Lavendale drew a deep sigh of content as he withdrew his eyes reluctantly from the glittering phantasmagoria of the city, stretching away below like a fire-spangled carpet. He leaned back in his chair and raised his glass to his lips.

'No doubt about my being an American born, Moreton,' he observed. 'The first night in New York is always a real home-coming to me. And this is New York, isn't it?' he went on, musingly, 'city of steel and iron, typical, indescribable.'

Jim Moreton, an erstwhile college friend and now a prosperous lawyer, nodded sympathetically.

'We are right in the heart of things here,' he assented. 'Nothing like a roof garden round about Broadway, to see us at home. I wonder whether you noticed any change?' he went on. 'They tell us that we get more European every year in our love of pleasure and luxury.'

Lavendale glanced around at the many little groups dining on the twenty-eighth storey of a famous hotel, under the light of the big, yellow moon. The table illuminations, and the row of electric lights which ran along the parapet, seemed strangely insignificant. Everywhere was a loud murmur of conversation, punctuated by much feminine laughter, the incessant popping of corks, the music of the not too insistent band.

'I tell you, Jimmy,' he confided, leaning forward towards his friend, 'to look into the faces of these people is the greatest relief I have known for twelve months. Just at first, when war broke out, one didn't notice much change, in England especially, but latterly there has been no mistaking it. Wherever you went, in the streets or the restaurants, you could see the writing in the faces of the people, a sort of dumb repression of feeling, just as though they were trying to get through the task of every-day life because they had to, eating and drinking because they had to, talking, amusing themselves, even, with an absent feverishness all the time—unnatural. I tell you it's like being in some sort of a dream to be in London or Paris to-day. It's only to-night I've felt myself back amongst real men and women again, and it's good.'

Moreton nodded understandingly.

'A fellow was writing something of the sort in one of the Sunday papers last week,' he remarked. 'Over here, of course, the whole thing to us is simply pictorial. We don't realize or appreciate what is happening. We can't.'

'And yet some day,' Lavendale sighed, 'we shall have to go through it ourselves.'

'One of your Harvard theories cropping up again!'

'It's more than a theory now—it's a certainty,' Lavendale insisted. 'One doesn't need to brood, though. There's plenty of real life buzzing around us all the time. Do you know why I sent you that wireless, Jim?'

'Not an idea on earth,' the other admitted. 'I guess I was conceited enough to hope that you wanted to see me again.'

'That's so, anyway,' Lavendale assured him, 'and you know it, but apart from that I want you to do something for me. I want to meet your uncle.'

'I'll do what I can,' Moreton promised, a little dubiously. 'He isn't the easiest person to get at, as you know.'

'Where is he now?' Lavendale inquired.

'I haven't had a line from him or my aunt for months,' Moreton replied, 'but the papers say he is coming to New York to-night.'

'Is there anything in these sensational reports about his new discovery?' Lavendale asked eagerly.

'I shouldn't be surprised,' the other confessed. 'There is no doubt that he is giving up his laboratories and closing down in the country. He told me himself, last time I saw him, that the thing he'd been working at, off and on, for the last thirty years, was in his hands at last, perfect. He's through with inventing—that's how he put it to me. He is going to spend the rest of his days reading dime novels in the mornings and visiting cinemas in the afternoons—says his brain's tired.'

'I shouldn't wonder at that,' Lavendale observed. 'He was seventy-two last year, wasn't he? I wonder how long he'll keep his word, though.'

'He seems in earnest. He has been very cranky lately, and they were all terrified down at Lakeside that he'd blow the whole place up.'

'You don't know any particulars about this last invention, I suppose?'

'If I did,' Moreton declared with a little laugh, 'I could have had my weight in dollars from the newspaper men alone. No, I know nothing whatever about it. All I can promise is that I'll take you up to Riverside Drive and do my best to boost you in. Now tell me what you've been doing with yourself this year, Ambrose? You've left the Diplomatic Service, haven't you?'

'Not altogether. I have a sort of unofficial position at the Embassy, perhaps as important as my last one, only not quite so prominent.'

'Still as great a scaremonger as ever? Do you remember those discussions you used to start at the debating society?'

'I remember them all right,' Lavendale assented grimly, 'and since you ask me the question, let me tell you this, Jim. I've lived, as you know, during the last seven years in the diplomatic atmosphere of Paris, of London and Berlin. I tell you soberly that anything I felt and believed in those days, I feel and believe twice as strongly to-day. Just look over your left shoulder, Jimmy. Isn't that rather a queer-looking couple for a fashionable roof-garden!'

