kely to be out of money if McAllen had been taken
from the job. Eventually he was informed, in strict confidence, that
Dr. McAllen had flipped. Under the delusion of having made a discovery
of tremendous importance, he had persuaded the authorities to arrange
a demonstration. When the demonstration ended in complete failure,
McAllen angrily accused some of his most eminent colleagues of having
sabotaged his invention, and withdrew from the university. To protect
a once great scientist's name, the matter was being hushed up.

So Mallorca was where the addled old physicist had elected to end his
days--not a bad choice either, Barney had thought, gazing after the
retreating figure. Pleasant island in a beautiful sea--he remembered
having heard about McAllen's passion for angling.

A day later, the Mallorca business profitably concluded, Barney flew
back to Los Angeles. That evening he entertained a pair of tanned and
shapely ladies whose idea of high fun was to drink all night and go
deep-sea fishing at dawn. Barney shuddered inwardly at the latter
notion, but promised to see the sporting characters to the Sweetwater
Beach Municipal Pier in time to catch a party boat, and did so. One of
the girls, he noticed not without satisfaction--he had become a little
tired of the two before morning--appeared to turn a delicate green as
she settled herself into the gently swaying half-day boat beside the
wharf. Barney waved them an amiable farewell and was about to go when
he noticed a plump old man sitting in the stern of the boat among
other anglers, rigging up his tackle. Barney checked sharply, and
blinked. He was looking at Oliver B. McAllen again.

It was almost a minute before he felt sure of it this time. Not that
it was impossible for McAllen to be sitting in that boat, but it did
seem extremely unlikely. McAllen didn't look in the least like a man
who could afford nowadays to commute by air between the Mediterranean
and California. And Barney felt something else trouble him obscurely
as he stared down at the old scientist; a notion of some kind was
stirring about in the back corridors of his mind, but refused to be
drawn to view just then.

* * * * *

He grew aware of what it was while he watched the party boat head out
to sea a few minutes later, smiled at what seemed an impossibly
fanciful concoction of his unconscious, and started towards the pier's
parking lot. But when he had reached