"I remember him when he was a bum in the street," they will tell you of nearly all of them; "when he had n't got a nickle for a shoe-shine. Did you ever hear how he got on his feet?" And then will follow either a sordid or a criminal story. And from them you can learn the story of Matthew Kerrigan and Leonard Holt. An office friend had told Kerrigan of an eccentric inventor who lived out in his home town of Englewood, a poor, poverty-stricken, scatter-brained mechanic who plodded in a broken-down cottage on the outskirts of Englewood at magnificent and foolish dreams, such as aviation and perpetual motion. When Kerrigan went out to see his friend he was taken, on a rainy afternoon, to pass the dull hours, on a visit to the man Holt. Beyond an occasional dunning tradesman, who sneered at him, and an occasional equally poor friend who remonstrated with him and urged him to take a position in a factory, Holt saw no one. And when Kerrigan was introduced, he talked like a starved fanatic. Tall; loosely built, as though his jointures were precarious; stooped; with great greasy hands; sandy-haired; with burning blue eyes and a high forehead, and a listless mouth and chin--one might have been pardoned for believing him an impractical fool. He pointed out a large system of wheels and pulleys, of weights and springs. It was the perpetual-motion model on which he was working. "But I thought perpetual motion had been given up as impossible," Kerrigan objected. "They have been making strides toward it," Holt answered. "The _Struttapparat_ was a great advance. Of course a small quantity of radium is necessary. But, still, energy may be--it is just possible--created mechanically. They disprove perpetual motion by the hypothesis of the conservation of energy, which is not proven--" And so he went on at great length in his jerky sentences, while Kerrigan listened, picking up things and dropping them boredly--a Bunsen burner, a pair of pliers, a tripod--what not. He lifted two pieces of asbestos, clamped queerly together by two long pieces of flexible metal. As he toyed with it the thing came apart in his hands. A snap, and it was together again. Kerrigan looked up in interest. "What's this for?" "A little fastening trick. Of no practical use--except, perhaps, for women's corsets!" Holt laughed. Kerrigan was silent. "Patented?" he suggested, after a while. "Everything I have is patented," Holt said with a touch of pride. "May I bring it along," Kerrigan asked, "to show it to a friend?" "Why, certainly!" Holt nodded. "Now, if you understand that the energy develops in geometric progression--" And very efficiently did Matthew Kerrigan show Holt's fastening device to his friend--a prominent banker who had never heard of Kerrigan before, but had always money to sink, at a price, in worthy enterprises. Kerrigan returned to Holt. "There may be something in that little thing of yours. Will you take a hundred dollars for it outright?"