CHAPTER III

THE THOUGHT CAMERA

“I now proceed to take a picture of your mind.” The queer little Chinaman who called himself Tao Sing twisted his face into a smile and in doing so added a hundred wrinkles to the thousand that already made up his rather comical face.

Four o’clock on the Monday following the ball game had found Johnny at the door of Whong Lee’s little shop asking for Tao Sing. Tao Sing had said he would show him a picture of his thoughts. Johnny did not believe he could do that. However, one of Johnny’s rules for living was, “Never pass anything up.” So here he was.

“Take a picture of my mind?” he laughed. “You can’t do that. I still have my head on. You can’t take a picture through my skull.”

“No. This I cannot do,” the little man said soberly. “But I can make a picture of what you think.”

“What I think,” Johnny whispered to himself. “That’s what he said the other night. Of course it’s nonsense. But he did tell me what I had thought about the pep meet. He did tell me what none of our team knew about the ball game. I’m going to find out how he did that if I can.”

“You mean you can read my mind?” he said to the little Chinaman.

“No, I cannot read your mind. No! No! Not that.” The little man’s brow puckered in a comical manner. “I can make a picture of your thoughts. You shall see.

“Wait!” Tao Sing twisted a knob on some small instrument before him on a table. He punched a button that made a loud click.

“What’s he up to?” Johnny asked himself. He had met this man only twice. Knew nothing of him really. Now in a stuffy little room in the back of Whong Lee’s shop where all manner of Oriental roots and seeds were sold, he was listening to strange talk. There was a druggy smell about the place that made him slightly dizzy. He wished in a vague sort of way that he was not there, but being there, decided to stay.

“Now!” The little yellow man heaved a heavy sigh. “Now you think. Ah yes, to think is easy. We always think, except when we sleep. Then we dream. You do not believe? Then you try not to think at all. Ah! This you cannot do.

“But to remember what you thought—” the little man rattled on, “ah, that is more difficult. But now you must remember. For very soon I shall show you what you have thought. It shall be all put down, right in here.” He tapped his instrument. “Where I can see it, read it when I choose. Tomorrow? Yes, in ten years? Yes. In a hundred years? Yes, yes, always.”

“Why, you—you couldn’t do that!” Johnny stammered.

“Ah, you shall see!” The little man’s wrinkled smile appeared again. “Now! Get ready—think! I record your thoughts.” A second button clicked, sounding loud in the silent, drug-scented room.

“He won’t record much,” the boy told himself stoutly. “But of course it’s all nonsense.”

He put his mind to the task of running over a song:

“I’m riding to the last round-up, I’ll saddle Old Paint, and ri—ide—”

What utter nonsense! This little man was a fake. He could not keep his mind on the words of that song. A fly caught in a spider’s web buzzed loudly in one corner. He heard the rustle of rice paper—Whong Lee wrapping up some Ginsing roots perhaps.

With a wrench he brought his mind back to the song:

“The last round-up, the la—ast round-up.”

He felt all sort of stuffed up. Even in the daytime this place was spooky enough. What if this little man _could_ read people’s minds? How terrible to have someone about, who could tell everything you thought! You’d just have to stop thinking, and that was impossible. Again he was back at the song:

“I’m riding to the last round-up—”

“Now you may stop thinking,” the little man broke in. “Only—” he smiled again. “You will never stop, not for one moment, except when you are asleep.

“Now,” he said briskly, “we take this out.” He held up a round metal box a little larger than a silver dollar. “We fit it in here. We turn this handle, so—very slowly, for two minutes.”

Taking out his watch, he proceeded to time himself while the tiny handle went round and round noiselessly.

“This little Chinaman is a fake,” the boy thought to himself once more. “He must be. How could anyone make a picture of your thoughts?”

And yet—he found himself trying to think what that would mean. If you were able to photograph the thoughts of your mother on the night before Christmas, or your teacher when you thought she had caught you in some prank, or the person who sits next to you in a street car, or the new girl next door, or a person suspected of some terrible crime. Johnny’s head fairly whirled with the possibilities of the thing. In the end he thought, “Huh! It can’t be done!”

Beginning to feel that he had dwelt upon this long enough, he switched his thoughts to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. Johnny could visit that fascinating place any time he pleased because he was a friend of the great Wung Lu, who spent much time there.

At times Johnny had lived near great forests. These he had explored with interest. He had followed mysterious rivers and searched hidden places in wild mountain ranges. Here he explored Chinatown.

And such a fascinating place this Chinatown was—especially the Chamber of Commerce to which, from all over the world, rich Chinamen came that they might trade silk and tea, quaint Chinese toys, teak wood boxes and a thousand other articles of trade, for wheat and typewriters, teaspoons and automobiles.

There were strange and fascinating things in the great hall of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce—a lamp made of three thousand pieces of porcelain, banners old as the hills from which they came, and brass dragons that seemed much older.

Johnny was deep in his contemplation of these things when the little man who called himself Tao Sing said, “Now then, you shall see!” He heaved a sigh. He snapped his old-fashioned watch shut. “Now we take it out of here. It is done. Your thoughts, how shall we say—they are pickled. They will keep a long, long time.

