“What’s the matter? Didn’t it work? It ought to. I’ve dabbled at that experiment myself. It always works—”
“Yes, sir, it worked. All the old tests I’ve tackled so far have. But just something to play with is as far as I seem to get. I can’t find out how to apply the power, how to make some use out of it.”
Dr. Pendexter’s quick ear caught the note of tragedy in the boy’s voice. To the man came a sudden realization of what a struggle this boy must be having as he strove alone to fathom the almost unfathomable mysteries of electricity. Being a man of action, Pendexter applied a remedy in his own way.
“Consarn it all,” he roared, “don’t look so blasted blue! You’re coming on fine, as far as you’ve gone.” The little Doctor cast a quick eye around the room at the bottles and jars, the Voltaic pile and the crystal wheel with its renovated gear. “The trouble is, you’re going sort of one-sided with nothing but one old book to learn out of,” and he flipped the calfskin cover of “Ye Compleat Knowledge” with his forefinger. “You’ve got to the point where you need something modern to study. What do you know about magnets and magnetism and electromagnets?”
“N-nothing,” stammered Lee Renaud in confusion.
“Umph!” from the Doctor. “Well, you’ve been missing out on one of the biggest things in electricity. The electromagnet, that’s the king pin of ’em all!”
“I’ve seen little magnets, sort of horseshoe-shaped bits of metal that you can pick up a needle or a tack or the like with. Didn’t know magnets had anything to do with electricity!”
“You better be knowing it then!” The Doctor banged the table with an emphatic fist. “The electromagnet is the thing that puts the 'go’ in telegraphy, the telephone, this radio business. Say, I’m going to send you a book about it, a modern one. You study it!” And with that parting command, the wiry, roaring little man was gone.
Staring at the empty chair drawn up close beside his latest experiment in tin and charcoal, Lee Renaud had the feeling that he had only imagined Dr. William Pendexter. The wizened little man with the outlandish voice was queer enough to have been generated out of a jar by one of these old electrical experiments.
A few days later though, Lee had good proof that Pendexter was very real—and a man of his word, too. When Lee made a trip down to the village store for a can of kerosene, Mr. Hicks, who was postmaster as well as storekeeper, shoved a package over the counter to him and said, “Today’s mail day.” (Mail came only three times a week to this little backwash village of King’s Cove, and then never very much of it.) Mr. Hicks thumped the packet importantly, “This here come for you. Must amount to something, 'cording to the passel of stamps they stuck on to it.”