business wasn’t altogether as clear to me as I pretended.  It wasn’t, though.  But at the time it served very well as an amusement.  All the while I realised that my self-entertainment was not without its element of danger, too:  I remember glances not altogether friendly but always a little doubtful, a little awed.  Even Handy Solomon, practical as he was, had a scruple or two of superstition in his make-up, on which one might work.  Only Eagen—­Slade, I mean—­was beyond me there.  You puzzled me not a little in those days, Slade.  Well....

“Did I say that I was sometimes annoyed by the doctor’s attitude?  Yes:  it seemed that he might have given me a little more of his confidence; but one can’t judge such a man as he was.  Among the ordinary affairs of life he had relied on me for every detail.  Now he was independent of me.  Independent!  I doubt if he remembered my existence at times.  Even in his blackest moods of depression he was sufficient unto himself.  It was strange....  How he did rage the day the chemicals from Washington went wrong!  I was washing my shirt in the hot water spring when he came bolting out of the laboratory and keeled me over.  I came out pretty indignant.  Apologise?  Not at all.  He just sputtered.  His nearest approach to coherence seemed to indicate a desire that I should go back to Washington at once and destroy a perfectly reputable firm of chemists.  Finally he calmed down and took it out in entering it in his daily record.  He was quite proud of that daily record and remembered to write in it on an average of once a week.

“Then the chest went wrong.  Whether it had rusted a bit, or whether the chemicals had got in their work on the hinges, I don’t know; but one day the Professor, of his own initiative, recognised my existence by lugging his box out in the open and asking me to fix it.  Previously he had emptied it.  It was rather a complicated thing, with an inner compartment over which was a hollow cover, opening along one rim.  That, I conjectured, was designed to hold some chemical compound or salt.  There were many minor openings, too, each guarded by a similar hollow door.  My business was with the heavy top cover.

“‘It should shut and open softly, gently,’ explained the Professor.  ’So.  Not with-a-grating-sound-to-be-accompanied,’ he added, with his curious effect of linked phraseology.

“Half a day’s work fixed it.  The lid would stand open of itself until tipped at a considerable angle, when it would fall and lock.  Only on the outer shell was there a lock:  that one was a good bit of craftsmanship.

“‘So, Percy, my boy,’ said the doctor kindly.  ’That will with-sufficient-safety guard our treasure.  When we obtain it, Percy.  When it entirely-finished-and-completed shall be.’

“‘And when will that be?’ I asked.

“‘God knows,’ he said cheerfully.  ‘It progresses.’