he man looked up. "You don't know?" he asked eagerly. "You really don't?"
"No," said Jerry; "but I'm going to find out."
"Yes," the other agreed. "Yes, you can, now that you've got the upper-hand. I guess I was half crazy when I thought I had been spied out. But I'll tell you."
He sat erect. "I am Thomas J. Winslow," he said, and made the statement as if it were an explanation in itself.
"Well," said Jerry, "that's no burst of illumination to my ignorance. Come again."
The man called Winslow was ready—anxious—to talk.
"I am an inventor. I have made millions of dollars"—Jerry looked at the disheveled apparel of the speaker and smiled—"for other people. The Stillwater syndicate stole my valveless motor. Then I developed my television set. Goodwin beat me out of that: he will have it on the market inside of a year. I swore they should never profit by this, my greatest invention."
Jerry was impressed in spite of himself by the man's earnest simplicity.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I've broken the atom," said Winslow. "First tore the atoms of hydrogen and oxygen apart—dissociated them in the molecule of water—and have resolved them into their energy components. That's what you heard—the reaction. It it self-sustaining, exothermic. That hot blast carried off the heat of my retort."