighted during the
entire night, and two watchmen patrolled it regularly. They report
that they saw and heard nothing unusual, and were very much amazed
when shown the oil-cask standing where the safe had been the night
before." The accounts in the various papers were substantially the
same.
Newspaper readers throughout the city and its environs were very much
intrigued. Such a thing was very exciting and mystifying; but it was
so far out of touch with their own lives that it did not affect them
very much at any time except when they were reading the paper or
discussing it in conversation. The police were the ones who were doing
the real worrying. And, when the following week two more safes
disappeared, insurance companies began to take an interest in the
matter; and everyone who had any considerable amount of valuables in
store began to feel panicky.
* * * * *
The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the last of the
series, the fourth, were especially amazing. This was also a jewelry
safe. Canzoni's is a popular firm that rents a quarter of a floor in a
big department store, and does a large volume of moderate-priced
business. The receipts are stored in a heavy portable safe in a corner
of the silverware section until evening, when they are carried to the
large vault of the big store. One Saturday afternoon after a
particularly busy day, Mr. Shipley, Canzoni's manager, was watching
the hands of the clock creep toward five-thirty. He leaned on a
counter and watched the clerks putting away goods for the night; he
glanced idly toward the safe which he intended to open in a few
minutes. The doormen had already taken their stations to keep out
further customers. Then he glanced back at the safe, and it wasn't
there!
Mr. Shipley drew a deep breath. The safe disappearances he had read
about flashed through his mind. But he didn't believe it. It couldn't
be! Yet, there was the empty corner with the birch panels forming the
back of the show-windows, and no safe. In a daze, he walked over to
the corner, intending to feel about with his hands and make sure the
safe was really gone. Before he got there, there flashed into sight in
place of the safe, a barrel of dark wood; and in a moment there was a
strong odor of vinegar.
Things spun around with Mr. Shipley for a few moments. He grasped a
counter and looked wildly about him. Clerks were hurrying with the
covering of counters; no one seemed to have noticed anything. He stood
a moment, gritted his teeth, and breathed deeply, and soon was master
of himself. He stood and waited until the last customer was gone, and
then called several clerks and pointed to where the safe had stood.
Within the space of a month, thirteen safes and three million dollars
worth of money or property had disappeared. The police were dazed and
desperate, and business was in a panic. Scientific men were appealed
to, to help solve the riddle, but were helpless. Many of them agreed
that though in theory such things were explainable, science was as yet
far from any known means of bringing them about in actuality.
Insurance companies spent fabulous sums on investigation, and, failing
to get results, raised their premiums to impossible levels.