"Filth-tub," gloated Arnold. "You wouldn't dare! The publicity would ruin you, and you know it, you know it!"
Mario inspected the man curiously. He was clearly ill. His breath reeked of internal decay. Under a loose gray-brown jacket his chest was concave, his shoulders pushed forward like doorknobs. His eyes were a curious shiny black, so black that the pupils were indistinguishable from the iris, and the eyes looked like big black olives pressed into two bowls of sour milk.
"There's a patrolman now," said Arnold. "Call him, mucknose, call him!"
Quickly Mario turned, walked away, and Arnold's laughter rang against his back.
Mario asked Louis Correaos about Letya Arnold. "Why wouldn't I dare have him arrested?"
And Correaos turned on him one of his long quizzical stares. "Don't you know?"
Mario remembered that Correaos thought he was Ebery. He rubbed his forehead. "I'm forgetful, Louis, Tell me about Letya Arnold."
"He worked in the radiation lab, figured out some sort of process that saved fuel. We naturally had a legal right to the patent." Correaos smiled sardonically. "Naturally we didn't use the process, since you owned stock in World Air-Power, and a big block of Lamarr Atomics. Arnold began unauthorized use. We took it to court, won, recovered damages. It put Arnold into debt and he hasn't been worth anything since."
Mario said with sudden energy, "Let me see that patent, Louis."
Correaos spoke into the mesh and a minute later a sealed envelope fell out of the slot into the catch-all.
Correaos said idly, "Myself, I think Arnold was either crazy or a fake. The idea he had couldn't work. Like perpetual motion."
Letya Arnold had written a short preface to the body of the paper, this latter a mass of circuits and symbols unintelligible to Mario.
The preface read:
Efficiency in propulsion is attained by expelling ever smaller masses at ever higher velocities. The limit, in the first case, is the electron. Expelling it at speeds approaching that of light, we find that its mass increases by the well-known effect. This property provides us a perfect propulsive method, capable of freeing flight from its dependence upon heavy loads of material to be ejected at relatively slow velocities. One electron magnetically repelled at near-light speeds, exerts as much forward recoil as many pounds of conventional fuel....
Mario knew where to find Letya Arnold. The man sat brooding day after day in Tanagra Square, on a bench beside the Centennial Pavilion. Mario stopped in front of him, a young-old man with a hysterical face.
Arnold looked up, arose eagerly, almost as if he would assault Mario physically.
Mario in a calm voice said, "Arnold, pay attention a minute. You're right, I'm wrong."
Arnold's face hung slack as a limp bladder. Attack needs resistance on which to harden itself. Feebly his fury asserted itself. He reeled off his now-familiar invective. Mario listened a minute.
"Arnold, the process you invented-have you ever tested it in practice?"
"Of course, you swine. Naturally. Of course. What do you take me for? One of your blow-hard call-boys?"
"It works, you say. Now listen, Arnold: we're working on a new theory at Ebery Air-car. We're planning to put out value at low cost. I'd like to build your process into the new model. If it actually does what you say. And I'd like to have you come back to work for us."
Letya Arnold snorted, his whole face a gigantic sneer. "Put that propulsion into an air-boat? Pah! Use a drop-forge to kill a flea? Where's your head, where's your head? It's space-drive; that's where we're going. Space!"
It was Mario's turn to be taken aback. "Space? Will it work in space?" he asked weakly.
"Work? It's just the thing! You took all my money-you!" The words were like skewers, dripping an acrid poison. "If I had my money now, patent or no patent, I'd be out in space. I'd be ducking around Alpha Centauri, Sinus, Vega, Capella!"
The man was more than half-mad, thought Mario. He said, "You can't go faster than light."
Letya Arnold's voice became calm, crafty. "Who said I can't? You don't know the things I know, swine-slut"
Mario said, "No, I don't but all that aside, I'm a changed man, Arnold. I want you to forget any injustice I may have done you. I want you back at work for Ebery Air-car. I'd like you to adapt the drive for public use."
Again Arnold sneered. "And kill everything that happened to be behind you? Every electron shot from the reactor would be like a meteor; there'd be blasts of incandescent air; impact like a cannon-ball. No, no-space. That's where the drive must go...."
"You're hired, if you want to be," said Mario patiently. "The laboratory's waiting for you. I want you to work on that adaptation. There must be some kind of shield." Noting the taut clamp to Arnold's mouth, he said hastily, "If you think you can go faster than light, fine! Build a ship for space and I'll test fly it myself. But put in your major effort on the adaptation for public use, that's all I ask."
Arnold, cooler by the minute, now exhibited the same kind of sardonic unbelief Mario had noticed in Correaos. "Blow me, but you've changed your tune, Ebery. Before it was money, money, money. If it didn't make you money, plow it under. What happened to you?"
"The Chateau d'lf," said Mario. "If you value your sanity, don't go there. Though God knows," and he looked at Arnold's wasted body, "you couldn't do much worse for yourself than you've already done."
"If it changes me as much as it's changed you, I'm giving it a wide berth. Blow me, but you're almost human."
"I'm a changed man," said Mario. "Now go to Correaos, get an advance, go to a doctor."
On his way to the Rothenburg Building and Kubal Associates it came to him to wonder how Ebery was using his body. In his office he ran down a list of detective agencies, settled on Brannan Investigators, called them, put them to work.
CHAPTER VII
Inventor With a Grudge
Investigator Murris Slade, the detective, was a short thickset man with a narrow head. Two days after Mario had called the Brannan agency, he knocked at Mario's workroom at Kubal Associates.
Mario looked through the wicket in the locked door, admitted the detective, who said without preamble, "I've found your man."
"Good," said Mario, returning to his seat "What's he doing?"
Slade said, in a quiet accentless voice, "There's no mystery or secrecy involved. He seems to have changed his way of living in the last few months. I understand he was quite a chap, pretty well-liked, nothing much to set him apart. One of the idle rich. Now he's a hell-raiser, a woman-chaser, and he's been thrown out of every bar in town."
My poor body, thought Mario. Aloud: "Where's he living?"
"He's got an apartment at the Atlantic-Empire, fairly plush place. It's a mystery where he gets his money."
The Atlantic-Empire seemed to have become a regular rendezvous for Chateau d'lf alumni, thought Mario. He said, "I want a weekly report on this man. Nothing complicated-just a summary of where he spends his time. Now, I've got another job for you...."
The detective reported on the second job a week later.
"Mervyn Alien is an alias. The man was born Lloyd Paren, in Vienna. The woman is his sister, Thane Paren. Originally he was a photographer's model, something of a playboy-up until a few years ago. Then he came into a great deal of money. Now, as you probably know, he runs the Chateau d'lf. I can't get anything on that. There's rumors, but anybody that knows anything won't talk. The rumors are not in accord with Paren's background, which is out in the open- no medical or psychosomatic training. The woman was originally a music student, a specialist in primitive music. When Paren left Vienna, she came with him. Paren lives at 5600 Exmoor Avenue-that's the Chateau d'lf. Thane Paren lives in a little apartment about a block away, with an old man, no relative. Neither one seems to have any intimate friends, and there's no entertaining, no parties. Not much to go on."