ond
them to still others. Blinky had a lot of fun, but he never forgot the
practical application of the device--practical, that is, from the
distorted viewpoint of a warped mind.

* * * * *

"I've heard about your machine," said a pasty-faced man one day, as he
sat in Blinky's room, "and I think it's a lot of hooey. But I'd give
just one grand to know who is with the district attorney this minute."

"Where is he?" asked Blinky.

"Two blocks down the street, in the station house ... and if Pokey
Barnard is with him, the lousy stool-pigeon--"

Blinky paid no attention to the other's opinion of one Pokey Barnard;
he was busy with a sputtering blue light and a telescope behind a
shield of heavy lead.

"Put your money on the table," he said, finally: "there's the dicks ...
and there's Pokey. Take a look--"

It was some few minutes later that Blinky learned of another valuable
feature in his ray. He was watching the district attorney when the
pasty-faced man brushed against a hanging incandescent light. There
was a bit of bare wire exposed, and as it swung into the ray the fuses
in the Collins studio blew out instantly.

But the squinting eyes at the telescope had seen something first. They
had seen the spare form of the district attorney throw itself from the
chair as if it had been dealt a blow--or had received an electric
shock.

Blinky put in new fuses--heavier ones--and tried it again on another
subject. And again the man at the receiving end got a shot of current
that sent him sprawling.

"Now what the devil--" demanded Blinky. He stood off and looked at the
machine, the wire with its 110 volts, the invisible ray that was
streaming out.

"It's insulated, the machine is," he told his caller, "so the juice
won't shoot back if I keep my hands off; but why," he demanded
profanely, "don't it short on the first thing it touches?"

* * * * *

He was picturing vaguely a ray like a big insulated cable, with light
and current both traveling along a core at its center, cut off,
insulated by the ray, so that only the bare end where the ray stopped
could make contact.

"Some more of them damn electrons," he hazarded; then demanded of his
caller: "But am I one hell of a smart guy? Or am I?"

There was no denying this fact. The pasty-faced man told Blinky with
lurid emphasis just how smart. He had seen with his own eyes and this
was too good to keep.