This old fellow was a multimillionaire, and for years had been trying in his senile way to invent things. Finally he’d concentrated on the Air Service, and had been submitting to McCook Field all sorts of things from a motor run by gun powder to an automobile that turned into a ship, wings sprung out, a propeller attached to the front of the motor, and all that. Naturally, all his stuff was infinitely ridiculous. If you don’t believe how many crack-brained inventors there are who submit perpetual motion machines and all that, ask an official of any big company, or the patent office. And McCook Field gets its share. He had been a harmless old coot, although a nuisance. Well, when the bombing was broached, he set to work, and figured out a scheme to carry bombs, each bomb to be hung under an individual balloon which was to be filled with poison gas. Then there was some magnetic idea which would make the bomb and the balloon go straight for the battleship attracted by the steel in it. When the bomb hit, the balloon would burst and spread poison gas all over. The only thing he hadn’t figured out was what would become of the pilot, except that he might jump into the middle of the ocean in a parachute. This old bird was very patriotic, offering all his nutty ideas to the Government free and clear. Now comes the hitch. A soldier of fortune, named Gimbel, and reputedly--I never met him--a very keen, unscrupulous and strong-minded person, had attached himself to this old gentleman and worked him for a fairly comfortable living, suggesting newer and nuttier ideas and pretending to help him work on them at a comfortable salary. The old boy trusted him a good deal, and was pretty strongly under the sway of said Gimbel. Gimbel had decided, evidently, that he wanted a big piece of change all in a lump, instead of putting up with the vagaries of the old boy for merely a stipend, so to speak. So he’d worked on the old boy’s mind, helping him become convinced that there was a deep laid plot to keep the Government from taking advantage of this priceless method of bombing. The inventor was absolutely certain, finally, that the Government was in the hands of traitors who were working deliberately to make the bombing tests a failure, or at least, not as successful as they could be. The Martin factory, Gimbel convinced him, had bribed high Government officials to make them turn down his invention so that they could sell a lot of very expensive ships. Then Gimbel convinced him that, in view of the fine patriotic motives behind the scheme, it would be a good thing to get rid of the factory entirely, thus at one and the same time getting rid of a big business which was working against the country for their own ends, and forcing the country to use the balloons and bombs of the inventor, which, of course, would be tremendously successful.