PAGE 3
"Wireless"
by
“When do you expect to get the message from Poole?” I demanded, sipping my liquor out of a graduated glass.
“About midnight, if everything is in order. We’ve got our installation- pole fixed to the roof of the house. I shouldn’t advise you to turn on a tap or anything tonight. We’ve connected up with the plumbing, and all the water will be electrified.” He repeated to me the history of the agitated ladies at the hotel at the time of the first installation.
“But what is it?” I asked. “Electricity is out of my beat altogether.”
“Ah, if you knew that you’d know something nobody knows. It’s just It– what we call Electricity, but the magic–the manifestations–the Hertzian waves–are all revealed by this. The coherer, we call it.”
He picked up a glass tube not much thicker than a thermometer, in which, almost touching, were two tiny silver plugs, and between them an infinitesimal pinch of metallic dust. “That’s all,” he said, proudly, as though himself responsible for the wonder. “That is the thing that will reveal to us the Powers–whatever the Powers may be–at work–through space–a long distance away.”
Just then Mr. Shaynor returned alone and stood coughing his heart out on the mat.
“Serves you right for being such a fool,” said young Mr. Cashell, as annoyed as myself at the interruption. “Never mind–we’ve all the night before us to see wonders.”
Shaynor clutched the counter, his handkerchief to his lips. When he brought it away I saw two bright red stains.
“I–I’ve got a bit of a rasped throat from smoking cigarettes,” he panted. “I think I’ll try a cubeb.”
“Better take some of this. I’ve been compounding while you’ve been away.” I handed him the brew.
“‘Twon’t make me drunk, will it? I’m almost a teetotaller. My word! That’s grateful and comforting.”
He sat down the empty glass to cough afresh.
“Brr! But it was cold out there! I shouldn’t care to be lying in my grave a night like this. Don’t you ever have a sore throat from smoking?” He pocketed the handkerchief after a furtive peep.
“Oh, yes, sometimes,” I replied, wondering, while I spoke, into what agonies of terror I should fall if ever I saw those bright-red danger- signals under my nose. Young Mr. Cashell among the batteries coughed slightly to show that he was quite ready to continue his scientific explanations, but I was thinking still of the girl with the rich voice and the significantly cut mouth, at whose command I had taken charge of the shop. It flashed across me that she distantly resembled the seductive shape on a gold-framed toilet-water advertisement whose charms were unholily heightened by the glare from the red bottle in the window. Turning to make sure, I saw Mr. Shaynor’s eyes bent in the same direction, and by instinct recognised that the flamboyant thing was to him a shrine. “What do you take for your–cough?” I asked.
“Well, I’m the wrong side of the counter to believe much in patent medicines. But there are asthma cigarettes and there are pastilles. To tell you the truth, if you don’t object to the smell, which is very like incense, I believe, though I’m not a Roman Catholic, Blaudett’s Cathedral Pastilles relieve me as much as anything.”
“Let’s try.” I had never raided a chemist’s shop before, so I was thorough. We unearthed the pastilles–brown, gummy cones of benzoin–and set them alight under the toilet-water advertisement, where they fumed in thin blue spirals.
“Of course,” said Mr. Shaynor, to my question, “what one uses in the shop for one’s self comes out of one’s pocket. Why, stock-taking in our business is nearly the same as with jewellers–and I can’t say more than that. But one gets them”–he pointed to the pastille-box–“at trade prices.” Evidently the censing of the gay, seven-tinted wench with the teeth was an established ritual which cost something.
“And when do we shut up shop?”
“We stay like this all night. The gov–old Mr. Cashell–doesn’t believe in locks and shutters as compared with electric light. Besides it brings trade. I’ll just sit here in the chair by the stove and write a letter, if you don’t mind. Electricity isn’t my prescription.”