Publisher's Synopsis
Professor Challenger, a big burly man, is arguing with people who are persistently calling him on the telephone when his young friend Malone, a reporter for The Daily Gazette, enters and requests Challenger accompany him to inspect the discovery of Theodore Nemor, who claims to have invented a machine capable of disintegrating objects. Skeptical of the invention, Challenger accepts Malone's proposal and accompanies him to the house of Nemor.At first Nemor offers to disintegrate Challenger and put him back together to demonstrate the machine, but Malone convinces Challenger that should the machine fail to restore him, his scientific work would go unfinished, and thus Malone nominates himself to be disintegrated.Malone is successfully disintegrated and put back together and Challenger then undergoes the same treatment. As punishment for Challenger's lack of faith in the invention and lack of courtesy to Nemor, the inventor restores the professor without any hair. In a fury, Challenger assaults Nemor, throws him to the floor and threatens his life should he not restore the professor to his previous state. Nemor restores Challenger's hair and Challenger congratulates him on his machine and inquires as to its practical application. Nemor boasts that in the hands of the Russians, who were the highest bidder for the rights to the invention, London and its millions of inhabitants could be destroyed.
