23: Break-through II

AS Mr. Campion and Luke exchanged glances up in their fastness, Rafael closed the journal and laid his spectacles down beside it. He was unsmiling.

“That was the letter,” he said. “Mr. Braithwaite felt he should publish it. I should have felt the same, but with the Daily Paper’s great resources perhaps I should have made a few investigations first. You didn’t even buy a set, did you?” He added, swinging round on the younger man, whose blush and shy grin put a nation on his side.

“Seven pounds!” he murmured, and his gasping laugh conveyed a journalistic world which Rafael had forgotten.

The senior man laughed briefly: “Anyway, you didn’t take it seriously, and who shall blame you? But you did recognize a genuine scientific approach and you sent the author a charming letter, which he has lent me and which, with your permission, I’m going to read.” He did not wait but shook out a tattered and creased piece of paper.

“As you see he treasured it,” he said, holding it up and beaming upon them as they exchanged the wistful but on the whole happy glance of those who note that they are to enjoy their triumphs at second hand. “Here it is:”

Dear Edward,
That was a fine letter and I enjoyed it. It will appear in our issue of the 12th of next month. Mind you look out for it. One of these days you must show me your “Instant Gen Amplifier.” Perhaps I am rather too old for it to be quite the boon to me that it well might be in my professional life, but I should certainly enjoy having a yarn about it. If you should come to London in the holidays, look in and see me. Give your name to the man on the door---his own is Mr. Cachou---and come on up to the fifth floor.

Your guinea for the letter will be sent to you by our accounts’ department, probably in about three weeks.

Your very good friend, believe me,
Reginald Yates Braithwaite
Editor

He was folding away the letter when Edward put up his hand for it and stowed it carefully in his notebook. Giles Jury laughed and swung back into his accustomed place in the centre of the screen.

“He’s met grownups before,” he said easily, and was about to round up his flock for the next phase when Rafael overrode him blandly and the camera, like a faithless cur, followed the stronger man.

“I wanted to read those letters to you,” he said simply, “because they explain what happened next. Last Saturday morning Edward, who was on half-term holiday in London, set out to visit his editor. He was worried because his two exhibition amplifiers had been confiscated. A deliberate attempt to take them from him, which he had frustrated, had been made in a London street. But later---most fortunately, as it has turned out---they were sequestered by an elderly relative and given casually to an interested visitor. But, in performing this seemingly highhanded and unsympathetic act, the unintentional benefactor did a service to the community which can hardly be estimated, for without his intervention the Daily Paper could not have made its present important disclosure. As it was, having lost his two amplifiers, Edward had to borrow the money and buy another. I stress this fact because it is vital for all who hear me to realize that this little device, to whose magical properties everybody seated round this table can subscribe, was actually bought over the counter of a London store last Saturday morning. The only two things which have been done to it since then are that it has been partially broken and that it has been wrapped in zinc plaster. Nothing else. Therefore, no one can lay any claim to it. No one can declare that it is an infringement of any secret belonging to the British defence services or to those of any other country. It is a foreign commercial device, bought in the open market this very week, broken and wrapped in plaster but otherwise untampered with in any way, and each and every word of this claim can be proved, if necessary in a court of law.

“Very well, then. To return to Edward last Saturday morning: he made his purchase and he walked on down Fetter Lane. But the editorial staffs of the Thousand and One Nights Press do not come in on Saturdays, and so, when he climbed up the marble steps of Scheherazade House, the man on the door---is his name really Cachou?”

“Yes,” exploded Reggie Braithwaite in a gust of delight. “Christian name, Hector.”