“But wait!” He held up a finger. “You shall see these so wonderful thoughts.

“See.” He took a small instrument from a shelf on the wall. “I put it in here. I wind this so.” A clicking sound followed. “I press this so. Now. Now! You look.” His tone rose as he pointed to the top of the instrument resembling a high power microscope. “You look! You see!”

Johnny did look, and what he saw struck him dumb. There, passing slowly before his eyes were words, faintly illuminated words. Strangest of all, he realized as he read that these words represented his thoughts of a few moments before.

The words passed slowly. There was ample time for reading every one. Yet, so astonished was he that for a time he did not read. When at last he got a grip on himself he realized that here recorded, apparently for all time, just as a moving picture is recorded, were his least and most trifling thoughts of a few moments before. The buzzing fly was there, and Whong Lee’s wrapping of a package. And, sadly jumbled with the rest, was his thinking through of that song.

There came a click louder than the rest. The space beneath his eyes went blank. The show was over.

“You see!” cried the little man. “I have your thoughts. They are recorded. They will keep a long, long time.”

To say that Johnny was astonished is to express his feelings not at all. He looked up at Tao Sing for all the world as if he had never seen him before.

“Say! You are wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Can you do that again?”

“You want to see again?” The little man grinned.

“Yes. Oh yes.”

“All right. You see.”

The little man fingered the microscope affair for a moment. “All right.” He stepped back. “You look see.”

Johnny did “look see,” and the thoughts that passed through his mind as he looked were strange indeed.

“It can’t be true,” he told himself. “And yet it is. A wonderful new invention, like the telegraph, radio, television. Like all the wonderful things of our marvelous age.”

The words that fell from Tao Sing’s lips as the spot before Johnny’s eyes once more went blank, left him staring.

“You want to try?” said Tao Sing.

“T—try?” Johnny stammered at last. “Try to take pictures of people’s thoughts?”

“Yes, yes.”

Once again Johnny stared. “Nothing,” he thought, “could be more interesting. And yet—

“Oh bother!” he whispered at last.

Then to the Chinaman, “Yes, I sure would!”

“All right.” The Chinaman’s eyes narrowed. “You do for me, I do for you.”

“Do what?” Johnny asked.

“Not very much.” Tao Sing’s eyes became mere slits of light. “You know Wung Lu?”

Johnny nodded.

“Wung Lu very rich, very wise.” The little man’s eyes opened suddenly very wide. “You see Wung Lu sit and think long time, eyes half shut. Think long time. Very wise thoughts. You take picture of these thoughts. Tao Sing read thoughts. By and by Tao Sing very wise. You take picture Wung Lu’s thoughts. You give ’em to Tao Sing. What? You take ’em pictures your friends. All right. You keep ’em. What?” He looked at the boy very hard.

Johnny stared. Here indeed was a strange offer. He was to sit in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, as he had often sat before, admiring the ancient, green-eyed dragon, while Wung Lu, the rich and wise one, sat in his corner contemplating a large portly Buddha. He was to take pictures of the wise one’s thoughts.

“Wung Lu thinks much.” Tao Sing spoke slowly. “He talks little.”

Johnny knew this to be true. Wung Lu smiled often. He seldom spoke.

“No great thought should be allowed to perish.” The little man was quoting some Chinese proverb.

“I’ll do it,” said Johnny quite suddenly.

“All right. Here, I will show you.” Soon Johnny was lost to the world in his study of the invention he believed to be the most marvelous in existence.

A half hour later, as he marched home with a mysterious package under his arm, his mind was overflowing with the strangest, weirdest plans. How many things there were that he truly wished to know! Now he would get them from the minds of others without asking questions. There were secrets too that required no end of scheming to uncover. Now it would be no trouble at all.

“And those stories I have been planning to write for the _Sentinel_!” (The _Sentinel_ was the little city’s weekly newspaper.) He was fairly bubbling over with enthusiasm. “Never have to write them at all now; just prop that old thought-camera up against the books on my table, get all set to look right at it, start it going, think the story through. And there you have it. All that’s left is to copy it down from the thought picture. How simple! How grand! How—”

He broke short off. Arrived at his own door, he had all but tumbled into Meggy Strawn who had been waiting for him there.

“Meg!” he muttered. “I—I beg your pardon.”

“You better!” Meg exclaimed. “I’ve been waiting half an hour. Doug Danby wants you to go over to the laboratories with him right away. Important business. He—

“But Johnny!” Her tone changed. “How queer you look! You must have been seeing a ghost.”

“Per-perhaps I have,” Johnny said slowly. “A ghost of—well, never mind of what.”

“Johnny, tell me.” There was a teasing look in Meg’s eyes.

“Not now. Perhaps never.” Johnny was through the door and into the house like a flash.

After hiding the newly acquired thought-camera in his closet, he tiptoed down the back stairs, then sped away through the garden and the back gate toward Doug Danby’s house.

“Can’t face those teasing eyes,” he told himself. “Not just yet. I might tell, and that would be betraying a dark secret, Tao Sing’s and mine.”