Inventions -- Fiction; Police -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories
He laid his small hands before him on the desk. "Lieutenant, I'm sick
of working for other people. This is my chance to get a bank-roll to
back my own contracting firm. Yes, I financed Calvin's research because
he's brilliant, and I knew he'd come up with something some day. Now
he's done it, and I'm merely protecting his interests and my investment
in him. See here." He shoved some documents at me. There was the patent
application, a declaration of partnership for purposes of marketing
the Mystery i-Gun, and the articles of incorporation of the Baxter
Construction Company.
"Okay," I said. "So you've cut your brother in on all this. Who's his
beneficiary when he dies?"
"Still looking for a motive for murder, aren't you, Lieutenant?"
I didn't admit it to him, but he was right. Calvin's "accident" seemed
too convenient to the purposes of his practical little brother,
Leo. What's more, the lab and medical men on the force were just
as mystified today as they were when we brought Calvin in with the
needle-thin hole in his skull. Old Doc Thorsen had admitted to me that
he could name no implement--not even a surgical instrument--that could
have inflicted such a narrow gauge hole. It had to be caused by a
fragment, _but there was no fragment in the brain_!
"Leo," I said, "I know you consider this case closed, but I want you to
do me a favor. I want to go over your brother's lab once more."
"But you've--" He stopped, shrugged and nodded his head. "Okay. I'm
interested in finding out what hurt Cal, as much as you are. I'll tell
you, I'm busy the rest of this week, but I'll meet you at the old house
next Monday evening at eight. You see, I closed up the place and moved
downtown."
I agreed, with the feeling that he was deliberately making me wait just
to annoy me. Leo Baxter was an important man now, a man graciously
willing to cooperate with the police--at his own convenience. I stood
up. "Your brother has been calling your name. I suppose they told you
that?"
"They phoned. Doctor said it was just mutterings."
"You haven't even been to see him?"
"What's the use? He wouldn't recognize me."
Well, it wasn't any of my business, really, but it's funny how you get
to hate a man for his attitude. I don't know what I expected to find
by going over that lab-workshop again, but whatever it was, I hoped it
would incriminate Leo. On the face of it he was guilty of nothing more
than a premature marketing of a new device, but the way he was cashing
in on Calvin's genius certainly did the dying man no honor.
_Cash in was right!_ The toys sold like bubble-gum. The papers, radio,
and TV picked up the sensational gimmick and gave it a billion bucks
worth of free advertising. And the profitable part of it was that the
i-Gun was so simple to mass-produce that Leo's fifteen contracting
manufacturers were almost able to keep up with the astronomical demand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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