The Grand Illusion — John Russell Fearn

Dudley Carnforth, gifted beyond the average with the 'gift of the gab', and also a 'jack-of-all-trades' scientific and master of none, decides that the time has come to end his grasshopper leaping from one job to another and do something really arresting which will put him on top of the world. Born in an age where space travel is just around the corner but not yet accomplished, he conceives the notion of pooling the many sciences he almost understands and producing therefrom a master plan for the conquest of space...