Chapter XV. The Airship Clue - Page 2

stronger."

Tom could hear, through the telephone, his chum moving about, and then he caught a startled exclamation.

"What's the matter?" asked Tom anxiously.

"I got a shock!" cried Ned. "I thought you said you had this thing fixed. Great Scott, Tom! It nearly yanked the arm off me! Is this a joke?"

"No, old man. No, of course not! Something must be wrong. I didn't mean that. Wait, I'll take a look. Say, it does seem as if everything was going wrong with this invention. But I'm on the right track, and soon I'll have it all right. Wait a second. I'll be right over."

Tom found that it was only a simple displacement of a wire that had given Ned a shock, and he soon had this remedied.

"Now we'll try again," he said. This time nothing wrong occurred, and soon Tom saw the clearest image he had yet observed on his telephone photo plate.

"Switch me on now, Ned," he called to his chum, and Ned reported that he could see Tom very plainly.

"So far--so good," observed Tom, as he came from the booth. "But there are several things I want yet to do."

"Such as what?" questioned Ned.

"Well, I want to arrange to have two kinds of pictures come over the wire. I want it so that a person can go into a booth, call up a friend, and then switch on the picture plate, so he can see his friend as well as talk to him. I want this plate to be like a mirror, so that any number of images can be made to appear on it. In that way it can be used over and over again. In fact it will be exactly like a mirror, or a telescope. No matter how far two persons may be apart they can both see and talk to one another."

"That's a big contract, Tom."

"Yes, but you've seen that it can be done. Then another thing I want to do is to have it arranged so that I can make a photograph of a person over a wire."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that if a certain person talks to me over the wire, I can turn my switch, and get a picture of him here at my apparatus connected with my telephone. To do that I'll merely need a sending apparatus at the other end of the telephone line--not a receiving machine."

"Could you arrange it so that the person who was talking to you would have his picture taken whether he wanted it or not?" asked Ned.

"Yes, it might be done," spoke Tom, thoughtfully. "I could conceal the sending plate somewhere in the telephone booth, and arrange the proper light, I suppose."

"That might be a good way in which to catch a criminal," went on Ned. "Often crooks call up on the telephone, but they know they are safe. The authorities can't see them--they can only hear them. Now if you could get a photograph of them while they were