"But you will be married?" the man insisted. "It is a very beautiful place. There is no place like it. I am sure Miss Franklin will—"
I tensed, jumped to my feet, and Dora stood up beside me. Miss Franklin! But I hadn't named her. This fellow knew us then. At our movement, it seemed that the little figure nearby was edging closer. I am a pretty husky, six foot fellow. As I stood up, the man on the bench rose also, with his hand still on my arm. He was about my height. I flung off his light hold.
"Not interested," I said. "Come on, Dora."
We started to go.
Was that damnable, headless little thing about to pounce on me? There were five hundred people here within sound of a shout, but despite it a thrill of fear darted through me. I'm not exactly afraid of anything human; but somehow this seemed different—as though that square, box-like, wide-shouldered little thing were something gruesome—something you couldn't fight with your fists. It was standing sidewise to us now, in a deeper shadow than before and, even more than before, I got the impression that the ominous-looking little figure was headless.
"But won't you at least come and see what I have to show you?" the man at my side was insisting. "It is not very far—"
"Thanks, no." I turned away with an arm around Dora. And suddenly the man was slinking off with the wide-shouldered little thing following after him on stiff little legs. In a moment they were gone.
That was the beginning. The details of me are not important here; I need only say that I was twenty-four that summer. Dora and I were engaged to be married. Both of us were orphans. She was wealthy; I was not, so that I did not want to marry until I had made a success of an invention on which I was working—a ray-weapon with which I hoped, not to make war more deadly, but to make war impossible. It was a non-killing, paralyzing vibration. In theory, if I could project it any great distance—a vibration on speeding form—then with it whole armies would be stricken down, rendered helpless.
But I had not progressed that far as yet. I was living in Dora's home, working in a small laboratory with which it was equipped. Just this week I had completed a miniature projector. With tests upon animals it seemed to be effective at some fifty feet....