"William Morrison - Disappointment" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

himself, "Perhaps I'd better think of something else."
"Perhaps you'd better," snarled Perry, and slammed the receiver down with a curse. His worst
forebodings had been realized.
A month after the honeymoon, Horton Perry visited his son-in-law's laboratory. "So you think that
this time you have it?" he asked in surly tones.
"Absolutely, Father," answered Payne respectfully. "This is it."
"We've conducted tests," said Angela proudly. "The materials used are inexpensive and harmless.
They coat the nuts evenly. Stewart has measured the amount of sodium chloride—"
Perry snorted. "Since when have you known what sodium chloride means, Angela? Don't put on airs
for me."
Angela smiled without resentment "Stewart has measured the amount of salt abraded in a shaking
machine, and found it trifling," she remarked.
"In fact," Payne insisted, "the insignificant quantities removed can be detected only
spectroscopically."
Horton Perry took a handful of the cashews offered him, and examined them carefully. They sparkled
like tasty diamonds, and none of the salt came off onto his hands. He popped them into his mouth.
The next moment he exploded. It was a question of what shot out of his mouth first, the nuts, a
tremendous curse, or two teeth which had been broken out of his plate. Nuts and teeth hit the floor
simultaneously with ominous crackles, while the thunder of his voice filled the room.
Angela shrieked in dismay, "Father, what happened?" But Payne, ever the scientist, was wasting no
time over his father-in-law's misfortune. He had picked up a couple of nuts, and was examining them with
his usual thoughtful air, looking past the surface into the space between the atoms. "Very interesting and
unexpected. "Slow secondary reaction — intensification of surface forces. May have some relation to the
case hardening of steel."
He placed a cashew on the soapstone laboratory table and pounded it with a hammer. The nut sank
into the soapstone and cut the hammer at the same time. Its own surface showed not a scratch. Horton
Perry, still cursing, didn't even notice.

A YEAR later, shortly after the birth of his first grandchild, Horton Perry visited the laboratory again.
He had heard nothing from his son-in-law that indicated a solution of the nut-salting problem, and in view
of the fact that the arrival of his grandson had cost him five thousand dollars, which Angela had extorted
from him in addition to the promised five hundred, he was feeling rather bitter.
His son-in-law, outside of having fathered a child, was a conspicuous failure. He had, it was true,
published two short scientific papers on the nature of surface forces, but they were written in
incomprehensible scientific jargon, and Perry had tossed them aside in disgust. What he wanted was the
answer to his problem.
Payne was working in a high-pressure room at the end of the building, and Perry sat down at his
son-in-law's desk to wait, his eyes wandering idly over notes which were meaningless to him, while with
his right thumb and forefinger he felt the new set of false teeth which had replaced the one damaged by
the impenetrable cashews.
At the end of five minutes he was boiling at the idea of having wasted so much of his valuable time.
Five minutes more, and he Lad stood up and was about to stalk out of the room, when a man stopped
him.
The man carried a revolver in his hand, and Perry was too excited to notice his height, age, or any of
the facial details which might have been useful later to the police. He spoke tersely. "I'll have that formula
now, Doctor Payne."
"Put that gun down," said Perry excitedly.
"Don't be a fool, Doc. I can shoot and be out of here before anybody knows what's up. I want that
formula."
 "Don't call me Doc. That isn't my name. And don't talk nonsense about a formula I've never heard