Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination: Stories by Edogawa Rampo

Author:Edogawa Rampo [RAMPO, EDOGAWA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Collections, Asian, General
ISBN: 9781462900619
Google: CfjPAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Published: 1956-01-01T12:00:00+00:00

A long time ago Tanuma had ordered him to construct this glass sphere. Its walls were half an inch thick and its diameter about four feet. In order to make the interior a one-unit mirror, Tanuma had the workmen and engineers paint the exterior of the globe with quicksilver, over which they pasted several layers of cotton cloth. The interior of the globe had been built in such a way that there were small cavities here and there as receptacles for electric bulbs which would not protrude. Another feature of the globe was a door just large enough to permit the entrance of an average-sized man.

The engineers and workers had been completely unaware of the purpose of the product, but orders were orders, and so they had gone ahead with their assignment. At last, on the night before, the globe had been finished, complete with an extra-long electric cord fitted to a socket on the outer surface, and it had been carefully brought into the lab. They plugged the cord into a wall socket, and then departed at once, leaving Tanuma alone with the sphere. What happened later was, of course, beyond the realm of their knowledge.

After hearing the chief engineers story, I asked him to leave. Then, putting Tanuma in the custody of the servants, who led him away to the house proper, I continued to stand alone in the laboratory, my eyes fixed on the glass fragments scattered about the room, desperately trying to solve the mystery of what had happened.

For a long while I stood thus, wrestling with the conundrum. Finally I reached the conclusion that Tanuma, after having completely exhausted every new idea in his mania of optics, had decided that he would construct a glass globe, completely lined with a single-unit mirror, which he would enter in order to see his own reflection.

Why would a man become crazy if he entered a glass globe lined with a mirror? What in the name of the devil had he seen there? When these thoughts passed through my mind, I felt as if I had been stabbed through the spine with a sword of ice.

Did he go mad after taking a glance at himself reflected by a completely spherical mirror? Or did he slowly lose his sanity after suddenly discovering that he was trapped inside his horrible round glass coffin—together with "that" reflection?

What, then, I asked myself again, had he seen? It was surely something completely beyond the scope of human imagination. Assuredly, never before had anyone shut himself up within the confines of a mirror-lined sphere. Even a trained physicist could not have guessed exactly what sort of vision would be created inside that sphere. Probably it would be a thing so unthinkable as to be utterly out of this world of ours.

So strange and terrifying must have been this reflection, of whatever shape it was, as it filled Tanuma's complete range of vision, that it would have made any mortal insane.

The only thing we know is the reflection cast by a concave mirror, which is only one section of a spherical whole.

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