i
in the most commonplace way in the world, and quite as though he had always done this very thing, mr. henry warfield standley, president of the i. & d. a. railway co., warned in advance by mr. rawn's telephone, came to the door himself. presently the three, rawn, halsey and the president of the company for which both so long had worked, sat at the long glass-covered table, where lay many papers. the president pushed a button and ordered the attendance of mr. theodosius ackerman, the general traffic manager; so that now they made four in company. the g.t.m., as he was known, had suffered great abrasion of the nerves by the delay of mr. rawn to produce a machine done up in a newspaper or in any way whatsoever, and he had joined the president in a disgusted belief that in some way he had been made foolish. he frowned now savagely at john rawn, and john rawn now, his hat on his head, frowned quite as savagely at him.
very little was said, but after a time young halsey nervously removed the newspaper from his little machine, and displayed it uncovered on the table, a ribbed and coiled and toothed little model, showing file marks here and there, and resembling nothing in particular in the world. they four regarded it calmly, curiously, this machine destined in the belief of some to double the length of the workman's day, to halve the distance around the world, to make or break fortunes, to make or break a country. the president started to jest, but his voice shook a trifle after all. to the general traffic manager the contrivance seemed absurdly small and inadequate. he choked so much he could not talk. rawn did not smile. he continued his heavy frown. young halsey, tacitly elected spokesman by rawn, cleared his throat as he addressed the president of the road, for whom he still felt naught but awe.
"we have put our receiver in tune with the dynamo in the basement of this building, mr. standley," began he, finally. both the magnates frowned at mr. halsey's presumption and turned to mr. rawn. the latter waved a large gesture.
"i forgot to say, gentlemen, that mr. halsey has aided me in working out my model, and it is just as well he should explain my idea." halsey therefore went on:
"and now you can see right here, on the table before you, about all the rest of it that we have. it isn't attached to anything at all. there is no wired connection of any sort whatever. now if we can run that electric fan over there with 'juice' that we can take right out of the air—with the second current which we take out of the motor in the basement—just as well as the primary current wired to the fan will run it, why, then, it looks to me as though our receiver here ought to be accepted as a working device."
the room was silent now. they sat looking at him. he resumed:
"besides, this receiver is more powerful than you think. i suppose i could burst that fan wide open with it, by just wiring the two, after disconnecting the original wiring of the fan to the house dynamo."
halsey spoke very calmly, yet the hands of the president of the road, resting on the edge of the table, trembled slightly. the fighting red had disappeared from the face of the g.t.m. he was bluish gray, as though deathly ill. he was, however, the first to recover. "well, why don't you burst it, then?" he exclaimed savagely, mopping at his forehead.
ii
"very well," said halsey quietly. "but first i suppose i ought to explain just a little about the basic idea under this whole proposition. you see that table there—we regard it as motionless. as a matter of fact, it is full of nothing but motion, so tremendously rapid that we are unconscious of it. that wall yonder is nothing but a continuous series of vibrations, of inconceivable rapidity. this floor is full of force, of energy. it's all around us—energy, force, motion.
"in your studies in physics, gentlemen, you learned that heat and motion are convertible. and you learned about the resultant of power—which always, so far as any accepted law of physics goes, is in ratio to the distance through which applied.
"now, what i've done," said halsey—john rawn frowned and coughed heavily, but no one noticed him, and halsey himself was unconscious of using the first personal pronoun—"is just to cut off all need of considering the distance through which force is applied. now, i don't know whether i can make it entirely plain to you, except by physical demonstration, but what i've done here is to carry further the idea of wireless telegraphy. we have here, to use an understandable figure of speech, a receiver which is the equivalent of a sounding-board—a sounding-board in tune to the vibrations of the second or free current of electricity.
"gentlemen, our idea was, in terms, that of harnessing up molecular activity. if we have done that, we have, of course, tapped the one exhaustless reservoir of power."
iii
the president of the railway had grown yet paler; but he nodded wisely, and halsey went on:
"there isn't any miracle in science that ought to cause us any wonder. it took science a long time to learn that heat and motion are interchangeable. i strike a cold piece of iron with a moving hammer, and the iron gets hot. it was cold before, and there hasn't been any fire near it. that's just as wonderful a thing—although we all accept it without question—as all that i've got here on the table before you. if i can stop some of the free energy that is vibrating all around us, i'm going to get either motion or heat out of it, and that's simple. we have gone far enough to know that this little receiver here, gentlemen, will arrest the free current of electricity, force, energy, whatever you care to call it, that's in the air and which can be multiplied and transmitted through the air. why and how it does that, i can't just tell, myself. no one has ever been able to explain everything about the magnetic needle, but we use it just the same. we don't so much care what it is if we can use it."
