The professor glared.
"What do you mean, we might all have been killed?"
"Why, the explosive in that package, and the detonator--really, Joseph, it was terribly dangerous--"
"Dangerous!" snorted the savant. "The only dangerous part was that he might have hit me over the head with it."
"But--the explosive--"
"Explosive, my eye!" And, again glaring: "Do you mean to tell me you can"t understand why that stuff he had in the package didn"t go off, you abbreviated atom?"
Henry"s goatee waggled uncertainly. He adjusted the steel-rimmed spectacles which were his only garment.
"Well ... really, Joseph...."
"I"ll admit right out I don"t get it," broke in Major Coggleston. "You mean there wasn"t any danger of that stuff going off?"
"Of course not." Professor Paulsen was distinctly snappish.
"But why--"
The scientist turned back to Henry. "Don"t you remember what I said to you this morning about those devil"s gla.s.ses of yours transposing letters instead of just reversing them? And that you told me it would take a special lens to straighten them out?"
"You mean--"
"Take any formula and transpose the symbols all the way through, and see what you get. Trinitrocresol, for instance. The formula is C_{7}H_{5}N_{3}O_{7}. Transpose it all the way through, and you have _{7}O_{3}N_{5}H_{7}C. In that particular case, it wouldn"t even make sense. But when our red-headed spy said he was a chemist and hadn"t had any trouble compounding this new explosive, I figured the formula must be one that would be at least half-way logical, no matter which way you wrote it. Only the odds were a million to one that one way it would equal an explosive; the other, nothing at all. So I didn"t hesitate to attack him."
"Joe," said Major Coggleston admiringly, "that"s a lot faster thinking than I"ve ever done. And I don"t need to tell you how grateful the Army will be."
"Really, Joseph, it was awfully clever!" Henry chimed in. "I"d never have thought of it--"
And then, changing thought in mid-sentence:
"Look! There"s that pretty blonde girl with the--"
"Henry!" exploded Professor Paulsen. "You"re old enough to behave like a grown man, not an inspectionistic schoolboy!" His hand shot out to grip his little partner"s goatee and jerk his eyes from the luscious creature now parading her charms before them.
"Ouch!" squealed Henry, his face s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up with pain. "Joseph, you"re hurting!"
"Then will you be good? Will you behave yourself?"
"Of course, Joseph. Just let me go!" Then, sulkily, as the tall scientist released him: "Though I still think you"re mighty finicky, Joseph Paulsen. After all, what"s wrong with my liking the cute way that girl wears the bangs across her forehead?"
[Footnote 1: The Piltdown Man was a species of prehistoric being (_Eoanthropus dawsoni_), long since extinct, with a retreating, apelike chin and thick cranial bones, but a human-type cranium.--Ed.]
[Footnote 2: See "Henry Horn"s Blitz Bomb," Amazing Stories, June, "42.--Ed.]
[Footnote 3: See "Henry Horn"s Super-Solvent," _Fantastic Adventures_, November, "41.--Ed.]