"No," I said finally.
The young fellow looked triumphantly at Mr. Youngquist, who looked as if he would like to be buried in ashes up to his ears.
"That's all."
Mr. Youngquist rallied and put Slim back on the stand. Then there was a recess. Mr. Youngquist and Mr. Rubicam and Slim and Mrs. Ellingbery and I went into a big huddle out in the hall. "That's what comes of messing around with imbecilic things like this Brain-Finder," Mr. Youngquist moaned. "Why didn't we stick to straight law?"
"Because we couldn't win that way," Mr. Rubicam reminded him. "We didn't have any real evidence."
Well, they decided the only chance to win the case was to have Slim tell about and demonstrate the Brain-Finder. Slim didn't like to do that; but we needed those five G's. That afternoon he told. The next morning we lugged it into court and set it on a table with the screen facing the judge.
There was a crowd in court that morning, thanks to a news story in the morning Herald. Slim groaned; crowds aren't good for private investigators. I pricked up my ears when in marched Mr. Swanberg, our landlord, as austere as striped trousers could possibly make him, but with a beauteous blonde in a pink dress, clinging as if she was afraid he'd get away. That opened my eyes. Maybe the old iceberg was human after all, to rate that kind of devotion. Maybe he did have an occasional moment of abandonment when he would lick the butter from his knife. If we ever got through this mess I was going to find out. "That's Mrs. Swanberg," Youngquist said to Slim.
I looked his wife over in my best professional style. I thought I'd seen her some place, and a detective is supposed to remember faces, but I couldn't quite place her. Anyway, there were now three blondes mixed in with that court-room—and that's a lot of blondes. Mr. and Mrs. Swanberg sat down at one side opposite the jury-box where they could see the screen of the Brain-Finder as well as the judge. I suppose Swanberg had read the story and wanted to see what we were up to in his building. Mrs. Ellingbery sat across the counsel table from me. She was a winner if there ever was one.
Slim went on the stand. He demonstrated the Brain-Finder very feebly—that is, innocuously. It was obvious that Youngquist was scared to death of what might happen.