Page:Arthur B Reeve - The Dream Doctor.djvu/299

 on his face relaxed as though he would hide his disappointment from her eager eyes.

"Confound that light! What's the matter with it?" he exclaimed, changing the subject, and glancing up at the gas-fixture.

Kennedy had already been intently looking at the Welsbach burner overhead, which had been flickering incessantly.

"That gas company!" added the Captain, shaking his head in disgust, and showing annoyance over a trivial thing to hide deep concern over a greater, as some men do. "I shall use the electricity altogether after this contract with the company expires. I suppose you literary men, Mr. Jameson, would call that the light that failed."

There was a forced air about his attempt to be facetious that did not conceal, but rather accentuated, the undercurrent of feelings in him.

"On the contrary," broke in Kennedy, "I shouldn't be surprised to find that it is the light that succeeded."

"How do you mean?"

"I wouldn't have said anything about it if you hadn't noticed it yourself. In fact, I may be wrong. It suggests something to me, but it will need a good deal of work to verify it, and then it may not be of any significance. Is that the way the Z99 has behaved always lately?"

"Yes, but I know that she hasn't broken down of herself," Captain Shirley asserted. "It never did before, not since I perfected that new coherer. And