“It was.”
“You can force it to act for you.”
“I fear not, Orlando.”
“I counted on you and you thwart me at the most critical moment of my life.”
Oswald smiled; his whole candid and generous nature bursting into view, in one quick flash.
“Perhaps,” he assented; “but you will thank me when you realise my weakness. Another man must be found—quick, deft, secret, yet honourably alive to the importance of the occasion and your rights as a great original thinker and mechanician.”
“Do you know such a man?”
“I don’t; but there must be many such among our workmen.”
“There isn’t one; and I haven’t time to send to Brooklyn. I reckoned on you.”
“Can you wait a month?”