Garrison informed him duly.
"I haven't yet made myself famous as a navigator of the air, but we all have our hopes."
"You'll never be able to steer a balloon," said Scott, with a touch of asperity. "I can tell you that."
"I begin to believe you're right," assented Garrison artfully. "It's a mighty discouraging and expensive business, any way you try it."
"I'll do the trick! I've got it all worked out," said Scott, betrayed into ardor and assurance by a nearness of the triumph that he felt to be approaching. "I'll have plenty of money to complete it soon—plenty—plenty—but it's a long time coming, even now."
"That's the trouble with most of us," Garrison observed, to draw his man. "The lack of money."
"Why can't they pay it, now the man is dead?" demanded Scott, as if he felt that everyone knew his affairs by heart and could understand his meaning. "I need the money now—to-day—this minute! It's bad enough when a man stays healthy so long, and looks as if he'd last for twenty years. That's bad enough without me having to wait and wait and wait, now that he's dead and in the ground."
It was clear to Garrison the man's singleness of purpose had left his mind impaired. He began to see how a creature so bent on some wondrous solution of the flying-machine enigma could even become so obsessed in his mind that to murder for money, insurance benefits, or anything else, would seem a fair means to an end.
"Some friend of yours has recently died?" he asked. "You've been left some needed funds for your labors?"
"Funny kind of friendship when a man goes on living so long," said the alert fanatic. "And I don't get the money; that's what's delaying me now."