'Why,' Said Our Friend, 'the Fact Is I Am An Engineer (Section D Of The Public Works Department) And I Have To Make An Important Measurement In Connexion With The Apothegm Of The Bilateral Which Runs To-Night Precisely Through This Spot.

My fingers now mark exactly the concentric of the secondary focus whence the Radius Vector should be drawn, but I find that (like a fool) I have left my Double Refractor in the cafe hard by.

I dare not go for fear of losing the place I have marked; yet I can get no further without my Double Refractor.'

'Do not let that trouble you,' said the short, stout stranger; 'I will be delighted to keep the place exactly marked while you run for your instrument.'

The crowd was now swelled to a considerable size; it blocked up the pavement, and was swelled every moment by the arrival of the curious. The little fat elderly man put his fingers exactly where the other's had been, effecting the exchange with a sharp gesture; and each watched intently to see that it was right to within a millimetre. The attitude was constrained. The elderly man smiled, and begged the engineer not to be alarmed. So they left him with his two forefingers well above his head, precisely twenty-five centimetres apart, and pressing their tips against the wall of the Credit Lyonnais. Then the three friends slipped out of the crowd and pursued their way.

'Let us go to the theatre,' said the experimenter, 'and when we come back I warrant you will agree with my remarks on Bureaucracy.'

They went to hear the admirable marble lines of Corneille.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 322 of 361
Words from 87122 to 87406 of 97758