CHAPTER V

JOHNNY’S THINK-O-GRAPHS

“Yes,” Johnny whispered to himself as he thrust his hand deep into a dark corner of his closet. “It’s still there. The thought-camera is no dream. But will it record thoughts for me? That’s the question.”

He found himself all aquiver with excitement. He was like a very small boy with his very first camera.

“Like to try it on myself,” he thought. Then, recalling the little Chinaman’s test and the sadly muddled thoughts the camera had brought out, he, for the time at least, abandoned that plan.

“There’s grandfather,” he told himself. “He sits by the hour every evening, looking off into the night and thinking. Wonder what those thoughts are like. I’d really like to know. That—that’s where I’ll try it first.” He hurried downstairs.

Johnny was very fond of the stalwart old man he called grandfather. A pioneer of his small city, he had seen much of life. At times he talked of those days long gone by. For the most part he sat in his great chair on the broad porch and gazed away into the darkness toward the spot where, in the daytime, the blue began.

Slipping silently into a chair close to the old man, Johnny touched the release to the thought-camera. There followed a low buzzing sound. Johnny’s heart leaped. The camera was working. But was it recording thoughts, his grandfather’s thoughts? Only time would tell.

For several moments in the night, disturbed only by the cricket’s chirp and the distant bullfrog’s hoarse croak, the pair sat there motionless.

Then the old man stirred. “What’s that, Johnny?” he asked.

“What’s what?” Johnny’s voice trembled slightly.

“Sounds a little like a new sort of cricket,” the old man rumbled.

“Nothing I guess.” Johnny snapped off his thought-camera. The sound ceased. “Well, guess I’ll go up,” he said in as steady a tone as he could command. “Goodnight!”

“Goodnight, Johnny.”

The boy fairly ran up the stairs. He was obliged to drop into a chair in his room to calm himself. Then, after shaking his fingers to loosen their tenseness, he went about the business of the hour.

Having removed the small cartridge containing the long, thread-like film, he set it revolving in that other magic box that was supposed to develop and finish it. Two minutes of this and the thing was done. Or was it?

Drawing one long deep breath, Johnny placed the film in the microscope-like affair, then started the mechanism.

For ten seconds he stood there squinting into the brass tube, spellbound. Then he exclaimed, “Hot diggity dog!”

After that, for a full fifteen minutes his thoughts were focussed upon the thing before him. In that quarter hour he ran the film through three times.

“Nothing,” he murmured as at last he sank into a chair, “nothing could be half so marvelous!”

And indeed it _was_ marvelous for there, stripped of all the backwardness and timidity that so often hamper the speech of old men, were recorded the golden thoughts of one grand old man as he dreamed of the glorious pioneer days that are gone forever.

“I’ll copy it,” Johnny told himself, “then I’ll have it printed in the _Sentinel_.

“No,” he amended, “I’ll do better than that. I’ll record his thoughts night after night. They’ll never be the same. It will make a book. And such a book!”

At that he sat for a long time dreaming of the marvelous things he would do with that thought-camera.

“But it belongs to Tao Sing,” he reminded himself. “Only he knows the secret of it. How long am I to have it? As long as I fulfill Tao Sing’s wishes I suppose.”

At that, with a shudder he could not entirely explain, he recalled his promise to Tao Sing. He was to carry the camera to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. He was to point it at his friend, the rich Chinese merchant Wung Lu, and record his thoughts for Tao Sing.

“I wonder why?” Disturbing thought!

“Think-o-graphs,” he whispered to himself before he fell asleep that night. “Good name for them, all right. A picture of your face is a photograph, so, naturally a picture of your thoughts is a think-o-graph. There now!” he chuckled to himself, “I’ve coined a brand new word. And if this thought-camera comes to be a common possession as ordinary cameras are, it will be a very popular word. If it does—” he repeated slowly.

He tried to think what the world would be like if anyone who wished it might have a thought-camera and photograph other people’s thoughts. There would not remain in the world one secret that could be kept, that was certain. All the secrets between nations would be at an end. Spies would lose their jobs. No criminal could escape revealing his innermost thoughts. The whole thing made him slightly dizzy, so he gave over thinking about it, and fell asleep.