It really was then that the inspiration came to me. In a flash thereleaped to my mind the closing paragraphs of the story I had readin the club at Algiers:

Does the answer lie somewhere upon the bosom of the broad Sahara,at the ends of two tiny wires, hidden beneath a lost cairn?

The idea seemed preposterous. Experience and in-telligence combinedto assure me that there could be no slightest grain of truth orpossibility in your wild tale--it was fiction pure and simple.

And yet where WERE the other ends of those wires?

What was this instrument--ticking away here in the great Sahara--buta travesty upon the possible!

Would I have believed in it had I not seen it with my own eyes?