SHORT STORY (Complete.) THE PROFESSOR'S DILEMMA.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIII, Issue 46, 24 February 1902, Page 6

SHORT STORY (Complete.) THE PROFESSOR'S DILEMMA.

wh4t happened because he h\d his shoes made to .ORDER ON HYGIENIC PRINCIPLES.

(By Henry Farmer.)

Professor Hummelstein's lecture on the Organism of Protoplasm had been lengthy, but intensely interestin o-. He had put forward a new •theory. Xo one among- those present naci been more deeply interested than Rathbone Myrtlock, professor of physiology. Men of science, like historians, art critics, and others, are given to disagree. The building "p of a new theory by one savant is. as a rule, a signal'to others to set about its demolition. As he walked homewards through the night, Kathbone Myrtlock, still young, but shy, short-sighted, and absent-minded, was completely absorbed in a refutation of Hummelstein's theory. So great, indeed, was his rnen.ai absorption that twice he collided with inoffensive foot passengers, and once nearly came to grief against a pillar box. A third collision was more serious. The man with) whom he collided wps the worse for liquor; but his speech was not so thick that it disguised the strength of his language as he assumed a sitting position ou the curb. Professor Myrtlock, though severely shaken, remained standing. But the concussion had knocked off his spectacles. When he o-athered them up, they were mines Tenses. From sheer force of habit, however, he replaced them upon his nose, and, with a stammered apology, pressed forward, his vision more obscured than before. ' Two minutes later, only protoplasm occupied Ins

mind. ■-'* His house was one of a number 01 houses exactly similar in all but their numbers. He had completely pulverised Hummelstein when he stood upon the doorstep, latch-key in hand. The absence of glass from his spectacles considerably enhanced the difficulty of finding 'the key-hole; but, ultimately successful, he entered. • Protoplasm still filled his mmcl. Mechanically he lit the candle standing on the hall table, and, forgetting to turn out the lowered gas or bolt the door, -stumbled upstairs to his bedroom. Entering the bedroom, and quite oblivious of the fact that he was still wearing his hat and gloves, he proceeded to draw off his shoes. "Yes," he muttered, triumphantly, "yes, 1 think Hummelstein will find my arguments irrefutable. I must gei the Science Quarterly to publish them."

He had removed his shoes —remarkable, square-toed, ugly shoes, • but built on the soundest hygienic, anatomical principles. He placed them outside the door.

"Hummelstein will have to climb down." he muttered; "his error is not incidental, but fundamental. Hfi has not a leg to stand upon. -It will be a grand victory for the English school of scientists. His definition of proto " He stopped abruptly—listened. Prom below had risen up the sound ©f voices—laughing, fe.male voices! Professor Myrtlock was a bachelor. He had no sisters. Besides himself, the only occupants of/his house were his domestics, an old married couple, who ruled him with a rod of iron, and had long since retired to bed. "That's curious," he muttered, uneasily, "curious. It really sounded as if those voices came from downstairs. I —I—"

A merry peal of girlish laughter rang out. This time there could be no mistaking whence it came. Protoplasm ond Hummel stein were forgotten now. Professor Myrtlock's jaw dropned. An awful, nightmarisn thought flashed through his brain. L -He';snatched up the candle from the table. Holding it above his head, he blinked round the room through nis glassless spectacles. His heajt all but ceased to beat; a scorching blush brightened his pale cheeks as the horrid truth smote lii . He was in a strange room! But that was not all! The light had fallen upon the dressing table, whereon lay a pair of long gloves. 2s o man ever wore such gloves. It was a woman's room! A cold sweat beaded on the brow of a man who would have faced an army of cl ndliest microbes without a tremour. He cast a wild, despairing, short-sighted glance round. The towel-horse came within range of his limited vision. He remembered how, on one occasion, a friend of his, a philosopher, surprised in the act of bathing, had baffled identity and had frightened the intruders away by Avrapping a towel about his face and head. Should he do likewise, and make a bold rush from the house? But his presence of mind and his nerve were shattered by the sound of footsteps moving up the stairs.

