"What is the matter, Tom?" he asked. "Has anything happened? I heard your alarm go off, and I came as quickly as I could."
"Nothing much has happened, father, excepting a chicken thief. But something great may come of it. Do you notice that searchlight, and how powerful it is?"
"I do, Tom. I never knew you had one as big as that."
"Neither did I, and I haven't, really. That's one of my smallest ones, but something seems to have happened to it to make it throw out a beam like that. I'm just going to look. Come on in the shop."
The two inventors, young and old, entered, and Tom quickly crossed to where the wires from the automatic dynamo, extended to the searchlight outside the window of his room. He made a quick inspection.
"Look, father!" he cried. "The alternating current from the automatic dynamo has become crossed with direct current from the big storage battery in a funny way. It must have been by accident, for never in the world would I think of connecting up in that fashion. I would have said it would have made a short circuit at once.
"But it hasn't. On the contrary, it has given a current of peculiar strength and intensity—a
