Dictator of Time

An Exciting Novel
Humanity against the Arch-Brain of the Future! Twentieth-Century Larry Wilson and Sandra Day lead the Armageddon of the Ages against Harg, crafty, vain monster-intellect bent on warping Man to his Inhuman Will!
Larry Wilson was going to miss his train. He swung from his cab at Philadelphia's Broad Street Station, glanced swiftly at his wrist-watch, tossed a bill in the general direction of the cabby, then dashed for the staircase that led to the train platform. His watch showed exactly 10:59. The New York express was scheduled to leave at eleven sharp.
Behind him, morning traffic made its customary din in the streets of the Quaker City. Automobile horns whonked belligerently. Radio loudspeakers blared from the doorways of tiny Market Street shops. A newsboy bellowed headlines on the European war situation. A bus chugged into the station, disgorged its cargo of human freight, lumbered ponderously on down the street. A vendor offered dried lavender; his whine was a thin, discordant note in the hum of a busy city.
But Larry Wilson, intent only on gaining the train platform above, did not notice these things. He brushed by a puffing matron at the foot of the stairs, steamed past a descending red-cap, and noticed with only casual interest as he took the steps three at a time a silken-clad calf before him. He might make it yet, he thought hopefully, if—
Then, suddenly, something was indefinably wrong !
Larry had ascended these stairs dozens of times in the past, both leisurely and, as now, at top speed. But at no time had they ever been like this! His stride faltered; then, even as the first, tiny fingers of wonderment plucked at his bewildered brain, he realized that the bright electric lights that limned the staircase had vanished. That in their place was a dull, unearthly, grayish glow that seemed to emanate equally from the walls, the staircase, and from the roof above him.
His foot, reaching for the next step, encountered no support. He staggered, thrown off balance, and stumbled forward to his hands and knees. Yet he was not bruised. As he fell he realized, with numb astonishment, that the steps were no longer there!