“And perhaps he is not,” Doug replied as they lost themselves in the gathering darkness.
CHAPTER V
JOHNNY’S THINK-O-GRAPHS
“Yes,” Johnny whispered to himself as he thrust his hand deep into a dark corner of his closet. “It’s still there. The thought-camera is no dream. But will it record thoughts for me? That’s the question.”
He found himself all aquiver with excitement. He was like a very small boy with his very first camera.
“Like to try it on myself,” he thought. Then, recalling the little Chinaman’s test and the sadly muddled thoughts the camera had brought out, he, for the time at least, abandoned that plan.
“There’s grandfather,” he told himself. “He sits by the hour every evening, looking off into the night and thinking. Wonder what those thoughts are like. I’d really like to know. That—that’s where I’ll try it first.” He hurried downstairs.
Johnny was very fond of the stalwart old man he called grandfather. A pioneer of his small city, he had seen much of life. At times he talked of those days long gone by. For the most part he sat in his great chair on the broad porch and gazed away into the darkness toward the spot where, in the daytime, the blue began.
Slipping silently into a chair close to the old man, Johnny touched the release to the thought-camera. There followed a low buzzing sound. Johnny’s heart leaped. The camera was working. But was it recording thoughts, his grandfather’s thoughts? Only time would tell.
For several moments in the night, disturbed only by the cricket’s chirp and the distant bullfrog’s hoarse croak, the pair sat there motionless.
Then the old man stirred. “What’s that, Johnny?” he asked.