"In my belief," went on Rawn, frowning at this flippancy, "I am upon the eve of a great success, Charles."
"What sort of success, Mr. Rawn?" inquired Halsey, more soberly.
Rawn smiled largely. "You will hardly credit me when I tell you, almost all sorts of success! To make it short, I have formed a power company—a concern for the cheap generation and general transmission of power. In the course of a few months we'll proceed in the manufacture of electrical transmitters and receivers for what I call the lost current of electricity."
Halsey stood cold for a moment, and looked at him in amazement.
"You don't mean to say—why, that's precisely what I've been thinking of for so long."
"I don't doubt many have been thinking of it," rejoined Rawn. "It had to come. These things seem to happen in cycles. It's almost a toss-up what man will first perfect an invention when once it gets in the air, so to speak. Now, this invention of mine has been due ever since the developments in wireless transmission. In truth, I may say that I have only gone a little beyond the wireless idea. What I have done is to separate the two currents of electricity."
Halsey leaned against the wall. "My God!" he half whispered. He smiled foolishly.
"Why, Mr. Rawn," he said finally, "I've been studying that, I don't know how long—ever since the researches in my university were made public. I thought for some time I might be able to figure it out further than our professors have as yet. Pflüger, of Bonn, in Germany, has been working for years and years on that theory of perpetual motion in all molecules."
"Mollycules? I don't know as I ever really saw any," hesitated Rawn.
"Very likely, Mr. Rawn!"