offers you a pedigree-pup for nothing, and you want a pedigree-pup,
wouldn't you just hold out your hand?"

John Dene looked from one to the other.

"But this is not exactly a matter of a pedigree-pup," suggested Admiral
Heyworth diplomatically. "It's a matter of--er----"

"I see you haven't got me," said John Dene with the air of a patient
schoolmaster with a stupid pupil. "You," he addressed himself in
particular to Sir Lyster, "have said in public that the most difficult
spot in connexion with the submarine trouble is between the Shetlands
and the Norwegian coast. You can't help the U-boats slipping through
submerged. Suppose the _Destroyer_--that's the name of my boat--is
sort of hanging around there, _with eyes_ and some other little things
she's got, what then?"

"Both Sir Lyster and I appreciate all you say," said the Admiral; "but,
well, we are a little old fashioned perhaps in our methods here." He
smiled deprecatingly.

"Well," said John Dene, rising, "you lose the odd trick, that's all;
and," he added significantly as he took a step towards the door, "when
it all comes out, you'll lose your jobs too."

"Really, Mr. Dene," protested Sir Lyster, flushing slightly.

John Dene swung round on his heel. "If you'd spent three years of your
life and over a million dollars on a boat, and come three thousand
miles to offer it to someone for nothing, and were told to wait till
God knows which day what week, well, you'd be rattled too. In T'ronto
we size up a man before he's had time to say he's pleased to meet us,
and we'd buy a mountain quicker than you'd ask your neighbour to pass
the marmalade at breakfast."

Whilst John Dene was speaking, Sir Lyster had been revolving the matter
swiftly in his mind. He was impressed by his visitor's fearlessness.
A self-made man himself, he admired independence and freedom of speech
in others. He was not oblivious to the truth of John Dene's hint of
what would happen if another nation, even an allied nation, were to
acquire a valuable invention that had been declined by Great Britain.
He remembered the Fokker scandal. He decided to temporise.

"If," continued John Dene, "I was asking for money, I'd understand; but
I won't take a red cent, and more than that I go bail to the tune of a
quarter of a million dollars that I deliver the goods."

He strode up and down the room, twirling his cigar, and flinging his
short, sharp sentences at the two men, who, to his mind