“Anyhow, they’re getting—restive. Caterham keeps harping on what may happen if it gets loose again. I say over and over again, it won’t, and it can’t. But—there it is!”
And he bounced about the room for a little while as if he meant to reopen the topic of the secret, and then thought better of it and went.
The two scientific men looked at one another. For a space only their eyes spoke.
“If the worst comes to the worst,” said Redwood at last, in a strenuously calm voice, “I shall give the Food to my little Teddy with my own hands.”
III.
It was only a few days after this that Redwood opened his paper to find that the Prime Minister had promised a Royal Commission on Boomfood. This sent him, newspaper in hand, round to Bensington’s flat.
“Winkles, I believe, is making mischief for the stuff. He plays into the hands of Caterham. He keeps on talking about it, and what it is going to do, and alarming people. If he goes on, I really believe he’ll hamper our inquiries. Even as it is—with this trouble about my little boy—”
Bensington wished Winkles wouldn’t.
“Do you notice how he has dropped into the way of calling it Boomfood?”
“I don’t like that name,” said Bensington, with a glance over his glasses.