Well, pretty quick now I could afford to travel in that kind of company.
I wondered what would happen when Swanberg saw his wife throwing her arms around me on the roller coaster. I guessed maybe he wouldn't be cold; he'd be jealous. Well, a man with a young and beautiful wife—somehow it kind of got me. I mean that sort of calf-like happiness. He loved her and he felt secure in the knowledge that she loved him, and—well, you know how it is.
Gosh, how I wanted that money. Here it was within our reach—the thing we'd worked so hard for, the reason I'd crawled under pullman cars and gone through the sidewalk and sneaked in to evade the landlord—all so Slim could keep working on the Brain-Finder. He had it now. Slim didn't know how to duplicate it, but one was all we needed. That one was worth a fortune.
I looked back at the Swanbergs, sitting there so close together. Swanberg hadn't really been tough with us. In fact, he'd been lenient. Three months was a lot to be behind. No, I guess the only thing I hadn't really liked about him was the fact that he was always so perfectly dressed and so cool while I had to go through the sidewalk on a hot day in August and then press the sweat out of my clothes with a flat-iron.
I looked at the girl. She was nice. She hadn't been doing anything out of the way that night. She certainly hadn't made any sort of pass at me. And they were in love.
I guess I had no business being an investigator. I looked at the judge, watching every move with his sharp old eyes. I glanced at Slim Coleman, sitting there, looking a little puzzled, his eyes deep and burning. I tried to ask Slim to forgive me. I looked at the screen. The roller-coaster car was pulling up to the top of the first hump.
I took hold of the Brain-Finder. It was heavy, but I picked it up and held it over my head, then I heaved it onto the floor, and it was nothing but a mass of loose wires and broken glass.
A woman screamed. Youngquist fainted. Slim came running with a question in his deep eyes. Tom Ellingbery's lawyer was triumphant. The judge pounded for order....
This is four days later. Tom Ellingbery and his wife made up. Last night's paper showed them on the roller coaster. He was quoted as saying: "All I wanted was to ride the roller coaster." And she had said: "Boys will be boys."