Adrift in the Unknown; or, Queer Adventures in a Queer RealmCook, William Wallace
Science
Adrift in the Unknown; or, Queer Adventures in a Queer Realm
Cook, William Wallace
Science fiction
The article in the first edition ran as follows:
QUINN’S CASTLE VANISHES.
AND SO DOES QUINN! WITH HOUSE AND BELONGINGS. THE HARLEM SAGE
DISAPPEARS IN A SINGLE HOUR. LEAVING NOT A TRACE BEHIND.
What happened to Professor Quinn last night? And what happened
to the strange steel structure known locally among Harlem
residents as Quinn’s Castle?
For Quinn and his castle were snuffed out like a candle-gleam
some time between the hours of eleven o’clock and midnight.
Patrolman Casey, who travels a beat in that part of Harlem,
avers that he passed the castle at eleven o’clock, and that it
was there; he passed its site again at twelve, and it was not
there.
Considerably exercised, Patrolman Casey made search for the
castle, and although he beat up the country for a dozen blocks
in all directions, he failed to find it. And what is more,
Patrolman Casey declares that he took the pledge when he went on
the force and has been a total abstainer ever since.
Corroboration of the officer’s report is not lacking. Certain
residents of the vicinity state that they saw the professor’s
weird dwelling yesterday evening; its windows were aglow and it
appeared evident that the professor was entertaining friends.
The first gray dawn this morning showed a bare lot with the
steel house missing.
Is it another case of Aladdin’s palace dissolving into thin air
at the "presto!" of some wonder worker? Or is it a plain case
of larceny undertaken on a gigantic scale? A golden opportunity
offers itself to a sleuth of the Sherlock Holmes school; and for
such a person the _Mercury_ presents the following facts:
First, the so-called castle was projectile-shaped, of
boiler-plate construction, and measured some twenty feet in
diameter, tapering to a point thirty feet above ground. It was
covered with a sort of paint that gave it the appearance of
frosted silver.
Second, there is much low shrubbery surrounding the site of the
castle, and if the castle had been blown down and rolled from
the ridge it stood on into the river there would have been left
evidences in plenty of such disaster.
(Note: The castle certainly weighed five tons, possibly five
times that. Nothing short of a cyclone could have budged it,
and there was hardly a breath of air stirring the whole night
long.)
Third, Professor Quinn, ever since he erected his steel house
and moved into it, has been regarded as mildly insane. Like
Abou-ben-Adhem, he desired to be entered on the angelic scroll
as one who loved his fellow-men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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