degrees they began to occupy quite a fair space in the outhouse—normally used for bicycles and lawn-mower.
“Are you sure,” Emily asked uneasily, “that you’re doing right in bringing home stuff like this?”
“Quite sure. It’s mainly throw-out stuff, and I’ve asked permission to keep some of it. As a cleaner I’m well in touch with the laboratory junk.’’
“Junk, yes, but the stuff I’ve seen looks like perfectly good electrical equipment and worth a fair sum of money.”
“It would be if it were not defective. Everything’s all right, Emmy, believe me. In any case, you can’t get in or out of a Government laboratory without the most rigid overhaul. Detector beams and heaven knows what go to work on you as you enter and leave the building, just so as to be sure you’re not carrying anything you shouldn’t.”
Emily nodded even though she found it hard to believe. But Albert was telling the truth. The stuff he had appropriated was quite valueless to the laboratory, where precision to the nth degree was required, and he had been given permission to take some of the stuff away—supposedly to form the basis of a color television receiver. Only Albert had far higher dreams than this!
He had very little spare time—Emily saw to that—but whenever he could seize a few moments, he tinkered away in the outhouse with his queer gadgets, coils of wire, and linked-up batteries. Where apparatus was defective he rectified it, and quite skilfully too. Accordingly, by degrees, there began to appear something that looked like a cross between a radio set and a tape-recorder.
The youngsters wanted to know what it was all about, and had to be satisfied with a vague explanation about a 3-D color televisor. Emily wanted to know everything too, and learned precisely nothing. Nor could she or the children examine the mystery apparatus in their spare time because Albert bought an old but sturdy safe of considerable dimensions and kept the apparatus locked away in it whenever he was absent from home.
Apparently the “Televisor” was not the limit of his ambition, however, for presently he began to construct another kind of instrument. It looked like a clock and was superbly designed. Even Emily had to admit that. Nobody would ever have guessed that Albert was the veriest amateur. But then, he had the constructional pages of his science magazine to help him.
By the spring his “clock” was complete, and by now it formed the apparent nucleus of another piece of equipment, in the center of which the “clock” was embedded. There were tubes in this external equipment—tubes, wires, small transformers, and a host of other things utterly baffling to anybody except Albert, or maybe a trained scientist.
Albert was sensible enough, however, to realize that you cannot fool all the people all the time. So, of his own free will he suddenly condescended to explain to the family what he was driving at, and he chose a warm evening in spring when Emily, Ethel, Dick, Betty, and Vera were all at home, an event of unusual rarity.
“Things,” Albert said, with an air of tremendous assurance, “are very shortly going to happen! Because you’ll be involved in these things as much as anybody else, you might as well have advance warning. I’ve been working on a master-plan, and it’s about complete.”
“Taken a long time,” Emily commented, darning a sock with vicious needle thrusts.
“All scientific accomplishments take a long time; only to be expected. However, to come to the point, I’ve been devising a way of making myself master of the world without afterwards cashing-in on the undoubted opportunities afforded by such a lofty position.”
“Eh?” Emily sat up and stared, her darning forgotten. As for the younger ones, they simply regarded their father as though he had gone completely crazy.
“Master of the world,” Albert repeated, sitting back in the worn armchair and wagging his head to himself. “And the best of it is, nobody will know it’s me. It will sound as though some all-powerful visitor from outer space is giving the orders. And, what is more, getting them obeyed! Think how much good that will do in the world.”
“Why will it?” Emily asked stupidly. “And who’s going to obey you, anyhow?”
“Everybody who hears the voice. The Conqueror’s Voice! How’s that sound?”
“It sounds all right, but coming from you it’s a farce! The last thing I can picture is you as a conqueror!”
“I know. Practically everybody who knows me feels the same way.” Albert clenched his bony fists and his eyes were gleaming. “That’s what has been wrong all through my life. I’ve been taken for a meek, downtrodden fool, which is one reason why I’ve turned my scientific talent to righting the wrong that has been done me. From here on I intend to sit back and watch anybody do exactly as I say!”
Vera, the eldest child, gave a rather sardonic laugh. “Even if that could happen, dad—which it obviously can’t—you’d very soon find yourself run in if you tried it. It’d be a short cut to the booby-hatch. Delusions of grandeur, or something.”
Albert looked at her. “You listen to me, my girl. You’ve heard of a perfect crime, haven’t you? The kind of crime so brilliantly executed that nobody can tell how it was done?”
“Of course I have!”
“Well, this is similar. Only instead of being a crime, it’s a blessing, or intended to be. Nobody will ever be able to prove who’s back of it, and unless my calculations are utterly wrong, everybody will think an outer-space visitor is the culprit. Certainly nobody will suspect Albert Simpkins.”
Ethel tittered, and Vera gave her mother an anxious glance. “Mum, I don’t think dad’s very well. He can’t be! He talks of being master of the world, yet he can’t even make his own family obey him.”
“Under the old order I couldn’t, certainly,” Albert admitted, “but I’ve found a different way of controlling things. Just let me explain further.”
“By all means!” Emily exclaimed, still looking stunned. Getting quickly to his feet, Albert left the room, and he could well imagine the kind of conversation that was taking place during his absence. When he returned, he found each member of the family quiet, but studying him in suspicious wonder. The wonder deepened as he set upon the table his strange clock device with its outer mechanism of tubes, minute transformers, and intricate wiring.
“This thing operates over a distance of twenty feet,” he explained, plugging it into the nearby power point. “It will also operate from batteries. Now, Vera, my smart young lady, let’s see what sort of a brain you’ve got.”
“What!” Vera jumped up in alarm, her eyes wide in obvious fright. “Don’t you dare come near me with that thing, dad!”
“I’ve no need to. Your brain has already given its emanation. Want to see for yourself?”
Vera hesitated, noting that her father had been operating both a graded wheel and a kind of rheostat knob, meanwhile watching the queer behavior of the central needle on the “clock.”
“Don’t you go near it!” Emily warned—but Vera was young and therefore curious. She moved forward and peered at the instrument cautiously. The “clock” needle was pointing, she observed, to number 9865 amongst the scale readings, which went up to 10,000. The scale was plainly a professional job and the work of precision engineers, but the omission of two numbers had led the government
