The Chemist's son, a young man of twenty, rose reluctantly from his obscure seat in a corner of the room. He was tall, and slight of build, with thick, wavy chestnut hair and blue eyes; his delicate features were offset by a square firmness of chin. He came forward slowly, flushing as the eyes of the men were turned on him; a poetic-looking boy, with only the firm line of his lips and the set of his jaw to mark him for a man. "My son, gentlemen," Rogers added. "You all know Loto." "We do," said George enthusiastically. He vacated his own chair, shoving it forward, and selected another, more retired position for himself. Loto settled himself in the chair and then hesitated, as though in doubt how to begin. He was still flushing, and yet his manner was thoroughly poised. His forehead was wrinkled in thought. "Father and I were experimenting," he began abruptly, "about two years ago. We were interested in electrons. We were experimenting with the fluorescence in a Crookes tube--breaking down the atoms into electrons. Then we followed the experiments of Lenard and Roentgen. We darkened the tube and prepared a chemical screen, which grew luminous." Loto turned to Rogers: "They don't want to hear all this. These technicalities--" Rogers smiled. "We hit upon it quite by accident--an accident that we have never been able to duplicate. We had, that evening, an adaptation of the familiar Crookes tube. I do not know the exact conditions we secured; we had no idea we were on the threshold of any discovery and we kept no record of what we did. Nor am I sure just how I prepared the screen--what proportions of the chemicals I used--" "You're worse than Loto," the Banker growled. "If you'll just tell us what--" "I will," agreed Rogers good-naturedly. "We were working one night in my laboratory on Forty-third Street--only a few hundred yards from the Scientific Club here. The room was dark, and we had set up a small chemical screen. It grew luminous as the electrons from the tube struck it, but the glowing was not what we had expected--not what we had observed before. The difference is unexplainable to you, but we both noticed it. And then Loto noticed something else, something in the darkness behind the screen." Loto was sitting upright on the edge of his chair; his eyes were snapping with eagerness as he interrupted his father. "I'll tell them because it was I who saw it first. Behind the screen, the darkness of the room itself was growing luminous with a glowing radiance that seemed to spread out into rays that were not parallel, but divergent. It looked almost as though the screen were a searchlight sending a spreading beam out behind it.