"Well, let me tell you something, O'Mera, something about the Alps.... They can be flown over--because they _have_ been flown over. Yes, sir, right from one side to the other.... And who was the first man that did it? Tell me that." "I haven't the least idea. Ask yourself the answer." "What difference does it make--so long as somebody was the first to do it? Somebody had to be first, before there could be a second. First comes first--second comes second." He emptied another glass and set a cigarette unsteadily in his lips. All the while he peered at O'Mera with supercilious and sardonic humor. "That's _fact_--isn't it?" "Sounds logical." "Over the top--from the plains on one side to the plains on the other.... Who was the first man that did it? You'd like to know." He lowered his voice confidentially and said in a stage whisper, "You'll have to ask somebody else." Potter knew who was the first man to fly over the Alps. There was little about the history and development of the aeroplane that he did not know. He remembered how the newspapers had heralded that feat and the name of the man who had accomplished it. The man had been a German, an officer; he had been decorated for it by the Kaiser himself. The name of the aviator was Lieutenant Adolf von Arnheim. Potter was excited. Was it a discovery? His suspicions of Cantor were reawakened, made vivid. He fancied he now had real basis for suspicion, for if his intelligence were not at fault the man had intimated in his tipsy way that _he_ had topped the Alps in an aeroplane, had even seemed to verge upon the boast that it was he who had first accomplished that feat. Potter reviewed the conversation, weighed and valued each word. Did his desire to believe the thing make it appear to be true?... He thought not. He believed he had put a warranted conclusion upon what he had heard, and that Cantor in his bibulous state had been upon the verge of making a revelation.... From that point reasoning walked in a straight path. Either Cantor was lying boastfully or he _was_ the first man to surmount the Alps. If he were the first, then his name was not Cantor, but Adolf von Arnheim, and he was an officer in the Imperial German army! Potter argued with himself, presented the evidence to himself again and again, and scrutinized with what fairness and calmness was possible. Clearly Cantor had an unusual knowledge of aeronautics, the knowledge which only experience could have given--experience of the most profound and particular study. Cantor did not seem a man likely to gain such knowledge from poring over a text-book.... If, then, Potter accepted the conclusion that Cantor was an aviator, the other conclusion was not so grotesquely remote. It crystallized his suspicion into certainty--a certainty that Cantor deserved scrutiny.