"Yes, sir, it's still the same. I haven't changed a thing except to pull the plate out in the hall."
"Have you tried it since your father was caught?"
"No, sir ... in all the excitement I haven't gotten around to fooling with it again."
The professor walked out in the hall, reached in his pocket for a handkerchief, tossed it over the plate. It rose! Straight up, and stuck to the ceiling!
"My gosh!" Jim blurted. "Somebody must have plugged that thing in again!"
Mary and Johnny, who were watching in silence, both spoke up to say that neither of them had. Jim reached down and picked up the AC line. Sure enough, it wasn't plugged in!
"Well, this is going to take some studying," Professor Jordan muttered, looking rather awed at Jim's gadget. "Jim, let's start at the beginning again, and be sure you tell me everything you did, every move you made, what kind of metal you used, how finely divided it was, what concentration you used and what voltages and frequencies you used."
"I'll try, Professor," Jim said, "But it's going to be sort of a hit or miss proposition because I fiddled with this thing for an hour or so before accidentally dropping my cigarettes on the plate. When they went up, I was surprised, to say the least, so I tried other things."
"What we've got to figure put first of all, is whether it was caused by a combination of changes, or whether it was the last setting you used," Professor Jordan said. "If it was a combination of voltage and frequency changes, then we've certainly got a problem on our hands."
All this time of course, Mary and Johnny had been standing more or less open-mouthed, listening, and I, from my vantage point high on the ceiling, had been taking it all in too.