"So much for your rough diamond!" said Eves. "Noakes evidently didn't know before to-day that you were here, and when I saw him confabbing with Wilkins he was no doubt asking all about you. Wilkins must have told him about your inventions, and he thought a visit to your drawer would give him an idea or two, and enable him to get in first with a patent."
"But you don't suppose Wilkins was in the plot?"
"I don't know about that, but he's clearly under Noakes's thumb. Some one said that you know a man by the company he keeps. Wilkins keeps uncommonly bad company."
"I'm disappointed in him, I confess," said Templeton. "To-morrow I'll give him a week's notice, and work on my own for the rest of my leave."
III
Next morning Templeton, after breakfast, went to the workshop as usual, leaving Eves to his own devices until lunch-time. Eves spent an hour pottering about in the shed, and was particularly interested in the fire extinguishing composition.
"Rummy old sport!" he thought. "I suppose he will strike something really good one of these days, and be a bloated millionaire while I'm pinching on a miserable pension. Wonder what temperature this stuff melts at, by the way."
He found, standing against the wall, a metal tray pierced with holes which had been plugged with the composition. A thermometer hung on a nail.
"Hanged if I don't experiment on my own account!" he thought.
He filled the tray with water from the pump in Mrs. Pouncey's garden, laid it on an iron tripod which he found in the shed, and obtaining some firewood and coke from Mrs. Pouncey, kindled a small fire in an iron brazier. This he put underneath the tray, hanging the thermometer from the tripod. In a few minutes a sizzling informed him that water was trickling through the holes, and lifting the thermometer, he discovered that it registered 76°.