AN INVENTION DESCRIBED.
Ned Nevins had told nothing but the simple truth when he stated that
he had endured many hardships and much rough travel under unpleasant
conditions in order to obtain an interview with the Boy Inventors.
He was a boy of singularly firm character and persistency or he would
never have triumphed over the obstacles he had conquered in order to
gain his ambition. When Ned’s uncle, Jeptha Nevins, had died, he had
entrusted to the boy the tin box which we have seen Ned guarding with
so much care. It contained plans and specifications of an invention
upon which the elder Nevins had spent all his spare time for many years.
Whether the invention was a practical one or not, Ned, skillful as he
was in the line of mechanics, did not know. But his uncle’s faith in
the value of his invention was so great that he had inspired his nephew
with almost implicit confidence in the soundness of his judgment.
Ned might have stayed in his home town and awaited a more favorable
opportunity for setting out on his travels but for one thing. Jeptha
Nevins had a son, a hulking ne’er-do-well sort of lad, or rather young
man, for he was some years the senior of Ned, who was sixteen.
Following his father’s death, “Hank” Nevins, as he was known among
his cronies, made a big fuss when he learned that Ned had been left
the plans of Jeptha Nevins’ invention. There was little else but the
furniture in the house and a small sum of money in the savings bank;
and so Hank Nevins laid formal claim to the plans of the invention from
which Jeptha Nevins had hoped so much.
But Ned refused absolutely to give them up to Hank. With almost his
dying words, Jeptha Nevins had entrusted the plans to his nephew, for
he had long since given up hopes of making anything out of Hank. In
fact Ned knew that it had been his uncle’s wish that Hank should know
nothing of the invention, but in some way the latter had discovered the
fact of its existence, and he hoped, that by selling it, (provided it
was in any way practical,) he might obtain some money which he could
expend in dissipation.
When he found that Ned was unwilling, or rather refused absolutely, to
give up the plans, Hank had flung out of the house with all manner of
threats, among them being that he would force his cousin to give up the
coveted plans by process of law. Ned knew nothing of law and like many
persons similarly situated, the idea of Hank’s resorting to lawyers to
obtain possession of the plans alarmed him. Among Hank’s acquaintances
was a young law clerk of “sporty” proclivities. With the aid of this
young limb of the law, Hank had succeeded in thoroughly alarming
Ned as to the legality of his retention of the papers. Matters were
constituted thus when Ned determined not to risk the possession of his
uncle’s plans any longer but to leave the small cottage, where they all
lived, and seek counsel and aid elsewhere than in his native village.
From the first time he had read of them, the Boy Inventors had
possessed a large place in Ned’s mind. In his extremity, therefore, he
had decided to seek them out and try to interest them in the untried
invention.
“Sit down,” said Jack, when the two boys were inside a small room
at one end of the workshop which, for lack of a better word, was
called the office. It was a very business-like looking room. Books on
technical topics lined the shelves at one end of it. Models, samples of
materials, test-tubes and other apparatus occupied most of the rest of
the available space.
Under the book shelves, however, was a desk. It was to one of the
chairs standing beside this latter piece of furniture that Jack
motioned his odd guest.
Ned sank into the chair with an alacrity that made it plain that he was
tired. He had, in fact, come some miles from his last stopping place
that morning.
“I’m sorry that you had that trouble with Sam Hinkley,” began Jack in a
kindly tone, “he should have known better than to treat you as he did.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” the other assured him hastily, “I’d have stood
for a lot more than that in order to get a chance to see you and tell
you what I’ve traveled a good way to say.”
“You said you had an invention, I think.”
“Yes; but it is not, properly speaking, mine,” and then Ned Nevins went
on briefly to describe the circumstances by which he had come into
possession of the plans in which both he and his uncle set so much
store. But up to this point he had not mentioned the nature of the
invention and Jack brought him to the point by a question.
“And just what may this invention be?”
Ned Nevins hesitated a few seconds before replying.
“I hardly know just what to call it,” he said, “but I guess an electric
hydroaeroplane about describes it.”
Jack’s face betrayed his interest.
“You mean a craft capable of air and water travel that is driven by
electricity?” he asked.
“That’s just it. But there are many novel features about it, however.
My uncle set most store by one particular novelty in its construction,
and that was the fact that it was driven by electricity instead
of gasolene. Gasolene is bulky, dangerous and heavy to carry, and
sometimes hard to obtain, but by using an electric generator, worked
while the machine is in motion, the Nevins hydroaeroplane, as my uncle
called it, has plenty of cheap power always obtainable and is simpler
than gasolene-driven motors in a number of ways.”
“But about your storage batteries--I suppose that’s the idea?”
Ned Nevins nodded.
“That’s just the point I was coming to,” he said; “one of the most
notable features of the Nevins hydroaeroplane is the fact that its
power is furnished by storage batteries many times lighter than any yet
constructed, and capable of developing many times the power. But the
plans will show you all that far better than I can explain.”
“I should like to see them.”
Although he was interested and showed it, Jack Chadwick had seen far
too many impracticable inventions to wax enthusiastic over any scheme
till he had examined into it for himself. But he knew that if young
Nevins had what he said he had, he was in possession of a big thing.
So it was with considerable expectancy that he watched young Nevins
fumble with the lock of the battered tin case. Finally he opened the
receptacle and drew out a roll of papers. These proved to be blue
prints, and closely penned writings covering several foolscap sheets.
Naturally, Jack’s attention was first directed to the blue prints that
young Nevins eagerly spread out on the table before him. Accustomed as
he was to such things, he read the intricate lines and tracings almost
as plainly as print.