Moreton turned a little lazily around. An elderly man and woman who had just entered were being shown to an adjacent table. The man was apparently of some seventy years of age, his morning clothes were of old-fashioned cut and he wore only a little wisp of black tie. His grey beard was cut in the fashion of a century ago, his bushy hair was long and unkempt. His companion, who seemed but a few years younger, wore the simplest of dark travelling clothes, some jet jewellery, a huge cameo brooch fastened a shawl at her throat and she carried a leather handbag.

'Don't they look as though they'd come out of the ark!' Lavendale murmured.

Moreton had risen slowly to his feet.

'Queer thing that you should spot them, Ambrose,' he remarked. 'This is what you might call something of a coincidence.'

'You don't mean to say that you know them?'

Jim Moreton nodded.

'My Uncle Ned and my Aunt Bessie,' he said. 'I must go and speak to them.'

He crossed towards the elderly couple, shook hands with the man, who greeted him cordially enough, and submitted to an embrace from the lady. Lavendale could hear, every now and then, scraps of their conversation. Towards its close, his friend turned and beckoned to him. Lavendale, who had been eagerly awaiting a summons, rose at once and approached the trio.

'Aunt,' Moreton explained, laying his hand upon his friend's shoulder, 'this is Mr. Ambrose Lavendale, a graduate of my year at Harvard. Uncle, Lavendale has just returned from Europe and he was talking to me about you. He is like the rest of us, tremendously interested in what all the world is saying about you and your latest discovery.'

Lavendale shook hands with the elderly couple, who greeted him kindly.

'Discovery, eh?' Mr. Moreton observed jocularly.

'That does seem rather an inadequate word,' Lavendale admitted. 'I think one of your own newspapers here declared that you had learnt how to bottle up the lightnings, to——'

'Oh, those damned papers!' Mr. Moreton exclaimed irritably. 'Don't talk to me about them, young fellow.'

'I would much rather talk to you about what they are aiming at,' Lavendale said simply. 'Are you going to give any demonstration, sir—I mean, of course, to the scientific world?'

The inventor glanced up at his questioner with a little twinkle in his hard, blue eyes.

'Say, you've some nerve, young fellow!' he declared amiably. 'However, I am very fond of my nephew here, and if you're a friend of Jim's you shall be one of a very select company to-morrow morning. The scientific world can wait, but I am going to set the minds of the newspaper people at rest. I am going to show them what I can do. I was thinking of asking you, any way, Jim,' he went on, 'and you can bring your friend with you. Twelve o'clock at Riverside Drive.'

The two young men were both profuse in their thanks. Mr. Moreton waved them away. 'There will be just three or four newspaper men,' he continued—'I put the names of the principal papers into a bottle and drew lots; the reporters who came down to Jersey State agreed to that—you two, your aunt and a young lady. You can go and finish your dinner now, boys. Your aunt and I, Jim, are going on to a cinema afterwards. We're going to make a real night of it.'

The two young men shook hands and made their adieux. As soon as they had resumed their places, Lavendale leaned across the table towards his friend with glowing face.

'Jimmy, you're a brick,' he declared. 'We'll have another bottle on the strength of this. The very night I arrive, too! Whoever heard of such luck! I don't suppose I should ever have got within a hundred yards of him but for you.'

'He's a shy old bird,' Moreton admitted. 'We certainly were in luck to-night though.'

'I wonder who the girl is who's going to be there,' Lavendale remarked idly.

His eyes had suddenly strayed once more over the brilliant yet uneasy panorama of flashing lights, huge buildings, the throbbing and clanging of cars across the distant line of the river to the blue spaces beyond. The leader of the little orchestra behind was playing a familiar waltz. Suzanne and he had danced it together one night in London. He was for a moment oblivious of the whole gamut of his surroundings. The world closed in upon him. He heard her voice, felt the touch of her fingers, saw a gleam of the tenderness which sometimes flashed out from beneath the suffering of her eyes. His friend glanced at him in wonder. It was the insistent voice of a waiter which brought him back from his reverie.

'French or Turkish coffee, sir?'

Lavendale made a heedless choice and climbed down to the present.

'Way back somewhere, weren't you?' Jim Moreton remarked.

His friend nodded.

'I have left behind a great deal that one remembers.'

*****

At a few minutes before twelve on the following morning, Lavendale and his friend were conducted by a coloured butler across a very magnificent entrance hall of black and white marble, strewn with wonderful rugs, through several suites of reception rooms, and out on to a broad stone piazza, at the back of Mr. Moreton's mansion in Riverside Drive. It was here that Lavendale received one of the surprises of his life. Mr. and Mrs. Moreton were reclining in low wicker chairs, and between them, a miracle of daintiness in her white linen costume and plain black hat, was—Suzanne. Lavendale forget his manners, forgot the tremendous interest of his visit, forgot everything else in the world. He stood quite still for a moment. Then he strode forward with outstretched hands and a very visible gladness in his face.

