"No, little Mercury, and I don't want to know," said Bones, busying himself with his papers.
"You'll tell me you don't know about L. next," he said, bewildered.
"Language!" protested Bones. "You really mustn't use Sunday words, really you mustn't."
Then Jelf unburdened himself. It appeared that G. had been engaged to L.'s daughter, and the engagement had been broken off....
Bones stirred uneasily and looked at his watch.
"Dispense with the jolly old alphabet," he said wearily, "and let us get down to the beastly personalities."
Thereafter Jelf's conversation condensed itself to the limits of a human understanding. "G" stood for Gregory--Felix Gregory; "L" for Lansing, who apparently had no Christian name, nor found such appendage necessary, since he was dead. He had invented a lamp, and that lamp had in some way come into Jelf's possession. He was exploiting the invention on behalf of the inventor's daughter, and had named it--he said this with great deliberation and emphasis--"The Tibbetts-Jelf Motor Lamp."
Bones made a disparaging noise, but was interested.
The Tibbetts-Jelf Lamp was something new in motor lamps. It was a lamp which had all the advantages of the old lamp, plus properties which no lamp had ever had before, and it had none of the disadvantages of any lamp previously introduced, and, in fact, had no disadvantages whatsoever. So Jelf told Bones with great earnestness.
"You know me, Tibbetts," he said. "I never speak about myself, and I'm rather inclined to disparage my own point of view than otherwise."
"You know, anyway," urged Jelf, "that I want to see the bad side of anything I take up."
He explained how he had sat up night after night, endeavouring to discover some drawback to the Tibbetts-Jelf Lamp, and how he had rolled into bed at five in the morning, exhausted by the effort.
"If I could only find one flaw!" he said. "But the ingenious beggar who invented it has not left a single bad point."
He went on to describe the lamp. With the aid of a lead pencil and a piece of Bones's priceless notepaper he sketched the front elevation and discoursed upon rays, especially upon ultra-violet rays.
Apparently this is a disreputable branch of the Ray family. If you could only get an ultra-violet ray as he was sneaking out of the lamp, and hit him violently on the back of the head, you were rendering a service to science and humanity.