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Rh Archie, with a show of more enthusiasm than Ralph had ever before seen him exhibit. "I've got up an invention that will just about revolutionize engineering."

"You don't say so!"

"Yes, I do. Only a day or two, and I'm going to try it—you'll hear about it, all right."

Ralph did, in fact, hear about it in a very sensational way, and wthin a few hours after the interview.

He rejoined Zeph and they proceeded homewards. Zeph was just as mysterious as ever about his new employment. Ralph knew that he was bubbling over from a pent-up lot of secrecy, but he did not encourage his quaint friend to violate an evident confidence reposed in him by his employer.

Zeph announced that he would like to stay over at the Fairbanks home until the next day, and was made duly welcome. He amazed and amused Ralph by showing him his "detective outfit," as he called it. It was an incongruous mass, stored away in a flat leather case that he secreted in a great pocket made inside his coat—a wig, false whiskers, a pair of goggles, and a lot of other "secret service" paraphernalia, suggested to Zeph by reading some cheap and sensational detective stories.