got a shock!" cried Ned. "I thought you said you had this thing
fixed. Great Scott, Tom! It nearly yanked the arm off me! Is this
a joke?"

"No, old man. No, of course not! Something must be wrong. I didn't
mean that. Wait, I'll take a look. Say, it does seem as if
everything was going wrong with this invention. But I'm on the
right track, and soon I'll have it all right. Wait a second. I'll
be right over."

Tom found that it was only a simple displacement of a wire that
had given Ned a shock, and he soon had this remedied.

"Now we'll try again," he said. This time nothing wrong occurred,
and soon Tom saw the clearest image he had yet observed on his
telephone photo plate.

"Switch me on now, Ned," he called to his chum, and Ned reported
that he could see Tom very plainly.

"So far--so good," observed Tom, as he came from the booth. "But
there are several things I want yet to do."

"Such as what?" questioned Ned.

"Well, I want to arrange to have two kinds of pictures come over
the wire. I want it so that a person can go into a booth, call up
a friend, and then switch on the picture plate, so he can see his
friend as well as talk to him. I want this plate to be like a
mirror, so that any number of images can be made to appear on it.
In that way it can be used over and over again. In fact it will be
exactly like a mirror, or a telescope. No matter how far two
persons may be apart they can both see and talk to one another."

"That's a big contract, Tom."

"Yes, but you've seen that it can be done. Then another thing I
want to do is to have it arranged so that I can make a photograph
of a person over a wire."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that if a certain person talks to me over the wire, I can
turn my switch, and get a picture of him here at my apparatus
connected with my telephone. To do that I'll merely need a sending
apparatus at the other end of the telephone line--not a receiving
machine."

"Could you arrange it so that the person who was talking to you
would have his picture taken whether he wanted it or not?" asked
Ned.

"Yes, it might be done," spoke Tom, thoughtfully. "I could conceal
the sending plate somewhere in the telephone booth, and arrange
the proper light, I suppose."

"That might be a good way in which to catch a criminal," went on
Ned. "Often crooks call up on the telephone, but they know they
are safe. The authorities can't see them--they can only hear them.
Now if you could get