"How do you know something came out?" McCumber persisted. He seemed to have taken over the questioning from Kennedy.
"Because I saw it," Sharp answered.
In the silence of the basement Rocks could hear several men breathing heavily.
"It lifted up, out of the box," Sharp continued. "It was a mass of grayish smoke, of shifting planes and impossible angles. It rose straight up and seemed to pause in the air. While it hung in the air—and I cannot begin to suggest an explanation for this—I suddenly seemed to lose my hearing. I couldn't hear a sound. There was utter, complete silence. It was the oddest sensation I have ever experienced."
Again the handkerchief wiped sweat from his face.
"Then—like a finger snap—the thing vanished. It disappeared into thin air. And when it vanished, I recovered from my deafness."
Rocks felt Penny's fingers searching for his hand. Her hand slid into his. She was trembling.
The detectives were pale, their faces bloodless. How much they had really understood of Sharp's description was open to doubt. Only a mathematical physicist could have grasped all the possibilities he had opened, and the cops weren't physicists. But they were alert. One had half-drawn his run. They were warily looking around the room.
"What did you do then?" McCumber persisted.
"We naturally spent some time searching the basement. When we found nothing, I began to suspect we were the victims of an illusion, that nothing had really come out of the box, that our imaginations were playing us tricks. Consequently, since it was already late in the afternoon, I departed. I thought nothing more of the matter until the police called me and told me that a man was dead here. Then I instantly realized that something had come out of the box, something utterly foreign to the science of our present day, something of which we have no knowledge, but which may be here now, watching us, waiting to pounce on its next victim—"