He closed the window that had been forced open, and then set about replacing the wires which had been disconnected, making up the circuit to its original design.
The Professor, who had been told that burglars had been in, entered the room excitedly, but Geoffrey reassured him.
“Somebody has been pottering about here. Lots of people know of my device, and I suppose somebody is out to try to discover it. But they haven’t done so. They’ve made a horrible mess of things, but they don’t know the whole truth, because they haven’t examined the new saturation device. If they had taken that away they would have found out everything.”
“Very fortunate, Geoff!” exclaimed the old Professor. “Most fortunate! Evidently some person wants to filch your invention from you!”
“Of course. But they don’t seem to have done it—unless——?” And the young man crossed eagerly to a big cupboard in the room, the door of which stood unlocked.
From it he withdrew a small, green-enamelled, steel dispatch-box.
“By Heavens!” he gasped. “They’ve got it!” And his father saw that the box had been ripped open.
“I kept the diagram and specification of the windings in there!” Geoffrey cried in dismay. “And they have taken it. They know everything—and it is not patented!”
“But who are the thieves?” queried the old man. “Who could come here into this house, and deliberately steal your invention?”
“Ah! There are hundreds of unscrupulous persons who have heard of it. They know how much it would be worth to the world in the near future, and I can only suppose that some plot has been formed to secure it. And they’ve been successful! They have abstracted the diagram from that box which I believed to be practically thief-proof. It had a complicated lock, but they have opened it with steel cutters.”