To Hastings Simpson unfolded his tale carefully, leaf by leaf, and
interested amazingly that eminent young electrician. Hastings, though
now married, the possessor of a baby with the reddest face in all
Chicago, and perfectly happy, had himself undergone somewhat of an
experience in obtaining the mother of that baby, and so sympathized with
Simpson deeply.
"We'll invent that keyhole or latch-key, or break something," was all he
said. There were thenceforth meetings every evening between the
two--meetings which were sometimes far extended into the night; and the
outcome of it all was that one morning, just as the sunbeams came
thrusting the white fog over blue Lake Michigan, Simpson sought his own
room somewhat weary-eyed, but with a countenance which was simply
beatific in expression. The invention had been perfected! What that
invention was may as well be described here and now. The first object to
be sought was, naturally, a keyhole which could not easily be missed. Of
course, this is a non-scientific description of it, but it may convey a
fair idea to the average reader. First, instead of the ordinary keyhole
there was something exactly resembling the customary mouthpiece through
which we whistle upstairs from the ground floor of a flat seeking to
attract the people who rarely answer. The only difference between it and
the ordinary mouthpiece was that it was set in so that it was even with
the woodwork of the door, and did not project at all. This mouthpiece
tapered all around inside, and terminated in a keyhole which was
rubber-lined. On the other side of this keyhole was a hard surface,
padded with rubber, but having just opposite the mouth of the keyhole a
small orifice extending through to a metal surface. That metal surface
was a section of one of the most powerful horseshoe magnets ever
invented in the United States, and was to be imbedded in the woodwork of
the door.
It was a huge thing, reaching nearly across the door, and warranted to
pull toward it anything magnetic of reasonable dimensions. The keyhole
was all the design of Simpson, the electric part of the affair all the
invention of Hastings. Combined, they made something beautiful and
wonderful.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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