“You have a nasty job fishing it out again?”
“Not at all. It smashes into flinders, the marble dust combines with the sulphuric acid, and forms a neutral liquid, bubbling with carbonic acid. Even you, Griggs, must know that carbonic acid gas will put out any fire, without damaging anything. There you are.”
“I see. You smell fire, rush up here and knock that ball into the tank, and the house is flooded through the dots in your frieze. Remarkable!”
“Oh, I don't even have to come up here,” smiled Hawkins. “See that?”
“That” was a little strand of platinum wire in a niche in the wall.
“That's just a test fuse, so that I can see that she's all in working order,” pursued the inventor, leaning his cigar against it. “There's half a dozen of them in every room in the house. As soon as the heat touches them, they melt and set off my electric release—and down drops the cover of the tank—ball and all. The ball breaks, the valve at the bottom opens automatically—and down goes the tank, full of extinguisher.”
“Well, I must say it looks practical.”
“It is!” asserted Hawkins. “Some night—if the night ever comes—when you see a roaring blaze in one of these rooms subdued in ten seconds by the gentle drizzle that comes out of that frieze, you will——”
“Mr. Hawkins, sir,” interrupted Hawkins' butler at the door.
“Well, William?”