"Who did you think it was?" asked Professor Henderson.
"I—I thought it was an enemy of mine," was the answer. "Some one who has been trying to discover my secret. But the man whom I fear has a heavy black mustache, and this one, you say, Jack, had none?"
"None at all."
"Then it's all right."
Jack thought of saying that the man might have shaved his mustache off, but he did not want Mr. Roumann to worry.
"I guess he was only a tramp," said Amos Henderson. "Some one wandering about looking for a chicken coop that isn't locked. Or, perhaps, seeking a chance to rob."
Jack said nothing, but from the glimpse he had had of the man's face, he did not believe the fellow was a tramp. There was too much intelligence shown. The face was an evil one, and seemed to indicate that the man had an object in peering into the window—a motive that was not connected with a chicken coop.
"I'll tell Andy to keep watch for a while tonight with his gun," went on the professor. "I don't like prowlers around here. I have some valuable tools in my machine shop, and they might steal them."
"Now, Professor Henderson," began Mr. Roumann, when he had taken his seat at a small table and spread out his plans in front of him, "I am only going to sketch briefly, for you and your young assistants, what I propose. As I have said, we will need a projectile, two hundred feet long and about ten feet through in the thickest part. In that we will build sleeping and living apartments, lacks to store the air which we will have to breathe while traveling through space, other tanks for water, a compartment for food, another for scientific instruments, and we will need a comparatively large space for my machinery."
"Why will it take up so much space?" asked the professor. "I thought you said the new power required only a small machine to generate it."