"Thomas Mallory?" I said. "The physicist? The one who pestered the daylights out of the government about some crack-brained invention during the early days of the war? Is he the one you mean?"
"Yes. The government isn't too sure, now, that it acted wisely in refusing to listen to his plan. But you know how it was for a while. Miracle men flooded the War Department with fantastic ideas for 'smashing the enemy.'
"Only, in this last extremity, the War Department decided to investigate Mallory's claim. As a last resort. I was commissioned to find him, bring him to Louisville. But now—" Uncertainly. "Now I don't know just what I ought to do. Even if he has a plan, and a good one, there is no one to whom we can communicate it."
Surprisingly, it was Danny Wilson who interrupted.
"Except," he said suddenly, "us!" He turned to me. "Brian, it would be suicide for us to go on to Louisville—and there's no place else to go. We might as well make this our job. We have everything to gain, nothing to lose."
"Do you," I asked the girl, "know where Mallory is?"
"Only roughly. Somewhere in the hills of the upper Cumberland. I plan to comb the neighborhood—"
The Kentuckian, Joe Sanders, edged forward.
"Don't need to do no combin'," he drawled. "Reckon I c'n help. This yere Mall'ry—he a big man? White hair? Red complected?"