The colonel chuckled again. “Hell, we had that figured out. He just had a battery of some kind in the suitcase. No fancy gimmick for deriving power from perpetual motion or anything like that. Nope. Just a battery, that’s all.”
Captain Dean Lacey was grinning hugely.
Thorn said: “Tell me, colonel—what was this fellow’s name?”
“Oh, I don’t recall. Big, blond chap. Had a Swedish name—or maybe Norwegian. Sanderson? No. Something like that, though.”
“Sorensen?” Thorn asked.
“That’s it! Sorensen! Do you know him?”
“We’ve done business with him,” said Thorn dryly.
“He didn’t palm his phony machine off on you, did he?” the colonel asked with a light laugh.
“No, no,” Thorn said. “Nobody sold us a battery disguised as a perpetual motion device. Our relations with him have been quite profitable, thank you.”
“I’d say you still ought to watch him,” said Colonel Dower. “Once a con man, always a con man, is my belief.”