The Blind Spot, Homer Eon Flint and Austin Hall [books to read for 13 year olds txt] 📗

But in the centre of the ceiling, occupying almost all the space overhead, a snow-white substance hung as if suspended. Were it not for its colour and its size, it might have been likened to an immense, horizontal grindstone hung in mid-air, with apparently nothing to hold it there. Around its side they could make out a narrow gap between it and the ceiling. And directly along its lower edge was a series of small, fiery jewels inset, and of the order and colour of the sign of the Jarados—red, blue and green, alternating.

The professor produced an electric torch and held it up to show that the gap between the stone and the ceiling was unbroken at any point. Then he counted the jewels on the lower edge. Chick made out twenty-four. Three were missing from their sockets—all told, then, there should have been twenty-seven.

The doctor noted the positions of the three empty sockets and, drawing a tapeline from his pocket, proceeded to measure the distances from each of the three—they were widely separated round the circle—from each other. Then he turned to Chick and Harry.

“Do you know where we are?”

“Under the Spot of Life,” it was easy to answer.

“You are in San Francisco!”

“Not in—in—” Chick hesitated.

“Yes. Exactly. This is 288 Chatterton Place—the house of the Blind Spot.” He paused for them to digest this. Then, “Harry—did you say Hobart Fenton was with you on that last night?”

“Hobart and his sister, Charlotte. I remember their coming at the last minute. They were too late, sir.”

The professor nodded.

“Well, Harry, the chances are that Hobart is not more than twenty feet away at the present moment. Charlotte may be sitting right there”—pointing to a spot at Harry's side—“this very instant. And there may be many others.

“No doubt they are working hard to solve the mystery. Unfortunately the best they can do is to guess. We hold the key. That is—I should correct that statement—we hold the knowledge, and they hold the keys.”

“The keys?” Harry wanted to know more.

The professor pointed to the three empty sockets in the great white stone above their heads. “These three missing stones are the keys. Until they are reset we cannot control the Spot. I had found two of them before I came through. I take it that both of you remember the blue one?”

“I think,” agreed Chick, “that neither of us is ever likely to forget it! Eh, Harry?”

The professor smiled. He was holding the light up to the snow-stone, at a spot that would have been the point of intersection had lines been drawn from the three missing gems, and the resulting triangle centred. He held his hand up to the substance. It was slightly rough at that point, as though it had been frozen.

Then he ran his fingers across the surrounding surface.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “I thought so! That helps considerably. Chick—put your hand up here. What do you feel?”

“Rough,” said Chick, feeling the intersection point. “Slightly so, but cold and—and magnetic.”

“Now feel here.”

“Cool and magnetic, doctor; but smooth. What does it prove?”

“Let's see; do you understand the term 'electrolysis'? Good. Well, there should be another clue—not similar, but supplementary, or rather, complementary—on the earth side. Perhaps one of you found it while you lived in that house.” The professor eyed both men anxiously. “Did either of you find a stain, or anything of that sort, on the walls, ceiling, or floor of any room there?”

Both shook their heads.

“Well, there ought to be,” frowned the doctor. “I am positive that, should we return now, we could locate some such phenomenon. From this side it is very easy to account for; it's simply the disintegrating effect of the current, constantly impinging at the point of contact or the intersection. Having acted on this side, it must have left some mark on the other.”

Watson was still running his hand over the snow-stone. Once before, when he had stood barefooted in the contest with the Senestro, he had noted its cold magnetism.

“What is this substance, professor?”

“That, I have not been able to discover. I would call it neutral element, for want of a more exact term; something that touches both aspects of the spectrum.”

“Both aspects of the spectrum?”

“Yes; as nearly as the limitations of my vocabulary will permit. If you recall, I showed you a simple experiment the other day in the palace. By means of an inductor I drew out the iron principle from the ether and built up the metal. Only it was not precisely iron but its Thomahlian equivalent. Had you been on the earth side you would have seen nothing at all, not even myself. I was on the wrong aspect of the spectrum.

“Also, you see here the Jaradic colours—the crimson, green and blue—the shades between, the iridescence and the shadows. Had you been on the other side you wouldn't have seen one of them; they are not precisely our own colours, but their equivalents on this side of the Spot.

“In the final analysis, as I said before, it gets down to ether, to speed and vibration—and still at last to the perceptive limitations of our own earthly five senses. Just stop and consider how limited we are! Only five senses—why, even insects have six. Then consider that all matter, when we get to the bottom of it, is differentiated and condensed ether, focused into various mathematical arrangements, as numberless as the particles of the universe. Of these our five senses pick out a very small proportion indeed.

“This is one way to account for the Blind Spot. It may be merely another phase of the spectrum—not simply the unexplored regions of the infra-red or the ultra-violet, but a region co-existent with what we normally apprehend, and making itself manifest through apertures in what we, with our extremely limited sense-grasp, think to be a continuous spectrum. I throw out the idea mainly as a suggestion. It is not necessarily the true explanation.

“Let us go a bit farther. Remember, we are still upon the earth. And that we are still in San Francisco, although all the while we are also in the Mahovisal. This is 288 Chatterton Place, and at the same time it is the Temple of the Bell. It might be a hundred or a thousand other places just as well, too, if my hypothesis is correct; which we shall see.

“Now, what does this mean? Simply this, gentlemen, that we five-sensed people have failed to grasp the true meaning of the word 'Infinity.' We look out toward the stars, fancying that only in unlimited space can we find the infinite. We little suspect we ourselves are infinity! It is only our five senses that make us finite.

“As soon as