"You know me, Tibbetts," he said. "I never speak about myself, and I'm

rather inclined to disparage my own point of view than otherwise."

"I've never noticed that," said Bones.

"You know, anyway," urged Jelf, "that I want to see the bad side of

anything I take up."

He explained how he had sat up night after night, endeavouring to

discover some drawback to the Tibbetts-Jelf Lamp, and how he had rolled

into bed at five in the morning, exhausted by the effort.

"If I could only find one flaw!" he said. "But the ingenious beggar

who invented it has not left a single bad point."

He went on to describe the lamp. With the aid of a lead pencil and a

piece of Bones's priceless notepaper he sketched the front elevation

and discoursed upon rays, especially upon ultra-violet rays.

Apparently this is a disreputable branch of the Ray family. If you

could only get an ultra-violet ray as he was sneaking out of the lamp,

and hit him violently on the back of the head, you were rendering a

service to science and humanity.

This lamp was so fixed that the moment Mr. Ultra V. Ray reached the

threshold of freedom he was tripped up, pounced upon, and beaten until

he (naturally enough) changed colour!

It was all done by the lens.

Jelf drew a Dutch cheese on the table-cloth to Illustrate the point.

"This light never goes out," said Jelf passionately. "If you lit it

to-day, it would be alight to-morrow, and the next day, and so on. All

the light-buoys and lighthouses around England will be fitted with this

lamp; it will revolutionise navigation."

According to the exploiter, homeward bound mariners would gather

together on the poop, or the hoop, or wherever homeward bound manners

gathered, and would chant a psalm of praise, in which the line "Heaven

bless the Tibbetts-Jelf Lamp" would occur at regular intervals.

And when he had finished his eulogy, and lay back exhausted by his own

eloquence, and Bones asked, "But what does it do?" Jelf could have

killed him.

Under any other circumstances Bones might have dismissed his visitor

with a lecture on the futility of attempting to procure money under

false pretences. But remember that Bones was the proprietor of a new

motor-car, and thought motor-car and dreamed motor-car by day and by

night. Even as it was, he was framing a conventional expression of

regret that he could not interest himself in outside property, when

there dawned upon his mind the splendid possibilities of possessing

this accessory, and he wavered.

"Anyway," he said, "it will take a year to make."

Mr. Jelf beamed.

"Wrong!" he cried triumphantly. "Two of the lamps are just finished,

and will be ready to-morrow."

Bones hesitated.

"Of course, dear old Jelf," he said, "I should like, as an experiment,

to try them on my car."




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