* * * *

Tommy stared.

"Four days?" he said. "The thing, whatever it is, has been going on
for four days?"

"Five," said Von Holtz nervously. "It was only to-day that I thought
of you, Herr Reames. The Herr Professor Denham had praised your
articles highly. He said that you were the only man who would be able
to understand his work. Five days ago--"

Tommy grunted.

"If he's been in danger for five days," he said skeptically, "he's not
in such a bad fix or it'd have been over. Will you phone for a
repairman? Then we'll see what it's all about."

The lean arms began to wave again as Von Holtz said desperately:

"But Herr Reames, it is urgent! The Herr Professor is in deadly
danger!"

"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."

Tommy had a sudden startling conviction that Von Holtz was in earnest.
He might be mad, but he was in earnest. And there was undoubtedly a
Professor Denham, and this was undoubtedly his ho