gets hold of some comic transformer and sets to work; what he did is at present his secret, but in the end . . . he will achieve the synthesis he wants. He’ll achieve it. Or at least, the oscillation will do it. Man, I shall have to go down on all fours and start learning physics in my old age; I’m talking rubbish, eh?”
Prokop muttered something completely unintelligible.
“That doesn’t matter,” said Mr. Carson calmly. “As long as it holds together. I’m dull and I imagine that it has some sort of electro-magnetic structure. If this structure is disturbed, then . . . it disintegrates, eh? Luckily about ten thousand regular wireless stations and several hundred illegal ones preserve in our atmosphere the sort of electro-magnetic climate, the sort of—eh—eh—oscillatory bath which suits this structure. And so it holds together . . .”
Mr. Carson reflected for a moment. “And now,” he began again, “imagine that some devil has a means by which he can thoroughly disturb electric waves. Obliterate them or something of the sort. Imagine that—God knows why—he does this regularly on Tuesdays and Fridays at half-past ten o’clock at night. At that minute and second all wireless communication is interrupted all over the world; but at that minute and second something also happens in this unstable compound, in so far as it is not isolated. . . . In a porcelain box, for example; something in it is disturbed . . . cracks, and it . . . it . . .”
