haps it isn't fair to give the impression that the desk was in
disorder. It was merely busy; just as though someone who had been
deeply engaged in working had for the moment stepped away. There was a
row of books across the back edge, and Tony leaned over eagerly to
glance at the titles.

"'Theory of Parallels,' Lobatchevsky; 'Transformation of Complex
Functions,' Riemann; 'Tensors and Geodesics,' Gauss," Tony read.
"Hm--old stuff. But here's modern dope along the same line. 'Tensors,'
by Christoffel; 'Absolute Differential Calculus,' by Ricci and Levi
Civita. And Schroedinger and Eddington and D'Abro. Looks like
somebody's interested in Relativity. Hm!"

* * * * *

He bent over, his constantly increasing interest showing in the
attitude of his body; he turned over papers and opened notebooks
crowded full of handwritten figures. Last of all he noted the batch of
manuscript directly in front of him in the middle of the front edge of
the desk. It was typewritten, with corrections and interlineations all
over it in purple ink.

A title, "The Parallel Transformations of Equations for Matter,
Energy, and Tensors," had been crossed out with purple ink, and "The
Intimate Relation between Matter and Tensors" substituted. Tony bent
over it and read. He was so fascinated that it did not even occur to
him to speculate on the happy circumstance that the mysteriously
appearing desk had brought its own scientific explanation with it. The
title of the paper told him that its sheets would elucidate the
apparently supernatural phenomenon, and all he did was to plunge
breathlessly ahead in his eager reading. The article was short, about
seven typewritten sheets. He took out his pencil and followed through
the mathematical equations readily. Tony's mind was a brilliant, even
though an erring one.

Under the first article lay a second one. One glance at the title
caused Tony to stiffen. Then he picked up the typewritten script and
carried it across the big room of his laboratory, as far away from the
desk as he could get. He put the girl's photograph in his pocket. Then
he took heaps and armfuls of papers, books and notes and carried them
from the desk to a bench in the far corner. For, as soon as he had
read the title, "A Preliminary Report of Experimental Work in the
Physical Manipulation of Tensors," a sudden icy panic gripped his
heart lest the desk and its papers suddenly disappear before he had
f