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Doreen came trotting back in then, with her hat box. “I’m tired of that game,” she said, giving the TV set a bored glance. And as she said it the tube went dark. The sound cut off.

“Damn!” I swore. “Must be a power failure!” I grabbed the phone and jiggled the hook. No dice. The phone was dead, too.

“You’re funny,” Doreen giggled. “It’s just the unhappy genii. See?”

She flicked over the catch on the hatbox.

And the picture came back on. The sound started up. “–swings and misses for strike two!” The air conditioner began to hum.

Marge and I stared. Mouths open. Wide.

* * * * *

“You did that, Doreen?” I asked it very carefully. “You made the television stop and start again?”

“The unhappy genii did,” Doreen told me. “Like this.” She flicked the catch back. The TV picture blacked out. The sound stopped in the middle of a word. The air conditioner whispered into silence.

Then she flipped the catch the other way.

“–fouls the second ball into the screen,” the announcer said. Picture okay. Air conditioner operating. Everything normal except my pulse and respiration.

“Doreen, sweetheart–” I took a step toward her–“what’s in that box? What is an unhappy genii?”

“Not unhappy.” You know how scornful an eight-year-old can be? Well, she was. “Unhap- pen. It makes things unhappen. Anything that works by electracity, it stops. Elmer calls it his unhappen genii. Just for fun.”

“Oh, now I get it,” I said brightly. “It makes electricity not work–unhappen. Like television sets and air conditioners and automobiles and bus engines.”

Doreen giggled.

Marge sat bolt upright. “Doreen! You caused that traffic jam? You and that–that gadget of Elmer’s?”

Doreen nodded. “It made all the automobile engines stop, just like Elmer said. Elmer’s never wrong.”

Marge looked at me. I looked at Marge.

“A field of some kind,” I said. “A field that prevents an electric current from flowing. Meaning no combustion motor using an electric spark can operate. No electric motors. No telephones. No radio or TV.”

“Is that important?” Marge asked.

“Important?” I yelled. “Think of the possibilities just as a weapon! You could blank out a whole nation’s transportation, its communications, its industry–“

I got hold of myself. I smiled my best I-love-children smile. “Doreen,” I said, “let me look at Elmer’s unhappen genii.”

The kid clutched the box.

“Elmer told me not to let anybody look at it. He said he’d statuefy me if I did. He said nobody would understand it anyway. He said he might show it to Mr. Einstein, but not anybody else.”

“That’s Elmer, all right,” Marge muttered.

I found myself breathing hard. I edged toward Doreen and put my hand on the hatbox. “Just one quick look, Doreen,” I said. “No one will ever know.”

She didn’t answer. Just pulled the box away.

I pulled it back.

She pulled.

I pulled.

“Bill–” Marge called warningly. Too late. The lid of the hatbox came off in my hands.

* * * * *

There was a bright flash, the smell of insulation burning, and the unhappen genii fell out and scattered all over the floor.

Doreen looked smug. “Now Elmer will be angry at you. Maybe he’ll disintegrate you. Or paralalize you and statuefy you. Forever.”

“He might at that, Bill,” Marge shuddered. “I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

I wasn’t listening. I was scrambling after the mess of tubes, condensers and power packs scattered over the rug. Some of them were still wired together, but most of them had broken loose. Elmer was certainly one heck of a sloppy workman. Hadn’t even soldered the connections. Just twisted the wires together.

I looked at the stuff in my hands. It made as much sense as a radio run over by a truck.