I felt sick with panic and hopelessness. Then, in that moment, out of nowhere, came the flash—the key—it shone there before me all at once, the answer I'd been looking for! I knew it had been there all along and my mind had gone around it time and again. And suddenly it was there, conscious and clear.
I arranged it all in my mind as we rode over to Fifth and Pinehurst, the police lieutenant intent on driving speedily through the heavy traffic.
If I could get to Marsten in time, I could save him! I'd had the explanation all along—I'd read it in a scientific journal, in reports I'd skimmed through on ESP. Marsten would understand—if I could get to him in time! He hadn't been wrong. And I could give him proof....
A big crowd was gathered in the early dawn, standing silently in the street, staring upward at the small figure on the ledge. The wind was cold and steady and in the early morning greyness I saw Marsten, thirty stories up, hunched against the side of the building. He wasn't a man to exhibit himself for melodramatic recognition. Therefore, I knew he must be very far out of his normal mind.
I am sure he went up there to jump immediately. But he had been there an hour, now. Perhaps, I thought, he was trying to figure, in a last desperate moment, where his experiment had failed. Trying to find in the mysterious, senseless chaos of embryonic human thought, a reason why he should not die....
The police got me through the crowd, inside the building and into an elevator. I ran down the hall of the thirtieth floor to the room where policemen were working with ropes and steel hooks. I heard one of them say, "We can't reach him. It's no use."
I stuck my head out the window, called Marsten's name. But the wind tore the words away, sent them in the opposite direction. He didn't turn his head. I could barely make out his features, dead white and void of expression.
"Don't jump, for God's sake!" I called over and over. "Professor, you were right! The experiment was a success! Listen to me! It was a success!"
I could see the uplifted faces down below, a blanket, a net they had stretched down there, both looking no bigger than a checker square.
Marsten didn't seem to hear me, but I kept yelling, trying to make him hear. I fought the wind, and whatever barrier there was between Marsten and myself. But he didn't turn, didn't seem to hear me, seemed unaware of me, of anything that went on around him.