He snorted.
“The third and fourth floor windows! That does me a lot of good!”
“On account of delirious patients,” I said rebukingly. “And as for there being two people trying to get the radium, I think there must be at least that many. I don’t believe that one person, alone and unaided, could make so much trouble.”
He grinned faintly at that, and then frowned.
“The chief of police wants to arrest the whole outfit at once. He is convinced that you are all in a conspiracy and that Gainsay is the leader. Of course, I don’t want to make such a wholesale cleaning. Especially since I—I believe that I’m getting warm. But I don’t want any arrests yet. I don’t want to put anybody on guard.”
“Mr. O’Leary,” I said eagerly, emboldened by his half-confidence. “I have heard things of you, of course—what wonderful success you have and all that. What methods do you use?”
He thrust his hands into his pockets, leaned back in the chair and sighed.
“Methods? I don’t have any methods. And as to success—wait a few days.”
“You don’t have any methods?”
“The moment when I’m feeling most useless and most like a failure is not the moment to ask me to tell of my successes. Or my methods. I don’t have methods. I take what the Lord sends and am thankful. Sometimes it is a matter of luck. Mostly it is a matter of drudgery and hard work. Always it is a matter of thinking, thinking, thinking. Of eating, living, sleeping with problems for days and nights. Usually, just about the time you have decided that none of the pieces of the puzzle can possibly fit, all at once something happens and—Click! Things clarify. There is a reason for everything. Nothing just happens. Nothing is an isolated fact. If you have a fact, you know that certain circumstances had to combine to bring it about. It is just logic, reason, the physical, material quality of cause and effect. There isn’t anything mysterious about it. It is just the—the arithmetic of analysis. I don’t mean that I am infallible. I have to reconsider and revise and correct mistakes, just like anybody else. I’m human—and young. But when you know that there is a solution, to the most puzzling problem, all there is to do is worry it out. I suppose the subconscious mind helps.”