He was right at that. It would take a lot of convincing to make me believe that a babe who wasn't going to get born for a thousand years was in love with him.
By this time, though, I was sure of one thing—there was something screwy going on in that laboratory of his. For five minutes a day he was watching some dame's picture, listening to her voice. If I had an idea what she was like, I might figure out where to go from there.
I began keeping an eye on Perry, dropping in at the laboratory to pay him visits. There was what looked like a ten-inch TV tube in one corner of his place, not housed in a cabinet, but lying on the table among dozens of other tubes and rheostats and meters and other things I didn't know about. Along the wall that led from this corner was a lot of stuff which Perry said was high voltage, and warned me not to touch.
I kept away. I wasn't trying to figure out how to get myself killed. All I wanted to know was when he saw this girl.
Finally I managed to pin the time down to between three and four in the afternoon. For five minutes every day, during that hour, he locked the door and didn't answer phone calls. I figured that if I dropped in then I might get a glimpse of her.
And that's what I did.
At first, when I knocked on the door, there was no answer. In a minute, though, I heard Perry's voice, but he wasn't talking to me. He was saying, "Darling," and he sounded kind of sick, which I figured was due to love. Come to think of it, he might have been scared a little. I heard him say, "Don't be afraid," and it was quiet for about fifteen seconds.
Then I heard a terrific crash, like lightning striking. The door shook, and I smelled something sharp, and the first thing I wanted to do was get out of that place. But I couldn't leave my brother in there.
I put my shoulder to the door and had no trouble at all. The explosion, or whatever it was, must have weakened the hinges. As the door crashed in, I looked for Perry.
There was no sign of him. But I could see his shoes, on the floor in front of that TV tube, where he must have been standing. No feet in them, though, just his socks. All the high-voltage stuff was smoking. The TV screen was all lit up, and on it I could see a girl's face, the same girl whose picture Perry had shown me. She was wearing one of those funny costumes, and she looked scared. It was a clear picture, and I could even see the way she gulped.