“Yes, they’re all unmanageable.  I see what’s wrong with them—­but I’ve lost my interest in naval affairs.”  He paused and added dreamily:  “I was horribly seasick crossing the Channel this time.

“Let us have a look at the field-gun,” said Sypher encouragingly.  Remembering the naval man’s language, he had little hope that Septimus would be more successful by land than by sea; but his love and pity for the inventor compelled interest.  Septimus’s face brightened.

“This,” said he, “is quite a different thing.  You see I know more about it.”

“That’s where the bombardier comes in,” laughed Sypher.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” replied Septimus.

He spread the diagram on a table, and expounded the gun.  Absorbed in his explanation he lost the drowsy incertitude of his speech and the dreaminess of his eyes.  He spoke with rapidity, sureness, and a note of enthusiasm rang oddly in his voice.  On the margins he sketched illustrations of the Gatling, the Maxim, and the Hotchkiss and other guns, and demonstrated the superior delicate deadliness of his own.  It could fire more rounds per minute than any other piece of artillery known to man.  It could feed itself automatically from a magazine.  The new sighting apparatus made it as accurate as a match rifle.  Its power of massacre was unparalleled in the history of wholesale slaughter.  A child might work it.

Septimus’s explanation was too lucid for a man of Sypher’s intelligence not to grasp the essentials of his invention.  To all his questions Septimus returned satisfactory answers.  He could find no flaw in the gun.  Yet in his heart he felt that the expert would put his finger on the weak spot and consign the machine to the limbo of phantasmagoric artillery.

“If it is all you say, there’s a fortune in it,” said he.

“There’s no shadow of doubt about it,” replied Septimus.  “I’ll send Wiggleswick over with the model to-morrow, and you can see for yourself.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I don’t know,” said Septimus, in his usual manner.  “I never know what to do with things when I invent them.  I once knew a man in the Patent Office who patented things for me.  But he’s married now and gone to live in Balham.”

“But he’s still at the Patent Office?”

“Perhaps he is,” said Septimus.  “It never occurred to me.  But it has never done me any good to have things patented.  One has to get them taken up.  Some of them are drunk and disorderly enough for them to be taken up at once,” he added with his pale smile.  He continued:  “I thought perhaps you would replace the big-caliber guns in our contract by this one.”

Sypher agreed with pleasure to the proposal.  He knew a high military official in the Ordnance Department of the War Office who would see that the thing was properly considered.  “If he’s in town I’ll go and see him at once.”

“There’s no hurry,” said Septimus.  “I shouldn’t like you to put yourself out.  I know you’re a very busy man.  Go in any time you happen to be passing.  You are there pretty often:  now, I suppose.”