Mr. Tidd was talking.
“Yes, sir,” he was saying, “the world don’t hold another book like this. The title says it’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but it’s about more than that. Why, it’s about everything. It don’t matter what happens, you can find the answer to it in Gibbon.... Yes, sir, The Decline and Fall is the greatest book of ’em all.”
“I agree with you entirely, Mr. Tidd, entirely. It has been some time since I read the book, sir, but I have been promising myself that pleasure—and profit—for several months. I shall read it again, sir, as soon as I get home.”
“You will never regret it,” said Mr. Tidd, and patted the book in his lap.
Somehow the stranger’s face seemed familiar to me, but for a while I couldn’t place him. Then all of a sudden it came to me: he was the man we saw on the depot platform who asked about turbines. I almost yelled out loud to Mark.
I listened again and heard the stranger say:
“I’m in the engineering business, Mr. Tidd, and that’s why I came to see you. I heard you were working on some sort of a machine, and, as my company always wants to keep in touch with the latest developments of mechanics and engineering, I dropped in to have a chat with you.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Tidd; but it was plain he was thinking about something else.
“It happens often,” said the stranger, “that men like yourself, who have valuable ideas, lack the money to carry them out. Very frequently my company, if the idea seems all right, advances the money to carry on experiments.”
“Money,” said Mr. Tidd, vaguely. “Oh yes, money. I don’t need money. No. I have all the money I need.”