‘Well, well,’ said Bobby Kennyson, rapping on the steel box. ‘What a stroke of luck the old man made me do chemistry all those years ago! I’d like to see if any other fellow can copy this. I’m going to be mighty rich if – well, we’ll find out about that right now!’
Then he clapped his pal Bill Stakes on the shoulder with his big paw, which was his way of saying ‘Goodbye’, jammed his hat on his head, and rushed out with his packages.
He went straight to the War Department of the United States of America, where he presented a letter and his card.
The servant looked them over, and then said slyly, ‘Invention, eh?’
‘Naturally,’ boomed Bobby. ‘What else?’
‘Then you’ll probably have to wait a bit – you’re number 29 today.’ Bobby was shown into a room where a dozen or so men sat on chairs, all with packages on their knees. They broke off their animated conversations and looked intently as one at Bobby, who sat down rather taken aback. Then the talk resumed.
After an hour and forty minutes, the servant came in and whispered to him: ‘You’re to come through to Mr Graham Wilkins,’ and led the way. Bobby was ushered into a room where the man responsible for inspecting inventions sat behind a desk. He wore glasses and had a strong, clean-shaven jaw.
Little did Bobby suspect that this surly hero moonlighted as President of the Society for the Reduction of American Inventions. But even so, Mr Graham Wilkins’ baleful stare made Bobby entirely forget the beautiful speech he had planned. So instead he put his box on the table, set a second package on the floor, and twisted his shabby hat in his hands.
‘What can you do?’ the stern official commanded him.
‘I can …,’ stuttered Bobby, ‘I can end any war in a day!’
‘My good man, you are either a clown or sick!’ roared Mr Wilkins, and reached out to open the box.
‘If you go any further, we will both be dead in a second, and the whole Department in perhaps thirty,’ Bobby remarked matter-of-factly.
Mr Wilkins snatched back his hands as if he’d been bitten and sat down again, shaken.
‘For in this box,’ Bobby continued, emboldened, ‘there is a gram of atomite. This gram is fully enough to kill some hundred thousand men in about a minute, if they were standing closely enough together!’
‘But how can a hundred thousand men eat a gram?’ the square-jawed inspector asked suspiciously.
‘Atomite is not eaten,’ Bobby replied proudly. ‘It is inhaled. A minuscule particle of atomite will destroy a man’s windpipe and lungs in a trice. I will now demonstrate this to you.
‘You see this jar. At the bottom, there’s an ordinary mouse. At the top, in this lid, there is a tiny piece of cotton wool, which I have exposed to the atomite. By pressing this lever, I will release the cotton wool and you may observe the effects.’
He stuck three thick plasters over the air holes through which the little mouse had been breathing up till then, and fitted a metal lid on top.
‘But the mouse is sweating, and already half dead,’ Mr Wilkins objected, his interest aroused.
‘If you sat in a jar for three hours, wouldn’t you break a sweat too?’ Bobby pointed out amicably. ‘No, please don’t worry, stay there. Nothing can happen to you.’
Then he pressed the lever, and a little scrap of cotton wool fluttered down from the lid of the jar right on to the mouse’s back. The little animal snapped open its mouth, stretched out its four legs, and was dead.
‘Excellent! Unbelievable!’ said Mr Wilkins. ‘And is the effect on larger creatures the same?’
‘As I’ve already told you, Mr Wilkins.’
‘Well, it would be worth a trial,’ said the mandarin, and rang a bell. ‘Fetch Colonel Rosecamp,’ he ordered when the servant entered.
The colonel appeared, and listened to a description of Bobby’s invention with amazement. ‘I must see this,’ he said.
‘With pleasure,’ said Bobby. ‘The equipment for larger-scale trials is all ready. It is now just a question of getting our hands on some large animals.’
‘Perhaps we could go in the building opposite,’ the Colonel said dryly. ‘They’re holding a women’s election meeting in there now.’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ Mr Wilkins touched a finger to his nose, which he always did when he was thinking. ‘There’s an ancient donkey downstairs in the stable that was put out to pasture ages ago. That would do!’
‘Good,’ said Rosecamp. ‘And we’ll get the rest of the animals from the clinics.’
Wilkins rang for the servant. ‘Pebbs,’ he said, ‘we’ve an old donkey on the premises. Go downstairs, he should …’
‘I beg your pardon, Mr Wilkins,’ Pebbs interrupted, ‘but as far as I know Mr Kensing has already gone to lunch!’
