"Yeah," said Stevenson. "And just incidentally, who is he?"
"Well," said Roberts, "he's a kid, that much is obvious. That whole letter sounds like a kid. Talking about 'the bad boys' and stuff like that."
"What do you figure, some scientist's kid maybe?"
"Maybe," said Roberts. "His old man is working on something in his little old laboratory in the cellar, and every once in a while the kid sneaks in and makes off with the ray gun or whatever it is." Roberts laughed. "I feel silly even talking about it," he said.
"I'd feel silly, too," Stevenson told him, "if I hadn't seen what this kid can do."
"Can we work anything out from the timing?" Roberts asked him. "He seems to show up once every couple of months."
"Let me check."
Stevenson went over to the filing cabinet and looked up the dates. "The bank job," he said, "was on Wednesday, June 29th. At eleven o'clock in the morning. That Higgins guy was on—here it is—Friday, August 5th, around noon. And this last one was on Hallowe'en, Monday, October 31st, at eleven o'clock at night."
"If you can see a pattern in there," Roberts told him, "you're a better man than I am."
"Well, the first two," Stevenson said, "were in the daytime, during the summer, when school was out. That's all I can figure."