"There are more wonders than the papers print. I saw that happen twice in the Indian Ocean, when I was a young man. I have been studying more or less on it ever since. Now I will show you the remainder of my Odistor. I call it that because folks when I was young used to talk of a mysterious Odic force."
To the desk he lifted a black leather grip-sack, as narrow, as low, and about twice as long as one of those in which surgeons carry their implements. From this he extracted a simple-seeming apparatus which I still suppose to have been of the nature of an electric machine. Externally it resembled a rectangular umbrella box of metal similar to that of the bulb. It was about four feet in length and four inches in height and in breadth. That end which he placed nearest the window was grooved to receive one-half the bulb accurately. Clamped longitudinally to the top of the box was a copper tube half-an-inch in exterior diameter, and closed, except for a pinhole sight, at the end farthest from the window. The other, or open end, was divided evenly by a perpendicular filament apparently of platinum.
Adam placed this sighted box on the green baize, its longer axis pointing across the Charles River to Cambridge, through the window. He carefully propped up the wire-net sash. Stooping at the desk he looked through the pin-hole sight and shifted the box to his satisfaction.
"Squint along the line of sight," he said, giving place to me. I stooped and complied.
"You see Memorial Hall tower right in the line?"
"Precisely."
"But what is nearest on the Cambridge shore?"
"The stone revetment wall."
"I mean next beyond that."
"The long shed with the big sign 'Builders' in black letters."