"Five hundred dollars!" repeated Graham, thunderstruck by this munificence. "Yes, sir: five hundred, cash! To tell you the truth--guess you don't know it--I heard at the bank that they didn't intend to extend the time on that note of yours, and I thought this five hundred would come in handy, and kind of wanted to help you out. Now what do you say?" He flourished the bills under Graham's nose and waited, entirely at ease as to his answer. "Well," said the old man, "it is kind of you, sir--very kind. Everybody's been good to me recently--or else I'm dreamin'." "Then it's a bargain?" "Why, I hope it won't lose any money for you, Mr. Burnham," Sam hesitated, with his ineradicable sense of fairness and square-dealing. "Making gas from crude oil ought to--" Duncan never heard the end of that speech. For some moments he had been listening intently, trying to recollect something. The name of Burnham plucked a string on the instrument of his memory; he knew he had heard it, some place, some time in the past; but how, or when, or in respect to what he could not make up his mind. It had required Sam's reference to gas and crude oil to close the circuit. Then he remembered: Kellogg had mentioned a man by the name of Burnham who was "on the track of" an important invention for making gas from crude oil. This must be the man, Burnham, the tracker; and poor old Graham must be the tracked.... Without warning Duncan ran round and made himself an uninvited third to the conference. "Mr. Graham, one moment!" he begged, excited. "Is this patent of yours on a process of making gas from crude oil?" Burnham looked up impatiently, frowning at the interruption, but Graham was all good humour. "Why, yes," he started to explain; "it's that burner over there that--" "But I wouldn't sell it just yet if I were you," said Nat. "It may be worth a good deal--" "Now look here!" Burnham got to his feet in anger. "What business 've you got butting into this?" he demanded, putting himself between Duncan and the inventor. "Me?" Duncan queried simply. "Only just because I'm a business man. If you don't believe it, ask Mr. Graham." "He's got a perfect right to advise me, Mr. Burnham," interposed Graham, rising. "Well, but--but what objection 've you got to his making a little money out of this patent?" Burnham blustered. "None; only I want to look into the matter first. I think it might be-- ah--advisable." "What makes you think so?" demanded Burnham, his tone withering. "Well," said Nat, with an effort summoning his faculties to cope with a matter of strict business, "it's this way: I've got an _idea_," he said, poking at Burnham with the forefinger which had proven so effective with Pete Willing, "that you wouldn't offer five hundred iron men for this burner unless you expected to make something big out of it, and... it ought to be worth just as much to Mr. Graham as to you." "Ah, you don't know what you're talking about."