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“Ah, hell!” said he. “Pull the damn bed down and spike it to the floor!” This we did. Then we held a short but intense consultation. Whatever else might be the matter, obviously Tristan was suffering severely from shock and, for all we knew, maybe from partial electrocution. So we called up Dr. Grosnoff in the nearest town.

* * * * *

Grosnoff after our brief but disingenuous explanation, threw off the bed covers in a business-like way, then straightened up grimly.

“And may I ask,” he said with sarcastic politeness, “since when a strait-jacket has become first-aid for a case of lightning stroke?”

“He was delirious,” I stammered.

“Delirious my eye! He’s as quiet as a lamb. And you’ve tied him down so tightly that the straps are cutting right into him! Of all the–the–” He stopped, evidently feeling words futile, and before we could make an effective attempt to stop him, whipped out a knife and cut the straps. Tristan’s unfortunate body instantly crashed against the ceiling, smashing the lathing and plaster, and remaining half embedded in the ruins. A low cry of pain rose from Alice. Dr. Grosnoff staggered to a chair and sat down, his eyes fixed on the ceiling with a steady stare–the odd caricature of a man coolly studying an interesting phenomenon.

My brother appeared to be aroused by the shock, struggling about in his embedment, and finally sat up. Up? Down, I mean. Then he stood, on the ceiling, and began to walk! His nose had been bruised by the impact, and I noticed with uncomprehending wonder that the blood moved slowly upward over his lip. He saw the window, and walked across the ceiling to it upside down. There he pushed the top of the window down and leaned out, gazing up into the sky with some sort of fascination. Instantly he crouched on the ceiling, hiding his eyes, while the house rang with shriek after shriek of mortal terror, speeding the packing of the parting guests. Alice seized my arm, her fingers cutting painfully into the flesh.

“Jim,” she screamed. “I see it now–don’t you? His gravity’s all changed around–he weighs up ! He thinks the sky’s under him!”

The human mind is so constructed that merely to name a thing oddly smooths its unwonted outlines to the grasp of the mind; the conception of a simple reversal of my brother’s weight, I think, saved us all from the padded cell. That made it so commonplace, such an everyday sort of thing, likely to happen to anybody. The ordinary phenomenon of gravitation is no whit more mysterious, in all truth, than that which we were now witnessing–but we are born to it !

* * * * *

Dr. Grosnoff recovered in a manner which showed considerable caliber.

“Well,” he grunted, “that being the case, we’d best be looking after him. Nervous shock, possible electric shock and electric burns, psychasthenia–that’s going to be a long-drawn affair–bruises, maybe a little concussion, and possibly internal injury–that was equivalent to a ten-foot unbroken fall flat on his stomach, and I’ll never forgive myself if…. Get me a chair!”

With infinite care and reassuring words, the big doctor with our help pulled my brother down, the latter frantically begging us not to let him “fall” again. Holding him securely on the bed and trying to reassure him, Grosnoff said:

“Straps and ropes won’t do. His whole weight hangs in them–they’ll cut him unmercifully. Take a sheet, tie the corners with ropes, and let him lie in that like a hammock!”