“But even if you’re successful, you won’t make any money out of it,” declared Ned Newton, after first hearing of his chum’s ambitions. “Look at the radio people! The air is free. Anybody who wants to can tune in and listen to a million dollar concert without paying a cent. They don’t even have to buy any special kind of receiver—they can roll their own, so to speak. What’s to prevent them from stealing your stuff—your—what do you call it, anyhow?” “I haven’t settled on a name,” Tom said, with a smile. “Call it talking pictures for the time being. Of course it’s entirely different from moving pictures with phonograph attachment.” “Well, what’s to prevent any one from tuning in on your talking pictures?” asked Ned. “This,” answered Tom, pointing to a small tube on one side of the receiving apparatus. “This is a new device. Without it no one can see and hear my pictures that will talk. This is protected by patents and no one can use it without my sanction. That’s the secret.” “Well, maybe you’ve got something there,” Ned admitted. So, during the past months, he had helped Tom Swift bring the new apparatus to such perfection as it now had. The present night’s performance was only one of many. At first there had been only blank failure. But by using different kinds of receiving screens, finally settling on a mirror covered with electrified glass, Tom had achieved a measure of success. Still, even now, the projected image of the singing or talking performer in a distant room was too dim to be commercially successful. “We’ll go at it again to-morrow,” Tom told his chum as he let him out of the laboratory and locked the door after him. “It’s the biggest thing I ever attempted,” he said to himself, when Ned had gone and he was alone in the room, “the very biggest, and I’m not going to have it stolen from me. No one suspects as yet what I am working on—no one except dad and Ned. But I wish I were nearer success. I thought the image would come through clear to-night, but there was that same haze—that same haze. I wonder——” He paused and listened intently. Outside his door he heard footsteps—cautious footsteps. “Is that you, Ned?” he called. “Anything wrong?” Tom did not open the door—he was taking no chances. “That you, Ned?” he asked again, more sharply. “No, Mr. Swift,” came back a voice with a foreign accent. “I am just leaving my own laboratory. I think I have perfected that new magnetic gear shift we have been working on.” “That’s good,” Tom responded. He recognized the voice of Jacob Greenbaum, a clever inventor whom he had recently engaged to work on some side lines that occupied the Swift factory. Tom had an idea for a new device to make easier the shifting of gears on automobiles. It was an adaptation of the old magnetic selection that has often been tried and which, up to date, had not been successful.