CHAPTER XVI. — A DINNER AT THE BRITZ
When Rebener got back to the entrance hall he found Edestone standing talking with an American newspaper correspondent, and as he came up heard the inventor say: “Well you can say that if I sell my discovery to anyone it will be to the United States, and that rather than sell to any other nation I would hand it over to my own country as a free gift.”
“Here, here,” Rebener joined in laughingly as he came up, “don’t you offer to give away anything. Just because your father left you comfortably well off is no reason that you shouldn’t sell things if people want to buy. Sell and sell while you’ve got the market, and sell to the highest bidder. Look at me, I am selling to both sides; that is my way of stopping this war.” He turned to the young newspaper man. “Is there anything new, Ralph?”
“Nothing, Mr. Rebener, except that there is a story out in New York that Mr. Edestone here has been sent over to act as a sort of unofficial go-between to bring England and Germany to terms; but he denies this. Then there is another story that he is trying to sell this new invention of his to England and that the German agents are trying to get it away from him before he does. You’ve just heard what he has to say on that subject, so I seem to have landed on a ‘Flivver’ all around.
“Say, Mr. Edestone, you’ll give me the dope on this lay-out won’t you, before the other boys get to it?” he wheedled. “We all know that something is going on, and she’s going to be a big story when she breaks, and it would be the making of me with the ‘old man’ if I could put it over first.
“I saw you, sir, this afternoon coming home from the Palace,” he chuckled, “and the President, going out to the first ball game of the season, surrounded by the Washington Blues, to toss the pill into the diamond, certainly had nothing on you.”
“You’ve struck it,” said Edestone, with a good-humoured laugh at himself. “I have been trying all day to think what I looked like, and that’s it.”
Rebener laid his hand upon his arm. “Well, Jack,” he said, “hadn’t we better be getting up to my place? I don’t want to keep the other gentlemen waiting, and these Europeans have an awful habit of coming at the hour they are invited, and do not, as we do in America, in imitation of the ‘Snark,’ ‘dine on the following day.’
“Good-night, Ralph,” he waved his hand to the correspondent. “Drop around tomorrow; I may have something for you.”
Then as they were going up in the elevator he confided to Edestone: “I am not so crazy about these two chaps that are coming to dinner tonight, but you know most of the good sort are at the front, or, if they happen to be in London, are too busy to waste their time on us Americans. Do you know, Jack, there is at this time quite a bit of feeling against us in England? Exactly what it is they resent it is hard to say. I certainly do not understand how they can expect us to take any part in this war with our population composed of people from every one of the countries that are engaged.”