Each participant was to have received a specific word or name which was directly connected with his field of teaching. The first letter of each word, formed an acrostic reading down which spelled out:
T-E-L-E-P-A-T-H-Y
The cards the professors had handed in were also there beside us on the table. I went through those cards again, slowly, while De Vaca and Morrison and Billingsley debated as to the best way of locating Marsten.
I wanted to do more than just find Marsten. I wanted to be able to help him when he was found. The cards the professors had handed in listed what they thought they had received from Marsten via mental telepathy. This is what they had written:
| 1. Shakespeare——Professor of English Literature |
| 2. Darwin——Professor of Biology |
| 3. Kidney——Professor of Anatomy |
| 4. Debussey——Professor of Music |
| 5. Opiate——Professor of Medicine |
| 6. Adler——Professor of Psychology |
| 7. Stalin——Professor in Russian History |
| 8. Golf——Professor in Physical Education |
| 9. Xmas——Professor in Theosophy. |
Each professor had written something similar in meaning to what Marsten had tried, through mental telepathy, to put into their minds. Except in the case of the Professor of Psychology. And in that one case there was a direct hit, as Marsten had said.
Oddly enough, Marian Adler had the same surname as the great psychoanalyst, Alfred Adler, whom Marsten had chosen for one of his projected thoughts. To me, the results did not seem the complete failure Marsten thought them. But of course Marsten had wanted to hit it one hundred percent. Nothing less would have satisfied a scientific mind like his in such an experiment.
The acrostic: S-D-K-D-O-A-S-G-X formed by the words apparently received by the Professors in that locked room was merely a jumble of letters, spelling out nothing of any meaning.
Finally, we parted to go our separate ways. I took the envelope and cards and went home. The others, with cars, would search for Marsten. I'd forgotten my work, my thesis, everything. I wanted to figure out something, but I didn't even know what it was. I had a most unscientific idea—a hunch!
All day I thought and sweated over that envelope's contents, the cards, the two acrostics: