There was not much to be examined. Four walls, a ceiling and a floor—all of undressed wood—that was about the extent of the affair; but in the center of the floor lay a great circular iron plate, some two feet across and festooned near the edge with a circle of highly unornamental iron bolt heads.
Beside the plate, a lever rising perpendicularly from the floor constituted the sole furnishing of the car.
“Now, you've seen a hydraulic elevator?” Hawkins began. “You know how they work—a big steel shaft pushed up the car from underneath, so that when it is in operation the car is simply a box standing on the end of a pole, which rises or sinks, as the operator wills.”
“I believe so,” I assented. “I think it's time now for me to be go——”
“That principle is fallacious!” the inventor exclaimed. “Consider what it would mean here—a steel shaft sixteen stories high, weighing tons and tons!”
“Well?”
“Well, sir, I have reversed that idiotic idea!” Hawkins announced triumphantly. “I have had a hole dug sixteen stories deep, and put the steel shaft down into it.”
It was about what one might have expected from Hawkins; but despite my long acquaintance with his bizarre mental machinery, I stood and gasped in sheer amazement.
“Now, then,” pursued the inventor. “I have had a steel tube made, a little longer than the shaft, you understand.”
“What! Even longer than sixteen stories?”