“Now, if I was telegraphing a photograph of you to Chicago, it would have to be in the form of a film, wrapped about a glass cylinder in the transmitter. Light would be thrown on it by means of a convex lens. Now, I cover the glass pipe with vulcanized rubber, or, say, with sealing wax, so that no rays get out, except through the one little window where they’ll fall on the film or the paper moving in front of it. Inside my cylinder is a lens containing selenium, where the rays fall after passing through the glass. But, pshaw, what’s all this to you?” “Go ahead—I’m listenin’!” “Well, as I was going to tell you, just so much light, or illumination, I ought to say, is given to the selenium cell as you’d see in the light and dark spots of the photograph. That, in turn, means a greater or less resistance offered to the electric current. Its energy is controlled automatically, of course, passing over the wire from the transmitter to the receiver, so that while the transmitting film is passing in front of the selenium at my end of the wire, the sealed tube of Tesla rays at the Chicago office is being moved before a receptive film at the far end of the wire. So the transmitted light escapes through the one little window, and records its impression on the film—and there you are!” The other man put down his glass, unperturbed. “Yes, here we are—but if there’s so many millions in this apparatus for you, what’s the use o’ hollerin’ it out to all Sixth Avenue? It’s fine! It sounds big! It’s as good as perpetual motion! But coming down to earth again, how’re you goin’ to get your funds to put all this pipe-dream through?” “I’ll get them yet, some way, by hook or crook!” protested the younger man, in the enthusiasm of his fourth glass of bootlegger’s gin. “Well, my friend, I’ll tell you one thing, straight out. Stick to me and you’ll wear diamonds! And until you’re gettin’ the diamonds, what’s more, you’ll be gettin’ your three square a day!” It was the lip of the indignant Durkin that curled a little, as he looked at the glittering stud on the expansive shirt-front and the fat, bejewelled hand toying with the gin glass. Then he remembered, and became more humble. “I’ve got to live!” he confessed, mirthlessly. “Of course you have! And you’re a fool to go broke in the teeth of a cinch like this. First thing, though, how’d you ever come to get pinched by Doogan? Here, take another drink—hot stuff, eh! Now, how’d you ever come to get you’self pulled that fool way?” “I had been living like a street cat, for a week. An Eighth Avenue manufacturing electrician I went to for work, took me up and showed me a wire on his back roof. He advanced me five dollars to short-circuit it for him. Doogan’s men caught me at it, and Doogan tried to make me out an ordinary overhead guerrilla.” “Lightnin’-slinger, eh?” “Yes, a lightning-slinger.” “But I s’pose you notice that he didn’t appear against you?”