say is your name?"

Garrison informed him duly.

"I haven't yet made myself famous as a navigator of the air, but we all
have our hopes."

"You'll never be able to steer a balloon," said Scott, with a touch of
asperity. "I can tell you that."

"I begin to believe you're right," assented Garrison artfully. "It's a
mighty discouraging and expensive business, any way you try it."

"I'll do the trick! I've got it all worked out," said Scott, betrayed
into ardor and assurance by a nearness of the triumph that he felt to
be approaching. "I'll have plenty of money to complete it
soon--plenty--plenty--but it's a long time coming, even now."

"That's the trouble with most of us," Garrison observed, to draw his
man. "The lack of money."

"Why can't they pay it, now the man is dead?" demanded Scott, as if he
felt that everyone knew his affairs by heart and could understand his
meaning. "I need the money now--to-day--this minute! It's bad enough
when a man stays healthy so long, and looks as if he'd last for twenty
years. That's bad enough without me having to wait and wait and wait,
now that he's dead and in the ground."

It was clear to Garrison the man's singleness of purpose had left his
mind impaired. He began to see how a creature so bent on some wondrous
solution of the flying-machine enigma could even become so obsessed in
his mind that to murder for money, insurance benefits, or anything
else, would seem a fair means to an end.

"Some friend of yours has recently died?" he asked. "You've been left
some needed funds for your labors?"

"Funny kind of friendship when a man goes on living so long," said the
alert fanatic. "And I don't get the money; that's what's delaying me
now."

"You're far more fortunate than some of us," said Garrison. "Some
friend, I suppose, here in town."

"No, he was here two days," answered Scott. "I saw him but little. He
died in the night, up to the village." His sharp eyes swung on
Garrison peculiarly the moment his speech was concluded.

He demanded sharply; "What's all this business to you?"

"Nothing--only that it shows the world's great inventors are not always
neglected, after all," answered Garrison. "Some of us never enjoy such
good fortune."

"The world don't know how great I am," declared the inventor, instantly
off, on the hint supplied by his visitor. "But just the minute that
insurance company gives me the money, I'll be ready to startle the
skies!