"Your room will be 347, sir," the desk clerk said, and handed Patric Vance a key. Vance was in the act of accepting it when his glance wandered to the sheet of the hotel register which he had just signed. Written not more than a half dozen spaces above his own name, he read:
"Professor Theophilus Dickenson. M. D., Ph. D., D., F. R. S. City."
"My word!" he exclaimed. "Old Dickinson staying here! Imagine!"
The clerk, who was accustomed to reading upside-down, read also.
"That will be the gentleman in 342," he said. "A friend of yours, Mr. Vance?"
"Rather!" Vance replied enthusiastically. "He taught me chemistry back in the Stone Age when I went to college. I say, call him on the phone and tell him I'm coming up to see him."
And so the trouble started.
"Will you be in town very long, Patric?" the professor inquired when their first salutations were over.
"Only a few days," Vance andwered. "My firm sent me up on a business trip to see the head of Wharton and Company."
"In that case," the other smiled, "I would probably not have had the pleasure of seeing you if I had not chanced to come to this hotel a few hours before your own arrival."
"Oh, no," Vance denied. "I had intended to look you up tomorrow as soon as I was at liberty. But I had expected to find you at the Chemists' Club rather than at a hotel."
"And so you would have, my boy," Prof. Dickenson replied; "except that there is at present a scientists' convention in town, and I gave up my rooms at the club in order to help accommodate some of our famous out-of-town guests."
"A convention?" Vance repeated with polite interest. "Will you be reading a paper, sir?"
Prof. Dickenson shook his head sadly. "Not this time, I'm afraid," he answered. "The galling part of it is, I probably have the most remarkable discovery of the century to lay before the convention; but I can't present it because I have been unable to find a subject upon whom to complete my experiments."
"What is your discovery?" Vance asked curiously. The professor's work in his chosen field could always be depended on to be original, at least.
"It is a means," the professor replied, "of demonstrating the fourth dimension, just as the third dimension is demonstrated by sounding, and the first and second by measurement."
"The fourth dimension," he went on, warming to his subject, "is not merely a speculative hypothesis, as is commonly imagined, but an actuality. Up to the present, its existance has never been proven other than philosophically; but I am now prepared to give a tangible demonstration of it by enabling objects to move back and forth in it."
"I didn't know you were a mathematical, Professor," Vance put in.
"Nor am I, primarily," his host smiled. "The fourth dimension does not depend for its demonstration upon a complicated mathematical formula. Nor does it, as some of our more imaginative fiction writers seem to believe, require a cumbersome piece of machinery. It is all a matter of vibration, Patric. Change the rapidity of a man's vibrations, and you change his position in the fourth dimension."
"It sounds very interesting," Vance admitted. "How do you do it?"
"Chemically." The professor crossed to his closet, and returned with a square-faced bottle. "I have compounded here a chemical formula which acts upon the vibrations of the etherons of which all matter is composed, enabling the subject to move forward into the fourth dimension. When the effect of the compound has worn off, he returns automatically to his starting point."
"Have you ever actually demonstrated the power of this formula?" Vance asked.
"Upon dumb animals, yes," Prof. Dickenson replied; "but never upon a human being. In spite of the fact that I know it to be absolutely harmless, I have never been able to induce anyone to undergo the experiment. I could, of course, experiment upon myself; but t hat would not be conclusive evidence. In order to present my discovery to my fellow scientists, I must have the corroborating testimony of a wholly disinterested party."
Vance looked sympathetically at his old friend and instructor. It was unfair that the poor old man's life work should come to nothing, simply through the timidity of the human race.
Vance's sporting blood began to rise. He glanced at the square-faced bottle. Its shape, at least, was reassuring.
"If you like sir," he said boldly, "I'll undergo the experiment tonight."
The professor all but fell on his neck. The day would yet be saved! Vance would go down in history as the Columbus of the Fourth Dimension!
When Vance rose to leave, he took with him a wine glass half filled with a colorless liquid from the square-faced bottle.
"Drink it just before you get into bed," the professor directed. "I have not made it strong enough to carry you far into the fourth dimension, since this is your first experience with it. The effects should wear off within a few hours, when you can report to me your sensations."
Vance returned to his room with the glass, and set it upon his bureau. He did not think of it again until he was about to get into bed that night.
"Oh yes; the old boy's medicine!" he exclaimed, and picked up the glass. Removed from the influence of the professor's presence, he felt a little skeptical regarding the mixture's powers. Still, a promise was a promise; and it probably wouldn't kill him.
He raised the glass, and drank off its contents at a drought. It tasted uncommonly like a well known preparation whose remarkably salubrious effects he heard lauded twice every week on his favorite radio programme. Then he got into bed. . . . . .
