Dr Hermann Anderwelt

: Secrets of Space
: Pharaoh's Broker

I had been busy all day trying to swarm the bees and secure my honey.

The previous day had been February 29th, a date which doesn't often

happen, and which I had especial reason to remember, for it had been the

most successful of my business career. I had made a long guess at the

shaky condition of the great house of Slater, Bawker & Co., who had been

heavy buyers of wheat. I had talked the market down, sold it down,

h mmered it down; and, true enough, what nobody else seemed to expect

really happened. The big firm failed, the price of wheat went to smash

in a panic of my mixing, and, as a result, I saw a profit of more than

two hundred thousand dollars in the deal. But, in order to secure this

snug sum, I still had to buy back the wheat I had sold at higher prices,

and this I didn't find so easy. The crowd in the wheat pit had seen my

hand, and were letting me play it alone against them all.



After the session I hurried to my office to get my overcoat and hat,

having an engagement to lunch at the Club.



"If you please, Mr. Werner, there is a queer old gentleman in your

private office who wishes to see you," said Flynn, my chief clerk.



"Ask him to call again to-morrow; I am in a great hurry to-day," I said,

slipping on one sleeve of my overcoat as I started out.



"But he has been waiting in there since eleven o'clock, and said he very

much wished to see you when you had plenty of time. He would not allow

me to send on the floor for you during the session."



"Since eleven o'clock! Did he have his lunch and a novel sent up? Well,

I can hardly run away from a man who has waited three and a half hours

to see me;" and I entered my private office with my overcoat on.



Seated in my deep, leathern arm-chair was an elderly man, with rather

long and bushy iron-grey hair, and an uneven grey beard. His head

inclined forward, he breathed heavily, and was apparently fast asleep.



"You will pardon my awaking you, but I never do business asleep!" I

ventured rather loudly.



Slowly the steel-blue eyes opened, and, without any start or

discomposure, the old man answered,--



"And I--my most successful enterprises are developed in my dreams."



His features and his accent agreed in pronouncing him German. He arose

calmly, buttoned the lowest button of his worn frock-coat, and, instead

of extending his hand to me, he poked it inside his coat, letting it

hang heavily on the single button. It was a lazy but characteristic

attitude. It tended to make his coat pouch and his shoulders droop. I

remembered having seen it somewhere before.



"Mr. Werner, I have a matter of the deepest and vastest importance to

unfold to you," he began, rather mysteriously, "for which I desire five

hours of your unemployed time----"



"Five hours!" I interrupted. "You do not know me! That much is hard to

find without running into the middle of the night, or into the middle of

the day--which is worse for a busy man. I have just five minutes to

spare this afternoon, which will be quite time enough to tell me who you

are and why you have sought me."



"You do not know me because you do not expect to see me on this

hemisphere," he continued. "Nor did I expect to find you a potent force

in the commercial world, only three years after a literary and

linguistic preparation for a scholarly career. Why, the maedchens of

Heidelberg have hardly had time to forget your tall, athletic figure, or

ceased wondering if you were really a Hebrew----"



"You seem to be altogether familiar with my history," I put in with a

little heat. "Kindly enlighten me equally well as to your own."



"I gave you the pleasure of an additional year of residence at the

University of Heidelberg not long ago," he answered.



"I do not know how that can be, for to my uncle I owe my entire

education there."



"Perhaps an unappreciated trifle of it you owe to your instructors and

lecturers. Do you forget that I refused to pass your examinations in

physics, and kept you there a year longer?"



"You are not Doctor Anderwelt, then?"



"Hermann Anderwelt, Ph.D., at your service, sir," he replied somewhat

proudly.



"But when and why did you leave your chair at Heidelberg?"



"It is to answer this that I ask the five hours," he said slowly.



"Oh, come now, doctor, you used to tell me more in a two-hour lecture

than I could remember in a week," I answered, taking off my overcoat,

and touching an electric button at my desk. My office boy entered.



"Teddy, have I had lunch to-day?" This was my favourite question on a

busy day, and Teddy always answered it seriously.



