"Well,” declared Bennie, with obvious admiration, "you’re certainly a shark at mathematics!”
The young lady took out her watch.
"You had better be thankful that I’m not the man-eating varie-ty - it’s nearly lunch-time!”
If Professor Hooker’s eyes had been as sensitive to delicate shades of the complexion as they were to the varied hues shown in his spectrophotometer, he would have noticed that a pink flush - very nearly wave-length 6250, he would have said - spread over her face as she caught his eye; but this incident wholly escaped his notice.
At the same moment, the bellow of a factory whistle somewhere over Alexandria way caused Professor Hooker to arouse himself out of his state of semilethargy,
"By thunder, it’s one o’clock!” he exclaimed, and, without further ado, he arose, bolted across the Circle, and made a flying leap for a street-car which was just swinging into Connecticut Avenue. The tailor-made girl followed him with an amused gaze.
"I really believe I know more mathematics than he does,” she remarked complacently to herself. "But isn’t he just a dear?” And with that, she too, arose and walked briskly away, as if she knew exactly where she was going - which she did.
III
He was fifteen minutes late to lunch, and the other boarders
had made way with everything on the table except a single chop and a few scrapings of macaroni which Mrs. Mullins, the landlady, had carefully rescued and preserved for him. But Professor Hooker, who ate merely as a matter of form, did not notice the absence of the other courses and, automatically obeying the law of com-pensation, evened up on the sago pudding, of which there was an inevitable abundance. Then he went up to his room, lit his pipe, seated himself, cross-legged, sideways on his bed, and got to work at his note-book again. The equation, however, in spite of the young lady’s clever suggestions, still refused to be solved. For an hour, he chewed his pencil, arising occasionally and walking up and down, three steps each way, in front of the marble-topped walnut bureau, until the middle-aged spinster who occupied the room below was ready to scream with nerves. As however, she was waiting for a man to come and take her out walking, she was obliged to possess her soul and feet in patience.
"I ought to have let that young woman finish up this calculation for me." Hooker at last conceded to the face in the glass. "I can’t handle the thing myself, and now I’ll have to go out to Georgetown and bother Thornton with it.”
Thornton was the senior astronomer at the new Naval Observatory, and, with his junior associate, Evarts, had been the first scientist to observe the mysterious phenomena incident to the manifestations of Pax’s power. But as Professor Hooker, at this point, remembered that he had left one of his other note-books at the Smithsonian, and as this note-book, when found, in turn sug-gested another unsolved problem, it was almost dark before he boarded the Georgetown car and quite naturally took his seat a-mong the places reserved for smokers.
The evening paper, however, offered very little of interest. In fact, Professor Hooker rarely found anything upon its front pages chat he cared to read. The anfics of political parties and their bosses, the matrimonial eccentricities of social leaders, "what the man will wear,” even the vivid accounts of battle, murder, and sudden death with which its columns were replete meant nothing to him. Disgustedly he folded over the newspaper and ran his eye down the miscellaneous foreign-news items. An obscure paragraph caught his eye.
THE NEW COMET
Geneva, Switzerland - The officials of the observatory here have just published the corrected elements of the orbit of the new comet reported by Battelli last month. They predict that this new intruder into the solar system will be of unusual brilliancy, probably surpassing chat of the Great Comet of 1811.
Here was something worth while - something directly pertaining to Professor Hooker’s bailiwick. Comets were his specialty. He had a familiar acquaintance with them and their families -knew them all by their first names, so to speak. Now, the Great Comet of 1811 had been the most sensational sidereal exhibition on record. It had caused a confident belief throughout the nations that the end of the world was surely at hand. If the new comet were going to be anything like that - holy smoke!
The full moon was climbing over the ghostly white domes of of the observatory as Professor Hooker, still pondering on the comet, trudged up the long hill to where his friend gave his life to the unselfish service of mankind. At the farther end of the building, a light glowed in a single window, and, having been admitted by a sleepy porter, he walked down the long corridor and knocked at Thornton’s door. Receiving no response, he waited for a moment, knocked again, and then opened the door himself. Thornton was sitting at his desk, completely absorbed in his calculations.
The grave profile of the astronomer showed through the dim light from the shrouded electric lamp like the head of an ancient statue of some Greek philosopher. Before him lay a litter of white papers covered with figures and an open book of logarithms. Immured in the interior of the great dome, with its monumental walls like those of an ancient Egyptian pyramid, they could hear no sound save the slow tick of the sidereal clock and the faint whir of the complicated machinery that drove the telescope in its infallible following of the movements of the solar system. For upward of two minutes, Thornton remained unconscious of Hooker’s presence. Then, with a sigh, he laid down his pencil and, looking up, observed his friend for the first time.
"Hello, Bennie,’’ he exclaimed, with a suggestion of excitement in his ordinarily calm voice; "pull your chair up here! We’ve got something big - the biggest thing, in fact, that has ever happened in astronomy! We got the elements of Battelli’s comet yesterday. Unless I’ve made some mistake in my figures, there’s going to be a smash-up in the universe!"
From Thornton, the conservative, such a declaration had immeasurable significance.
"You mean it’s going to hit the earth?" asked Hooker, with interest.
"No," answered Thornton; "but it looks as if it would strike one of the smaller asteroids in a head-on collision - and if it does -
"Something will drop," finished Hooker. "Which asteroid?"
"Medusa - one I’ve been following in its orbit for more than two years - a small planet, largely composed of pitchblende."
Hooker pursed his lips into a whistle.
"What do you really suppose will happen?” he inquired.
"No one can tell," replied the astronomer. "The collision might check Medusa in its orbit and cause it to fall into the sun. In falling, it might cross the earth’s path and strike us - it might mean the end of the world!"
"Gee whiz!" ejaculated Professor Hooker. "When is this interesting event going to take place?"
"I calculate that the comet and the asteroid will come into collision at three o’clock on the morning of the eighteenth of next month. You can come over and see it if you like."
"I’ll be here," Bennie assured him, jotting down the date. "And now,” he added, pulling his note-book from his pocket, "be
a good fellow and solve this equation for me, will you?”
"Good Lord!” protested Thornton. "Really, don’t you think it’s almost bedtime? I’m no good outside my own line, anyway.”
"This is your line,” retorted Bennie. "Look here, Thornton; don’t go back on me. All this fooling-around of mine with radium and that sort of stuff has weakened my mathematics. I’ve simply got to solve this equation. I almost solved it this morning,” he added, with a shamefaced recollection of the girl in the tan suit.