Next evening Marvin lounged along the shore of Mackinac, remembering the
Bright River’s immortals, and another morning found him on another
steamer.
An hour later he was standing on the starboard side, searching the
horizon for the limestone ruin where he had shivered all night.
He turned with a sigh, and bumped into another passenger.
“I beg your pardon.”
“I beg yours, captain.”
Marvin flushed. There was no mistaking the lean figure, the myopic eyes,
the thin but masterful face.
“Mr. Ferry, I’m ashamed that I once demanded your services as butler. I
did not know that you had been doing all you could to win the war.”
“Captain, you took your disappointment like a man.”
“May I ask how Gratia is?”
“Very well and happy. She is engaged to be married to Mr. James Hogg.”
“I congratulate Jimmy, and, if I may, I congratulate you.”
“You may. I think I’m going to get a pretty able son-in-law. It may
interest you to know that she accepted him as Hogg, but that ain’t his
real name. It seems he’s a Huguenot. I don’t know much about the
Huguenots, but I know they were good workmen.”
“Mr. Ferry, I called up Jimmy’s boarding-house day before yesterday, and
was told that he was busy writing a speech. Can you throw any light on
that?”
“Yes,” laughed Asher. “I’ve made him a departmental manager, and his men
gave him a dinner night before last. I was invited, but couldn’t attend.
The committee that came to see me showed me a petition they were
presenting him—a request to change his name to La Hogue. So I guess he
was writing a speech of acceptance. Now tell me what we are going to do
when that stuff”—here Asher pointed to the coal on the dock they were
passing—“is all gone.”
“Why,” said Marvin, “I suppose you’ll use hydro-electric.”
Asher turned and scrutinized his companion with myopic luminous eyes.
“Young man, that answer ain’t enough. You are capable of a better answer
than that. If every drop of water that falls in the United States was
utilized to produce power, it would produce no more than we are getting
from coal right now.”
“What makes you think I’ve given any attention to the matter?”
“I’ll be frank with you. After you called at my house I took steps to
find out exactly how much of a man I had to deal with. I know your
college record, your war record, and your chemical record.”
“Perhaps you do,” smiled Marvin, “but you don’t know what I was
reckoning when I woke up after losing my hand. I was calculating how
much alcohol could be extracted from a ton of straw.”
“Well, how much was it?”
“Not enough. It would take the whole corn crop of the United States to
duplicate the heating power we are now taking from five billion gallons
of gasoline.”
Asher nodded. “I reckon there ain’t two other men in the country that’s
worrying. Maybe I’m wrong—there may be others—but you’re the first one
I’ve met.”
“My father, sir, thinks that you see a long way ahead.”
“Does he? He has a funny way of showing it.”
“I’d like you to meet him, Mr. Ferry.”
“I don’t want to meet him.”
“But he is only a few miles away from us at this minute. I want you to
stop off with me and get acquainted with him.”
“I won’t do that.”
“Mr. Ferry, I’m guessing that you will. He has the mistaken notion that
you are a coward. What’s the sense in letting that notion continue when
you might dispel it in five minutes? You are the master of thirty
thousand workmen who have never been able to form a union, and yet you
hesitate to face a man who has much the same ideals as yours.”
“Marvin, let’s drop that subject. Come up here in the bow of the boat,
out of the wind, and talk to me about solar energy.”
They walked up the deck and seated themselves near the lookout.
“Now, this here process by which a leaf extracts the energy out of the
sun. Can’t that be duplicated in a laboratory?”
“Possibly, some day, but it amounts to discovering the secret of life.
To get even within speaking distance of that problem there would have to
be long co-operation between botany and physiology and organic chemistry
and radiochemistry. If you gave every cent of your wealth to a
university to advance such co-operation, you would still be taking the
longest way round.”
“I’ll never do anything for a university. They ain’t practical.”
“Mr. Ferry, that remark is the remark of a great man who on most
subjects is an ignoramus.”
“Trying to insult me?”
“You know I’m not. I can’t look at you without liking you. I think you
must give your employees some sort of doped drink to make them like
you.”
“Marvin, you’ve got the courage of your convictions, but you don’t know
much about the real world. I tell you colleges ain’t practical.”
“And I tell you, Mr. Ferry, that a research laboratory does the best
work when it’s right in the heart of a university.”
“Well, we’re getting off the track a little bit. The chemist who looked
up your chemical record for me said you’d been wasting your time on
lead.”
“He’s welcome to his opinion.”
“What interests you in lead?”
“A good many things. One of them is the weight.”
“Ain’t that known?”
“Lead is averaged at 207.2, but it ranges as low as 206.”
“What makes it vary?”
“Different patterns in the nucleus of the atom. But radium steps down
into lead evenly—226, 222, 218, 214, 210, 206, which means that it loses
four points of mass at each step.”
“What makes it do that?”
“Because it releases two charges of positive electricity at each step.”
“You mean to tell me that lead is full of electricity?”
“I do. It is solid electricity, kept from explosion by the tension of
its opposing charges.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Ask any physicist.”
Asher studied the deck. “You mean to tell me that the lead in the paint
on this floor conceals power?”
“I do. And some day that power is going to be used in cylinders. Sooner
or later we are going to make lead behave as radium does now. We are
mining a million tons of it a year, and virtually wasting it. Your
chemists may laugh as much as they please. I don’t expect any man but a
man like yourself to entertain the idea.”
“Marvin, I want to get this thing straight in my mind. Do I understand
that the chemical elements can be lined up, one, two, three, four,
five—like that—according to the amount of power in them?”
“That is correct.”
“Then I’d be guessing that the even numbers are the commonest elements.”
“How do you get that?”
“I don’t know. Things come to me like that sometimes.”
“Well, I’d like to say that you are probably right, and that you never
said a keener thing in your life. That is precisely the sort of right
guess that gave us dynamos.”
They looked at each other and glowed with friendship.
“Marvin, don’t I owe you something?”
“Nothing except to stop off and meet my father.”
“Then I’ll do that, because I want to hear you talk more. But I don’t
want you to think me a stingy man just because I have no use for
colleges. You’ve lost a hand in the service of your country, and your
country ain’t going to pay you for it. Your country ought to give you a
chance to study lead, if you like that sort of thing. You lost a hand,
and you lost a girl. I’m the father of that girl, and I appreciate the
way you took it. I’d like to show you that I like you for giving up
Gratia.”
“It cost me nothing, Mr. Ferry. We both considered ourselves lucky to
have found out in time. Didn’t she tell you?”
“No,” smiled Asher. “I guess she liked the decoration—I mean your scalp
hung at her belt. Girls are queer.”