“Walter,” he said, as the train pulled into the station, “I want that published in to-morrow’s papers.”
I looked over what he had written. It was one of the most sensational stories I have ever fathered, beginning, “Latest of the victims of the unknown poisoner of whole families in Stratfield, Connecticut, is Miss Isabel Pearcy, whose father, Randall Pearcy, died last week.”
I knew that it was a “plant” of some kind, for so far he had discovered no evidence that Miss Pearcy had been affected. What his purpose was, I could not guess, but I got the story printed.
The next morning early Kennedy was quietly at work in the laboratory.
“What is this treatment of lead poisoning by electrolysis?” I asked, now that there had come a lull when I might get an intelligible answer. “How does it work?”
“Brand new, Walter,” replied Kennedy. “It has been discovered that ions will flow directly through the membranes.”
“Ions?” I repeated. “What are ions?”
“Travelers,” he answered, smiling, “so named by Faraday from the Greek verb, io, to go. They are little positive and negative charges of electricity of which molecules are composed. You know some believe now that matter is really composed of electrical energy. I think I can explain it best by a simile I use with my classes. It is as though you had a ballroom in which the dancers in couples represent the neutral molecules. There are a certain number of isolated ladies and gentlemen—dissociated ions—” “Who don’t know these new dances?” I interrupted.
“They all know this dance,” he laughed. “But, to be serious in the simile, suppose at one end of the room there is a large mirror and at the other a buffet with cigars and champagne. What happens to the dissociated ions?”
“Well, I suppose you want me to say that the ladies gather about the mirror and the men about the buffet.”