The soft answer did not cool Clayton down; it seemed only to irritate him the more; and he repeated and emphasised his conviction that the invention would never do any man a farthing’s worth of real service.  He even made it a ‘brass’ farthing, this time.  Then he laid an English farthing on the table, and added: 

’Take that, Mr. K., and put it away; and if ever the telelectroscope does any man an actual service—­mind, a real service—­please mail it to me as a reminder, and I will take back what I have been saying.  Will you?’

‘I will,’ and Mr. K. put the coin in his pocket.

Mr. Clayton now turned toward Szczepanik, and began with a taunt—­a taunt which did not reach a finish; Szczepanik interrupted it with a hardy retort, and followed this with a blow.  There was a brisk fight for a moment or two; then the attaches separated the men.

The scene now changes to Chicago.  Time, the autumn of 1901.  As soon as the Paris contract released the telelectroscope, it was delivered to public use, and was soon connected with the telephonic systems of the whole world.  The improved ‘limitless-distance’ telephone was presently introduced, and the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody, and audibly discussible, too, by witnesses separated by any number of leagues.

By-and-by Szczepanik arrived in Chicago.  Clayton (now captain) was serving in that military department at the time.  The two men resumed the Viennese quarrel of 1898.  On three different occasions they quarrelled, and were separated by witnesses.  Then came an interval of two months, during which time Szczepanik was not seen by any of his friends, and it was at first supposed that he had gone off on a sight seeing tour and would soon be heard from.  But no; no word came from him.  Then it was supposed that he had returned to Europe.  Still, time drifted on, and he was not heard from.  Nobody was troubled, for he was like most inventors and other kinds of poets, and went and came in a capricious way, and often without notice.

Now comes the tragedy.  On December 29, in a dark and unused compartment of the cellar under Captain Clayton’s house, a corpse was discovered by one of Clayton’s maid-servants.  Friends of deceased identified it as Szczepanik’s.  The man had died by violence.  Clayton was arrested, indicted, and brought to trial, charged with this murder.  The evidence against him was perfect in every detail, and absolutely unassailable.  Clayton admitted this himself.  He said that a reasonable man could not examine this testimony with a dispassionate mind and not be convinced by it; yet the man would be in error, nevertheless.  Clayton swore that he did not commit the murder, and that he had had nothing to do with it.

As your readers will remember, he was condemned to death.  He had numerous and powerful friends, and they worked hard to save him, for none of them doubted the truth of his assertion.  I did what little I could to help, for I had long since become a close friend of his, and thought I knew that it was not in his character to inveigle an enemy into a corner and assassinate him.  During 1902 and 1903 he was several times reprieved by the governor; he was reprieved once more in the beginning of the present year, and the execution day postponed to March 31.