Duff hesitated. The sample had been extremely small. The tests had been difficult.
The apparatus in the physics lab hadn’t worked as well as he could have hoped. “I’m — sure enough,” he finally said, “to come in here.”
“Can you give us some of the stuff to test?”
“That’s another thing. I did have a. trace left when I got through. But — I’m cow-clumsy. When I finished the last test I started doing a dumb-headed dance — I was excited. I batted a bottle of sulphuric off a shelf — had to wash it and the last of my sample down the drain, but quick. The place was fuming up.”
“Too bad.” Mr. Higgins locked his hands behind his head, looked at Duff and thought for a while. “You could be mistaken about your experiment?”
“I don’t believe so. It’s possible.”
“Stick around a few minutes.” Higgins walked from the room. He was gone for quite a while. When he came back, his face was unreadable. He sat in his chair again.
“We’d like a look at that cached stuff, Bogan. I take it there’s always somebody at home. Mrs. Yates.”
“Not always. On sunny Sundays we wheel her to the car and lift her in and take her wheel chair along. Church. Harry Ellings never misses church.”
“Good. You see, we’d also like to look at that thing without anybody knowing. If it does happen to be uranium, we want to know more than just that Ellings has it.”