"George Griffith - A Corner in Lightning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Griffith George)

Professor Kenyon had paid a couple of visits with Calvert, once at the beginning of the work and once
when it was nearing completion. So far not the slightest hitch or accident had occurred, and nothing
abnormal had been noticed in connection with the earth's electrical phenomena save unusually frequent
appearances of the Aurora Borealis, and a singular decrease in the deviation of the mariner's compass.
Nevertheless, the Professor had firmly but politely refused to remain until the gigantic apparatus was set
to work, and Calvert, too, had, with extreme reluctance, yielded to his wife's intreaties, and had come
back to England about a month before the initial experiment was to be begun.
The twentieth of March, which was the day fixed for the commencement of operations, came and went,
to Mrs. Calvert's intense relief, without anything out of the common happening. Though she knew that
over a hundred thousand pounds of her husband's money had been sunk, she found it impossible not to
feel a thrill of satisfaction in the hope that Markovitch had made his experiment and failed.

She knew that the great Calvert Company, which was practically himself, could very well afford it, and
she would not have regretted the loss of three times the sum in exchange for the knowledge that Nature
was to be allowed to dispose of her electrical forces as seemed good to her. As for her husband, he
went about his business as usual, only displaying slight signs of suppressed excitement and anticipation
now and then, as the weeks went by and nothing happened.

She had not carried out her threat of going to Australia. She had, however, escaped from the rigours of
the English spring to a villa near Nice, where she was awaiting the arrival of her second baby, an event
which she had found very useful in persuading her husband to stop away from the Magnetic Pole. Calvert
himself was so busy with what might be called the home details of the scheme that lie had to spend the
greater part of his time in London, and could only run over to Nice now and then.

It so happened that Miss Calvert put in an appearance a few days before she was expected, and
therefore while her father was still in London. Her mother very naturally sent her maid with a telegram to
inform him of the fact and ask him to come over at once. In about half-an-hour the maid came back with
the form in her hand bringing a message from the telegraph office that, in consequence of some
extraordinary accident, the wires had almost ceased to work properly and that no messages could be got
through distinctly.

In the rapture of her new motherhood Kate Calvert had forgotten all about the great Storage Scheme, so
she sent the maid back again with the request that the message should be sent off as soon as possible.
Two hours later she sent again to ask if it had gone, and the reply came back that the wires had ceased
working altogether and that no electrical communication by telegraph or telephone was for the present
possible.

Then a terrible fear came to her. The experiment had been a success after all, and Markovitch's
mysterious engines bad been all this time imperceptibly draining the earth of its electric fluid and storing it
up in the vast accumulators which would only yield it back again at the bidding of the Trust which was
controlled by her husband! Still she was a sensible little woman, and after the first shock she managed,
for her baby's sake, to put the fear out of her mind, at any rate until her husband came. He would be with
her in a day or two, and, perhaps, after all, it was only some strange but perfectly natural occurrence
which Nature herself would set right in a few hours.

When it got dusk that night, and the electric lights were turned on, it was noticed that they gave an
unusually dim and wavering light. The engines were worked to their highest power, and the lines were
carefully examined. Nothing could be found wrong with them, but the lights refused to behave as usual,
and the most extraordinary feature of the phenomenon was that exactly the same thing was happening in
all the electrically lighted cities and towns in the northern hemisphere. By midnight, too, telegraphic and