are engaged in, or have contributed to, the perilous work of
trying to solve Earth's one remaining cosmological mystery.

There is a saying, ancient as the hills, that "truth is stranger
than fiction," and in a most startling manner has this axiom been
brought home to me within the last fortnight.

It was just two o'clock in the morning when I was aroused from a
restful sleep by the vigorous ringing of my door-bell. The
untimely disturber proved to be a messenger bearing a note,
scrawled almost to the point of illegibility, from an old
Norseman by the name of Olaf Jansen. After much deciphering, I
made out the writing, which simply said: "Am ill unto death.
Come." The call was imperative, and I lost no time in making
ready to comply.

Perhaps I may as well explain here that Olaf Jansen, a man who
quite recently celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday, has for the
last half-dozen years been living alone in an unpretentious
bungalow out Glendale way, a short distance from the business
district of Los Angeles, California.

It was less than two years ago, while out walking one afternoon
that I was attracted by Olaf Jansen's house and its homelike
surroundings, toward its owner and occupant, whom I afterward
came to know as a believer in the ancient worship of Odin
and Thor.

There was a gentleness in his face, and a kindly expression in
the keenly alert gray eyes of this man who had lived more than