A hectic flush blazed out on either cheek. The scorching, blood seemed to warm him into action and thaw the iciness that had frozen him. He sprang to the door and turned the key. A moment later a feminine voice, in accents oJ! shrill terror, cried aloud: "Aunt—aunt! There's a pair of man's shoes outside my door! Help!" The emphasis was on "man." Professor Myrtlock clutched his forehead in an agony of despair. He had locked himself in, his shoes out! With the wild look of a hunted being, he glanced towards the closed window, tnen set his teeth. A lm> .ub of voices and sounds came buzzing through the door— "Shoes—man —police!" Then shrieks and slamming of doors. He sprang to me window and flung it open. An inky blackness was below. He leaned out, felt to right and left, and gripped on his left a drain-pipe. What was below he know not. There was

no time to calculate risks. Some one was thundering on the door.

He swung himself on to the ledge, and, breathing a feverish, unspoken prayer that he might reach the ground in safety, '"slithered" down. To this day Professor Myrtlock has only a confused remembrance of what, followed —a vague recollection of a wild race through darkness; of clambering- a wall horrid with broken glass; of speeding breatless and bootless through silent streets; of hiding in an unfinished house; of, at last, haunted by and trembling at every shadow, reaching his own house and creeping up to his own bedroom. It was o-ly then that tiie blur passed away. As he stared at his j white face in the. mirror the nightmare of a thongnt flashed through his brain that, though he had esJ caped, he had left something behind him. A groan burst from his lips. liis shoes were not like other men's shoes. 11. Professor Myrtlock's lectures were attended by students of both sexes. The lecture-room was crowded on the morning- alter the professor's terrible experience. In the front row, especially reserved for them, sat some half a dozen lady students. They were not all of them blue-spec-tacled and unprepossessing in appearance. One or two of the faces were decidedly pretty, and the prettiest belonged to the young lady who sat at the end of the row.

Professor Myrtlock, despite his shyness and shortsightedness, for some time past had been distinctly conscious of this one particular lady student. On one occasion, at the end of the lecture, she had stayed behind to ask him to unravel a certain knotty point. The professor had experienced an unusual amount of satisfaction in doing so, and had cherished a secret hope that on future occasions more problems might arise to solve which his assistance would be required. Brilliant as he was in his own particular branch, the professor had no genius for self-analysis. He did not realise what was going on within him.

The rjrofessor was late —ten minutes late. When he did make his appearance it was evident that he was in a highly nervous state. Two or three times in the course of his lecture he lost the thread of his reasoning, harked back, and ended in confusion.

It was a remarkable thing. As a rule, his lectures were noted for their sequence and clearness. Occasionally, too, it was noticed that, without any apparent reason, a hot flush would suddenly illumine his pallid face, as if conjured up by some recollection. Also, he was continually casting down nervous glances at his shoes. It was an unpleasant thought, not devoid of a touch of cruel irony— the possibility of being tracked down by his own shoes.

It may have been the overwrought state of his nerves; but, as the lecture proceeded, the professor got it into his head that the pretty girl student was continually staring at his feet.

As a rule he lectured standing; but he was observed pn this morning to sit down at his desk and tuck his feet in a curiously cramped manner under his chair. The professor was evidently far from well.

At the conclusion of the lecture, as the students h'led out, the professor gave a deep sigh of relief and buried his face in his hands, after the manner of a man deeply absorbed in thought. "0, professor, I' hope I'm riot troubling you, but there's just one little point 1 iim not quite clear about." He looked up with a start. It was the pretty girl student. The explanation took some little time. Then they left the lecture-room together. Again the professor imagined that she was glancing down at his feet. It affected his walk. He seemed to be treading on hot bricks. All his shoes were built on the same principle and by the same shoemaker. -"Are you—are you going my way, Miss Morton?" he inquired, rather nervously. "Why, yes, professor!" she answered; ""we live quite close to you. I've often passed you, but you've never seen me; I expect your head has been too full of scientific things!" The professor was conscious of a | pleasurable thrill. He would have been happy but few the horrible recollection of a pair of shoes. _ "I—l am so sorry." he said, "if I passed you —I'wouldn't have done so for the world; but T am absent-mind-ed, and short-sighted."

