Jack Brandt looked over Peter's shoulder. "How many?" he asked.
"Twenty-three!"
"Golly," grinned Brandt. "We're outnumbered."
"We won't be long if this thing works like this every night. This is better than the original ball-bearing mousetrap."
"Which?"
Peter grinned. "The tomcat," he said.
That was how it started. It went on for a week, passed through a huge peak of catch, and then tapered off abruptly. A month later, the trap had passed no mouse into—nothingness—for three days. The Better Mousetrap was placed back in the cabinet and forgotten.
For this was during the days of War, when he who was not fighting was working to provide the fighting man with what he needed. And Peter Manton's laboratory had too much to do in too short a time to permit even an hour's wonder or work on anything not directly concerned with the problem at hand.
The months passed. Peter Manton nodded knowingly when Hiroshima heralded the atomic age. He made penciled notes on the margin of the paper correcting some of the reporter's errata in describing radar. He wrote a hot letter to OSRD complaining that the news release on the proximity fuse had been mishandled, that he knew the real facts. He followed sonar and loran with interest.