The Colonel laughed so hard he had to sit down, and a grin even stole over Mr Wilkins’ earnest countenance. ‘I did not mean Mr Kensing this time, Pebbs, I want the real donkey with four legs that’s down in the stable!’
‘Mr Kensing is my private secretary,’ he explained, turning to Bobby Kennyson.
Pebbs left to send for the poor old donkey.
The trials were set for the following morning, and Bobby went happily home. On the way, in anticipation of his becoming a multimillionaire, he bought himself a new hat.
At the crack of dawn the following day, a strange caravan wound its way across a field. An old blind horse, the wretched donkey from the War Department and a few dogs, cats and rabbits jolted about in one lorry. In another Mr Wilkins followed with Mr Kensing, Colonel Rosecamp, Bobby, and the latter’s assistants. The atomite equipment was stowed in two large crates.
Mrs Mabel Wilkins and Miss Maggie Wilkins had wanted to attend the spectacle too, but naturally hadn’t been dressed in time.
When the lorries’ passengers had disembarked, Bobby supervised preparations. He took two jars. ‘There’s a quarter of a gram of atomite in this receptacle and half a gram in this one. There’s a small cartridge attached to the lid of each, which I will later detonate by an electrical lead. We’ll stand these jars here and tie the test animals to the posts in a circle with a radius of fifty paces. Let’s say for the first trial, with a quarter of a gram, we’ll take the horse, five cats and three rabbits. There. And now we connect the wire to the cartridge and move away with the other animals to a distance from which we can still observe proceedings clearly.’
So they withdrew and left the animals to their scientific fate.
After five hundred paces – the wires wouldn’t reach any further – the gentlemen halted, and Bobby connected the wires to the detonator. ‘If I push this button on the left,’ he explained, ‘I will blow up the jar with the quarter of a gram of atomite, whereas if I push the right one, then the jar with the stronger dose will explode. For the second trial we will put the animals in a circle with a radius of a hundred paces, although atomite, which spreads through the atmosphere with prodigious ease, has a far greater range. But you need not worry, gentlemen, for now I am pouring the contents of this bottle around our position here; it is the only antidote that destroys every trace of atomite instantaneously. The crews of the atomite canons in future wars will use protective masks containing this antidote. And now, gentlemen, could I have your attention!’
He pushed the left button, and before the faint explosion could even be heard, the animals were lying by the posts to which they had been tied, and moved no longer.
‘Splendid,’ said Mr. Wilkins. ‘We’ll be able to do away with the electric chair!’
They all made their way to the victims of science to study the effects. Just as they reached the circle where the old donkey and his companions in misfortune stood resigned to their fate near the detonator, two enchanting figures in little white shoes, bright little summer dresses and colourful parasols appeared.
‘Oh Maggie,’ said Mrs Mabel Wilkins. ‘Look, there they are and here is one of their gadgets. It seems to have been worth coming out here after all, despite them being so inconsiderate and not waiting for us. Look what a funny thing this is!’
Maggie hesitantly inspected the detonator with the timidity women have when faced with things they don’t understand. ‘It’s a strange box with two buttons and wires coming out of them!’ she said.
The men had caught sight of the women now.
‘Look, Maggie, they’re waving like crazy and they keep pointing at you. Your father keeps on shouting,’ Mrs Mabel said, in a state of high excitement. ‘I think they want you to do something with that thing there.’
At the other end of the field, they had recognized the danger and were signalling wildly.
‘Hurry up, Maggie, they’re getting more and more angry!’
‘Here’s a button to push,’ Maggie said helplessly.
‘Well, push it, then,’ ordered her mother. ‘You can see how they’re shouting for it.’
At that moment the men were frenziedly running in all directions in a bid to save themselves, since they saw what was going to happen.
Maggie pushed.
‘Oh, now they’re all running in all directions like madmen,’ laughed Mrs Mabel. ‘Look – oops-a-daisy, now they’ve all thrown themselves on the ground! Really, these men can’t take anything seriously. They always have to play their silly jokes on us! Come on, Maggie, let’s go to those silly-billies!’
And so, cutely turned out in their bright little dresses as if they were the first breath of spring itself, the two women tripped over to the men, who lay face down and were no longer moving.
Meanwhile the old donkey, pleased at the turn of events, was trotting back to his stable in town. On the way he said to the dachshund limping along beside him: ‘You see, my friend, if it hadn’t been for those beautiful women, we’d be dead now! But then humans wouldn’t have fought over any bone of contention. As it is, because of those beautiful women, war in the future will last somewhat longer than a single day!’
He was only an old donkey but, given that, he actually spoke very sensibly.