structure so that one only had just to tap it, from a distance . . . with some waves or other . . . by an explosion, oscillations, or the devil knows what, and it would fly to pieces,—what? Bang! From a distance! What do you say to that?”
Prokop said nothing, and Mr. Carson, pulling at his cigar in delight, feasted his eyes on him.
“I’m not an electrician, you know,” he began after a moment; “it was explained to me by an expert, but I’ll be damned if I understood it. The fellow was all over me with electrons, ions, elementary quanta and I don’t know what; and, to finish up with, this professorial luminary stated that, to make a long story short, the thing was impossible. My friend, you’ve made a howler! You’ve done something which according to the greatest authorities is impossible . . .
“I tried to explain it myself,” he continued, “but not like that. Let us suppose that some one takes it into his head to . . . to make an unstable compound . . . from a certain lead salt. The salt in question does not behave as it should; it refuses to combine, eh? Then this chemist of ours tests everything possible . . . like a madman; and then remembers, let us say, that in the January number of the Chemist there was something about the said phlegmatic salt being a first-class coherer . . . a detector of electric waves. He gets an inspiration. An idiotic and sublime inspiration—that perhaps by the use of electric waves he can bring that cursed salt into a better frame of mind, eh? A man gets his finest inspirations through being stupid. So he
