e
sizzled above it, and a photographic plate below was developed to show
a string of round discs that could easily have been pearls.

The temporary possessor of the box was pleased with the result--but
Blinky was puzzled. For the developer had brought out an odd result.
There were the pearls as expected, but, too, there was a small picture
superimposed--a picture of a bald head and a body beneath seated
beside a desk. The picture had been taken from above looking straight
down, and head and desk were familiar.

Blinky knew them both. The odd part was that he knew also that both of
them were at that instant on the ground floor of the same disreputable
building, directly under and two floors below his workshop.

Like many great discoveries, this of Blinky's came as the result of an
accident. He had monkeyed with the X-Ray generator and had made
certain substitutions. And here was the result--a bald head and a
desk, photographed plainly through two heavy wood floors. Blinky
scratched his own head in deep thought. And then he repeated the
operation.

This time there was a blonde head close to the bald one, and two
people were close to the desk and to each other. Blinky knew then that
there were financial possibilities in this new line of portrait work.

It was some time before the rat eyes of the inventor were able to see
exactly what they wanted through this strange device, but Blinky
learned. And he fitted a telescope back of the ray and found that he
could look along it and see as if through a great funnel what was
transpiring blocks and blocks away; he looked where he would, and
brick walls or stone were like glass when the new ray struck through
them.

Blinky never knew what he had--never dreamed of the tremendous
potentialities in his oscillating ethereal ray that had a range and
penetration beyond anything known. But he knew, in a vague way, that
this ray was a channel for light waves to follow, and he learned that
he could vary the range of the ray and that whatever light was shown
at the end of that range came to him as clear and distinct as if he
were there in the room.

He sat for hours, staring through the telescope. He would train the
device upon a building across the street, then cut down the current
until the unseen vibration penetrated inside the building. If there
was nothing there of interest he would gradually increase the power,
and the ray would extend out and still out into other rooms and bey