“He is unquestionably a dramatic scoundrel. Why did you interfere? At the very moment I quitted him he was giving his own precious character to Constantine. Never mind! I will find the rascal and beat him to a jelly.” “Bully for you! Things have happened, then?” “My dear Frank, I have not only seen but _heard_. Think what it means! Three thousand miles of wireless telephony! And what a first-rate brute that fellow Steindal is!” “A regular son of a gun, I have no doubt. But say. I thought you had rung up Maggie Hutchinson?” “I did not see her, thank Heaven, but I heard so much concerning her that I shall make it my business to meet the _Merlin_ at Liverpool and warn her against that pair of beauties in New York.” Hooper selected a fresh and extra green cigar. “Now, indeed, I can smoke the calumet of peace while you talk,” he said, curling up in an easy chair with the comfortable _abandon_ of one who has faithfully kept a long vigil. CHAPTER VI IN WHICH CONSTANTINE HAS A VISION Although he had not the slightest difficulty in recounting the precise phrases of conversations and the exact details of actions which had their habitat in New York during the previous hour and a quarter, Karl did unquestionably feel the need of choosing his words when he began to tell Hooper how a new and wholly entrancing phase of his extraordinary powers was opened up by the discovery that mere distance no longer diminished his sense of hearing. It was so vitally important to be accurate. First impressions are of prime value in describing a sensation. If a man only retained his first impression of the taste of alcohol what a sober world it would be! When his conscious intelligence quitted the room in which he and Hooper were sitting, he had no fixed objective in his mind. This fresh departure was noteworthy, and, indeed, absolutely essential to the theory propounded by Sir William Macpherson, namely, that Karl was a living installation of wireless telegraphy. If this rough-and-ready definition of the phenomenon were reasonably correct, it was essential that the human “station” should have the power of receiving as well as transmitting the electrical influences which called into activity its sixth sense. Hitherto Grier had, so to speak, swept the mental horizon with a searchlight, hoping or expecting to find the object he sought. Now, in a state of quiescence, yet tuned to the proper pitch by the sound of one of those strong, deep words which vibrate back to the twilight of human origins, he was encountered by another radio-active force, and became, for a time, a machine-like recorder of impressions.