blurted Chap, and this time Mr. Colson laughed outright.
As they sat at tea, Elsie glanced out admiringly upon the brilliant-hued garden that was visible through the big window, and then she saw something which filled her with astonishment. Two men had come into view round the end of a square-cut hedge. One was the man they had seen half-an-hour previously — the commonplace little fellow who had claimed to be a relative of the professor. The second was taller and older, and, she judged, of a better class. His long, hawklike face was bent down towards his companion, and they were evidently talking on some weighty matter, to judge by the gesticulations of the stranger.
“By Jove!” said Chap suddenly. “Isn’t that Hildreth?”
Mr. Colson looked up quickly; his keen blue eyes took in the scene at once.
“Yes, that is Mr. Hildreth,” he said quietly. “Do you know him?”
“Rather!” said Chap. “He has often been to our house. My father is on the Stock Exchange, and Mr. Hildreth is a big pot in the City.”
Colson nodded.
“Yes, he is a very important person in the City,” he said, with just a touch of hidden sarcasm in his voice. “But he is not a very important person here, and I am wondering why he has come again.”
He rose quickly and went out of the room, and presently Tim, who was watching the newcomers, saw them turn their heads as with one accord and walk out of sight, evidently towards the professor. When the old man came back there was a faint flush in his cheek and a light in his eye which Tim did not remember having seen before.
“They are returning in half-an-hour,” he said, unnecessarily it seemed to Elsie. She had an idea that the old man was in the habit of speaking his thoughts aloud, and here she was not far wrong. Once or twice she had the uncomfortable feeling that she was in the way, for she was a girl of quick intuitions, and though Professor Colson was a man of irreproachable manners, even the most scrupulous of hosts could not wholly hide his anxiety for the little meal to end.
“We’re taking up your valuable time, Mr. Colson,” she said with a dazzling smile, as she rose when tea was over and offered him her hand. “I think there’s going to be a storm, so we had better get back. Are you coming with us, Tim?”
“Why, surely—” began Chap, but she interrupted him.
“Tim said he had an engagement near and was leaving us here,” she said.
Tim had opened his mouth to deny having made any such statement, when a look from her silenced him. A little later, whilst Chap was blundering through his half-baked theories on the subject of Mars — Chap had theories on everything under and above the sun — she managed to speak with Tim alone.
“I’m quite sure Mr. Colson wants to speak to you,” she said; “and if he does, you are not to worry about us: we can get back, it is downstream all the way.”
“But why on earth do you think that?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “But I have that feeling. And I’m sure he did not want to see you until those two men came.”
How miraculously right she was, was soon proved. As they walked into the garden towards the path leading to the riverside, Colson took the arm of his favourite pupil and, waiting until the others were ahead, he said: “Would it be possible for you to come back and spend the night here, Lensman?”
“Why, yes, sir,” said Tim in astonishment. In his heart of hearts he wanted to explore the place, to see some of the wonders of that great instrument-house which, up to now, Colson had made no offer to show them. What was in the room marked “Planetoid 127”? And the queer receiver on the square tower — that had some unusual significance, he was certain. And, most of all, he wanted to discover whether the science master had been indulging in a little joke at the expense of the party when he claimed to have heard voices that had come to him from one hundred and eighty-six millions of miles away.
“Return when you can,” said Colson in a low voice; “and the sooner the better. There are one or two things that I want to talk over with you — I waited an opportunity to do so last term, but it never arose. Can you get rid of your friends?” Tim nodded. “Very good, then. I will say goodbye to them.”
Tim saw his companions on their way until the punt had turned out of sight round the osiers at the end of the backwater, and then he retraced his steps up the hill. He found the professor waiting for him, pacing up and down the garden, his head on his breast, his hands clasped behind him.
“Come back into the library, Lensman,” he said; and then, with a note of anxiety in his voice: “You did not see those precious scoundrels?”
“Which precious scoundrels? You mean Dawes and Hildreth?”
“Those are the gentlemen,” said the other. “You wouldn’t imagine, from my excited appearance when I returned to you, that they had offered me no less than a million pounds?”
Tim stared in amazement at the master.
“A million pounds, sir?” he said incredulously, and for the first time began to doubt the other’s reason.
“A million pounds,” repeated Colson, quietly enjoying the sensation he had created. “You will be able to judge by your own ears whether I am insane, as I imagine you believe me to be, or whether this wretched relative of mine and his friend are similarly afflicted. And, by the way, you will be interested to learn that there have been three burglaries in this house during the last month.”
Tim gaped. “But surely, sir, that is very serious?”
“It would have been very serious for the burglars if I had, on either occasion, the slightest suspicion that they were in the grounds,” said Mr. Colson. “They would have been certainly electrified and possibly killed! But on every occasion when they arrived, it happened that I did not wish for a live electric current to surround the house: that would have been quite sufficient to have thrown out of gear the delicate instruments I was using at the time.”
He led the way into his library, and sank down with a weary sigh into the depths of a large armchair.
“If I had only known what I know now,” he said, “I doubt very much whether, even in the interests of science, I would have subjected myself to the ordeal through which I have been passing during the last four years.”
Tim did not answer, and Mr. Colson went on: “There are moments when I doubt my own sanity — when I believe that I shall awake from a dream, and find that all these amazing discoveries of mine are the figments of imagination due, in all probability, to an indiscreet supper at a very late hour of night!”
He chuckled softly at his own little joke.
“Lensman, I have a secret so profound that I have been obliged to follow the practice of the ancient astronomers.”
He pointed through the window to a square stone that stood in the centre of the garden, a stone which the boy had noticed before, though he had dismissed it at once as a piece of meaningless ornamentation.
“That stone?” he asked.
Colson nodded.
“Come,
