I say, "Yeah?" I would like to be helpful; that laboratory is going to cost money. A electron-telescope ain't cheap. I need for Jode to be prosperous to keep his promise.
"He has opened his files to me," says Jode, wrinklin' up his fat face like a baby tryin' not to cry. "All the games he has pretended to fall for, with the news clippings of the trials and sentencing of the operators! He even has the records of the parole board hearings on them, and how he has protested the freeing of such criminals. That file is most informative. There are a coupla twists that even I never heard of before. The greatest artists in the business have worked on him, Buck! It would be a artistic triumph to diddle him. Indeed, I could not rest easy in my grave without havin' a try at him!"
"I bet," I says, "that if he ever does fall, it will be for somethin' a three-year-old would laugh at."
I don't know why I say it, but Jode's mouth drops open. He blinks at me, and suddenly he begins to wheeze happy again. "Genius!" he says. "That's the trick! Now I start hunting for the oldest, stalest, most impossible trick in the world! Somethin' so old and phoney nobody would think of tryin' it. I think, Buck, that as my technical assistant you show genius!"
He struts out, a fat little guy with sporty clothes who looks like a retired banker without a worry in the world. And around this time a new crop of science magazines appears on the newsstands; I buy the lot of 'em and loaf around in my sailboat, readin' 'em and making plans.
2
One week passes, and two. Then Jode tells me he wants me to have dinner, formal, with a Prof Henry Barr whom he has contacted because he's got a hunch that the Prof has maybe the scheme he is looking for. The Prof had an advertisement in the paper. It reads:
I have made an unconventional scientific discovery that I do not know how to develop commercially. An entrepreneur or financial adviser with some money is sought. Address Biologist, Box 711, care this paper.
"It's crude," says Jode, helpful. "It wouldn't get a nibble from real money. All he could hope for would be a sure-thing player or a legal counsellor tryin' for a long-shot cut. I have invited him to dinner. In prosperous surroundings he will be excited and probably spill his hand. You will pass on the plausibility of his scientific discovery. It is one of the things I pay you for."