Dick was laughing.
“And you ask me to explain a thing like that after I’ve been talking of miracles?” he scoffed. “Why, it’s childishly simple. Some local fellow was playing a fool trick with eight rotary gaps adjusted to the key of C, or else someone was pioneering with a modulated CW—a broadcasting set.”
“Yeah, Sherlock? Well, I thought of that, too—I’m not as dumb as I look.”
Stan had risen to go. When he was safely outside the door, a position calculated to make his parting shot highly dramatic, he turned and shot back, “Right in the middle of that little performance the light in my radio room went out, and I learned the next day that the power had been off all over the city!”
The door slammed.
Weeks passed. Stan, busy with athletics and activities, did not have time to call at his friend’s house for more than a month, and when finally he did, it was only upon receipt of an urgent telephone message. He burst into Dick’s room to find that worthy lying on the floor with his nose deep in an immense volume.
“Oh, Lord! False alarm,” he groaned. “I thought you had electrocuted yourself, or something. What’s the matter?—and what the dickens are you reading?”
Dick rose and laid the volume carefully on the table.
“A treatise on X-rays,” he said; “and as for your other questions, nothing is the matter and I haven’t electrocuted myself. I just wanted you to come over and see what you have been responsible for. Look!”