THE REMARKABLE ACT OF MR. NICHOLAS VERDIGRIS
“The discov’ry Nick made,” the girl said quietly, “was a simple little fact about a certain small all-metal radio-cabinet that’s put out here in America by the thousands—by the big mail-order firm of Montwentry and Gord. ’Tisn’t a big city set; it’s a battery-provided radio—for use in towns where they haven’t no juice—that’s electricity, see?—or for poor people who have to live in shacks like some of them up in Harlem here—shacks with no wiring.
“Nick,” she continued, “had won one of these hickies—that’s what I call anything that’s turned out wholesale by casting—in a found’y—well, Nick had won one of these hickies from some coon in a dice game, and had the thing in his room. And had been monkey-fooling about it. And he discovered that if he scrooched down in front of it—later, he found that the fact was true of every one of those radios, because the queer horn-shaped ap’ture in all of ’em had been cast from the same patt’ren—anyway, he discovered that if you scrooch down in front of it, and put your mouth at a certain point—Nick, the shrewd devil, even found how to loc’lize the point every time—by sighting inside the horn so’s a small metal knob or—or tit, just over the curve of the bottom, would line up with a small slit in the opposite side—anyway, he discovered that anything spoke into that fool horn from that p’ticler point would be tossed back into the room.”
“Oh,” said Wingblade, vastly disappointed, “that was nothing but reflection of sound?”
“Oh, was it?” she echoed. “Well, it was consid’ably more than that—when you lamp the clipping I’m going to show you. For the wise boys of Sci’nce di’gnosed it as—but anyway—’bout Nick—since you seem to think he was feeble-minded or something. He discovered that anything spoke into that horn—from that point—would be tossed back into the room, many times louder. But wait!—get a load of this—he found that if you spoke again into the damfool thing in a higher—or lower voice—the words would come back in—in a voice so different, that you couldn’t tell ’twas the first voice.”
Derek Wingblade frowned puzzledly. “Well—that is something,” he conceded.
“And Nick even cooked up a little private vaudyville act that he used to put on when he encountered one of these cabinets—once in a blue moon—here—or there. I saw him do the act one night at the home of a nigger policy king out in Harlem, who was too goddamned miserly to live in a electric-wired house, and I tell you I never saw anything like it. The act went as follows—and hold your questions, kiddo—for I’m going to give you Sci’nce’s own low-down on it in a coupla seconds!—the act went as follows.” She paused. “Nick would first pull the bald piece of b.s. that he had a ‘magic’ radio-tube which, by screwing it in the back of this here radio where some kind of a detector-or-something tube lays, would act as a aut’matic picker-up of pieces of broadcasts here, there, and everywhere, the while it—it—”
“Heated up, I suppose?” he ventured.
“Yes, that’s right. That, you see, was to lay the stage for the act. And he’d say that the tube would explode soon’s it got too hot. That was so’s he wouldn’t have to repeat the act—see? And so he’d go ’round in back of the dump where his coat was—pretending to be fetching the tube—but instead would unscrew the ordinary light bulb that was in the toilet-room or any place. And he’d fetch that into the sitting room, or parlor, or what, handling it like it was an inc’bator baby. And he’d draw out the cabinet—go around in back of it—pretend to take out the detector-or-whatever-it-was tube—take it out, in fact—and pretend to screw in this magic bulb. But instead, being scrooched down back of the cabinet, he’d stick it inside his pants instead—between his stomach and his belt and close his coat on it. Then he’d come around in front, frowning. Because nothin’ was happening, see? And he’d scrooch down on his heels in front—hands on cabinet—pretending to wait while the magic tube warmed up—for these pieces of pickup—any pickup—”
“Aye,” exclaimed Wingblade. “And sight for that vital point, eh? I’ll be glad to find out what was back of all that voodoo?”
“You will,” she said. “And straight off a clipping out of a hifaluating magazine called Sci’nce Review. Which was sent to Nick by—but here—for my story first—” She was fumbling in an upper and almost indistinguishable pocket of her black dress as she spoke, withdrawing temporarily a half-stick of gum, a broken stick of lip rouge—“Anyway, soon’s Nick’d sighted that iron tit against that slit, he’d start talking—but like a broadcaster—you know?—and since his back would be to his aujience, and the fool horn in some way changed his voice entirely, nobody in back of him could know ’twas him—and he’d pull off something in his phony broadcast that would jolt hell out of his aujience—in the case of this old nigger policy king, Isaac, Nick pulled off a phony rib that the cops were looking for Isaac—why, it dam’ near made the old coon go right through the ceiling—but then Nick changed his voice—well, no, not his voice—but just the—the height of his voice—”
“Pitch, don’t you mean?” offered Wingblade.
“Yeah, I guess that is the right word. Well, he’d change the pitch. And back’d come more phony broadcasting—as though off another temp’ture of that magic tube—and Nick would go up and down that way, a new voice for every pitch, busting inside half fit to kill. And just about the time his aujience—in the case I speak of, that Isaac and family—were suspicious that they were getting one grand rib—and were about to barge over and look into it—Nick would take a deep breath—shove his muscular belly against his belt—and ‘bang’ would go the electric light bulb stuck there; and then, turning around, he’d announce with not a crack in his phiz that the p’furmance was over—that the magic tube had gone bust. If I hadn’t spilled the beans by giggling my behind off, that p’ticler night, Isaac would have fainted on the spot.” She paused. “And that’s the kind of a bright guy that you’re skeptical of—and who it took six months for Sci’nce to catch up with. But here—read for yourself. This came to me in the last letter I got from Nick. Though I don’t know who sent it to him.”
