But afterward, Cap McNeally came to me, wondering.
"Why should he have wanted to die, Brait? I can't understand it. A man like John Cartaphilus; wealthy, intelligent, respected—was he really mad, do you think?"
I hesitated. I, too, had been wondering about that. I had gone so far as to look up the life history of the mad scientist. I had found several curious things. No man knew when, or where, John Cartaphilus had been born. All agreed that he was "remarkably youthful" in appearance. It was rumored that he had outlived a wife married in youth; that she had been an elderly woman when she died.
I said, "I told you there had been a scandal in his life, recently, Skipper. It concerned a friend of his, a worker in one of his shops.
"Cartaphilus was, and is, a genius, but he has a reputation for driving his men too hard. They say that on this occasion, seeking the answer to some problem that evaded him, he forced this assistant to labor for weeks, begrudging him even a few hours sleep each night.
"On the eve of the solution of the problem, this worker came to him, nervous, ragged, exhausted, begging for a brief respite. Claiming he was sick with overwork and fatigue. But John Cartaphilus insisted, impatiently, there was no time for rest. He ordered the man to get about his work.
"The job was completed. But the friend died. The doctors said it was a pure case of exhaustion. When he heard this, Cartaphilus' brain snapped. He blamed himself for the man's death, fled Earth. He became—or so we may believe—the wandering spaceman we found in the asteroids."
Cap McNeally frowned.
"Do you believe that story, Brait?"
I started to say no. I started to tell the skipper something else I had discovered while probing into the life history of John Cartaphilus. Something that, to my mind at least, more fully explained the oddness of our erstwhile passenger.