Rafael, who had taken it for granted that the letter had been facetious, frowned at him. “Amazing,” he said coldly. “Anyhow, he seems an excellent doorman, for when he heard Edward’s story and saw the letter he did not turn the boy away or tell him to come back on Monday but got on the telephone to Mr. Braithwaite’s home. He was out, but Joan Yates Braithwaite was there and she, splendid journalist’s wife that she is, kindly told him to send the distressed boy along. Unfortunately, there then began a game of hide-and-seek. When Edward was there, the Braithwaites were not, and so on, back and forth; but finally, quite late at night, they all met up and Edward produced his purchase. In a very short time Mr. Braithwaite made up his mind what to do. After getting in touch with a kindly neighbour of Edward’s aunt, who otherwise could have been alarmed by his absence, he drove his wife and their young visitor to Chiswick, where they awoke perhaps the one man in all England whose remarkable knowledge of the byways of contemporary world science enabled him to make a coherent picture of the evidence they set before him.”

He wound up the peroration with a bow to the delighted Peggie, and once again Giles Jury swanned forward.

“Not yet, I’m afraid, my dear chap.” Rafael was ruthless, and some of the actual force of the man showed fleetingly through the woolen shadows of the medium. “Until now I’ve been simply telling the story as it was presented to the Daily Paper, now I have to tell you what the Daily Paper has done about it in your own interests.

“I don’t pretend to have Edward’s scientific methods, but I have listed my moves in the order in which I made them. Firstly, I made certain that I had acquired every ‘Iris Transistor’ left on sale in this country, and I also bought the very few which had gone to the Duchy of Luxembourg, the only other European country to import them. Secondly, I got in touch with Mr. Hyakawa, a senior director of the Nomoto Company in Tokyo, and he was very helpful. He confirmed Edward’s story about the curious nervous malaise which overcame his work-people when they handled nipponanium and agreed that it was one of the reasons why the company had ceased to use it. The story was told in a gossip paragraph in a sample copy of the Nipponese Commercial Bulletin, which, in a translated version, was for a time distributed in this country. Mr. Hyakawa also told me that the formula for the amplifiers used in the ‘Iris Transistor’ was not patented. The concept was in the nature of a sales gimmick and was thought to have failed. The Daily Paper has a scientific correspondent in Japan, and Mr. Hyakawa has agreed to give him all technical data relevant to the composition and manufacture of the amplifiers. In fact, I believe he has done so already and that important information is being analyzed in London now. Unluckily, he tells me, there were no stocks of the discontinued ‘Iris Semi-Silent Transistors’ left at the factory. The last small consignments may have been sold to Czechoslovakia, France or China, but this has not yet been confirmed.”

“Really, Rafael, I think we ought to hear something about nipponanium . . . .” Jury got the objection in by inserting it sharply like a spike between bricks, but he had mistaken his man.

“That is in hand,” the editor of the Daily Paper assured the world. “Tomorrow morning---we shall be on the streets at four a.m. as usual---we are printing an exhaustive account of the break-through in general and Longfox’s amplifier in particular, written by Pegg Braithwaite, who has never been more dynamic. You can read everything that is known in the world today about nipponanium by Professor T. P. Symmington of Cambridge University, as well as all about the ‘Iris Transistor,’ its chemical analysis and its technical composition. There will be photographs, artists’ scale drawings and also a short biography of Edward’s famous father, Richard Longfox, by a writer who knew him. Besides these, there will be personal statements from those who have had the privilege of trying the amplifier. I have contributed one myself. It was an eerie experience, one which I never hope to repeat, at least in its present form! There is nothing I should like better than to tell you about it now, but there are two important items which really must come first.

