Kennedy shrugged his shoulders non-committally, as if he had never heard of the patent office or the gyroscope in his life.  The men were listening, whether or not from loyalty I could not tell.

“Let us see your gyroplane, I mean aeroscope—­whatever it is you call it,” asked Kennedy.

Norton took the cue.  “Now you newspaper men are the first that I’ve allowed in here,” he said.  “Can I trust your word of honour not to publish a line except such as I O.K. after you write it?”

We promised.

As Norton directed, the mechanicians wheeled the aeroplane out on the field in front of the shed.  No one was about.

“Now this is the gyroscope,” began Norton, pointing out a thing encased in an aluminum sheath, which weighed, all told, perhaps fourteen or fifteen pounds.  “You see, the gyroscope is really a flywheel mounted on gimbals and can turn on any of its angles so that it can assume any angle in space.  When it’s at rest like this you can turn it easily.  But when set revolving it tends to persist always in the plane in which it was started rotating.”

I took hold of it, and it did turn readily in any direction.  I could feel the heavy little flywheel inside.

“There is a pretty high vacuum in that aluminum case,” went on Norton.  “There’s very little friction on that account.  The power to rotate the flywheel is obtained from this little dynamo here, run by the gas-engine which also turns the propellers of the aeroplane.”

“But suppose the engine stops, how about the gyroscope?” I asked sceptically.

“It will go right on for several minutes.  You know, the Brennan monorail car will stand up some time after the power is shut off.  And I carry a small storage-battery that will run it for some time, too.  That’s all been guarded against.”

Jaurette cranked the engine, a seven-cylindered affair, with the cylinders sticking out like the spokes of a wheel without a rim.  The propellers turned so fast that I could not see the blades—­ turned with that strong, steady, fierce droning buzz that can be heard a long distance and which is a thrilling sound to hear.  Norton reached over and attached the little dynamo, at the same time setting the gyroscope at its proper angle and starting it.

“This is the mechanical brain of my new flier,” he remarked, patting the aluminum case lovingly.  “You can look in through this little window in the case and see the flywheel inside revolving—­ ten thousand revolutions a minute.  Press down on the gyroscope,” he shouted to me.

As I placed both hands on the case of the apparently frail little instrument, he added, “You remember how easily you moved it just a moment ago.”

I pressed down with all my might.  Then I literally raised myself off my feet, and my whole weight was on the gyroscope.  That uncanny little instrument seemed to resent—­yes, that’s the word, resent—­my touch.  It was almost human in the resentment, too.  Far from yielding to me, it actually rose on the side I was pressing down!