“Why—why, I guess so. Course we’ve got lots to do, but we want to hold up our end with the rest of the club. So we’ll come along, and let the Saracen wait a while.”
“The Saracen?” Sam repeated.
“Confound it, Poke! Can’t you keep anything to yourself?” Step cried reproachfully.
“Oh, that just slipped out!” Poke said ruefully. “I didn’t mean to give it away. But ‘Saracen’ is going to be the name of the machine. Kind of appropriate, don’t you think? You know you always picture Saracens skimming around over deserts and—er—er—over things generally. And that’ll be the way we’ll do. Understand?”
“I do,” Sam assured him with all the gravity he could command.
Poke’s expression betrayed relief. “I thought you would—you’ve got all-’round brains, Sam. The Shark, now—course he’s got brains, of a sort—and mighty good ones of a sort they are—but while he’s a corker at figuring, he can’t seem to rise to the—to the—well, to the romance and poetry of a thing like this.”
The Shark shrugged. “I’d be stronger for this Saracen business, maybe, if there was a desert or two handy.”
Sam was enjoying the conversation, but time was slipping away. He joined the Shark by the door.
“You fellows’d better hurry up,” he said to Poke and Step. “Come over to the house. Lon and the car will be waiting.”
“All right! We’ll come,” they answered together; and Sam, taking the Shark’s arm, marched him off.