“Zat is true, but it vould be business. Zere vill be patent rights, perhaps; vell, ve buy zem; ve buy anyzink zat is goot business.” “No, I haven’t taken out a patent. It is very good of you, Mr. Schwab, if at any time——” “Ach! Vat you call any time!—zat is no time. Now, now is ze time. I am in zis country only few days. I go soon to Morocco for business. I suffer egstremely from sea-illness, but for business I go anyvere. Zink how it vould console me in ze Bay of Biscay to know zat I had done goot business for Schlagintwert—and for you, Mr. Dorrell.” “Sorry. Really I can’t say any more, Mr. Schwab. I _must_ go; look me up again, if you like, when you get back from Morocco.” Recognizing that Tom was not to be drawn, the German swallowed his disappointment, took leave in most expansive terms, and was soon jogging back in the direction from which he had come. But finding, on arriving at the station, that he had an hour to wait for his train, he introduced himself to the station-master and tactfully led the conversation to Midfont House and its owner, Mr. Greatorex. What he learnt in the course of it was something to the following effect. Some years before, Mr. Greatorex had discovered a taste for mechanics in the son of the village smith at Barton Abbas, twenty miles away. He had put the boy to a good school, often had him at Midfont House in the holidays, and paid his fees at the university in the neighbouring town, where the boy took honours in mechanics and engineering at a very early age. Then, about a year before this time, Mr. Greatorex had fenced in a large piece of waste ground on his estate, erected a workshop in the middle of it, and given it up entirely to young Dorrell, who was now apparently a permanent inmate of his house. What went on in the workshop the station-master did not know. The enclosure was kept strictly private; nobody outside the family was ever allowed to pass its borders. The station-master believed that young Dorrell was inventing a motor-car; it was said that Mr. Greatorex’s interest in him dated from the day when the boy had repaired some trifling mishap which had befallen his car on the road. The effect of this information on Herr Schwab was greater than the station-master ever knew. When the train came in, the German got into it; but he alighted at the next station two miles off, and trudged back over the road until he once more stood at the gate of Midfont House. It was now dark. Schwab did not this time pull the bell. He walked on past the gate for a good quarter of a mile, then halted at a large heap of stones collected for mending the road.