During the time the Frenchmen were at their hotel in Dayton, it might have been expected that their presence would become known to local newspapermen and that the world would have learned of what was going on. To avoid attracting attention they had taken the precaution to avoid the Hotel Algonquin where Fordyce had stayed on his earlier visit, and were at the Beckel House. They were unmolested there until an employee of one of the telegraph offices “tipped off” a reporter friend. The telegrapher had noticed various cables in code going to France and felt sure the Frenchmen must be carrying on an important deal. A reporter nabbed Fordyce and Bonel one evening in the hotel lobby on their return from a theater. As Bonel spoke no English, Fordyce parried the reporter’s questions. He thought a plausible explanation of their presence would be that they were studying the water system of a typical American city. But what he said was that they were studying Dayton’s “water pipes.” That satisfied as well as amused the reporter and nothing about the French commission got into the papers. The local newspapermen had failed to note that, after Fordyce’s previous visit, the New York _Herald_ of January 4 had printed a brief item about his having seen the Wrights to discuss a contract. It never occurred to anyone in Dayton that the Wright brothers could have attracted visitors from across the Atlantic, for the Wrights still were not “news.” If the Frenchmen had made a statement that they were there dickering with the Wrights for a $200,000 contract, it is possible that the local papers would not have printed it. They might not have believed such a tale. Only a few days after the French commission had left Dayton, another foreign visitor dropped in on the Wrights--the Englishman, Patrick Y. Alexander. After some casual talk, he inquired with seeming innocence, as if just to make conversation: “Is the French commission still here?” The Wrights were startled. So great had been the secrecy about the visit of the Frenchmen that not many even in the French Government were permitted to know about their trip to Dayton. How did this mysterious Britisher know about it? The Wrights assumed that he must have been a volunteer worker in the British secret service. It was now obvious that he had crossed the Atlantic for no other purpose than to call on the Wrights and had hoped to burst in upon them while the Frenchmen were still there. After a stay of only one day in Dayton he hastened back to New York to sail on the next boat. His call made it all the more clear that the British were then more interested in what other European governments were doing about planes than in acquiring an air fleet of their own.