"Just a minute, Mr. Elshawe. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions first?"
"Go ahead."
Skinner leaned forward earnestly. "Mr. Elshawe, who deserves credit for an invention? Who deserves the money?"
"Why ... why, the inventor, of course."
"The inventor? Or the man who gives it to humanity?"
"I ... don't quite follow you."
He leaned back in his chair again. "Mr. Elshawe, when I invented the Polarizer, I hadn't the remotest idea of what I'd invented. I taught general science in the high school Malcom Porter went to, and I had a lab in my basement. Porter was a pretty bright boy, and he liked to come around to my lab and watch me putter around. I had made this gadget—it was a toy for children as far as I was concerned. I didn't have any idea of its worth. It was just a little gadget that hopped up into the air and floated down again. Cute, but worthless, except as a novelty. And it was too expensive to build it as a novelty. So I forgot about it.
"Years later, Porter came around to me and offered to buy it. I dug it out of the junk that was in my little workshop and sold it to him.
"A couple of years after that, he came back. He said that he'd invented something. After beating all around the bush, he finally admitted that his invention was a development of my little toy. He offered me a million dollars if I'd keep my mouth shut and forget all about the thing."
"And you accepted?" Elshawe asked incredulously.