The man’s humor, even taking into consideration his life’s passion for abstractions, struck me as particularly distasteful. But Vance seemed not to mind his cold-blooded cynicism.
“There’s one item,” he said, “that I omitted to mention.” Turning to Markham he asked for the piece of paper containing the formula, and handed it to Arnesson. “This was found beneath Sprigg’s body.”
The other scrutinized it superciliously.
“The Bishop, I see, is again involved. Same paper and typing as the notes. . . . But where did he get that Riemann-Christoffel tensor? Now, if it had been some other tensor—like the G-sigma-tau, for instance—any one interested in practical physics might have hit on it. But this one isn’t common; and the statement of it here is arbitrary and unusual. Certain terms omitted. . . . By George! I was talking to Sprigg about this only the other night. He wrote it down, too.”
“Pyne mentioned the fact that Sprigg had called here Thursday night,” put in Vance.
“Oh, he did, did he? . . . Thursday—that’s right. Pardee was here, too. And Drukker. We had a discussion on Gaussian co-ordinates. This tensor came up—Drukker mentioned it first, I think. And Pardee had some mad notion of applying the higher mathematics to chess. . . .”
“Do you play chess, by the by?” asked Vance.
“Used to. But no more. A beautiful game, though—if it wasn’t for the players. Queer crabs, chess players.”
“Did you ever make any study of the Pardee gambit?” (At the time I could not understand the seeming irrelevance of Vance’s questions; and I noticed that Markham too was beginning to show signs of impatience.)
“Poor old Pardee!” Arnesson smiled unfeelingly. “Not a bad elementary mathematician. Should have been a high-school teacher. Too much money, though. Took to chess. I told him his gambit was unscientific. Even showed him how it could be beaten. But he couldn’t see it. Then Capablanca, Vidmar and Tartakower came along and knocked it into a cocked hat. Just as I told him they would. Wrecked his life. He’s been fussing around with another gambit for years, but can’t make it cohere. Reads Weyl, Silberstein, Eddington and Mach in the hope of getting inspiration.”