"Then it's a swindle!" he declared hotly. "We'll get that fellow Hartley! He's a crook! We'll make him--" "Oh, no," interrupted Shackelford, quietly, "it's no swindle. According to your own story, you prepared the paper yourself and paid him for his signature to it." "We paid him twenty-five thousand dollars for his patent," asserted Connorton. "But you didn't get the patent," returned Shackelford. "He has assigned to you, for a consideration of twenty-five thousand dollars, all his rights, title, and interest in something or other, but the assignment doesn't clearly show what. There are a thousand things that it might be, but nothing that it definitely and positively _is_. Very likely he doesn't know this, but very likely somebody will tell him. Anyhow, you've got to clear an unquestioned title before you can do anything with the patent without danger of unpleasant consequences." Deeper gloom settled upon the faces of the three, and especially upon the face of Connorton, who was primarily responsible for their present predicament. "What would you advise?" asked Connorton at last. "Well," returned the lawyer, after a moment of thought, "you'd better find him. As near as I can make out, he had no thought of tricking you." "Oh, no, I don't believe he had," confessed Connorton. "I spoke hastily when I charged that. He's too impractical for anything of the sort." "Much too impractical, I should say," added Talbot, and Peyton nodded approval. "In that case," pursued the lawyer, "you can still clinch the deal easily and quickly--if you get to him first. I see nothing particularly disturbing in the situation, except the possibility that somebody who _is_ practical may get hold of him before you do, or that he may learn in some other way of the value of his invention. Do you know where he is?" "No," answered Connorton. "That's the trouble." "Not so troublesome as it might be," returned the lawyer. "He is not trying to hide, if we are correct in our surmise, and his eccentricities of dress and deportment would attract attention to him anywhere. I have a young man here in the office who will get track of him in no time, if you have nothing better to suggest." They had nothing better to suggest, so Byron Paulson was called in, given a description of Ira Hartley, together with such information as to his associates and haunts as it was possible to give, and sent in quest of news of him. "Meanwhile," observed the lawyer, "I'll prepare something for his signature, when we find him, that will have no loopholes in it." * * * * *