"A thought has come to me that may save my life: I shall try to give the alarm by cutting the electric wires and putting out the cupola light."
He had indeed given the alarm in time to save his life, but his mind became a complete blank. The Torreton Joy Drops disappeared from the market, and the light in the cupola of the deserted works has never been relighted. Finally, even the family residence was given to the city for a hospital, but it was not until after the extensive greenhouses had been dismantled and their treasures scattered that it was suggested that they might have held the secret of the famous sweetmeat. That secret, with its possibilities, lies hopelessly buried in the darkened brain of Walter Torreton.
And it is darkness alone that disturbs him now. It was observed from the beginning of the attempts to treat his remarkable case that he displayed the utmost repugnance to darkness, and grew nervous, uneasy and wild as twilight came on. He is happy only in a glare of light, and it was upon the advice of an eminent Parisian specialist that he was finally removed to the beautiful California valley, where he lives, day and night, in a flood of radiance. His mind slipped a cog, the specialist says, which may slip back again, just as a train that has jumped the track may jump back—but it is one chance in a million.
DOODLE'S DISCOVERY
John Jefferson Doodle derived a large amount of pleasure from the knowledge that he was considered a crank. In Doodle's opinion cranks were persons who, knowing the right way, refused to have things done in any other. John Jefferson demanded full value for his own money and persisted in giving the same in return for the money of others. Business back-steps, fool fakery, and lame excuses were foreign to his methods, so when he opened his restaurant success was assured. Doodle's was the most up-to-date café in the entire eating zone. The food, service and appointments were of the best, and from the opening day the future prosperity of Doodle was something that a fifth-rate prophet could foretell without running the risk of a headache.
But Doodle's Café was in the direct line of a trouble cyclone. In the washrooms connected with the establishment the proprietor supplied the finest toilet soap that money could buy, but unfortunately for the peace of mind of John Jefferson he was called upon to supply much more than legitimate demands required. Expensive soap proved a tempting bait to unprincipled patrons, and Doodle soon discovered that something like forty dollars' worth of soap was required to meet the daily demands of his six hundred patrons. Legitimate hand-washing could not possibly be responsible for this enormous outlay, so Doodle set his brain the task of devising a plan by which the thieves could be detected.
As all the world knows, various ingenious schemes have been tried with the object of protecting the soap in the washrooms of hotels and restaurants. The cakes have been chained to the wash-stands, for example, only to be cut away by well-to-do people who take things as they come. Again, hotel proprietors have put up liquid soap in fixed contrivances, but the kleptomaniacs outwitted the vigilance of the worried owners. The soap was carried away in bottles, and the unfortunate proprietors, finding it impossible to circumvent the ingenuity of the thieves, furnished common soap in large quantities as the only means of lessening their loss.
But Doodle continued to buy the finest toilet soap that was on the market, and he was determined that no thief would make him change his methods. On this account he set his wits to work and Doodle's Soap Thief Detector was the result.
The café owner was in rapture over his invention. Its ability to do all that he claimed for it was beyond question. He had it patented, fitted to the wash-stands, and then awaited results.
The Detector was a simple contrivance. It consisted of a small kodak-like arrangement concealed behind the mirror that hung above each washbowl, the eye of the camera being hidden among the electric light fixtures. The picture-taking device was connected with the soap tray in such a manner that a person lifting the soap relieved the pressure upon a button in the bottom of the tray and was by this means immediately photographed by the unseen instrument. When the soap was replaced a self-developing film was moved up in readiness to snap the next person who lifted the tablet, but if it was not replaced the photographic apparatus stopped working and the picture of the soap thief was, therefore, the last on the film.