"not a damned bit!" growled the g.t.m. "but can we? why don't you get busy with that fan?"
halsey rose and went over to the electric fan and snipped off a length of the wire, so that the fan stood free and unattached on its shelf. the loose wire he now busied himself in attaching to the fan and in turn to the little model on the table.
"to my mind," said he, after finishing this work, and arresting a finger above a little connecting lever in the side of the receiver, "it's a very beautiful thought that underlies all this. the forces which run through this receiver will never grow tired. labor will be a joy for them, a delight, as labor ought to be in any form. mr. rawn and i don't always quite agree about that," he smiled, still with his finger above the little lever. "what i hope to do is to change the working-man from being an object back into being a man, so that labor may be a joy and not a dread."
"then we don't want it," grinned the president, feebly essaying a jest. "mr. rawn and i were agreed that it would do just the other thing!"
"well, go on with it!" growled ackerman. "i'm a busy man. to hell with the story! we want results!"
every man present sprang back from the little instrument on the table. there came a slowly increasing purr of the motor, a series of intense blue sparks showing at the toothed points of reception. the blades of the fan began to revolve faster and faster; so fast that at length both eye and ear ceased to record their doings. then, after sight and sound had failed to serve, there came a crash!
there was no fan on the shelf where it had stood. fragments of metal were buried in the woodwork, in the wall. john rawn wiped the blood from a cut on his cheek. no one said anything. it was quite commonplace, after all.
iv
"you wished to see what it would do," said halsey grimly. "the power seems to be there. any time you like, any amount you like. and you saw that it didn't come in here by wire—it was only transmitted from the receiver, not to it. the fan is broken, but the receiver is just the way we left it. well, it looks as though we had settled a few questions, doesn't it?"
standley, pale, could only gasp, "why, it's—it's dangerous!" he said. "it's devilish! look there!" he pointed at the blood on rawn's face. rawn remained silent.
"there is no use applying undue force to a minor purpose," said halsey, "any more than there is in throwing on the high speed of a car going down hill. but our reserve is there, gentlemen, just the same. by increasing the size of our receivers we can develop power to turn any amount of machinery that can be geared together—any number of machines, large or small, at any place. i only wanted to show what the real power is in this device of ours. our receiver is very small, you see."
they all remained silent for a time. standley at last drew a long breath.
"we're saved!" said he. "what do you say to it, jim?" this to ackerman.
"it looks like a go," said the latter, drawing a deep sigh. "we've seen enough right here to make good with our people back east; and we've got enough right now to get the public in."
the president turned an agitated eye upon john rawn. "mr. rawn," said he, "referring to the tenor of our earlier conversation, i desire to say that we are not in the habit of giving the lion's share to anybody—"
"suit yourself," said john rawn, smiling.
"but in this case, as i said to you at first, there's so much in this if there's anything at all, that there's no use splitting hairs over it." he receded rapidly from the position he coveted but saw he could not hold.
"we ought to begin work at once. er—mr. rawn, do you happen to have any present need for any money—personally?"
"no," answered john rawn calmly, "i am in no need of funds. when the organization is completed, and i begin my work as president of the power company, i shall be glad to go on the pay-roll, of course. i should add now that i expect mr. halsey to be my general manager in the mechanical department."
"in regard to salaries," said the president, hesitating, "we might roughly sketch out something—"
"my own salary will be a hundred thousand dollars a year," said mr. rawn quietly. "i don't think we should ask mr. halsey to work for less than five thousand. do you, gentlemen?"
"i've worked for less, myself," said ackerman grimly.
"there shall be no haggling, gentlemen, no haggling," said the president blandly. "it shall be as mr. rawn suggests. by the way, a near call that, rawn."
he waved a hand at the bloody cut on our hero's face. that gentleman drew a half sigh of unconscious triumph. it was the first time any one in that office had ever dropped the "mister" from his name! he saw himself entering into the charmed circle.
"suppose it had come a half inch closer?" suggested the president.
"it didn't," said john rawn. "it was never meant to."
"that's the talk!" drawled ackerman. "i'll tell you, rawn, come in to-morrow. we'll get the patent lawyers and our corporation counsel, and begin work on this thing."
v
that was all there was about it, the proceedings being wholly prosaic and commonplace. mr. halsey found again his newspaper, again wrapped up his machine therein, took it under his arm, and hesitatingly turned toward the door, the palest now, and most unhappy of them all. he had denied his own first-born. he had publicly disclaimed ownership in this idea. rawn was to have a hundred thousand dollars a year, he only a twentieth of that. just where and how was rawn twenty times as valuable as himself, when all the time it had been he.—but then, what matter? five thousand dollars a year and grace! what more could any man desire than that? he forced that to console him, forced himself to believe it sordid to haggle on the price of love; and so passed down in the elevator, out through the corridors to the street, without much further speech to any.
"charles," said his intended father-in-law, as they approached the nearest corner, "do you happen to have a quarter left? i feel somewhat hungry, and for the time i have no money at all with me."
