“I can’t imagine why it should matter,” I admitted without much conviction, “but I don’t see anything in the unnecessary addition that need excite suspicion. Do you?”
“Perhaps not; but you observe that the sender was apparently anxious that the parcel should be opened by a particular person.”
I shrugged my shoulders. The whole proceeding and the reasons given for it struck me as verging on farce. “Do you go through these formalities with every parcel that you receive?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “Only with those that are unexpected or offer no evidence as to their origin. But we are pretty careful. As I said just now, we have had our experiences. One of them was a box which, on being opened, discharged volumes of poisonous gas.”
“The deuce!” I exclaimed, rather startled out of my scepticism and viewing the parcel with a new-born respect, not unmixed with apprehension. “Then this thing may actually be an infernal machine! Confound it all, Thorndyke! Supposing it should have a clockwork detonator, ticking away while we are talking. Hadn’t you better get on with the X-rays?”
He chuckled at my sudden change of attitude. “It is all right, Mayfield. There is no clockwork. I tried it with the microphone as soon as it arrived. We always do that. And, of course, it is a thousand to one that it is just an innocent parcel. But we will just make sure and then I shall be at liberty for a chat with you.”
He led the way to a staircase leading to the floor above where I was introduced to a large, bare room surrounded by long benches or tables occupied by various uncanny-looking apparatus. As soon as we entered, he placed the parcel on a raised stand while Polton turned a switch connected with a great coil; the immediate result of which was a peculiar, high-pitched, humming sound as if a gigantic mosquito had got into the room. At the same moment a glass globe that was supported on an arm behind the parcel became filled with green light and displayed a bright red spot in its interior.
“This is a necromantic sort of business, Thorndyke,” said I, “only you and Mr. Polton aren’t dressed for the part. You ought to have tall, pointed caps and gowns covered with cabalistic signs. What is that queer humming noise?”
“That is the interrupter,” he replied. “The green bulb is the Crookes’s tube and the little red-hot disc inside it is the anti-cathode. I will tell you about them presently. That framed plate that Polton has is the fluorescent screen. It intercepts the X-rays and makes them visible. You shall see, when Polton has finished his inspection.”
I watched Polton—who had taken the opportunity to get the first innings—holding the screen between his face and the parcel. After a few moments’ inspection he turned the parcel over on its side and once more raised the screen, gazing at it with an expression of the most intense interest. Suddenly he turned to Thorndyke with a smile of perfectly incredible wrinkliness and, without a word, handed him the screen; which he held up for a few seconds and then silently passed to me.