He turned with the words, and picked up a paper from the table, frowning over it absently, and whistling below his breath.

When he finally looked round again his face cleared.

“Ah, that’s better!  Sit down, and we’ll talk.  By Jove, isn’t it colossal?  They told me over at the fort that I was a fool to come across to-night.  But I simply couldn’t keep you waiting another night.  Besides, I knew you would expect me.”

Conyers’ grim face softened a little.  He could scarcely have said how he had ever come to be the chosen friend of young Hugh Palliser.  The intimacy had been none of his seeking.

They had met at the club on the occasion of one of his rare appearances there, and the younger man, whose sociable habit it was to know everyone, had scraped acquaintance with him.

No one knew much about Conyers.  He was not fond of society, and, as a natural consequence, society was not fond of him.  He occupied the humble position of a subordinate clerk in an engineer’s office.  The work was hard, but it did not bring him prosperity.  He was one of those men who go silently on week after week, year after year, till their very existence comes almost to be overlooked by those about them.  He never seemed to suffer as other men suffered from the scorching heat of that tropical corner of the Indian Empire.  He was always there, whatever happened to the rest of the world; but he never pushed himself forward.  He seemed to lack ambition.  There were even some who said he lacked brains as well.

But Palliser was not of these.  His quick eyes had detected at a glance something that others had never taken the trouble to discover.  From the very beginning he had been aware of a force that contained itself in this silent man.  He had become interested, scarcely knowing why; and, having at length overcome the prickly hedge of reserve which was at first opposed to his advances, he had entered the private place which it defended, and found within—­what he certainly had not expected to find—­a genius.

It was nearly three months now since Conyers, in a moment of unusual expansion, had laid before him the invention at which he had been working for so many silent years.  The thing even then, though complete in all essentials, had lacked finish, and this final touch young Palliser, himself a gunner with a positive passion for guns, had been able to supply.  He had seen the value of the invention and had given it his ardent support.  He had, moreover, friends in high places, and could obtain a fair and thorough investigation of the idea.

This he had accomplished, with a result that had transcended his high hopes, on his friend’s behalf; and he now proceeded to pour out his information with an accompanying stream of congratulation, to which Conyers sat and listened with scarcely the movement of an eyelid.

Hugh Palliser found his impassivity by no means disappointing.  He was used to it.  He had even expected it.  That momentary unsteadiness on Conyers’ part had astonished him far more.