While sketching the Brooklyn Bridge during a public meeting dedicated to the completion of its Manhattan tower, Leopold notices Stuart Besser taking photographs with an anachronistically small camera. Stuart is an amateur physicist (and a great‑great‑grandson of Leopold) from 21st‑century New York, who has discovered the existence of gravitational time portals. At the evening ball, during which Leopold is to announce his bride-to-be, he sees Stuart photographing design sketches in the duke's study. Chasing Stuart, he tries to save him from falling off the unfinished bridge, only for both to fall into the time portal.