He appeared to be debating whether to explain further, and finally resumed:  “Matter thus being in reality a manifestation of force or ether in motion, it is necessary to change and control that force and motion.  This assemblage of machines here is for that purpose.  Now a few words as to my theory.”

He took a pencil and struck a sharp blow on the table.  “There you have a single blow,” he said, “just one isolated noise.  Now if I strike this tuning fork you have a vibrating note.  In other words, a succession of blows or wave vibrations of a certain kind affects the ear and we call it sound, just as a succession of other wave vibrations affects the retina and we have sight.  If a moving picture moves slower than a certain number of pictures a minute you see the separate pictures; faster it is one moving picture.

“Now as we increase the rapidity of wave vibration and decrease the wave length we pass from sound waves to heat waves or what are known as the infra-red waves, those which lie below the red in the spectrum of light.  Next we come to light, which is composed of the seven colours as you know from seeing them resolved in a prism.  After that are what are known as the ultra-violet rays, which lie beyond the violet of white light.  We also have electric waves, the waves of the alternating current, and shorter still we find the Hertzian waves, which are used in wireless.  We have only begun to know of X-rays and the alpha, beta, and gamma rays from them, of radium, radioactivity, and finally of this new force which I have discovered and call ‘protodyne,’ the original force.

“In short, we find in the universe Matter, Force, and Ether.  Matter is simply ether in motion, is composed of corpuscles, electrically charged ions, or electrons, moving units of negative electricity about one one-thousandth part of the hydrogen atom.  Matter is made up of electricity and nothing but electricity.  Let us see what that leads to.  You are acquainted with Mendeleeff’s periodic table?”

He drew forth a huge chart on which all the eighty or so elements were arranged in eight groups or octaves and twelve series.  Selecting one, he placed his finger on the letters “Au,” under which was written the number, 197.2.  I wondered what the mystic letters and figures meant.

“That,” he explained, “is the scientific name for the element gold and the figure is its atomic weight.  You will see,” he added, pointing down the second vertical column on the chart, “that gold belongs to the hydrogen group—­hydrogen, lithium, sodium, potassium, copper, rubidium, silver, caesium, then two blank spaces for elements yet to be discovered to science, then gold, and finally another unknown element.”

Running his finger along the eleventh, horizontal series, he, continued:  “The gold series—­not the group—­reads gold, mercury, thallium, lead, bismuth, and other elements known only to myself.  For the known elements, however, these groups and series are now perfectly recognised by all scientists; they are determined by the fixed weight of the atom, and there is a close approximation to regularity.