'Suzanne!' he exclaimed. 'Why, how wonderful!'

She laughed at him gaily as she accepted his greeting. There was some response to his joy shining out of her eyes, but it was obvious that his presence was less of a surprise to her.

'You did not know that I was here?' she asked. 'But why not? Men and women have travelled many times round the world before now to learn its secrets.'

Lavendale recovered a little of his self-possession. He shook hands with Mrs. Moreton, who was beaming placidly upon them, mutely approving of this unexpected romance. The great inventor turned him round by the shoulder and indicated four men of varying ages who formed the rest of the little company.

'I will not introduce you by name,' he said, 'but these four gentlemen, selected by lot, as I think I told you last night, represent the mightiest and holiest power on earth—the great, never-to-be-denied Press of America. They are here because, since the first rumour stole from my laboratory down in Jersey State that I had reached the end of my labours, I have been the victim of an incessant and turbulent siege, carried on relentlessly day by day—I might almost say hour by hour. For good reasons I desired to keep my discovery to myself a little longer, but I know that I am beaten, and these gentlemen, or rather the power which they represent, have been too many for me. My country household has been honeycombed with spies. My medical man, my gardener, the assistants in my laboratory, have every one of them been made the objects of subtle and repeated attempts at bribery. Young Mr. Lavendale, let me tell you this—the Press of America to-day is the one undeniable force. Look at them—my conquerors. I am going to present them to-day with my secret—not willingly, mind, but because, if I do not yield, they will continue to eat with me, to sleep with me and to walk with me, to plague my days and curse my nights. This young lady,' he continued, in an altered tone, 'came to me with a personal letter from my cousin, our Ambassador in Paris. You, Mr. Lavendale, are here as my nephew's friend. Now, if you are ready, I will proceed with the demonstration.'

The four men had risen to their feet. One of them, a well-set-up, handsome young fellow, shook hands with Lavendale.

'I was a year before you at Harvard, wasn't I?' he remarked. 'We think that Mr. Moreton is just a little hard upon us. We represent, to use his own words, the undeniable force, and to do it we have to forget that we are human, and persist. This may be very annoying to Mr. Moreton, but as a rule it is the world that benefits.'

The inventor, who had disappeared for a moment in the interior of the room which led out on to the piazza, suddenly stood upon the threshold. His face seemed to have become graver during the last few moments and he motioned them impatiently back to their places. Then, with a reel of what seemed to be fine wire in his hand, he made his way to the further end of the broad balcony which completely encircled the house, and carefully stretched a length of the wire from the edge of the building to the stone balustrade. As soon as he had accomplished this, he drew from his pockets what appeared to be a pair of black gloves of some spongy material, and a tiny instrument about the size of a lady's watch, which none of them could see. He drew on the gloves with great care, placed the instrument between the palms of his hands and turned to his nephew.

'Just ring the bell there, will you, Jimmy?' he directed.

The young man obeyed. The little group now were all standing up, their eyes fixed upon that strip of thin wire. Mr. Moreton slowly drew his palms together several times, pausing once to glance at the small instrument which lay concealed between them. Footsteps were heard approaching around the side of the house, and a coloured servant in livery, carrying a tray in his hand, appeared. He had no sooner set his foot upon the wire than he stopped short, gave a wild jump into the air, came down again, jumped again, and slowly, with the salver still in his hand, began to dance.

'Touch the bell,' the inventor ordered, in a voice which seemed tense with suppressed emotion.

His nephew obeyed at once and again there were footsteps. Another servant, carrying a chair, came round the corner, paused for a moment as though in amazement on perceiving the antics of his predecessor, stepped on to the wire, leapt into the air, and commenced to perform almost similar gyrations. Mr. Moreton's breath was coming fast and he seemed to be the victim of some peculiar emotion. This time he only glanced towards the bell, which his nephew pushed. Again there were footsteps. A third servant, with a box of cigars, appeared, gave a little exclamation at the extraordinary sight before him, stepped forward on to the wire, leapt up till his head almost touched the sloping portico, and commenced throwing the cigars into the air and catching them. Mr. Moreton glanced from the three performers towards his little audience. The expression on their faces was absolutely indescribable. Meanwhile, the dancing of the three men in livery became more rapid. The man with the salver and glasses began throwing them into the air and catching them again, the servant on the outside was now occupied in balancing a cigar on the tip of his nose, while his neighbour on the right was twirling the wicker chair which he had been carrying, on the point of his forefinger. Mr. Moreton stretched out his hand towards the spellbound, stupefied little company.

'The Hamlin Trio, gentlemen, of jugglers and dancers, imported from the Winter ............