light circuit—it carries over a thousand volts. And you switched that into the telephone circuit?"
"Dat's what I done did, Massa Tom; yas, sah!"
"What for?"
"Why, I done want t' make mah voice good an' loud t' skeer dat rascal Koku!"
Tom stared at the colored man in amazement.
"No wonder you got a shock!" exclaimed the young inventor. "You didn't get all the thousand volts, for part of it was shunted off; but you got a good charge, all right. So that's what did the business; eh? It was the combination of the two electrical circuits that sent the photograph over the wire.
"I understand it now, Rad; but you did more than I've been able to do. I never, in a hundred years, would have thought of switching on that current. It never occurred to me. But you, doing it by accident, brought out the truth. It's often that way in discoveries. And Koku was standing in the other telephone booth, near the plate there, when you switched in this current, Rad?"
"Yas, sah, Massa Tom. He were. An' yo' ought t' see him hop when he heard mah voice yellin' at him. Ha! ha! ha!"