And she handed Derek Wingblade an apparently several-times-folded clipping which she’d finally succeeded in extricating from her tight pocket—a clipping set, he saw, as soon as he shook it open to its full length, in the characteristic type of a very dignified technical magazine, and on the top margin of which somebody had written, in pencil: “Nick, I ran across this in the Science Review of this month, just out: Tony.”
With considerable interest—since his newspaper destiny seemed to hinge upon Mr. Nicholas Verdigris!—Wingblade read it. It ran:
MATHEMATICS ILLUMINATES NOVELTY AMATEUR ACT INVENTED BY PETTY NEW YORK GAMBLER.
Mathematical and sound-specialists of the Boston Tech reported today, according to the Institution’s weekly report of scientific activities, that an amateur entertainment act said to have been discovered and perfected solely by a petty New York gambler, and practiced as a joke on certain friends of his, has a most profound basis in Science. This gambler, name unknown, was wont to pretend to screw a ‘magic bulb’ into the rear chassis of a Montwentry-Gord mail-order all-metal battery radio cabinet and then, resting on his heels in front of the cabinet, successfully make it appear that the machine was successively picking up bits of broadcasts from as many as a half-dozen stations. As soon as he ran out of ideas by which to chaff his audience, he terminated the act—so it is said—by pushing on his abdominal muscles—between which and his tightened belt he would, in actuality, have concealed an ordinary small-wattage light-bulb—and bursting the bulb with a loud report. This gave him an argument, of sorts—so long as the radio-cabinet chassis remained unexamined!—against repeating his performance, and thus his hearers, most of whom invariably would be certain it had all been ventriloquism, were not able to prove their own theory. Which, it appears, was exactly what this gambler desired! As it happened, however, a little Chinese boy who recently witnessed the amazing demonstration, in his father’s sub-cellar fan-tan resort, sent a description of it, as a most ingenious “voice-throwing” act, to an ex-schoolmate who was away at school, and who in turn sent it to his father, who, in turn, being scientifically minded, doubted the fan-tan-cellar episode to have been a ventriloquial demonstration, and so brought the curious facts to the Scientific Research Department of the Boston Tech. And mathematicians of Boston Tech, using the identical mail-order all-metal radio cabinet, and investigating the alleged phenomenon both as an empirical fact—and, when empirically found to be a fact, as a scientific puzzle—found that the gambler’s demonstration was a genuine phenomenon in acoustics, and had a profound basis in Science. For painstaking micrometer measurements of the shape and caliber of the entire oddly twisted horn-shaped aperture in this particular radio cabinet revealed—when analyzed as a problem in 4-dimensional solid geometry—that aperture to be not merely a true parahyperbolic-conoid—which is a surface theoretically generated by revolution, in space, about its own axis, of a complicated curve known as a para-hyperbola, and containing a focus lying outside of itself—but was, moreover, in this device, an “accelerated-cyclic parahyperboloid”—i.e. a surface generated by revolving such a curve about an axis each point in which moved continuously, in the plane common to all the points, but with a velocity logarithmically increased—with respect, that is, to the point in back of it, after Minden’s Law. Extremely difficult to explain outside higher mathematics, the result of such a logarithmically “twisted surface” would be, primarily, that its focus would lie entirely outside the conoidal horn-aperture—and could be found—as in this case this gambler obviously did, by sighting a certain teat (designed to “mellow” outcoming sound) against a slit on the opposite side (designed to absorb certain overtones). [The design for the horn in question, say Montwentry-Gord, was created by an old sound-expert in their employ, who died shortly after the first casting was made from the pattern.] The complete result, however, of the “mathematical” shape of this horn was, first: that talking in—or at—its invisible focus meant that the entire horn would resonate and reflect the talking, greatly amplified, backward; and second, that, because the curved surface was “logarithmically cyclic”—“twisted” is the nearest layman’s word!—for every pitch of speech utilized at that focus, the sound would come back “twisted”—i.e. distorted differently as to its under- and over-tones, due to interferences of same by each other, additions thereof, cancellations of each other, etc.—in short, since under- and over-tones chiefly determine the quality of human voices, the focus-spoken words would come out, for each pitch thereof, as a new and different “voice.” The manufacturers have already applied for extension of letters-patent, to cover specific use of their machine in dubbing foreign-language sound-tracks on American films, for, they say, by its use one trained dramatic speaker, using different pitches—or better, with his pitches automatically determined by prior passage through proper pitch-transmuting mechanisms—can talk all the lines of all the characters in a single dramatic film composition!
Derek Wingblade, finishing the strange scientific story, looked up. Folded the clipping several times, in fact, and handed it back to the girl, across the patiently waiting cocktails. “I take back any skepticism,” he said frankly, “about your Nick. He did have a 6-month jump on Old Man Science.”
“Exactly as I told you,” she exclaimed triumphantly. And tucked the folded clipping back into her pocket. “And if Nick said that that Shelby’s Bluff McCorniss was a phony—a phony he was. But it just so happens, buddy boy, that there’s a way to prove it up—”
“To prove it?” Derek Wingblade leaned forward. “Now—we’re getting somewhere. What—how?”
“Since,” she said plaintively, “all this is now n.g. for yours truly—I’ll be dishing it.” She sighed. “Yes, there’s a way to prove it. And I was prepared, I don’t mind telling you, to do that—before heading down there myself.”
“Heading down—you mean that after you found Nick was dead, you decided to go down. For some purpose?”
“Some purpose is quite right!” she mimicked him. “I made plans to go down there and make that baby—the phony McCorniss—pay, and pay, and pay—through the nose. For we’d be in a sleepy town where he couldn’t get me taken for any one-way ride. I had the real inside dope that he was phony. And would have—once I saw him—the proof of it—by which proof he’d know I could show him up before the world.”
Derek Wingblade knew that he was now on the track of a huge story.
“And the proof?” he asked, businesslike.