A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

14 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY could afford to do it, and asked Dr. Franklin if it were simply because they were so tremendously interested in his experiments. “The truth is,” he said, “that the heads of this firm are not quite intelligent enough to appreciate the direction which his experiments are taking. They don’t know how much he has in hand, But it isn’t either pity or charity that makes them keep up such a big plant for Cleve- land Darrell. No, he saves them in hard cash something like two or three hundred thousand dollars a year, and in addition, he’s put some commercial inventions in their hands that ought to put them just about a whole century ahead of the rest of the world.” While the doctor was speaking, I took up his statements one by one and used them as measuring rods with which to estimate the mental size of Cleve Darrell, and he kept growing and growing against the horizon of my imagination until he pretty well stood up among the stars. Of course I had known for years that he was important. But I had not suspected that he was a giant. When he was with me, he talked fishing and hunting, and such stuff, and he could be very good company both before dinner and after. But this was different. I was to see him on his own camping grounds! We saw him very quickly. We got up into a narrow little box of a sitting room, with seventeen kinds of odors in it, all of them bad, and a tired- looking boy took our names in, and a tired-looking little man with a week’s beard on his face came out and snapped at us, and said that we would have to wait. We asked him how long we would have to wait and I understood him to say, as he turned his back on us and went away with the white skirts of his apron flapping behind him, that he didn’t know how long we would have to wait, and that he didn’t give a damn. I looked at Dr. Franklin, and the doctor smiled a little. ‘People who work around Cleveland Darrell,” said he, “are apt to become a little tense—if they have wits enough to understand what he’s doing.” We went over and stood at the window that looked down upon the galley; and there we waited for another half hour, I think. And then a red streak blinded me. No, it was more golden than red. It leaped, I think, from farther down the side of the building, and it landed somewhere on the face of the opposite cliff. S, we could see the spot where it landed. There was a strange howling, roaring sound like thunder and a sick cat making music together. And I saw a glowing spot form on the side of the cliff and grow rapidly. While from the nether rim of that circle, red-golden dripping flowed down the face of the cliff, and where they reached precipitous falls and jumped through the air, they struck again on the rock below with showering of liv- ing sparks. The whole cliff was lighted up. It was the weirdest thing that I’d ever seen. As for Dr. Franklin, I thought that he’d throw himself out the window, he climbed so far and hung so over the ground. And there was a groaning in his throat. Now the great circle of light that had been growing and growing up to this mo- ment, disappeared as suddenly as it had commenced. And Franklin dropped back into the room, and barely managed to stagger to a chair. He sank into it, and I, turning about, pretty well flabbergasted, was in time to see a tall figure with long, loose white arms, and a long white gown that flowed to the ground, and—a glass face! This form stood by the door, fumbling at its head, and presently the glass mask came away and showed me Darrell. Yes, it was the same fellow, but he had such a look on his face as I never had seen before. Dr. Franklin had said that the men who worked with young Darrell were apt to get a little tense. If so, it was a trouble that they could easily have caught from their boss. The color was out of his face, and the eyes flitted far back under his brows. He looked as though he hadn't slept for a month; but he looked, too, as if he could keep on working for another month. Perhaps that will give you my feeling about how he had been burning himself up, and how much there still re- mained to burnin him! He gave us a wave of the hand for a greeting. He didn’t have time for us yet. COMicaoo® S C@