“On my word of honor as a gentleman,” said he, solemnly.
So the story was true after all, and I had not been hoaxed. I heaved a
sigh of relief.
It was soon arranged that he should return with me to the farm.
Forgotten was my freight, as I hurried him to the dory.
As I helped him into the boat, I noticed that his left hand was
bandaged, and asked him why.
“It happened night before last,” he answered laconically. “Man shot at
me.”
And not another word would he speak until the dory was tied to its stake
on the other side of the harbor, and we were chugging along the red road
which runs east across Chappiquiddick.
“Now tell me all about it,” I begged. “How did you ever get back to
earth, and how did you happen to come down here?”
Myles replied, “This is the way it was: After our conquest of the
ant-men, I resumed my experiments with the wireless transmission of
matter, which experiments had been so rudely interrupted by my
accidentally transmitting myself to the planet Poros—Venus, as you
earth-folk call it.
“I not only perfected the device, but also perfected it in such a way
that it could be used as an attachment to a certain common sort of
high-power hook-up. Now, before I left the earth, I knew that the
General Electric Company at Lynn had a hook-up of this kind in a
receiving station which was in almost constant operation, and was such a
standard installation that there was practically no chance of its not
being still in commission. I happened to remember its wave-length. So I
adjusted my apparatus in my electrical laboratory on Poros, with two
Cupian friends at the levers; and the next thing I knew, I found myself
back on earth, lying on the floor of a room, in front of a radio set.
“There was a man seated near by, the first human being whom I had seen
in over five earth-years. I rushed to greet him, and to ask him where I
was. But probably, in my haste, I spoke to him in the language of Poros.
That, and my Cupian toga, must have surprised him, for he fired several
shots at me with an automatic, and then turned and bolted through the
door. One of his shots nicked my left hand. Luckily, the rest missed
me.”
“Then you are the supposed madman of Lynn!” I exclaimed.
“The very same,” he answered.
“Well, well!” said I. “Who would have guessed it? And yet, as I read the
story in the _Boston Post_, it somehow or other made me think of you.”
Myles laughed. “Not very complimentary. They certainly gave me a weird
write-up.”
“They certainly did,” I replied. “But tell me, how did you get rid of
your nightgown?”
Myles laughed again. “My toga, you mean? I found a suit of overalls, an
old hat, and a pair of shoes in a locker, put them on, and made my
escape from the building. In one of the pockets there was some small
change, which carried me to Boston.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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