We seated ourselves at once on the chairs that had been
placed for us, and, when the mutual salutations had been exchanged, I
looked about me. There were three people in the room besides Jervis:
Thorndyke, who sat with his watch in his hand, a grey-headed gentleman
whom I took to be Dr. Norbury, and a smaller person at the dim farther
end--undistinguishable, but probably Polton. At our end of the room were
the two large trays that I had seen in the workshop, now mounted on
trestles and each fitted with a rubber drain-tube leading down to a
bucket. At the farther end of the room the sinister shape of the gallows
reared itself aloft in the gloom; only now I could see that it was not a
gallows at all. For affixed to the top cross-bar was a large,
bottomless glass basin, inside which was a glass bulb that glowed with a
strange green light; and in the heart of the bulb a bright spot of red.
It was all clear enough so far. The peculiar sound that filled the air
was the hum of the interrupter; the bulb was, of course, a Crookes tube,
and the red spot inside it, the glowing red-hot disc of the
anti-cathode.
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