He was an iron-faced, beetle-browed, stern man, and this morning he did
not seem to be in the best of tempers. Finding his companions inclined
to be sympathetic, he continued his lamentation.

"And merely because it's Christmas I've had to shut up my laboratory and
give my young fools a holiday--just when I was in the midst of a most
important series of experiments."

Professor Biggleswade, who had heard vaguely of and rather looked down
upon such new-fangled toys as radium and thorium and helium and
argon--for the latest astonishing developments in the theory of
radio-activity had brought Sir Angus McCurdie his world-wide fame--said
somewhat ironically:

"If the experiments were so important, why didn't you lock yourself up
with your test tubes and electric batteries and finish them alone?"

"Man!" said McCurdie, bending across the carriage, and speaking with a
curious intensity of voice, "d'ye know I'd give a hundred pounds to be
able to answer that question?"

"What do you mean?" asked the Professor, startled.

"I should like to know why I'm sitting in this damned train and going to
visit a couple of addle-headed society people whom I'm scarcely
acquainted with, when I might be at home in my own good company
furthering the progress of science."

"I myself," said the Professor, "am not acquainted with them at all."