"You know me, Tibbetts," he said. "I never speak about myself, and I'm
rather inclined to disparage my own point of view than otherwise."
"I've never noticed that," said Bones.
"You know, anyway," urged Jelf, "that I want to see the bad side of
anything I take up."
He explained how he had sat up night after night, endeavouring to
discover some drawback to the Tibbetts-Jelf Lamp, and how he had rolled
into bed at five in the morning, exhausted by the effort.
"If I could only find one flaw!" he said. "But the ingenious beggar
who invented it has not left a single bad point."
He went on to describe the lamp. With the aid of a lead pencil and a
piece of Bones's priceless notepaper he sketched the front elevation
and discoursed upon rays, especially upon ultra-violet rays.
Apparently this is a disreputable branch of the Ray family. If you
could only get an ultra-violet ray as he was sneaking out of the lamp,
and hit him violently on the back of the head, you were rendering a
service to science and humanity.
This lamp was so fixed that the moment Mr. Ultra V. Ray reached the
threshold of freedom he was tripped up, pounced upon, and beaten until
he (naturally enough) changed colour!
It was all done by the lens.
Jelf drew a Dutch cheese on the table-cloth to Illustrate the point.
"This light never goes out," said Jelf passionately. "If you lit it
to-day, it would be alight to-morrow, and the next day, and so on. All
the light-buoys and lighthouses around England will be fitted with this
lamp; it will revolutionise navigation."
According to the exploiter, homeward bound mariners would gather
together on the poop, or the hoop, or wherever homeward bound manners
gathered, and would chant a psalm of praise, in which the line "Heaven
bless the Tibbetts-Jelf Lamp" would occur at regular intervals.
And when he had finished his eulogy, and lay back exhausted by his own
eloquence, and Bones asked, "But what does it do?" Jelf could have
killed him.
Under any other circumstances Bones might have dismissed his visitor
with a lecture on the futility of attempting to procure money under
false pretences. But remember that Bones was the proprietor of a new
motor-car, and thought motor-car and dreamed motor-car by day and by
night. Even as it was, he was framing a conventional expression of
regret that he could not interest himself in outside property, when
there dawned upon his mind the splendid possibilities of possessing
this accessory, and he wavered.
"Anyway," he said, "it will take a year to make."
Mr. Jelf beamed.
"Wrong!" he cried triumphantly. "Two of the lamps are just finished,
and will be ready to-morrow."
Bones hesitated.
"Of course, dear old Jelf," he said, "I should like, as an experiment,
to try them on my car."