way to Tinker, "I saw a very
neat little motor-car, which I should like to make you a present of.
But I say--I don't want you to tell anyone--how--how ill I was up
there. My spirit was all right, of course; but that rarefied
air--acting on business worries--produced a state of nervous
prostration. I--I wasn't quite myself, in fact."

Tinker looked at him with intelligent interest, and, closing one of his
sunny blue eyes, said thoughtfully, "Nervous prostration? Is the motor
a Panhard?"

"Yes," said Mr. Blumenruth.

"If you hadn't been so--so--upset, I've no doubt you'd have sailed the
machine yourself," said Tinker warmly.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE BARON AND THE MONEY-LENDER

Sir Tancred would only stay four days in Paris with the grateful
Blumenruth, because he wished Hildebrand Anne to have the sea air, for
it seemed to him that he had not yet got back his full strength after
the scarlet fever. They returned, therefore, to Brighton, and when the
weather grew hotter, removed to the more bracing East Coast. Tinker
was for sharing the three thousand pounds he had made out of his trip
in the flying-machine equally with his father; but Sir Tancred would
not hear of it. Chiefly to please him, however, he borrowed a thousand
of it at five per cent., and invested the rest in Tinker's name. With
this thousand-pound note and three notes of fifty pounds, he paid off
the loan of a thousand pounds which he had borrowed from Mr. Robert
Lambert, a money-lender, five years before, with the balance of the
interest up to date, and found himself once more unencumbered save for
a few small debts, and with plenty of money for his immediate needs.

During August and September they stayed at different country houses;
and Fortune being in a kindly mood, the money remained untouched. In
the middle of October they came to London to their usual rooms in the
Hotel Cecil; and Sir Tancred was one morning at breakfast disagreeably
surprised to receive from Mr. Robert Lambert a demand for the immediate
payment of 1450 pounds. At first he thought it was a mistake, then he
remembered that he had paid Mr. Lambert in notes; and that Mr. Lambert
had promised to get at once from his bank the promissory note on which
the money had been borrowed, and send it to him. The promissory note
had not come, and the matter had passed from Sir Tancred's mind. Now,
he perceived that, if Mr. Lambert chose to deny that payment, he was in
no little o