"Let us all into the secret."
"Oh, there"s no secret," said the inventor shortly.
"No dance, either," pouted the girl from Jersey, who was an intimate of the family.
It was the signal for the light fantastic business to begin. Hawkins is notoriously out of sympathy with dancing. He took my arm and guided me stealthily from the drawing-room.
"Phew!" remarked the inventor when we had settled ourselves up-stairs with a couple of cigars. "Say, Griggs, do you still wonder at crime?"
"Meaning?"
"Meaning dear papa Blodgett," snapped Hawkins. "Honestly, do you believe it would be really wicked to lure that old human p.u.s.s.y-cat down cellar and sort of lose him through the furnace-door?"
"Don"t talk nonsense, Hawkins," I laughed.
"It isn"t nonsense. It"s the way I feel. But I"ll get square on that spiteful tongue of his some day--and when I do! There isn"t anything sweeter waiting for me in Heaven than to feel myself emptying a pan of dishwater on that old reprobate from one of the upper windows.
"Why, Griggs, sometimes in the night I dream I have him on the floor, that I"m just getting even for some of the things he"s said to me and about me, and I wake up in a dripping perspiration and----"
"Stop, Hawkins!" I guffawed.
"Strikes you funny, too, does it?" the inventor cried angrily. "I suppose you think it"s all right for him to talk as he does? Criticise my decorations, tell me they"ll all burn up some day, and all that?"
"Well, but they might."
"They might not!" shouted Hawkins in a fury. "You don"t know any more about it than he does. You couldn"t burn up this house if you soaked every carpet in it with oil!"
"Why not?"
"Aha! Why not? That"s just the point. Why not, to be sure? Because it"s all prepared for ahead of time."
"Private wire to the engine-house?" I queried.
"Private wire to Halifax! There"s no private wire about it. See here, Griggs, do you suppose that poor little brain of yours could comprehend a truly great idea?"
"It could try," I said meekly.
"Then listen. You remember those dots on the frieze all through the house? You do? All right. Just close your eyes and conceive a little metal tube running back into the wall. Imagine the little tube opening into a large supply pipe in the wall.
"Is that clear? Then conceive that the supply pipe in each room connects with a supply pipe in the rear of the house, and that the big pipe terminates--or rather begins--in a big tank on the top floor!"
"But what on earth is it all?"
"It"s the Hawkins Chemico-Sprinkler System!" announced the inventor.
"For the Lord"s sake!" I gasped.
"Yes, sir! It"s something like the sprinkling system you see in factories, but all concealed--perfectly adapted to private house purposes! Every one of those dots is simply a little hole in the wall through which, in case of fire, will flow quart after quart of my chemical fire-extinguisher? How"s that?"
"Er--is the tank full?" I asked, gliding hurriedly away from the wall.
"Of course it is. Oh, sit where you were, Griggs, don"t drag in that asinine clownishness of yours. Or, better still, come up with me and see the business end of the thing--the tank and all that."
"The stuff isn"t inflammable, is it? We"re smoking, you know."
"An inflammable fire-extinguishing liquid!" cried Hawkins. "Why, can"t you understand that--bah!"
He laid a course to the upper regions and I followed.
"Out here in the extension," he explained, when we reached the top floor. "There!"
We stood in a bare room, whose emptiness was accentuated by the cold, electric light.
Furnishings it had none, save for the big tank in the center. This was a wooden affair, lined with lead.
Over the top, and some two feet above the tank proper, the heavy cover was suspended by a weird system of pulleys and electric wires. To the under side of the cover was fastened a big gla.s.s sphere filled with white stuff.
It was a remarkable contrivance.
"There--that"s simple, isn"t it?" said Hawkins, with a happy smile.
"It may be if you understand it."
"Why, just look here. See that big gla.s.s ball? That"s full of marble dust--carbonate of lime, you know. The tank is filled with weak sulphuric acid. When the ball drops into the acid--what happens?"
"You have a nasty job fishing it out again?"
"Not at all. It smashes into flinders, the marble dust combines with the sulphuric acid, and forms a neutral liquid, bubbling with carbonic acid.
Even you, Griggs, must know that carbonic acid gas will put out any fire, without damaging anything. There you are."
"I see. You smell fire, rush up here and knock that ball into the tank, and the house is flooded through the dots in your frieze. Remarkable!"
"Oh, I don"t even have to come up here," smiled Hawkins. "See that?"
"That" was a little strand of platinum wire in a niche in the wall.
"That"s just a test fuse, so that I can see that she"s all in working order," pursued the inventor, leaning his cigar against it. "There"s half a dozen of them in every room in the house. As soon as the heat touches them, they melt and set off my electric release--and down drops the cover of the tank--ball and all. The ball breaks, the valve at the bottom opens automatically--and down goes the tank, full of extinguisher."
"Well, I must say it looks practical."
"It is!" a.s.serted Hawkins. "Some night--if the night ever comes--when you see a roaring blaze in one of these rooms subdued in ten seconds by the gentle drizzle that comes out of that frieze, you will----"
"Mr. Hawkins, sir," interrupted Hawkins" butler at the door.
"Well, William?"
"Mrs. Hawkins, sir, she says as how your presence is desired down-stairs."
"Oh, all right," said the inventor wearily. "I"ll be down directly."