After some further chatting over old times, Saunders remembered the dinner she had to cook, and rose to leave.
“It’s about time we were moving too,” said Bennet to Warner, “that is, if you must catch the next train.”
“Yes, I really must,” said Warner, getting up and shaking hands with them all and saying that he hoped to pay them another visit some day.
“Give my love to Tom,” cried Lucy to Warner, as he jumped up beside Bennet in the cart, “and tell him to try and come and see me soon again,” she added, as they disappeared down the lane.
CHAPTER VIII
MR FALCON ON FLIGHT
While the financier was considering whether he should leave Doctor Peters at once or wait, so as to avoid getting in contact with Warner, it occurred to him that he might stay a while and sound his adviser as to the other scheme he had been thinking about ever since Eben Croft purloined from Mr Goodall’s workroom a treatise on “Flight” by Professor Scudder.
The possession of this manuscript by Mr Falcon, induced him to decide upon utilising the suggestions therein contained, for he had not forgotten the discomfiture he met with on the Crystal Palace lake, and he longed for an opportunity of surpassing the air-ship performance of Harry Goodall, which made such a favourable impression on Miss Dove before the amateur aeronaut rescued her from a watery grave. Thus animated with entirely new notions, the financier requested Doctor Peters to listen while he explained a scheme by which he hoped further to raise himself in the estimation of Squire Dove and his daughter.
The doctor at first felt disinclined to devote any time and attention to the affairs of his visitor, and he was on the point of saying “Shut up” (as Mr Falcon had done when he whispered from the skeleton case). The doctor, however, still mindful of the financier’s liberal fees, consented to hear what he had to say, but begged that Mr Falcon would be concise, as he was not disposed to go into scientific arguments or a lengthy preamble, nor could he listen to profound calculations. “For you must not forget, Mr Falcon,” he said, “that in Surgery and Pathology we dislike complications,” and he knew that figures could be easily made to embarrass the uninitiated and to deceive scientists as well. “So do unfold your wings, tail and what not with simplicity of diction.”
“You may rely on my doing that, doctor, but first let me inform you that I have not long since visited a noted tower in which a valuable work on flying was deposited, and it was there that my servant Eben Croft dropped into the storeroom, where he picked up a rare and original manuscript on ‘Flight,’ by Professor Scudder.”
“And this, I suppose, Mr Falcon, has taken a firm hold of your mind?”