Willie Partridge was the son of the great inventor, Dwight Partridge, and it was generally understood that the explosive, Partridgite, was to be the result of a continuation of experiments which his father had been working upon at the time of his death. That Dwight Partridge had been trying experiments in the direction of a new and powerful explosive during the last year of his life was common knowledge in those circles which are interested in such things. Foreign governments were understood to have made tentative overtures to him. But a sudden illness, ending fatally, had finished the budding career of Partridgite abruptly, and the world had thought no more of it until an interview in the _Sunday Chronicle_, that store-house of information about interesting people, announced that Willie was carrying on his father's experiments at the point where he had left off. Since then there had been vague rumours of possible sensational developments, which Willie had neither denied nor confirmed. He preserved the mysterious silence which went so well with his appearance. Having turned slowly so that his eyes rested on Lord Wisbeach's ingenuous countenance, Willie paused, and his face assumed the expression of his photograph in the _Chronicle_. "Ah, Wisbeach!" he said. Lord Wisbeach did not appear to resent the patronage of his manner. He plunged cheerily into talk. He had a pleasant, simple way of comporting himself which made people like him. "I was just telling Mrs. Pett," he said, "that I shouldn't be surprised if you were to get an offer for your stuff from our fellows at home before long. I saw a lot of our War Office men when I was in England, don't you know. Several of them mentioned the stuff." Willie resented Partridgite as being referred to as "the stuff," but he made allowance. All Englishmen talked that way, he supposed. "Indeed?" he said. "Of course," said Mrs. Pett, "Willie is a patriot and would have to give our own authorities the first chance." "Rather!" "But you know what officials are all over the world. They are so sceptical and they move so slowly." "I know. Our men at home are just the same as a rule. I've got a pal who invented something-or-other, I forget what, but it was a most decent little contrivance and very useful and all that; and he simply can't get them to say Yes or No about it. But, all the same, I wonder you didn't have some of them trying to put out feelers to you when you were in London." "Oh, we were only in London a few hours. By the way, Lord Wisbeach, my sister--"--Mrs. Pett paused; she disliked to have to mention her sister or to refer to this subject at all, but curiosity impelled her--"my sister said that you are a great friend of her step-son, James Crocker. I didn't know that you knew him." Lord Wisbeach seemed to hesitate for a moment.