"No, sir, you have an engagement to lunch at the Standard Club," he

replied.



"Telephone to Gus at the Club that I can't come up to-day. Also send

over to the Grand Pacific for a good lunch for two. Have some beer in

it--real Munchner, and in steins," I directed, and then I reclined on

a long leather lounge, and motioned to the doctor to have a chair. He

declined, however, and walked slowly back and forth before me as he

talked, keeping his right hand inside his coat, and with the left he

occasionally ploughed up his heavy hair, as if to ventilate his brain.



"A year ago I gave up theoretical physics for applied physics; I

resigned my chair at Heidelberg, and came to this progressive city. I

brought with me a working model of the greatest invention of this

inventive age. Yet it was then neither perfect in design nor complete in

detail. But now I have hit on the plan that makes it practicable and

certain of success. I need only a little money to build it, and the

world will open its eyes!"



"But you must pardon me if instead of opening mine I shut them," I

interrupted, seeing the point quickly, and losing no time in dodging. "I

have no money to invest in patent rights; but still, you must stay to

lunch with me."



Just here the doctor seemed to find it necessary to diverge from the

orderly course of his lecture as he had prepared it, and interject a few

impromptu observations.



"Events are difficult to forecast, but the capabilities of a youth are

harder to divine. One educates his son in all the fine arts, and he

turns out a founder of pig iron. One's nephew is apprenticed to a

watchmaker, and in a few years, behold, he is a great barrister. Your

uncle educated you thoroughly in the old Hebrew and Chaldee of the

rabbis, and, lo! you are now the ursa major of the wheat market.



"Just now you are in the centre of the kaleidoscope of success. Slater,

Bawker & Co. were there a month ago, but now they are only bits of

broken glass in the bottom of the heap! And you? you are really a

twisted bit of coloured glass like the rest, but you chance to be thrown

to the middle. The mirrors of public opinion multiply your importance

half a dozen times, and behold you are reflected into the whole picture.

But the kaleidoscope turns, and the pieces of glass are shifted. Other

broken chips now at the bottom of the heap will soon be filling the

centre!



"Permit me to change my figure of speech. You are sweeping back the

waves of the sea while the tide is falling, and the wide-mouthed public

looks on, and whispers about that your broom makes all the waves obey,

and drives them back at will. Just when you begin to believe it yourself

the tide may turn, and neither brooms nor all the powers on earth can

then sweep it back.



"Isidor Werner, you believe yourself rich; but your wealth is like

molasses in a sieve. If you do not dip in your finger and taste the

sweet occasionally, you will have nothing to show for your pains in the

end. I shall ask you for but a taste of the sweet now, so that I may

preserve a little of it against that day which may come, when the sieve

will be bright and clean and empty again!"



There was a knock at the door.



"Come in!" I shouted. "Nothing but this lunch can save me from your

eloquence. You have already ruined me in three similes!"



The waiter arranged a bountiful and tempting luncheon on a writing

table. I commenced on it at once, but the doctor, though repeatedly

urged, persistently refused. He took a long draught at a stein of

Munich beer, and continued:--



"My invention proposes to navigate the air and the ether beyond, as well

as the interplanetary spaces," he said impressively.



"Flying machine, eh?" I sneered, between bites of planked whitefish.



"Indeed no!" he growled, as if he detested this name. "My invention is

not a machine but a projectile. It is not self-propelling, because if it

depended upon its own propelling apparatus, it could not in thousands of

years navigate the interplanetary spaces. It is a gravity projectile,

and will travel at a rate of speed almost incalculable. It does not fly,

but its manner of travelling is more nearly like falling."



I gave the doctor a quick searching look to see if I could discover any

signs of incipient insanity. I met a firm, steady gaze; an earnest,

convincing look. Somehow, I felt there was something real and true and

wonderful about to come from the great scholar before me, and that I

must hear it and hear it all; that I must lend a serious and thoughtful

attention. My eyes were rivetted upon the doctor's for fully a minute in

silence.



"Go on," I said at last; "I am all attention."