When Vance awoke the morning sunlight was streaming into his room. At first he did not remember Prof. Dickinson and the experiment; then something recalled them to his mind, and he grinned.
"The old boy's medicine couldn't have been strong enough," he murmurred half aloud. "I still seem to be in only three dimensions."
He swung his foot to the floor, and put out his hand toward the chair on which he had left his clothes the night before. But he paused with the gesture only half completed, and stared in helpless amazement. The chair was empty!
"What the deuce!" he exclaimed. He sprang up and looked on the floor beside the chair. There was nothing there.
He began to search the room frantically, looking into closets and under furniture. And it was while so engaged that he made another even more alarming discovery: not only the clothes he had been wearing the evening before, but his travelling bag and all his other belongings had disappeared as well!
"Either this is some practical joke," he exclaimed, "or Dickenson has made a silly mistake, and sent my duffel into the fourth dimensiom instead of me!"
The latter part of this thought was distinctly disconcerting; for Vance was in many respects a rather shy young man, and did not at all relish the idea of his very personal effects swirling wantonly about in four-dimensional space, to turn up eventually Heaven alone knew where.
He crossed to the bell button, and administered to it a righteously indignant jab. In due course of time, the door opened, and a bell boy thrust in his head. He seemed at once surprised and relieved by Vance's presence.
"I knew that call came from this room!" he announced triumphantly. "But what are you doin' here, Mister?"
"At the present moment," Vance replied dryly, "I am looking for my clothes."
"Yes, but why in here?" the boy wanted to know. "And you've been sleepin' in that bed!" The last was an accusation.
Vance began to lose patience. "Will you," he asked with ominous gentleness, "kindly go down the hall to Room 342, and ask Prof. Theophilus Dickenson to come here?"
The boy withdrew. In a few moments he was back.
"The party in 342 ain't a him," he reported. "It's a her; and when I told her about you and that you wanted her to come on over, she got mad and slammed the door shut."
Vance was staggered. "Do you mean to tell me," he demanded, "that Prof. Dickenson isn't occupying Room 342?"
"Perhaps," the boy offered helpfully, "you've got your numbers mixed up. This ain't your room, either, you know."
"Not my room!" Vance sprang up as if he had been electrified. He stared about him. But there was the furniture just as he remembered it; the windows were in the same position; so were the pictures on the walls.
"Isn't this 347?" he demanded.
The boy nodded. "Sure this is 347," he admitted. "But it ain't the room you were assigned to."
"It most certainly is," Vance retorted indignantly.
"Couldn't be." The boy was positive. "347 was vacant last night. I had to get the key off the board before I came up here." He held it up in evidence. "Didn't you hear me unlock the door from the outside?"
"Good Lord!" Vance gasped. "Then I was not only robbed; I was locked in!"
"I think," the bell boy said, "I'd better call the manager."
The manager came; but instead of answering Vance's questions, he had questions of his own to ask. First of all, what was Vance doing where he was? And second, how had he succeeded in getting into a room that had been locked for over a week?
But I tell you I had a key," Vance insisted. "The clerk gave it to me when I registered yesterday afternoon."
Not to this room," the manager denied firmly. Then a thought struck him and he looked the other over critically. "Tell me," he said; "did you -- er - ah -- To put it bluntly, did you have anything to drink before turning in last night?"
Vance opened his mouth to voice an indignant denial, but checked himself. The professor's medicine! So it had translated him through the fourth dimension from one room to another! The explanation was so reculously simple that he wanted to laugh.
"It wasn't what you mean," he said a little foolishly. "But if you'll send for Prof. Dickenson, I think he can explain."
The manager made no comment; he had held his position for too long for that. "What r oom does the professor occupy?" he inquired.
"I thought it was 342," Vance replied dubiously. "But he -- he doesn't seem to be there this morning."
The manager went to the wall telephone, called the desk, and made an inquiry. When he turned back to Vance, his expression of polite tolerance had vanished.
"The clerk tells me," he announced, "that there is no Professor Dickenson registered at this hotel."
"Dickinson -- not registered!" Vance cried. He felt stunned. "There must be some mistake."
But the manager was firm. "I think not, Mr. -- ah -- What did you say your name was?"
"Vance," supplied the unhappy young man. "Patric Vance."
The manager returned to the telephone and made another inquiry. This time the reply he received rendered him openly hostile.
"Mr. Vance," he began acidly, "not only is your friend, Prof. Dickenson not registered at this hotel, but you are not, either!"
(To be concluded in the next issue)
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Updated June 23, 2015. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.