Her voice had sounded strangely like to the voice that had cried out, "Aunt, there's a pair of man's shoes outside my door!" "I saw you last night," she continued, "at Professor Hummelstein's lecture. i persuaded my aunt to take me. It was interesting, but bits of it were too learned for me."

Aunt! Symptoms of perspiration were beginning to show on Professor Myrtlock's forehead.

"And do you know, professor, when we returned we received such a horrible shock! In our absence a burglar had entered the house, and he was actually in nay room. He hadn't time to carry anything away with him! He escaped through the window before the arrival of the police, But he had taken off his shoes!"

The professor had a vague feeling that his feet and shoes were swelling to an enormous size. ,

"The police have got the shoes. They are of a peculiar make, and they hope to trace'the burglar by them!" The door was yet open, but Professor My'rtlock was too disorganised and bewildered to explain mutters. He was tongue-tied. And as Miss Morton held out her hand —her house was reached —he could barely articulate the word "Good-bye."

Old Jacobs, the man servant who generally looked after and controlled the professor, noted the wild, white expression of his master's face.

An hour or so passed, when the ring-ing of the front door bell was followed by the entrance of Jacobs. His face wore the expression of one who has been supremely shocked.

"There's two policemen, wearin' their uniforms, too, and they insist upon seem' you, sir'!'

The professor, with reeling brain, gripped the ledge of the chair, as two stalwart constables, one of them carrying a brown paper parcel, entered.

Piercing" the covering of the paper, he beheld a pair of shoes. 111. "My dear aunt," said Elsie Morton, at the conclusion of the lunch, "do you know that Professor Myrtlock lives quite close, and—well, I wish you would call on him. He's been so nice to me and has given me so much assistance. He's awfully shy." It was a quarter past four, when Mrs Morton and her niece were admitted by Jacobs.

"Yes, mum, the professor's in; he's in mum, but—O, law, law! To think I should have lived to see this day— but he's been took up. And they're going' to march him off to the station. Police, mum, and they showed me a pair of his shoes, mum, and asked me if they were my master's, and they were; and they said, "He's our man!"

And Jacobs, in the excess of his grief, began to violently wring his hands.

'Shoes —burglary — last night!" gasped Mrs Morton, staring blankly at her niece.

"0!" ejaculated Miss Morton. An "0!"' of surprise, yet with an inflection that suggested a glimmering of comprehension. And then, as the idea of the harmless, sweet-tempered professor being arrested as a burglar fully dawned upon her, with all its accompanying humorous situations, she could not restrain her laughter.

Still bewildered, they were standing- in the hall, when a door opened and the professor himself, firmly gripped on either side by a constable, was marshalled out.

"I tell you, my good men," he stammered, "I am no burglar. In a fit of absent-mindedness 1 entered the wrong house—"

"All right, all right," said the constable gruffly, "you can tell all that to the magistrate —"

Then catching sight of Mrs Morton, he saluted. %

"Here's the lady what instigated the investigations. We've got him, marm. Seem' you're 'ere, p'raps you'll be good enough to come along to- the station and prefer the charge. It was 'is shoes as give ?im away!" Mrs Morton had taken a comprehensive grip of the situation. Her niece had been seized with a violent fit of coughing and had taken refugo behind her handkerchief. "There's been a mistake," said Mrs Morton. "Release your prisoner." The policeman looked doubtful. "Release your prisoner!" The policemen sullenly obeyed. "And what about these 'ere thing-s?" said one of them, holding aloft, somewhat contemptuously, the pair of shoes. "Leave them." He deposited them on the carpet, with a look of disgust, and, followed by his brother official, departed. Then Miss Morton, unable to maintain the transparent pretence ot coughing, gave way to a convulsion of laughter. The situation was too funny! But it was such good natured laughter that first Mrs Morton joined in and then the professor.

"I—l should like to explain," he stammered. "You must think me au awful fool. Won't yousstar\r and have tea?"

When Jacobs, in answer to his bell, entered he stared hard at his master.

"Some tea, please, Jacobs." "Well, what next, I wonder?" said the old man.

Reaching the kitchen he explained to his wife the latest developments.

'"Liza," he concluded, * "what's things a-goin' to end iv? What next, I asks?" "Matrimony," answered the old lady. And she was right.