Dr. Nathaniel Marchare is unquestionably the greatest organic chemist the world has seen since Emil Fischer. His laboratories in Alexandria, Virginia, constantly pour out a host of exceedingly important inventions. The chemists, physicists, physical chemists, and biologists who work under him are all dedicated men and women, gifted with that scientific insight that so often produces simple solutions to great problems. Dr. Marchare and his people are the principal clients of the firm of Helix Spardleton, Patent Attorney, and as such they are very important to me. Nevertheless, I always get a queasy feeling in my stomach when Dr. Marchare excitedly calls up Mr. Spardleton, and Mr. Spardleton turns him over to me.
Dr. Marchare is a very nice person, not at all mad as people are prone to say. He is tall and gaunt and slightly wall-eyed, and he seems to live in a great, flopping laboratory smock, and his hair is always wild, and he seems to look around you rather than at you, but he is a very nice person and not at all mad. His main trouble is he does not understand the workings of the United States Patent System. After I have explained to him the operation of the Patent Law on some particular situation, Dr. Marchare frequently begins to mutter to himself as if I were no longer in the same room with him, and I find this most discouraging. As if this were not bad enough, many of Dr. Marchare's scientists have acquired the same habit.
It was a bright fall morning when this particular call came through. I hadn't heard the phone ring, nor did I hear Mr. Spardleton answer it in response to Susan's buzz. But some sixth sense brought me upright in my chair when I heard Mr. Spardleton say, "Well, how are things out in the Washington suburbs this morning?"
I felt the hairs tingle at the base of my neck, and I knew that Mr. Spardleton was talking to Dr. Marchare. I heard, "Certainly, why don't I send Mr. Saddle out. He's worked with Callahan before—on that Pigeon Scarer Case, as I recall—and the two of them can decide what to do. That sound all right?"
I am afraid it sounded all right, because there was some chitchat and then the sound of the phone's banging into its cradle, and Mr. Spardleton's booming voice, "Oh, Mr. Saddle. Will you come in here a moment, please?"
I took a quick swallow of milk of magnesia, an excellent antacid, and went in. Mr. Spardleton was busy so he came right to the point. "They've got some kind of problem out at the Marchare Laboratory—don't know whether to file a patent application right now, or wait until the invention is more fully developed. Will you hop out there and get them straightened out? Callahan is the chemist, and you know him pretty well."
I certainly did. Callahan's name always reminded me of the time I took testimony in Sing Sing Prison on a Callahan application in Interference. But I nodded numbly and went back to my office and finished the bottle of milk of magnesia and caught a cab to the Marchare Laboratory.
It was cool in the lab and the air smelled faintly of solvents. I liked the smell, and I sniffed it deeply and tried to distinguish one from the other. My chemistry professor had often told me that I had the best nose he had run across in twenty-five years of teaching. I picked out the pungent, aromatic odor of toluene and the hospital smell of diethyl ether, and I thought I could detect the heavy odor of lauryl alcohol. Underneath them all was a rich, sweet smell that I had smelled before, but I couldn't tell what it was. I decided it was a lactone, and let it go at that. I nodded as I went past the receptionist, and her smile made me feel uncomfortable again, just as it always did; there was too much of a leer in it. I never stopped to tell her where I was going; I just went in unannounced.
I went up the stairs and down the hall to Callahan's lab, next to Dr. Marchare's. I went in. Henry Callahan stood at a bench pouring a colorless liquid down a chromatographic column. He looked over at me and said, "Well, Carl Saddle. How are you, man? Nice to see you."