Larry cleared his throat without saying anything. This was a weird one, all right.
The living room was comfortable in a blatantly primitive way. Three or four paintings on the walls which were probably originals, Larry decided, and should have been in museums. Not an abstract among them. A Grant Wood, a Marin, and that over there could only be a Grandma Moses. The sort of things you might keep in your private den, but hardly to be seen as culture symbols.
The chairs were large, of leather, and comfortable and probably belonged to the period before the Second War. Peter Voss, evidently, was little short of an exhibitionist.
The Professor took up a battered [pg 029] humidor. “Cigar?” he said. “Manila. Hard to get these days.”
A cigar? Good grief, the man would be offering him a chaw of tobacco next.
“Thanks, no,” Larry said. “I smoke a pipe.”
“I see,” the Professor said, lighting his stogie. “Do you really like a pipe? Personally, I've always thought the cigar by far the most satisfactory method of taking tobacco.”
What can you say to a question like that? Larry ignored it, as though it was rhetorical. Actually, he smoked cigarettes in the privacy of his den. A habit which was on the proletarian side and not consistent with his status level.
He said, to get things under way, “Professor Voss, what is an intuitive scientist?”
The Professor exhaled blue smoke, shook out the old-time kitchen match with which he'd lit it, and tossed the matchstick into an ashtray. “Intuitive scientist?”