Pete shook his head, regarding his calculations depressedly. “They aren’t. Cash to pay the grocer’s bill is still a dim and misty hope. It is horrible, Thomas! I remembered my uncle as simply reeking with cash, and I thought the fourth dimension was mathematics, not debauchery. But Uncle Robert must have had positive orgies with quanta and space-time continua! I shan’t break even on the heir business, let alone make a profit!”
Thomas made a noise suggesting sympathy.
“I could stand it for myself alone,” said Pete gloomily. “Even Arthur, in his simple, kangaroo’s heart, bears up well. But Daisy! There’s the rub! Daisy!”
“Daisy, sir?”
“My fiancée,” said Pete. “She’s in the Green Paradise floor show. She is technically Arthur’s owner. I told Daisy, Thomas, that I had inherited a fortune. And she’s going to be disappointed.”
“Too bad, sir,” said Thomas.
“That statement is one of humorous underemphasis, Thomas. Daisy is not a person to take disappointments lightly. When I explain that my uncle’s fortune has flown off into the fourth dimension, Daisy is going to look absent-minded and stop listening. Did you ever try to make love to a girl who looked absent-minded?”
“No, sir,” said Thomas. “But about lunch, sir—”
“We’ll have to pay for it. Damn!” Pete said morbidly. “I’ve just forty cents in my clothes, Thomas, and Arthur at least mustn’t be allowed to starve. Daisy wouldn’t like it. Let’s see!”
He moved away from the desk and surveyed the laboratory with a predatory air. It was not exactly a homey place. There was a skeletonlike thing of iron rods, some four feet high. Thomas had said it was a tesseract—a model of a cube existing in four dimensions instead of three.