But let's
begin with the phenomena themselves. I've told you before, how, when I was
in jail, I worked out their nature and the fact that they must draw their
power from some source that could be exhausted or emptied. You have read
Eldridge's reasoning as to why he thought Monsieur X was at a distance and
on a height. He took as the basis of his reasoning one fact in connection
with the wireless messages we were receiving--that they were faint, and
therefore presumably far distant or sent by a weak battery. He neglected,
or passed over as an important item of tuning, the further fact that the
instrument in the Atlas Building was the only instrument to receive
Monsieur X's messages.
"Now, that fact might be explained either on the very probable supposition
that our receiving instrument happened in what we may call its undertones
to be the only one tuned to the sending instrument of Monsieur X; or it
might be because our instrument was nearer Monsieur X's instrument than
any other. This was unlikely because of the quality of the sound--it
sounded to the expert operator as though it came from a distance.
Nevertheless, it was a possibility. Taken by itself, it was not nearly so
good a possibility as the other. Therefore, Eldridge chose the other.
"There were a number of other strictly scientific considerations of equal
importance. I do not hesitate to say that if I had been influenced only by
the scientific considerations, I should have followed Eldridge's lead
without the slightest hesitation.
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