“Sure! How’d you know?” Goggles’ eyes bulged behind his thick lenses.
“Know a lot about them,” Johnny chuckled. “Sometime I’ll tell you about how a fellow talked to me down a beam of light. Electric eyes helped him to do that, and a lot of exciting things happened. But go on. What you using electric eyes for?”
“Umpire,” Goggles said with a broad grin. “Baseball umpire. Got forty eyes. Some see up and down and some sideways. We’ve tried it out. Works swell. Calls balls and strikes perfectly. Never a miss.
“Thing is—” Goggles hurried on. “A week from Wednesday we play Fairfield. That team’s always beefing about the umpire. Holler their heads off. So I thought—” he took a long breath, “thought you might like to try our old electric umpire. He’ll umpire fairly. Never a mistake.”
“That—” Doug sprang to his feet, “that would be swell! And man! Oh, man! We’ll draw a crowd! Think of it! Something absolutely new. Electric umpire! What do you think of it, Johnny?”
“Wha—think of what?” Johnny started. “Electric eye. Oh! Yes, it’s interesting.”
“No! More than that!” Doug exploded. “Electric umpire!”
Truth was, strange as it may seem, Johnny’s mind had gone off the track. It had suddenly been deflected by the thought-camera, the most extraordinary thing he had ever seen. “I dreamed it,” he had been telling himself. “Thing never happened. That Chinaman never recorded my thoughts. But if he did, if the thing’s in my closet when I get home, I’ll try it—like to try it now.” This was what he had been thinking when Doug Danby brought him back to his present surroundings.
“Swell idea!” he enthused, once the electric umpire had been explained to him. “Work all right, I’m sure of it.”
“And draw a crowd,” put in Doug.