"Then you don't need to ask me questions about what they might have had in mind."
She glanced at her drink.
"It's silly, isn't it? I hadn't thought of it that way."
"You'd better start thinking now. In times like these, anybody who can pour a lot of sawdust, old shoelaces, tomato ketchup, and hair tonic into a bathtub and make rubber is hotter than tobasco. The only thing I can't understand is why the FBI didn't have you both in a fireproof vault long ago."
"I can answer that," she said wearily. "Have you any idea how many new synthetic rubber inventors are pestering people in Washington every day? Only about a dozen."
"But if your father's reputation is as good as you say it is —"
"All sorts of crackpots have some kind of reputation too. And to the average dollar-a-year man, any scientist is liable to be a bit of a crackpot."
"Well, they can test this stuff of yours, can't they?"
"Yes. But that takes a lot of time and red tape. And it wouldn't necessarily prove anything."
"Why not?"
"The specimen might be any other kind of worked-over or reclaimed rubber."
"Surely it could be detected."
"How?"
"Analyse it."
She laughed a little.
"You're not a chemist. Any organic or semi-organic concoction — like this is — is almost impossible to analyse. How can I explain that? Look, for instance, you could grind up the ashes of a human arm, and analyse them, and find a lot of ingredients, but that wouldn't prove whether you'd started with a man or not. That's putting it very clumsily, I know, but—"
"I get the idea."
He lighted a cigarette and tightened his lips on it. These were ramifications that he hadn't had time to think out. But they made sense within the limits of his knowledge.
He went back to the concrete approach that he understood better.
"Has your father patented his formula?"
"No. That would have meant discussing it with attorneys and petty officials and all kinds of people. And I tell you, it's so simple that if one wrong person knew it, all the wrong people could know it. And after all — we are in the middle of a war."
"He didn't want any commercial protection?"
"I told you that once, and I meant it. He doesn't need money; doesn't want it. Really, we're horribly comfortable. My grandfather bought a gold mine in California for two old mules and a can of corned beef. All Father is trying to do is to give his process to the right people. But he's been soured by his experiences here in Washington, and of course he can't just write a letter or fill out a form, and tell all about it, because then it would be sure to leak out to the wrong people."
"Something seems to have leaked out already," Simon observed.
"Maybe some people have more imagination than others."
"You haven't anyone special in mind?"
She moved her hands helplessly.
"The Nazis?" she suggested. "But I don't know how they'd have heard of it… Or the Japs. Or anyone…"
"Anyone," said the Saint, "is a fair guess. They don't necessarily have to be clanking around with swastikas embroidered on their underwear and sealed orders from the Gestapo up their sleeves. Anyone who isn't as big-hearted as your father, but who believes in him, might be glad to get hold of this recipe — just for the money. Which would make the field a good bet on any mutuel." He smiled and added: "Even including that human also-ran, Mr. Sylvester Angert — the funny little man."
He put down his glass and strolled around the room, his hands in his pockets and his eyes crinkled against the smoke of the cigarette slanted between his lips.
It began to look like a nice little situation. The FBI wouldn't have any jurisdiction unless somebody Higher Up — such as Frank Imberline, perhaps — brought it to Mr. Hoover's attention that the protection of Calvin Gray and his daughter was a matter of national importance. Imberline might do just that, doubtless adding something like: "A stitch in time saves nine." But would he? Would the dollar-a-year man who had been the head of Consolidated Rubber go to any great lengths to protect the life of an inventor of a process which could make synthetic rubber out of old bits of nothing much? Might not Imberline, like too many others in Washington, be looking beyond the end of the war? Walter Devan had said something pat about life preservers, but wasn't it a fact, still, that when the war was over, the old battle might start again; the battle between the old and the war-born new?
Imberline was an unknown quantity, then, which left only the local gendarmerie to appeal to. Simon knew nothing at all about them; but even if they were extremely efficient, he surmised that they were also liable to be very busy. He didn't know for how long they would be likely to detach three able-bodied officers for the sole job of providing a full-time personal bodyguard for Madeline Gray. And in any case, they couldn't stay with her if she left the city.
"Where is your father now?" he asked.
"At home — in Connecticut."
"Where?"
"Near Stamford."
The DC police couldn't do anything about that. And the Stamford cops would be even less likely to have men to spare for an indefinite vigil.
"Maybe you ought to hire some guards from a detective agency," he said. "I gather you could afford it."
She looked him in the eyes.
"Yes. We could afford it."
He had made a reasonable suggestion and she had considered it in the same reasonable way. Even that steady glance of hers didn't accuse him of trying to evade anything. It would have had no right to, anyway, he told himself. It was his own conscience. He didn't owe her anything. He had plenty of other things to think about. There certainly must be some proper legal authority for her to take her troubles to — he just hadn't been able to think what it was. And anyhow, what real basis did he have for deciding that Calvin Gray's invention was practical and important? There were highly trained experts in Government offices who were much more competent to judge such matters than he was.
And just the same he knew that he was still evading, and he felt exasperated with himself.
He asked: "What was your idea when you did see Imberline?"
"Get him to come to the laboratory himself, or send someone who was absolutely reliable. They could watch us make as much rubber as they'd need for their tests, and then they could be sure it was a genuine synthetic."
"But eventually other people would have to be in on it — if it were going to be manufactured in any quantity."
"Father has that all worked out. You could have a dozen different ingredients shipped to the plant and stored in tanks. Three of them would be the vital part of the formula. The other nine would mean nothing. But they'd all be piped down through a mixing room that only one man need go into. The unnecessary ingredients would be destroyed by acids and run down the drain, so that no checkup would be possible. The real formula would be piped from the mixing room direct to the vats. One man could control a whole plant by just working two or three hours a day. I could control one myself. But even if anyone on the outside knew every chemical that was brought in and used, it would take them years to try out every combination and proportion and treatment until they might hit on the right one." -
It was a sound answer. But it had the tinge of being a pat answer, too. As if it had been rehearsed carefully to reply to embarrassing questions.
Or maybe he still had a hangover of his own first skepticism.
He made a decision with characteristic abruptness.
"Suppose," he suggested, "you go to your room. Lock and night-lock the door and don't open it to anyone, except me."
He went to the desk, scrawled a word on a slip of paper, folded it and handed it to her. She looked at it and nodded. He took the paper back and touched a match to it. As the ashes crumbled, they took into nothingness the word he had written, the word he was to say when he called her.