THE OTHER WORLD
By Murray Leinster
DICK BLAIR dug up a Fifth Dynasty tomb in Lower Egypt and found that one object, and one only, had been spoiled by dampness in a climate which preserved all the other objects in the tomb to perfection. Almost simultaneously, in New York, a plumber carrying a kit of tools turned into a doorway on Eighth Avenue and was never seen again, living or dead. Shortly after, a half-ton of dried figs vanished inexplicably from a locked warehouse in Smyrna, and—in New York—a covered barge complete with a load of bricks and building materials evaporated into thin air while a night watchman gazed goggle-eyed. His account of the event was not believed.
There were other pertinent events even before these. One year in New York’s history of the number of missing persons who had no reason to vanish went up to four times normal. Most missing persons have their reasons for disappearing, but there are always a few who seem neither to have been murdered or to have absconded. This year the number of such cases was unprecedented, and there was no explanation for it at all.
There was the time seventy-five years before when the four prettiest members of a theatrical chorus went upstairs to doff their winter wraps in the home of a rich man who was giving a party, and never came down again. Then there was that indubitable were-wolf which was killed in Avino province in Italy, in the 1850’s. It was classed only tentatively as wolf because it had some oddities of conformation, but it had intelligence at least equal to that of the peasants on whom it had preyed for two weeks before its destruction. It had killed and partly or wholly devoured twenty-two human beings in two weeks. The scientists of the time were very much annoyed when enraged peasants stormed the place where it was held for examination and burned the carcass to ashes.
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