"Arthur Conan Doyle - The Los Amigos Fiasco" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Arthur Conan)

of human pity. He had deserved a dozen deaths, and the Los Amigos folk grudged
him so gaudy a one as that. He seemed to feel himself to be unworthy of it, for
he made two frenzied attempts at escape. He was a powerful, muscular man, with a
lion head, tangled black locks, and a sweeping beard which covered his broad
chest. When he was tried, there was no finer head in all the crowded court. It's
no new thing to find the best face looking from the dock. But his good looks
could not balance his bad deeds. His advocate did all he knew, but the cards lay
against him, and Duncan Warner was handed over to the mercy of the big Los
Amigos dynamos.
I was at the committee meeting when the matter was discussed. The town council
had chosen four experts to look after the arrangements. Three of them were
admirable. There was Joseph M'Connor, the very man who had designed the dynamos,
and there was Joshua Westmacott, the chairman of the Los Amigos Electrical
Supply Company, Limited. Then there was myself as the chief medical man, and
lastly an old German of the name of Peter Stulpnagel. The Germans were a strong
body at Los Amigos, and they all voted for their man. That was how he got on the
committee. It was said he had been a wonderful electrician at home, and he was
eternally working with wires and insulators and Leyden jars; but, as he never
seemed to get any further, or to have any results worth publishing, he came at
last to be regarded as a harmless crank, who had made science his hobby. We
three practical men smiled when we heard he had been elected as our colleague,
and at the meeting we fixed it all up very nicely among ourselves without much
thought of the old fellow who sat with his ears scooped forward in his hands,
for he was a trifle hard of hearing, taking no more part in the proceedings than
the gentlemen of the press who scribbled their notes on the back benches.
We did not take long to settle it all. In New York a strength of some 2,000
volts had been used, and death had not been instantaneous. Evidently their shock
had been too weak. Los Amigos should not fall into that error. The charge should
be six times greater, and therefore, of course, it would be six times more
effective. Nothing could possibly be more logical. The whole concentrated force
of the great dynamos should be employed on Duncan Warner.
So we three settled it, and had already risen to break up the meeting, when our
silent companion opened his mouth for the first time.
"Gentlemen," said he, "you appear to me to show an extraordinary ignorance on
the subject of electricity. You have not mastered the first principles of its
actions on a human being."
The committee was about to break into an angry reply to this brusque comment,
but the chairman of the Electrical Company tapped his forehead to claim its
indulgence for the speaker's eccentricity.
"Pray tell us, sir," said he, with an ironic smile, "what is there in our
conclusions with which you find fault?"
"With your assumption that a large dose of electricity will merely increase the
effect of a small dose. Do you not think it possible that it might have an
entirely different result? Do you know anything, by actual experiment, of the
effect of such powerful shocks?"
"We know it by analogy," said the chairman, pompously. "All drugs increase their
effect when they increase their dose; for example--for example--"
"Whiskey," said Joseph M'Connor.
"Quite so. Whiskey. You see it there."
Peter Stulpnagel smiled and shook his head.