We saw Jack at mealtimes for the next few days, but he didn't talk much. We learned that he was twenty-six, in spite of his looking like a boy in his teens, that he thought Prof. Einstein the greatest man ever, and that he disliked being called son. Of his experiment, he didn't have much to say then. He saw Mrs. Burroughs was a little nervous about his experimenting in the guest room and he assured her it was not dangerous. Before the week was out, we started hearing the noises. The first one was like a wire brush going around a barrel. It went _whisk, whisk_. Then he rigged up something that went _skaboom_ every few seconds, like a loud heartbeat. Once in a while, he got in a sound like a creaky well pump, but mostly it was _skaboom_ and _whisk_, which eventually settled down to a steady rhythm, _whiskaboom, whiskaboom_. It was kind of pleasant. * * * * * Neither of us saw him for two days. The noises kept going on. Mrs. Burroughs was alarmed because he did not answer her knock at mealtimes, and one morning she charged upstairs and hollered at him through the door. "You stop your nonsense this minute and come down to breakfast!" "I'm not hungry," he called back. "You open this door!" she ordered and, by George, he did. "Your _whiskaboom_ or whatever it is will keep till after breakfast." He sat at the table, but he was a tired boy. He had a cold, his eyelids kept batting, and I don't believe he could have lifted his coffee cup. He tried to look awake, and then over he went with his face in the oatmeal. Mrs. Burroughs ran for the ammonia, but he was out cold, so we wiped the oatmeal off his face and carried him upstairs. My wife rubbed Jack's wrists with garlic and put wet towels on his face, and presently he came to. He looked wildly about the room at his machinery. It was all there, and strange-looking stuff, too. "Please go away," he begged. "I've got work to do." Mrs. Burroughs helped him blow his nose. "There'll be no work for you, sonny. Not until you're well. We'll take care of you." He didn't seem to mind being called sonny. He was sick for a week and we tended him like one of our own. We got to know him pretty well. And we also got to know you. Now, Mr. Gretch, whatever you are doing in your laboratory is your own business. You could be making atomic disintegrators, for all Jack told us. But he does not like or approve of it and he told us about your running battle with him to keep him working on your project instead of his own. Jack tried to explain his ideas for harnessing time and what he called "the re-integration principle." It was all so much _whiskaboom_ to us, so to speak, but he claimed it was for the good of mankind, which was fine with us. But he said you would not let him work it out because there was less money in it than in your project, and this is why he had to get away and work and worry himself into a collapse.