“One is a warning, and I want us all to be desperately serious about this. Don’t think Rome has been built in a day. Don’t scour the shops for the ‘Iris Semi-Silent.’ Don’t ring up the Daily Paper or QTV. Above all, do not be afraid. Your secrets are safe for a very long time. Experts estimate that it will take decades, perhaps even hundreds of years, for the prospect which this development offers to materialize. At this moment no guaranteed accurate message can be sent or received. All we know now is that the time will surely come when both will be possible. There is so much to be done before then that the mind shrinks from even contemplating the task: Not only must we learn how to transmit and receive our thoughts, but reliable baffles and scrambling devices must be invented. Men and women have a right to privacy, and the Daily Paper promises that it will never permit this privilege to be violated. So don’t let that angle worry you; there is no need for it. Also, should any of you by chance possess an ‘Iris Transistor’ purchased since last May---it is not very likely, because very few have been sold---then please don’t tear it to pieces in an attempt to find its secret. It may be valuable. First of all, make absolutely certain of its name and make, and then only get in touch with the Daily Paper office or this programme at QTV.

“However, there is something else---my second point---which I do feel you may think as alarming as I do. In the crowded hours since I first heard this news, information has been reaching me from all over the world, little surprising items which have added up to nothing less than a conspiracy to corner nipponanium! In the last few months, less than half-a-dozen very rich firms and private persons have been buying up all the known stocks of this element, which until now was thought to have almost no practical use. Tomorrow morning our financial correspondent and his colleague, K. L. Tabbs, the Daily Paper’s keenest investigator, will probe this mystery thoroughly and fearlessly and will not rest until the greedy men have been ruthlessly exposed. Meanwhile, the Daily Paper understands that there is no great cause to fear a world shortage. Nipponanium can be isolated from the residue of certain radioactive carbons without great difficulty and----”

Transmission came to an abrupt end. The tingling silence took the audience at Advance Wires by surprise, and it was only when Lord Ludor appeared in the doorway of the control room with a terrified Feeoh behind him that the explanation emerged.

“Drat that old article!” said Thos unexpectedly. “He does that if he gets bored. Goes in and yanks out the mains. He’ll fuse the whole works and ’lectrocute himself one of these days! How ostentatious can you get? Eh?”

Luke touched Mr. Campion’s arm, and they peered down at the scene below for a moment before making for the stairs. They reached Sam almost before Ludor, who had had to circumnavigate Helena and Martin. The boy was leaning against the matchboarding, his hands in his pockets. His cheeks were pink and his eyes downcast, but there was satisfaction in his stance.

Ludor put a hand on the wall above Sam’s head and leaned on it. They were in a circle made up of Martin and Helena, Campion and Luke, and his tone was restrained.

“So you did the research. Who told you that you were on Professor Tabard’s team?”

“He did.” Sam’s glance flickered upward. “Of course. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known for certain, would I? When I was helping over at the workshop, the professor came in and looked at me and said, ‘Is this one of your wretched twins, Mayo?’ And Mr. Mayo said, ‘No, he’s normal.’ And the professor said, ‘Oh, I see, he’s on the team.’ So that was that.”

“Where did you see that the transistor set contained nipponanium?”

“In its free literature. You send for it if you’d like to have whatever it is and haven’t got the money. Then, after you’ve read it, if you still want it, you save up for it.”

Ludor was interested; it was his great gift. “You read all that stuff in very fine print? I didn’t know anyone did that.”

“Of course. That is research.”

“I suppose so. Horrible job. Have you got the brochure here?”

“No, it was lost with my bag. I didn’t know how Edward would get on without it, but he managed very well. He dribbled the ball right down the field, didn’t he? Got it past everybody. And that editor shot it straight in the goal---wham!”

“You could have asked for a second copy of the brochure.”

“Could we? They’d already given us one.”

Lord Ludor regarded him with disgust. “You’re too young altogether,” he said, and meant it. “How long before you get your Ph.D.? Ten years?”

“I expect so. Probably more. I’m nearly nine.”

“Get it and come to me and I’ll employ you.”

“Thank you.” A faint streak of otherworldliness showed in Sam for a fleeting moment. “It’s very kind of you,” he said seriously. “But do you think you ought to promise? There’s going to be a lot of change in the next ten years. You may not have anything for me to do.”

Lord Ludor turned away from him and went back to the blond secretary. “I hate that damn kid,” he said.

THE END