He tossed the thing to me, pointed at the little box of paper clips in the drawer and said, "Have fun."
I did, for about five minutes. Eight paper clips later I was convinced that whatever else it might be, the gadget was no potential murder weapon. The clips disappeared, totally. You could pass your hand through the point of departure without a tingle of sensation.
Leo briefed me further. The thing worked only on metallic conductors. It was harmless to human flesh and other organic matter. Then he removed the cover that ran the length of the rather crude, hand-carved, wooden barrel. From front to back, were: One pen-light cell, a lumpy-looking coil of wire hand-wound on a spindle-shaped iron core, and a short, cylindrical bar-magnet.
"In mass production," he said, "About 40 cents worth of material and maybe 50 cents worth of labor! Do you see why I wanted to keep it a secret until I could patent it?"
"No!" I said flatly. "Unless you consider a paper-clip disposal unit an item of commercial importance."
"But it's a whole new scientific principle—the rotation of matter completely out of our space-time continuum!"
"That much I grasp, but what good is it except as a demonstration of a piece of pure scientific research?"
"Good Lord, man, have you no imagination?"
"Okay, okay! Get rich," I said and slammed the front door behind me as I stomped out. I had been so certain that the missing gadgets would give me a motive for the attack on Leo's brother, or at least the method of inflicting the fantastic wound, that I was about ready to turn in my badge in frustration. All I could pin on Leo was a desire to cash in on his brother's gimmick—which, presumably, he could have done whether Calvin lived or died.
Suppose, I mused on my way back to the station, that Calvin had refused to let Leo commercialize on his discovery? Perhaps Calvin was preparing a paper for publication in scientific circles. Maybe cool-headed little Leo tried to knock off his brother to keep the secret in the family until it could be turned to a selfish dollar.