Henry Horn"s X-Ray Eye Gla.s.ses.
by Dwight V. Swain.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Look!" said Henry Horn with a gasp. "Here, you look at the camp through the gla.s.ses!"]
[Sidenote: Henry Horn had a new invention; a pair of gla.s.ses that worked on the x-ray principle. But he didn"t expect them to reveal n.a.z.i secret agents and their works of sabotage!]
"It"s not enough to have a nudist colony move in next door!" fumed Professor Paulsen. "No, indeed! That wouldn"t disrupt things enough.
Now, in addition, every ne"er-do-well in the county comes prowling over our farm in order to spy on the naked numbskulls!"
Scowling ferociously, the gaunt scientist stamped violently back across the meadow"s lush verdure toward the little country home he shared with his partner, Henry Horn. Beside him, matching his own long strides, came the savant"s old friend, Major Ray Coggleston of Army Intelligence.
"None of us can hope for a bed of roses all the time, Joe," Coggleston remarked, grinning at the professor"s outburst. ""Into each life some rain must fall," you know. You"ve got trespa.s.sers to bother you. Me, I"m responsible for protecting one of the biggest explosives laboratories in the country against Axis espionage and sabotage."
Instinctively, as he spoke, the officer"s eyes sought out the long, low Ordnance experiment station, barely a mile away. Professor Paulsen, following the glance, nodded.
"You"re right," he agreed. "And when you come right down to it, my worries over the nudist camp back there"--he jerked his head toward the high board fence which marked the boundary--"aren"t very important. Not with a war in progress."
By now the two were in the yard and rounding the corner of the house.
The next instant they stopped dead in their tracks.
There, in the shade of the building, stood a slight, familiar figure. A figure which, at the moment, was the center of attention for a little knot of interested spectators.
"Oh, yes, gentlemen, it certainly does work!" cried Henry Horn enthusiastically, his scraggly goatee jerking spasmodically with each nod of emphasis. He waved the battered pair of binoculars he clutched in his right hand. "Yes, it"s a marvelous invention. You can see everything you want to, just like you were right inside that camp. And only a dollar for a minute"s look!"
The professor"s face jumped to beet red, then apoplectic purple. His fists clenched, and the sound he made as he sucked in his breath closely resembled that of a cow pulling her foot out of a mudhole. He started forward.
Major Coggleston choked off an incipient frame-racking spasm of mirth barely in time. He caught the tall scientist"s arm.
"See you later, Joe!" he snickered. "I"ve got to get back on duty.
There"s a new super-explosive being tested, and I"m supposed to be on hand."
"All right. Later." Professor Paulsen grated the words through clenched teeth, but it is doubtful that he was even conscious of speaking. His eyes were focussed straight at Henry in a horrible glare, and the smoke of indignation hovered about him in clouds.
"Only a dollar, gentlemen!" cried Henry, oblivious to all this new attention. "It"s just like going inside the camp. Really it is!"
"He"s right, boys!" broke in a burly, red-headed character. "Those gla.s.ses of his are better than a seat on the fence." And, turning to the little man: "I"ll even buy "em from you. How much"ll you take?"
"You see, gentlemen?" whooped Henry, steel-rimmed spectacles nearly sliding off the end of his nose in his excitement. "The gentleman says my invention is everything I say it is--"
"_Henry!_"
The little man jumped as if a red-hot flatiron had just been applied to that portion of his trousers designed for sitting.
"Urghk!" he exclaimed profoundly.
"You prying Piltdown[1]!" flamed the professor. "Is there anything you won"t do for money?" A moment of thunderous silence. "I"m surprised you"re not doing a fan dance yourself, if these would-be Peeping Toms are willing to pay for nakedness."
The red-headed man guffawed.
"And you!" exploded the savant, turning on the spectators. "Get out of here! Yes, all of you, you riffraff! I won"t have you on the place!"
Henry"s potential customers fled before the Paulsen wrath like chaff before the wind, leaving the quaking little entrepreneur to face his fate alone. He stood braced against the verbal cloud-burst, eyes squeezed tight shut behind steel-rimmed gla.s.ses, goatee sticking straight out.
"For days these snoopers have driven me half-crazy!" raged the professor. "I"ve tried every trick I could think of to keep them out.
I"ve put signs forbidding trespa.s.sing on every tree. I"ve threatened mayhem and murder. Yet still they come!"
"But Joseph--"
"Keep quiet "til I"m finished, you disgrace to science!" The lean scholar ran trembling fingers through his greying hair. Then:
"And now--today! Major Coggleston and I go down to the end of the meadow to drive three of the sneaking human dung beetles away from knot-holes.
When we get back, what do we find?"
"Joseph, please--"
"We find you--my colleague, my partner, my friend! You--peddling the use of your binoculars to the slimy creatures!" He glared savagely at his victim. "If you were in Paris, Henry Horn, you"d be selling French postcards to tourists!"
Still purple with rage, the savant turned away. Stared dourly back toward the high board fence that surrounded the nudists.
The next instant he jerked as stiff as if an electric shock had jolted through him.
"Henry!"
"Yes, Joseph." The other"s voice was meekly plaintive as he awaited a renewal of the diatribe.
"Henry, that fence is between us and the nudists! How could you see them, binoculars or not?"
Henry"s face brightened. His goatee moved to a more confident angle.
"That"s what I"ve been trying to tell you, Joseph," he explained. "It"s my new invention--"
"Invention!" There was a hysterical note in the way Professor Paulsen exclaimed the word. "Please, Henry, not that! Don"t tell me you"ve been inventing again--"
His little colleague bristled.
"And why shouldn"t I be inventing, Joseph Paulsen?" he demanded querulously. "My inventions are mighty valuable. Why my new explosive--"[2]
"--Which you ran onto quite by accident, and which turned out not to be an explosive at all," the professor cut in grimly.