They saw as much, and more. Halsey's little car repeated its circuit about the long table again and again, tirelessly, operated by power taken from the unwired receiver. Where the receiver got its power Halsey explained in detail as he had done before.
The thing was there to show for itself. As to the breadth of its application, these men needed no advice. They were accustomed to the look ahead, to the weighing of wide possibilities.
"It's like the French conjurer, gentlemen," said John Rawn smiling. "He operates with his sleeves rolled up. 'There is no déception, by friends,' says he. There's the whole works on the table right before us. If it isn't a tremendous thing I'm the worst fooled man in all this world, and I'll be the worst broke man in the world."
"Toot! Toot!" remarked a jovial voice from Standley's end of the table. "Start her up again, son—I never get tired of seeing that thing go like the Chinaman's cable car." Levity was a relief to them. There is a certain strain, after all, in planning for the ownership of a people, a republic.
Halsey again pushed down the lever, and again the dummy car ran around and about the table on the curved track which had been laid for it.
"That's the travel of the future, gentlemen," said John, Rawn soberly, at length. "They can take it or leave it. So can you."
IV
Silence fell on that group of gray, grave men. The thing seemed to them uncanny, although so simple. They looked about, one at the other. A sort of sigh passed about the room. There sat at the table men who represented untold millions of capital. They were looking upon a device which in the belief of all was about to multiply these millions many-fold. Their hands already inordinately full of power, they contemplated yet more inordinate power. They sat fascinated, silent, sighing at the prospect, in a delicious half-delirium. The forehead or the upper lip of each was moist.
"You can't get away from it, fellows," said Standley, of St. Louis. "I've tried to, my best, and I can't. I felt just the way you do when it was first put up to me—I didn't want to face the truth, it was so big. As soon as these two men went away from me my feet got cold; but if they hadn't come back, I think I'd have jumped in the river. I want to let go of this thing right here—it scares me. But I just can't, that's all."
They made no comment. The atmosphere seemed strangely strained, tense. An old and beardless man, thin, pallid, leaned against the table, his eyes staring, his face almost corpse-like. No voice was raised in criticism or indeed in comment, but all sat weighing, pondering. Rawn was the first to break the silence.