He sketched. He had been working on the idea for several days, and the sketch was ready in his mind to be transferred to paper.
“What you goin’ to do?”
“Something crazy,” said Tommy. “A mirror isn’t the only thing that changes angles to right ones.”
“You’re the doctor,” said the imperturbable Smithers.
He set to work. He puzzled Tommy sometimes, Smithers did. So far he hadn’t asked how much his pay was going to be. He’d worked unintermittantly. He had displayed a colossal, a tremendous calmness. But no man could work as hard as Smithers did without some powerful driving-force. It was on the fourth day that Tommy learned what it was.
The five coils had been made, and Tommy was assembling them with an extraordinary painstaking care behind a screen, to hide what he was doing. He’d discovered a peep-hole bored through the brick wall from the lean-to where Von Holtz worked. He was no longer locked in there. Tommy abandoned the pretense of imprisonment after finding an automatic pistol and a duplicate key to the lock in Von Holtz’s possession. He’d had neither when he was theoretically locked up, and Tommy laughed.
“It’s a farce, Von Holtz,” he said dryly, “this pretending you’ll run away. You’re here spying now, for Jacaro. Of course. And you don’t dare harm either of us until you find out from me what you can’t work out for yourself, and know I have done. How much is Jacaro going to pay you for the secret of the catapult, Von Holtz?”
Von Holtz snarled. Smithers moved toward him, his hands closing and unclosing. Von Holtz went gray with terror.
“Talk!” said Smithers.