"I--I thought----"
"Quite right, my boy; I intend you shall know all about it. You see it resembles the works of a watch.... Now, when I touch this spring the receiver opens and gathers in certain psychic waves which emanate from the subconscious personality of--well, let us say you, for example!... And now I touch this button. You see that slender hairspring of Rosium uncurl and rise, trembling and waving about like a tentacle?"
Young Yates, notebook in hand, recovered himself sufficiently to nod. Mr. Carr leered at him:
"That tentacle," he explained, "is now seeking some invisible, wireless, psychic current along which it is to transmit the accumulated psychic waves. As soon as the wireless current finds the subconscious personality of the woman you are destined to love and marry some day----"
"I?" exclaimed young Yates, horrified.
"Yes, you. Why not? Do you mind my trying it on you?"
"But I am already in love," protested the young man, turning, as usual, a ready red. "I don't care to have you try it on me. Suppose that machine should connect me with--some other--girl----"
"It has!" cried Carr with a hideous laugh as a point of bluish-white fire tipped the tentacle for an instant. "You're tied fast to something feminine! Probably a flossy typewriter--or a burlesque actress--somebody you're fitted for, anyway!" He clapped on his monocle, and glared gleefully at the stupefied young man.
"That will teach you to enter my premises and hold my daughter's hand when she is drawing innocent pictures of Cooper's Bluff!" he shouted. "That will teach you to write poems to my eighteen-year-old daughter, Drusilla; that will teach you to tell her you are in love with her--you young pup!"
"I am in love with her!" said Yates, undaunted; but he was very white when he said it. "I do love her; and if you had behaved halfway decently I'd have told you so two weeks ago!"