“What’s the matter with him?”
“He is marooned,” said Von Holtz. Again he licked his lips. “He is marooned, Herr Reames, and you alone—”
“Marooned?” said Tommy more skeptically still. “In the middle of New York State? And I alone can help him? You sound more and more as if you were playing a rather elaborate and not very funny practical joke. I’ve driven sixty miles to get here. What is the joke, anyhow?”
Von Holtz said despairingly:
“But it is true, Herr Reames! He is marooned. He has changed his coordinates. It was an experiment. He is marooned in the fifth dimension!”
There was dead silence. Tommy Reames stared blankly. Then his gorge rose. He had taken an instinctive dislike to this lean young man, anyhow. So he stared at him, and grew very angry, and would undoubtedly have gotten into his car and turned it about and driven it away again if it had been in any shape to run. But it wasn’t. One tire was flat, and the last ruddy drops from the radiator were dripping slowly on the grass. So he pulled out a cigarette case and lighted a cigarette and said sardonically:
“The fifth dimension? That seems rather extreme. Most of us get along very well with three dimensions. Four seems luxurious. Why pick on the fifth?”
Von Holtz grew pale with anger in his turn. He waved his arms, stopped, and said with stiff formality:
“If the Herr Reames will follow me into the laboratory I will show him Professor Denham and convince him of the Herr Professor’s extreme danger.”