Part 4 (1/2)
”Good heavens,” Patricia said disgustedly, ”remind me to break off our engagement if I haven't already done it. I hate overpowering men. All I'm saying is that we'll have to give Don at least a week. One day isn't enough.”
Dr. Braun c.o.c.ked his head to one side and said uncomfortably, ”I'm not sure but that in a week's time our friend Don might be able.... See here, Don, do you mind going on down to the hotel's bar while we three talk this through?”
Crowley obviously took umbrage at that, but there was nothing to be done. Frowning peevishly, he left.
The doctor looked from one to the other of his a.s.sociates. ”By Caesar, do you realize the damage friend Don could accomplish in a week's time?”
Patricia laughed at him. ”That's what I keep telling the two of you. Do you realize the damage _any_ person could do with invisibility? Not to speak of giving it to every Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry in the world.”
Ross said, ”We've started this, lets go through with it. I back Pat's suggestion, that we give Don sufficient serum to give him twelve hours of invisibility a day for a full week. However, we will ration it out to him day by day, so that if things get out of hand we can cut his supply.”
”That's an idea,” Patricia said. ”And I suspect that within half the period we'll all be convinced that the process will have to be suppressed.”
Ross leaned forward. ”Good. I suggest we three keep this suite and get Don a room elsewhere, so he won't be inhibited by our continual presence. Once a day we'll give him enough serum for one shot and he can take it any time he wishes to.” He ran his beefy hand back through his red crew cut in a gesture of satisfaction. ”If he seems to get out of hand, we'll call it all off.”
Dr. Braun cleared his throat unhappily. ”I have premonitions of disaster, but I suppose if we've come this far we should see the experiment through.”
Patricia said ungraciously, ”At least the lout will be limited in his accomplishments by his lack of imagination. Imagine going into that French girl's dressing room.”
”Yeah,” Ross said ludicrously trying to make his big open face look dreamy.
”You wretch,” Patricia laughed. ”The wedding is off!”
But Crowley was no lout. He was full of the folk wisdom of his people.
_G.o.d helps those who help themselves._
_It's each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost._
Not to speak of.
_Never give a sucker an even break._
_If I didn't do it, somebody else would._
Had he been somewhat more of a student he might also have run into that nugget of the ancient Greek. _Morals are the invention of the weak to protect themselves from the strong._
Once convinced that the three eggheads were incapable of realizing the potentialities of their discovery, he had little difficulty in arguing himself into the stand that he should. It helped considerably to realize that in all the world only four persons, including himself, were aware of the existence of the invisibility serum.
He spent the first day in what Marx called in ”Das Kapital” the ”original acc.u.mulation of capital,” although it would seem unlikely that even in the wildest accusations of the most confirmed Marxist, no great fortune was ever before begun in such wise.
It was not necessary, he found, to walk into a large bank and simply seemingly levitate the money out the front door. In fact, that would have meant disaster. However, large sums of money are to be found elsewhere on Manhattan and for eleven hours Crowley used his native ingenuity and American know-how, most of which had been gleaned from watching TV crime shows. By the end of the day he had managed to acc.u.mulate in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars and was reasonably sure that the news would not get back to his sponsors. The fact was, he had cleaned out the treasuries of several numbers rackets and those of two bookies.
It was important, he well realized, that he be well under way before the three eggheads decided to lower the boom.
The second day he spent making his preliminary contacts, an operation that was helped by his activities of the day before. He was beginning already to get the feel of the underworld element with which he had decided he was going to have to work, at least in the early stages of his operations.
Any leader, be he military, political or financial, knows that true greatness lies in the ability to choose a.s.sistants. Be you a Napoleon with his marshals, a Roosevelt with his brain trust, a J. P. Morgan with his partners, the truism applies. No great leader has ever stood alone.