Seven Minutes
By Frank Owen
When Dr. Gordon Winwood gave up his splendid practise on Upper Fifth Avenue and left the city, it was a great surprize to his friends. He gave no reason for his leaving nor did he acquaint anyone with his destination. He simply disappeared from his usual haunts in New York as completely as though he had dissolved into the very air. Among those who knew him the affair was a nine days' wonder, but on the tenth day it was forgotten, perhaps eclipsed by some new and greater enigma.
Only Barlow Garth, Dr. Winwood's colored assistant, knew where he had gone, and Barlow had gone with him. With him also had gone Coralie Winwood, the doctor's beautiful wife, although even she was unacquainted with the actual facts. As the train sped up into the wild stretches of woodland which carpet the slopes of the Adirondack Mountains, she sat by her drawing room window and crooned a rather weird love song, or rather it faintly resembled a love song, for it was like nothing of Earth. Sitting there by the window, bathed in sunlight, her lovely hair gleaming and shimmering about her shoulders like a golden flood, she was a thing of marvelous beauty. Her mouth was exquisitely fashioned, rather wistful and demure. The contour of her nose was flawless. Her eyes were violet-blue. They gleamed in the sunlight like gorgeous jewels, but their depths suggested darkness, black pools of brooding mystery. She smiled constantly for no apparent reason, and once she laughed aloud, a musical little laugh which made one think of the tinkling music of a tiny waterfall.
Dr. Winwood sat opposite his wife. He feasted his eyes upon her as though he were starving. He seemed to seek to slake his thirst for her in the dark flood of her eyes. When he spoke there was a gentleness in his voice that was almost a caress. He talked to her as though she were a mere child, and yet for the most part when he spoke to her he seemed to be addressing Barlow Garth, who stood constantly ready for commands, as faithful as the head eunuch in a sultan's palace. Yet though Barlow Garth stood in the manner of a servant, he was far from a servitor in the eyes of the doctor. For Barlow Garth was Dr. Winwood's greatest friend, despite their difference in color. He had assisted the doctor for years in all his experiments. In New York it used to be facetiously said that the black man was really the white man's shadow and not a separate personage at all. Barlow Garth heard the rumor and smiled his inimitable smile, but he did not seem ill-pleased.
If he had cared to be garrulous, he could have told an amazing story which would have sounded almost incredible, for the happenings of the past week had opened up an entirely new path in science. Barlow Garth had written exhaustive accounts of their experiment. He had done so at
