My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was upheld. I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it. "What was this a test for?" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had made. "What are you planning to do now?" "This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat." "Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why, that's _murder_." "Not," Carmen said, "without no _corpus delecti_." "The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim," I remembered from my early Ellery Queen training. "You're talking too much, Professor," Tony suggested. "Remember, _you_ did it with _your_ machine." "Yes," I said at length. "And why are we standing here letting those machines sit there?" * * * * * There were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following morning. One two-inch story--barely making page one because of a hole to fill at the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat prostration--told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by an ingenious new arson bomb that left "virtually" no trace. (Maybe the fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more creditable.) The second item was further over in a science column just off the editorial page. It told of the government--!--developing a new process of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray. This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks. If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with refrigerators and hypodermic needles. I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee I made when the doorbell rang. I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the front door. He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. "Action, Professor." "The district attorney has indicted you?" I asked hopefully. "He's not even indicted _you_, Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this plant in the _Times_." I shook my head. "The government will take over the invention, no matter what the public wants." "The public? Who cares about the public? The Arcivox corporation wants this machine of yours. They have their agents tracing the plant now. They will go from the columnist to his legman to my man and finally to you. Won't be long before they get here. An hour maybe." "Arcivox makes radios and TV sets. What do they want with the Expendables?"