attention was drawn to a stack of folders setting forth facts about "Marple's Rubber Roofing."
"What the deuce is rubber roofing?" he asked, and Mr. Marple, lowering himself wearily into his chair, answered the question in words calculated not to bore a young artist who looked askance at commerce and industry.
Grover, touched at this delicacy, was reminded of the days when he had rather highhandedly rejected the older man's tentative offer to take him into business. It occurred to Grover, rather late in the day, that this man, whose ancestors had helped mould the history of his State, was no mere manufacturer: the books in his library, the professors who came to dinner, his membership in committees for the improvement of practically everything!
Surprised by Grover's show of interest, Mr. Marple talked at some length. He had taken advantage of his short stay in Paris to secure French patents for an improved process. He had even had to disguise his tracks like a man in a detective story to outwit a competitor, and the strain had taxed him.
Grover had been glancing through the advertising folders on the table. His impressionistic brain had caught the sense of the propaganda, and he was impatient, for Mr. Marple's sake, at their stilted presentation of it.
"What they need," he said, "is a dash of pictorial fantasy and a literary caress."
