Part 45 (1/2)

”No. The old ones. I was trying to count them up. I've taken out about fifty patents, and there are heaps of things half worked out which might be valuable. Now I was thinking that if I made them all over to Sypher he might get in some practical fellow to set them right, and start companies and things to work them, and so make a lot of money.”

He took off his cap and ran his hand up his hair. ”There's also the new gun. I do wish you'd have that, too,” he added, anxiously. ”In fact, it was our talk yesterday that put the other idea into my head.”

Sypher clapped him on the shoulder and called him his dear, generous fellow. But how could he accept?

”They're not all rot,” said Septimus pleadingly. ”There's a patent corkscrew which works beautifully. Wiggleswick always uses it.”

Sypher laughed. ”Well, I'll tell you what we can do. We can get a syndicate together to run the Dix inventions, and pay you royalties on sales.”

”That seems a very good idea,” said Zora judicially.

But Septimus looked dissatisfied. ”I wanted to give them to Sypher,” said he.

Zora reminded him laughingly that he would have to provide for the future member of Parliament's election expenses. The royalties would come in handy. She could not take Septimus's inventions seriously. But Sypher spoke of them later in his enthusiastic way.

”Who knows? There may be things hidden among his models and specifications of enormous commercial value. Lots of his inventions are crazy, but some are bound to be practical. This field gun, for instance. The genius who could have hit on that is capable of inventing anything. Why shouldn't I devote my life to spreading the Dix inventions over the earth? It's a colossal idea. Not one invention, but fifty--from a corkscrew to a machine gun. It's better than Sypher's Cure, isn't it?”

She glanced swiftly at him to see whether the last words were spoken in bitterness. They were not. His face beamed as it had beamed in the days when he had rhapsodied over the vision of an earth, one scab, to be healed by Sypher's Cure.

”Say you think it's better,” he urged.

”Yes. It's better,” she a.s.sented. ”But it's chimerical.”

”So are all the dreams ever dreamed by man. I shouldn't like to pa.s.s my life without dreams, Zora. I could give up tobacco and alcohol and clean collars and servants, and everything you could think of--but not dreams.

Without them the earth is just a sort of backyard of a place.”

”And with them?” said Zora.

”An infinite garden.”

”I'm afraid you'll be disillusioned over poor Septimus,” she said, ”but I shouldn't like you to take up anything you didn't believe in. What would be quite honest in another man wouldn't be honest in you.”

”That means,” said Sypher, ”you wouldn't like to see me going on dealing in quack medicines?”

Zora flushed red.

”It was at the back of my mind,” she confessed. ”But I did put my thoughts into the form of a compliment.”

”Zora,” said he, ”if I fell below what I want to appear in your eyes, I should lose the dearest dream of all.”

In the evening came Septimus to Penton Court to discuss the new scheme with Sypher. Wiggleswick, with the fear of Zora heavy upon him, had laid out his master's dinner suit, and Septimus had meekly put it on. He had also dined in a Christian fas.h.i.+on, for the old villain could cook a plain dinner creditably when he chose. Septimus proclaimed the regeneration of his body servant as one of the innumerable debts he owed to Zora.

”Why do you repay them to me?” asked Sypher.

Then he rose, laughed into the distressed face, and put both his hands on Septimus's shoulders.

”No, don't try to answer. I know more about you than you can possibly conceive, and to me you're transparency itself. But you see that I can't accept your patents, don't you?”