"Here they come! We'll get him started. Bill knows."

CHAPTER IX

GUS HOLDS FORTH AGAIN

"Say, old scout," cautioned Gus, in a low voice, "better not tell about
our job. Let it dawn on them later."

"Righto, Gus. It's nobody's business but ours. But what do the bunch
want?"

Bill soon found out, however, when Cora and Ted came to meet him.

"We've had an argument, Terry and I, about Edison," said the girl, "and
I know you can settle it. I said that--"

"Hold on! Don't tell me who said anything; then it'll be fair," Bill
demanded.

"'O wise, wise judge!'" gibed Ted. "Ought to have a suit of ermine.
Proper stunt, too. Let me put it, Cora; I'll be the court crier. Come on
and let's squat on the bank like the rest. Judge, you ought to be the
most elevated. Now, then, here's the dope: Did Edison really ever do
anything much to help with the war?"

"He did more than any other man," Bill declared promptly. "Positively!
Everybody ought to know that. He invented a device so that they could
smell a German submarine half a mile away, and they could tell when a
torpedo was fired. Another invention turned a ship about with her prow
facing the torpedo, so that it would be most likely to go plowing and
not hit her, as it would with broadside on. I guess that saved many a
ship and it helped to destroy lots of submarines with depth bombs. It
got the Germans leery when their old submersibles failed to get in any
licks and went out never to come back; it was as big a reason as any why
they were so ready to quit. Well, who was right?"

"I was!" announced Cora, gleefully. "Terry just can't see any good in
Edison at all. He says he hires people who really make his inventions
and he gets the credit for them. He says--"

"I don't suppose it makes much difference what he says; he simply
doesn't know what he's talk--"

"You think you know, but do you? You've read a lot of gush that--" Terry
began, but Gus interrupted him, almost a new thing for the quiet chap.

"Listen, Terry: get right on this. Don't let a lot of foolish people
influence you; people who can't ever see any real good in success and
who blame everything on luck and crookedness. And Bill does know."

"Anybody who tries to make Edison out a small potato," declared Bill,
addressing the others, rather than the supercilious youth who had
maligned his hero, "is simply ignorant of the facts. My father knew a
man well who worked for Edison in his laboratory for