"They are generous when they have determined to get a thing," smiled the elder Pulsifer, "and they have determined to get the Varian inventions. After all, you see, you can withdraw gracefully from negotiations with Washington. Nothing has been actually accomplished yet, and as matters have only reached an experimental stage nobody is compromised." "See here, gentlemen," asked Varian suddenly, as if his mind had been fixed on this question all the time Pulsifer had been speaking, "how much money has this government got to spend in cold cash?" "Why, my dear sir, what a question----" "Answer me!" "Well, if you must know--though it is wholly foreign to our discussion--I suppose they could raise a war fund to-morrow of seventy million dollars, to be raised by loans to a billion dollars and a half." "They could do all this in two days?" "Undoubtedly." "Well, you go back to your baron and tell him that if his government worked for ninety days and raised ninety times ninety millions _they would still be a million miles away from buying Henry Varian to betray his government_!" "You are insane!" The elder Pulsifer's fat face quivered, while his brother's already red visage deepened in color to an angry crimson. "No; not insane, gentlemen," quietly replied the inventor. "It is you who must be that for imagining for a moment that I would set a price for selling out Uncle Sam." "Hurray!" breathed Ned from behind his bush; "it's the Pulsifers I'm aching, twitching, dying to get a slam at now." "So, then, you have been trying to draw us out!" shouted the elder Pulsifer, beside himself with fury at the unexpected turn of affairs. "You have led us on, you cur, you sneak, you hound, you----" Smack! The inventor's palm shot out and struck Pulsifer's fat face a stinging blow. In the moonlight Ned could see a dark, angry patch appear where it had struck. The younger Pulsifer made a leap for the inventor as the blow resounded. The Dreadnought Boy saw something glitter in his hand as he leaped forward. It was a revolver that the would-be briber had drawn. At the same instant, and just as Ned was about to spring forward, the elder man drew from his coat-tail pocket a silver whistle. He placed it to his lips and blew a shrill blast. Simultaneously four dark forms leaped from behind a sort of summer-house shrouded in creepers, and flung themselves on the inventor. They bore him to the ground, as the Dreadnought Boy, with a loud shout of: "Stand clear!" dashed from his place of concealment. CHAPTER XXIV. IN THE PULSIFERS' HANDS. Sinewy and well-muscled as he was, Ned realized a moment later that he was in for such a battle against odds as he had never fought before. Hardly had he made his unexpected appearance and bowled the astonished younger Pulsifer over with a well-directed blow of his fist, before one of the quartet that had downed Mr. Varian sprang upon the lad and gripped him in a strong-armed embrace.