"Well, he got some wealthy men interested. A lot of them invested money--big money--in the Keely Motor Company. Every so often, he'd bring them down to his lab and show them what progress he was making and then tell them how much more money he needed. He always got them to shell out, and he was living pretty high on the hog. He kept at it for years. Finally, in the late nineties, _The Scientific American_ exposed the whole hoax. Keely died, and his lab was given a thorough going over. It turned out that all his marvelous machines were run by compressed air cleverly channeled through the floor and the legs of tables." "I see," repeated the inventor, narrowing his eyes. "And I suppose my invention is run by compressed air?" "I didn't say your invention was a phony," Colonel Dower said placatingly. "I merely mentioned the Keely Motor to show you why we want to test it out somewhere away from your laboratory. Are you willing to go?" "Any time you are, colonel." A week or so later, they went out into the Mojave and set up the test. The suitcase-- * * * * * "... The suitcase," said the colonel, "was connected up to a hundred hundred-watt light bulbs. He let the thing run for ten hours before he shut it off." He chuckled. "He never would let us look into that suitcase. Naturally, we wouldn't buy a pig in a poke, as the saying goes. We told him that any time we could be allowed to look at his invention, we'd be glad to see him again. He left in a huff, and that was the last we saw of him." "How do you explain," Thorn said carefully, "the fact that his suitcase _did_ run all those lights?" The colonel chuckled again. "Hell, we had that figured out. He just had a battery of some kind in the suitcase. No fancy gimmick for deriving power from perpetual motion or anything like that. Nope. Just a battery, that's all." Captain Dean Lacey was grinning hugely. Thorn said: "Tell me, colonel--what was this fellow's name?" "Oh, I don't recall. Big, blond chap. Had a Swedish name--or maybe Norwegian. Sanderson? No. Something like that, though." "Sorensen?" Thorn asked. "That's it! Sorensen! Do you know him?" "We've done business with him," said Thorn dryly. "He didn't palm his phony machine off on you, did he?" the colonel asked with a light laugh. "No, no," Thorn said. "Nobody sold us a battery disguised as a perpetual motion device. Our relations with him have been quite profitable, thank you." "I'd say you still ought to watch him," said Colonel Dower. "Once a con man, always a con man, is my belief." Captain Lacey rubbed his hands together. "Ed, tell me something. Didn't it ever occur to you that a battery which would do all that--a battery which would hold a hundred kilowatt-hours of energy in a suitcase would be worth the million he was asking for it?"