“But, Professor Schmalz, you need not introduce me to Mr. Welter, who will think I am one of your assistants.”
“As you wish about that, pupil of my dear old friend.”
“Excellent!” Trant leaped to his feet. “Provided it is possible to arrange this with Mr. Welter, how soon can you let me know?”
“Ach! it is as good as arranged, I tell you. His vanity will arrange it if I assure the greatest publicity—”
“The more publicity the better.”
“Wait! It shall be fixed before you leave here.”
The professor led the way into his private study, telephoned to the president of the American Commodities Company, and made the appointment without trouble.
A few minutes before eight o’clock that evening Trant again mounted rapidly the stone steps to the professor’s laboratory. The professor and two others, who were bending over a table in the center of the room, turned at his entrance. President Welter had not yet arrived. The young psychologist acknowledged with pleasure the introduction to the two scientists with Schmalz. Both of them were known to him by name, and he had been following with interest a series of experiments, which the elder, Dr. Annerly, had been reporting in a psychological journal. Then he turned at once to the apparatus on the table.
He was still examining the instruments when the noise of a motor car stopping at the door warned him of the arrival of President Welter’s party. Then the laboratory door opened and the party appeared. They also were three in number; stout men, rather obtrusively dressed, in jovial spirits, with strong faces flushed now with the wine they had taken at dinner.
“Well, professor, what fireworks are you going to show us to-night?” asked Welter, patronizingly. “Schmalz,” he explained to his companions, “is the chief ringmaster of this circus.”