“Mr. Morrison, I want you to visit a house near here. Mr. Jones and Mr. Waldemar will come along; you know them, perhaps. Please don’t protest. I positively will not take a refusal. We have a motor-car waiting.”
Furious, but not daring to refuse, Morrison found himself whirled swiftly away, and after a few turns to shake off the crowd, into Spencer Street. With his captors, he mounted to the third floor of an old frame house. The rear room door had been broken in. Inside stood a strange instrument, resembling a large camera, which had once stood upright on a steel tripod riveted to the floor. The legs of the tripod were twisted and bent. A half-demolished chair near by suggested the agency of destruction.
“Just to render it harmless,” explained Average Jones. “It formerly pointed through that window, so that a bullet from the barrel would strike that pole way yonder in Harrison Street, after first passing through any intervening body. Yours, for instance, Governor.”
“Do I understand that this is a gun, Mr. Jones,” asked that official.
“Of a sort,” replied the Ad-Visor, opening up the camera-box and showing a large barrel superimposed on a smaller one. “This is a sighting-glass,” he explained, tapping the larger barrel. “And this,” tapping the smaller, “carries a small but efficient bullet. This curious sheath”—he pointed to a cylindrical jacket around part of the rifle barrel—“is a Coulomb silencer, which reduces a small-arm report almost to a whisper. Here is an electric button which was connected with yonder battery before I operated on it with the chair, and distributed its spark, part to the gun, part to the flash-light powder on this little shelf. Do you see the plan now? The instant that the governor, riding through the street yonder, is sighted through this glass, the operator presses the button, and flash-light and bullet go off instantaneously.”
“But why the flash-light?” asked the governor.
“Merely a blind to fool the landlady and avert any possible suspicion. They had told her that they had a new invention to take flash-lights at a distance. Amidst the other flashes, this one wouldn’t be noticed particularly. They had covered their trail well.”
“Well, indeed,” said the governor. “May I congratulate you, Mr. Morrison, on this interesting achievement in ballistics?”
“As there is no way of properly resenting an insult from a man in your position,” said Morrison venomously, “I will reserve my answer to that outrageous suggestion.”
“Meantime,” put in Average Jones, “let me direct your attention to a simple mathematical formula.” He drew from his pocket an envelope on which were drawn some angles, subjoined by a formula. Morrison waved it aside.