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Such rudimentary human beings it would be hard to conceive, and so after a while it occurred to some one that the same scientific methods that discover and disclose to us the modes of life, the habits, and even thoughts of primitive and rudimentary man, might be devoted to establishing a means of communication with them and unveil the secret the whole world was eager to know. Accordingly, they were taken to the University of Chicago and turned over to the department of anthropology. The learned expounders of this science were not long in devising a simple means of communication. The twelve unfortunates were seated upon a recitation bench and a doctor of philosophy wrote out an alphabet upon the blackboard.

“One rap of your foot will be A,” said the doctor of philosophy. “Two will be B. Two raps, a pause, and one will be C. We will soon learn your story.”

At this moment, the reverberations of a prodigious blow upon the door outside echoed through the room, “bang, bang–bang, bang, bang–bang.”

Unaccountably startled, as if at the hearing of some portent, the professor stood rooted to the spot for a moment, and then was about to leap to the door, when the simulacrums before him sprang to their feet and with a tremendous stamping, smote their wooden legs upon the floor, “stamp, stamp–stamp, stamp, stamp–stamp.”

The professor stared at the twelve mutes. There were their immobile faces, as wooden as their wooden legs, wearing their perpetual grin, but the westering sun shone on their eyes and there he saw an abject, grovelling fear, dreadful to behold, the master passion of twelve souls, slaves to some mysterious will which had just made itself manifest out of the unseen. By what means the will had gained this ascendancy, the terrible disfigurements of their remnants of bodies told only too well, and he who ran could read the utter prostration before the power which in their lives had been the greatest and most terrible in the universe. Again, far off in a distant corridor of the building, slowly rumbled to them: “knock, knock–knock; knock, knock–knock,” and the twelve unfortunates, like so many automatons, gave token of their obedience. They had been warned to keep the secret.

And so was foiled the attempts of the learned anthropologists to hold converse with these rudimentary beings. The alphabet of such elaborate devisings went for naught. Never did the twelve persons in the state of primitive culture get further than the letter C: “knock, knock–knock; knock, knock–knock.”