“Then all you’ve got to do is to adjust the apparatus till you get a new adjustment which will register ‘the man’s’ wave, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes,” snapped Tom, “and it took Denckel three years to get that adjustment, and there’s no data on how he did it. The rest was easy compared to this. If we only had that lost manuscript.”
Jones sat huddled in a dejected heap. Dorothy’s cheery face was downcast. “I must confess,” she sighed, “that I’m afraid the apparatus isn’t going to be of any immediate use to us without the manuscript.”
“Any immediate use!” sputtered Tom. “The old thing isn’t worth a rap. It’ll be registering every trolley car that goes by next. We’ve done every thing we know how to fix it, and it may be ten years before we find out what’s the trouble. If we only had the Denckel manuscript.”
“Yes, if we only had Denckel’s work,” said Dorothy wearily. “But we haven’t. There’s no use doing anything more to-night. We’ll go at it again in the morning.”
The next two days brought no result. The wave-measuring machine would tell where the waves came from, but it would do nothing towards separating them. Day after day the reflectoscopes were watched for the expected sinking of the German ship, but without avail. Change after change was made in the Denckel apparatus, in the hope that the next alteration might be the right one, and that it might come in time to place the man, before the next battleship went down. Saturday afternoon, the last day of the week in which the man was to sink the German battleship, we sat as usual in the laboratory. The last adjustment had been as unsuccessful as the rest, and Tom and Dorothy sat in deep thought, while Jones was scraping the insulation from some wire at one side.
“If we only had that manuscript,” said Tom, for the thousandth time, “but failing it, let’s have another try. Jones, will you bring me that manuscript? I mean the old table of wave constants we made up last winter.”
“That’s it,” remarked Dorothy. “His mind is so intent on the manuscript that he ordered it instead of soup the other day.”
To that maelstrom of papers, his desk, Jones turned to find the needed table of constants, and, after watching his efforts for a few minutes, Tom turned to Dorothy.
“Find it, will you, Dorothy? I imagine it’s there.”