Conversation flagged during the meal. Muller ate like a man whose thoughts were engaged somewhere else, and on something vastly more important than eating and drinking.
Rufus began to have an uncomfortable feeling that his visit boded no good, and yet he had not the courage to precipitate matters by asking impertinent questions.
As soon as the supper-tray was taken away, Rufus produced a box of cigars, and for a minute or two they blew smoke in silence.
Muller was the first to speak. Looking at his cigar carefully, as if examining the brand, he said in his most casual manner, "I suppose, Sterne, you have never considered the possibility of being forestalled in your invention?"
"Well, no," he said slowly, but with a startled look in his eyes. "I cannot say that I have ever seriously considered such a possibility."
"And yet it is notorious in the realm of discovery and invention, that the same idea has been hit upon by different men in different parts of the world almost at the same time."
"I do not remember that fact being brought clearly to my mind," Rufus said, wondering if someone had forestalled him.
"It is true, nevertheless. I could give you illustrations if I had time. But what is important at the present moment is that a man away up in Westmorland has got ahead of you."
"No!" Rufus said, in a tone of alarm.
"Well, perhaps I ought to have said that he appears to have got his claim in first. I do not understand all the technicalities of the case, but he appears to me to have achieved, or to have achieved very largely, the thing you are aiming at," and he took a newspaper cutting out of his pocket, and passed it on to Rufus.