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By Root 3400 0

straight truth, after all the compliments he’s been getting from the sassiety dames. I’m glad you’ve kept your head. I thought about writing you from Butte — been selling some bum oil-stock there and kind of got out quick to save the inspectors the trouble of looking over my books. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘I’ll just sit down and write the whey-faced runt a letter, and make him feel good by telling him how tickled I am over his nice work.’ But you know how it is — time kind of slips by. Well, this is excellentus! We’ll have a chance to see a whole lot of each other now. I’m going in with a fellow on an investment stunt here in New York. Great pickings, old kid! I’ll take you out and show you how to order a real feed, one of these days. Well, tell me what you been doing since you got back from the West Indies. I suppose you’re laying your plans to try and get in as the boss or president or whatever they call it of this gecelebrated Institute.”

“No — I, uh, well, I shouldn’t much care to be Director. I prefer sticking to my lab. I— Perhaps you’d like to hear about my work on phage.”

Rejoicing to discover something of which he could talk, Martin sketched his experiments.

Clif spanked his forehead with a spongy hand and shouted:

“Wait! Say, I’ve got an idea — and you can come right in on it. As I apperceive it, the dear old Gen. Public is just beginning to hear about this bac — what is it?— bacteriophage junk. Look here! Remember that old scoundrel Benoni Carr, that I introduced as a great pharmacologist at the medical banquet? Had din-din with him last eventide. He’s running a sanitarium out on Long Island — slick idea, too — practically he’s a bootlegger; gets a lot of high-rollers out there and let’s ’em have all the hooch they want, on prescriptions, absolutely legal and water-tight! The parties they throw at that joint, dames and everything! Believe me, Uncle Clif is sore stricken with tootelus bootelus and is going to the Carr Sanitarium for what ails him! But now look: Suppose we got him or somebody to rig up a new kind of cure — call it phageotherapy — oh, it takes Uncle Clif to invent the names that claw in the bounteous dollars! Patients sit in a steam cabinet and eat tablets made of phage, with just a little strychnin to jazz up their hearts! Bran-new! Million in it! What-cha-think?”

Martin was almost feeble. “No. I’m afraid I’m against it.”

“Why?”

“Well, I— Honestly, Clif, if you don’t understand it, I don’t know how I can explain the scientific attitude to you. You know — that’s what Gottlieb used to call it — scientific attitude. And as I’m a scientist — least I hope I am — I couldn’t — Well, to be associated with a thing like that —”

“But, you poor louse, don’t you suppose I understand the scientific attitude? Gosh, I’ve seen a dissecting-room myself! Why, you poor crab, of course I wouldn’t expect you to have your name associated with it! You’d keep in the background and slip us all the dope, and get a lot of publicity for phage in general so the Dee-ah People would fall easier, and we’d pull all the strong-arm work.”

“But — I hope you’re joking, Clif. If you weren’t joking, I’d tell you that if anybody tried to pull a thing like that, I’d expose ’em and get ’em sent to jail, no matter who they were!”

“Well, gosh, if you feel that way about it —!”

Clif was peering over the fatty pads beneath his eyes. He sounded doubtful:

“I suppose you have the right to keep other guys from grabbing your own stuff. Well, all right, Mart. Got to be teloddeling. Tell you what you MIGHT do, though, if that don’t hurt your tender conscience, too: you might invite old Clif up t’ the house for dinner, to meet the new lil wifey that I read about in the sassiety journals. You might happen to remember, old bean, that there have been times when you were glad enough to let poor fat old Clif slip you a feed and a place to sleep!”

“Oh, I know. You bet there have! Nobody was ever decenter to me; nobody. Look. Where you staying? I’ll find out from my wife what dates we have ahead, and telephone you tomorrow morning.”

“So you let the