Meanwhile, I had been looking curiously at the box on the table.
It did not seem to be like anything we had ever used before. One
end was open, and the lid lifted up on a pair of hinges. I lifted
it and looked in. About half way down the box from the open end
was a partition which looked almost as if some one had taken the
end of the box and had just shoved it in, until it reached the
middle.
The open half was empty, but in the other half I saw a sort of
plate of some substance covering the outside of the shoved-in end.
There was also a dry cell and several arrangements for adjustments
which I did not understand. Back of the whole thing was a piece of
mechanism, a clockwork interrupter, as I learned later. Wires led
out from the closed end of the box.
Garrick shoved the precious letter into his pocket and then placed
the box in a corner, where it was hidden by a pile of books, with
the open end facing the room in the direction of the antiquated
safe. The wires from the box were quickly disposed of and dropped
out of the window to the yard, several stories below, where we
could pick them up later as we had done with the detectaphone.
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