ly.

Elmer blew like a porpoise; looked very thoughtful for a moment, and
then said:

"You could represent Grossmann as the final court of appeal--the High
Lord Muck-a-muck of the L.E.A."

"I should have to do something of the sort," Challis admitted, and
continued with a spurt of temper. "But understand, Elmer, I don't do it
again; no, not to save the reputation of the Royal Society."

III

Unhappily, no record exists of the conversation between the Wonder and
Herr Grossmann.

The Professor seems at the last moment to have had some misgiving as to
the nature of the interview that was before him, and refused to have a
witness to the proceedings.

Challis made the introduction, and he says that the Wonder regarded
Grossmann with perhaps rather more attention than he commonly conceded
to strangers; and that the Professor exhibited the usual signs of
embarrassment.

Altogether, Grossmann was in the library for about half an hour, and he
displayed no sign of perturbation when he rejoined Challis and Elmer in
the breakfast-room. Indeed, only one fact of any significance emerges to
throw suspicion on Grossmann's attitude during the progress of that
secluded half-hour with the greatest intellect of all time--the
Professor's spectacles had been broken.

He spoke of the accident with a casual air when he was in the
breakfast-room, but Challis remarked a slight flush on the great
scientist's face as he referred, perhaps a trifle too ostentatiously, to
the incident. And although it is worthless as evidence, there is
something rather suspicious in Challis's discovery of finely powdered
glass in his library--a mere pinch on the parquet near the further
window of the big room, several feet away from the table at which the
Wonder habitually sat. Challis would never have noticed the glass, had
not one larger atom that had escaped pulverisation, caught the light
from the window and drawn his attention.

But even this find is in no way conclusive. The Professor may quite well
have walked over to the window, taken off his spectacles to wipe them
and dropped them as he, himself, explained. While the crushing of some
fragment of one of the lenses was probably due to the chance of his
stepping upon it, as he turned on his heel to continue the momentarily
interrupted conversation. It is hard to believe that so great a man as
Grossmann could have been convulsed by a petty rage that found
expression in some act of wanton destruc