Come on!"
They moved on to the laboratory. They entered—and tumult engulfed them.
The demonstrator was running and Thomas—pale and despairing—supervised its action.
The demonstrator was turning out currency by what was, approximately, wheelbarrow loads. As each load materialized from the fourth dimension, Thomas gathered it up and handed it to Daisy, who in theory was standing in line to receive it in equitable division.
But Daisy was having a furious quarrel among herself, because some one or other of her had tried to cheat.
"These," said Pete calmly, "are my fiancee."
But the short, squat man saw loads of greenbacks appearing from nowhere.
He drew out a short, squat revolver.
"You got a press turning out the stuff behind that wall, huh?" he said shrewdly.
"I'll take a look!"
He thrust forward masterfully. He pushed Thomas aside and mounted the inch-thick glass plate.
Pete reached, horrified, for the switch.
But it was too late.
The glass plate revolved one-eighth of a revolution.
The demonstrator hummed gleefully; and the officer appeared in duplicate just as Pete's nerveless fingers cut off everything.
Both of the officers looked at each other in flat, incredulous stupefaction.
Casey stared, and the hair rose from his head.
Then Arthur put a front paw tentatively upon Casey's shoulder.
Arthur had liked the cigar.
The door to the laboratory had been left open. He had come in to ask for another cigar.
But Casey was hopelessly unnerved.
He yelled and fled, imagining Arthur in hot pursuit.
He crashed into the model of a tesseract and entangled himself hopelessly.
Arthur was an amiable kangaroo, but he was sensitive. Casey's squeal of horror upset him.
He leaped blindly, knocking Pete over on the switch and turning it on, and landing between the two stupefied copies of the other officer.
They, sharing memories of Arthur, moved in panic just before the glass plate turned.
Arthur bounced down again at the demonstrator's hoot.
The nearest copy of the short, squat man made a long, graceful leap and went flying out of the door.
Pete struggled with the other, who waved his gun and demanded explanations, growing hoarse from his earnestness.
Pete attempted to explain in terms of pretty girls stepping on banana peels, but it struck the officer as irrelevant. He shouted hoarsely while another Arthur hopped down from the glass plate—while a third, and fourth, and fifth, and sixth, and seventh Arthur appeared on the scene.
He barked at Pete until screams from practically all of Daisy made him turn to see the laboratory overflowing with five-foot Arthurs, all very pleasantly astonished and anxious to make friends with himself so he could play.
Arthur was the only person who really approved the course events had taken.
He had existed largely in his own society.
But now his own company was numerous.
From a solitary kangaroo, in fact, Arthur had become a good-sized herd. And in his happy excitement over the fact, Arthur forgot all decorum and began to play an hysterical form of disorganized leapfrog all about the laboratory.
The officer went down and became a take-off spot for the game. Daisy shrieked furiously.
And Arthur—all of him—chose new points of vantage for his leaps until one of him chose the driving motor of the demonstrator.
That industrious mechanism emitted bright sparks and bit him.
And Arthur soared in terror through the window, followed by all the rest of himself, who still thought it part of the game.
In seconds, the laboratory was empty of Arthurs. But the demonstrator was making weird, pained noises.
Casey remained entangled in the bars of the tesseract, through which he gazed with much the expression of an inmate of a padded cell.
Only one of the short, squat officers remained in the building.
He had no breath left.
And Daisy was too angry to make a sound—all six of her.
Pete alone was sanely calm.
"Well," he said philosophically, "things seem to have settled down a bit.
But something's happened to the demonstrator."
"I'm sorry, sir," said Thomas pallidly, "I'm no hand at machinery."
One of Daisy said angrily to another of Daisy:
"You've got a nerve!