“I admit that I jumped--cold sweat broke out on my forehead, but I glued my fingers to those variometer dials. About a minute later I heard it again--_do, re, mi_, and on up. It sounded at first like eight rotary gaps tuned to a musical scale, except that the tones were much smoother, almost bell-like, in fact.” Dick was laughing. “And you ask me to explain a thing like that after I’ve been talking of miracles?” he scoffed. “Why, it’s childishly simple. Some local fellow was playing a fool trick with eight rotary gaps adjusted to the key of C, or else someone was pioneering with a modulated CW--a broadcasting set.” “Yeah, Sherlock? Well, I thought of that, too--I’m not as dumb as I look.” Stan had risen to go. When he was safely outside the door, a position calculated to make his parting shot highly dramatic, he turned and shot back, “Right in the middle of that little performance the light in my radio room went out, and I learned the next day that the power had been off all over the city!” The door slammed. * * * * * Weeks passed. Stan, busy with athletics and activities, did not have time to call at his friend’s house for more than a month, and when finally he did, it was only upon receipt of an urgent telephone message. He burst into Dick’s room to find that worthy lying on the floor with his nose deep in an immense volume. “Oh, Lord! False alarm,” he groaned. “I thought you had electrocuted yourself, or something. What’s the matter?--and what the dickens are you reading?” Dick rose and laid the volume carefully on the table. “A treatise on X-rays,” he said; “and as for your other questions, nothing is the matter and I haven’t electrocuted myself. I just wanted you to come over and see what you have been responsible for. Look!” He stepped to the neat work bench and withdrew the black covering cloth from a bulky cabinet. “If I’m the father of that,” snorted Stan, “I ought to be ashamed of myself. Why, it’s out of date, obsolete--no one builds cabinets three feet high any more. What in heck is it, anyway?” “It,” said Dick, “is, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted”--he coughed, with a dignified air--“something for which you, only you, and no one but you, are responsible.” “How come? I’ll bite.” “It’s a long story, Stan. You probably remember the trick story that you told me a few weeks ago, at the end of which you left abruptly, so that I might not, with the powers of pure logic, destroy what you seemed to believe a miracle?” “I remember, all right, only I didn’t say it was a miracle, and the story was not a trick story--I told you it was gospel truth, and I wasn’t kidding.” “Uh-huh,” agreed Dick. “Well, be that as it may, your dramatic exit left me with an unsolved puzzle in my head, as you no doubt intended that it should, and knowing me as you do, old egg-beater, you certainly must know what the result of such a condition upon me would naturally be.”