Damn the man! What right had he to put me through the third degree? I felt my state of dazed horror slowly giving way to anger. I glanced around. The pistol still menaced; the man at the door had not moved. It was useless to try and evade the questions.
"For the past year," I replied, "business has been very poor. In fact, the professor advanced me some money."
"Humph!" Again that irritating, non-committal grunt.
The chief turned in his seat and stared thoughtfully at the crystalline cage.
"And you don't know what the professor was trying to invent?"
"Only its nature," I began.
"Ah! That's better. Why didn't you tell me that before?" The chief leaned forward.
"Well," I explained, "the whole thing seems so absurd. When the professor told me how his married life had been broken up, he told me that at that time he reached the utmost depths of human suffering. Absolute zero, he called it."
"Ah!"