“ ‘Lemme introdush you,’ Markley grinned, shambling to his feet and grasping her shoulder to steady himself. ‘Ruth meet cap’n, cap’n meet Ruth’—all that sort of thing. ‘You may,’ he continued owlishly, ‘marvel at her name. I have bestowed the historic appellation because the original Ruth was also a gleaner. I have insisted on the décolleté for two reasons, first because, dreshed that way, it will be impossible for her to carry off her gleanings when she leaves the bungalow. As a result of this precaution I have lost none of the silver plate or gilded photograph albums. Second, because it’s so awful hot that I feel sorry for any one who has to wear clothes.’ He unwound the bath towel, swabbed his face, neck and chest and reshipped it around his waist. Then he sank back into his chair and pushed the warm whisky and soda toward me.
“I suppose I should have got his receipts for the shipment and left immediately, for he was certainly beyond the pale of tolerance, but the lad was so plainly lonely and miserable that I sat sipping the whisky, which was really good, and listening to the tale, which, between periods of weeping, he unfolded. I suppose you’ve heard it all before, haven’t you, Mac?”
“He was tight as a clam with me when it came to family history,” replied MacAllister. “Besides we didn’t talk any more than necessary after he took that woman in.”
“He came from Devonshire, he said,” the captain resumed. “Attended Oxford and some technical college——”
“Yes, he used to rub it in a little about being an Oxford man, I remember, after he learned I had attended King’s College back in the dark ages,” growled MacAllister.
“He said there had always been plenty of money,” Todd resumed. “His father paid all bills without much complaint. Some difficulty with his eyes kept him out of the war, so that he finished his courses, specializing in mechanics and electricity. Naturally he became fascinated with the radio. That was back in 1919, you remember, when the whole thing was in its infancy, and commercial broadcasting was hardly thought of. A lot of experimenting was being done, however, and Markley hit upon a great idea—to make a radio receiving amplifier loud enough to fill great auditoriums and provide entertainment for vast congregations. The only trouble was that when music or voices were amplified so many times, the static was amplified along with it, resulting in intense vibrations and awful screeches and yells, so that the program itself would be inaudible. There was also some danger, he declared, if the amplification was great enough, of shaking down the ceiling of the auditorium itself. The boy claimed he had overcome this difficulty.
“ ‘Captain,’ he blurted, patting my shoulder tenderly, ‘cap’n, you shee before you the one and only, triple-guaranteed eliminator of static in this little world. Gaze upon him well, cap’n. The odds are running three to one it will be your last chance.’
“Was he lying or not, Mac?”
“I almost wish he had been,” growled the new agent. “But he was telling you strict truth. Radio was the only thing he was interested in, even at Maraban. He dug his apparatus out of the packing cases the week he arrived, and rigged it up in a deserted sheet iron shack. There he’d sit, tinkering with it and drinking—straight whisky, too—until almost morning, to the great awe of the niggers and the total abolishment of sleep at the station. A few broadcasting stations were opening up over the world, especially in America. You remember that was the summer every one went crazy over the things. His set was big enough to get them all, too. With the amplifiers cut in, the music would blare through the whole compound at night, until I threatened to sleep in the jungle. When he tuned in on a speech or a bedtime story—he preferred those—the voice sounded like that of a giant, with ten times the volume of ordinary tones, but clearer and more free from noise than the best phonograph. It fair had the natives hypnotized. They used to take little offerings to the door of the shanty to appease the wrath of the juju inside. ‘Big mouf’ they termed him.
“The only difficulty, as Markley explained to me once, in a moment of friendliness, was that he had to keep eternally balancing the static out of it with special condensers. I remember one morning he went to sleep over the thing. Pandemonium broke loose. The little shack seemed almost to bounce off the ground as the set went out of balance and the static seeped in. The row was deafening. I ran down and jerked all the switches I could find to shut it off, but Markley slept through it all, under the radio table. I had an awful temptation to smash the thing, Todd. Only the fact that I am a good Presbyterian saved me. Lucky it did.”