After that she ran outside and around to the bathroom window. It was shut and locked, as she already knew. Not only that, it had been stuck for years.
With an urgency born of a realization that every second might mean the difference between life and death, she ran back into the house and called the fire department. Also the family doctor.
By nine-thirty the police had been called in. By eleven o'clock they had seen the parallel between this disappearance and that of John Henderson.
Martin Grant's first reaction was concern for Ethel. His second reaction was that, twice, he had presented his theory to someone and that person had vanished. His third was accompanied by a twinge of fear. He had just finished presenting his theory to the senior physics class!
This was followed by an amazing realization. He was conceding that there might be a connection between his theory and the disappearances. He laughed it off, but it returned. It disturbed him.
It continued to bother him on Wednesday, so he began to search his mind for reasons. Eventually he found them. There was a distinct analogy between a theory that didn't agree with observable reality, and a pair of disappearances which violated known methods of disappearing.
The analogy was so clear that he began to feel there might be a functional relation between the two. Of course, he concluded, it would be reasonably certain if a large number of the students in the senior group were to vanish also.
This intellectual conclusion became an anxiety neurosis.
So, on Wednesday—after he had scanned the room anxiously to see how many students were absent and discovered to his intense relief that they were all there—he spent the full hour lecturing on the necessity—the vital necessity—of unbelief in all things, especially scientific theories.
But would it work? He vaguely remembered giving Horace a similar lecture.