I  
"Charles," said John Rawn one evening, with that directness of habit which perhaps we have earlier noted, "I have been thinking over some scientific problems."
 
"Yes?" replied Halsey. "What is it—a patent car coupler? There isn't a fellow in our office who hasn't patented one, but I didn't know it was quite so catching as to get into the Personal Injury department—they only settle with the widows there."
 
"In my belief," went on Rawn, frowning at this flippancy, "I am upon the eve of a great success, Charles."
 
"What sort of success, Mr. Rawn?" inquired Halsey, more soberly.
 
Rawn smiled largely. "You will hardly credit me when I tell you, almost all sorts of success! To make it short, I have formed a power company—a concern for the cheap generation and general transmission of power. In the course of a few months we'll proceed in the manufacture of electrical transmitters and receivers for what I call the lost current of electricity."
 
Halsey stood cold for a moment, and looked at him in amazement.
 
"You don't mean to say—why, that's precisely what I've been thinking of for so long."
 
"I don't doubt many have been thinking of it," rejoined Rawn. "It had to come. These things seem to happen in cycles. It's almost a toss-up what man will first perfect an invention when once it gets in the air, so to speak. Now, this invention of mine has been due ever since the developments in wireless transmission. In truth, I may say that I have only gone a little beyond the wireless idea. What I have done is to separate the two currents of electricity."
 
Halsey leaned against the wall. "My God!" he half whispered. He smiled foolishly.
 
"Why, Mr. Rawn," he said finally, "I've been studying that, I don't know how long—ever since the researches in my university were made public. I thought for some time I might be able to figure it out further than our professors have as yet. Pflüger, of Bonn, in Germany, has been working for years and years on that theory of perpetual motion in all molecules."
 
"Mollycules? I don't know as I ever really saw any," hesitated Rawn.
 
"Very likely, Mr. Rawn!"
 
"I've never cared much for mere scientific rot," said Rawn, coloring a trifle. "That gets us nothing. But what were you saying?"
 
Halsey's enthusiasm carried him beyond resentment and amusement alike.
 
"Molecules are everywhere, in everything, Mr. Rawn," he explained gently; "and now we know they move, though we can see them only in mass and as though motionless."
 
"I don't see how that can be," began Rawn; but checked himself.
 
Halsey smote his hand against the solid wall. "It moves!" he exclaimed. "It's alive! It vibrates—every solid is in perpetual motion. The dance of the molecules is endless. It's in the air around us, above us—power, power—immeasurable, irresistible power, exhaustless, costless power! All you have to do is to jar it out of balance."
 
"Yes, I know. That's what I've been getting at, precisely—"
 
"I was going to figure it out sometime," said Halsey ruefully.
 
"I did figure it out!" said John Rawn sententiously. "Moreover, I've got the company formed."
 
 
 
 
II
 
"You—Mr. Rawn? How did you manage that? I didn't know that you—" Halsey at last spoke.
 
"A great many haven't known about a great many things," said Rawn, walking up and down, his hands in his pockets, his air gloomily dignified. "A few men always have to do the things which others don't know about. For instance, what did all the work of your professors—what-d'ye-call-'ems—amount to? Nothing at all. Maybe they'd print a paper about it. That would about end it, just as it ended it for you. You admit you got the idea from them; but I say it wasn't any idea at all. I saw it—in the papers. Didn't pay much attention to it, because there's nothing in this scientific business for practical men like me."
 
"I know, I know," Halsey nodded. "That's true. Here it all is." He took from his coat pocket a creased and folded newspaper page of recent date. "Here's the story—I was proud, because it was my own university did the work:
 
"'That the molecules composing all material substances are constantly in rapid motion, ricocheting against one another in the manner of a collection of billiard-balls suddenly stirred up, the speed of the air's components being about half that of a cannon ball, was the proof announced to-day from the University of Chicago as a further development of the experiments by Professor R. A. Threlkeld, which for the last year have been attracting the attention of scientists from all parts of the world. The absolute nature of the proof, upon which physicists all over the world have been working without result for several years, was assented to by Professor Pflüger, of Bonn University, Germany, who arrived in Chicago last Monday to witness the demonstration.'"
 
He paused in his literal reading from the printed page. "I told you about Pflüger," he began.
 
"Yes, some Dutchman," assented Rawn graciously. "They're great to dig."
 
Halsey, being in the presence of the man whom he proposed making his father-in-law, was perforce polite, although indignant. He went on icily, with his reading, since he had begun it:
 
"'The belief that the molecules of which all matter is composed are in a perpetual dance of motion has been held tentatively by scientists for several years, but, owing to the general inability to make any progress in proving it, considerable skepticism has developed among the physicists of several of the leading scientific nations. It was generally known as the kinetic theory. Professor Threlkeld's proof is a further development of his experiments, showing electricity to be a definite substance, which were announced last year and were pronounced the most important discovery concerning the nature of electricity since Benjamin Franklin.
 
"'The simple expedient of performing his experiments in almost a complete vacuum—a method which had not occurred to scientists before—was given by Professor Threlkeld as the foundation stone of his discovery. Minute drops of oil, sprayed into a vacuum chamber, one side of which is of glass, demonstrate by their own motions the truth of the theory.
 
"'Surrounded by the ordinary amount of air, the oil drops are bombarded by moving air molecules in so many thousand places at once that their motion is so rapid as to be invisible. With few molecules of air surrounding them, the drops are driven back and forth as though being used as a punching-bag.
 
"'By reference to his previous experiments with drops of oil bombarded by electrical ions, the motion of the oil drops has been found to be precisely the same, showing the cause of the motion to be similar in both cases.'"
 
"That's all right," said John Rawn, "all very well as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough."
 
 
 
 
III
 
Halsey smiled. "Well, here's what the discoverer says about it," he commented. "I reckon that's plain, too, as far as it goes:
 
"'For the benefit of the general public, Professor Threlkeld has prepared the following statement concerning the experiments he has been conducting:
 
"'"The method consisted in catching atmospheric ions upon minute oil drops floating in the air and measuring the electrical charge which the drops thus acquired. This year the following extensions of this work have been made:
 
"'"The action of ionization itself is now being studied, each of the two electrical fragments into which a neutral molecule breaks up being caught upon oil drops at the instant of formation. This study has shown that the act of ionization of a neutral air molecule always consists in the detachment from it of one single elementary charge rather than of two or three such charges.
 
"'"By suspending these minute oil drops in rarefied gases instead of in air at atmospheric pressure, the authors have been able to make the oil drops partake of th............