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were just told to rough you up a bit to discourage
you. Maybe it was to be a straight kidnaping. Maybe they thought you could be used to keep your father quiet. Or maybe they
thought you might be able to tell them
his process if they persuaded you enough. By the
way, could you?”
    She nodded.
    “It’s very simple, once you know it; and I’ve been helping Father in his laboratory ever since he
started working on it again.”
    “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, any body 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 peo ple 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 concoc tion—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
ingre dients, 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 ob served.
    “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
neces sarily 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 rec ipe—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