"That's probably it. Well, what are you going to do?"
"Nothing. Sit tight. If I stick my neck out into that hall, or go outside through the window, the edge is going to be with Cole. If I sit here and make him come to me, it's the other way round. Only I'm through reading for tonight. I'm sitting right here by the bed. If you can sleep, go ahead. I'll shut up and let you."
"Sure," I said. "I can sleep swell. Just like a lamb staked out in the jungle to draw a tiger for the hunters. That's how I can sleep."
He chuckled. "The lamb doesn't know what it's there for."
"Until it smells tiger. I smell tiger." That reminded me of my dream, and I told him about it.
"You're a psychologist," he said. "What does it mean?"
"Probably that I had a subconscious dislike for Dr. Roth," I told him. "Only I know that already. I don't need to interpret a dream to tell me that."
"What did you have against Roth, Brian? I've known there was something from the way you've talked about him."
"He was a prig, for one thing," I said. "You know me well enough, Jack, to know I'm not too bad a guy, but he thought I was miles away from being good enough for Jeanette. Well--maybe I am, but then again, so's everybody else who might fall in love with her."
"Does she love you?"
"I think so." I thought it over. "Sure, I practically know she does, from things she said tonight."
"Anything else? I mean, about Roth. Is that the only reason you didn't like him?"
I didn't say anything for a while. I was thinking. I thought, why not tell Jack now? Sooner or later, he'll know it. The whole world will know it. Why not get it off my chest right now, while there was a good chance to get my side of it straight?
Something made me stop and listen first. There wasn't a sound from outside nor from the hallway.
"Jack," I said, "I'm going to tell you something. I'm awfully glad that you were here tonight."
"Thanks, pal." He chuckled a little.
"I don't mean what you think I mean, Jack. Sure, maybe you saved my life from Alister Cole. But more than that, you gave me an alibi."
"An alibi? For killing Roth? Sure, I was with you when he was killed."
"Exactly. Listen, Jack, I had a reason for killing Roth. That reason's coming out later anyway. I might as well tell you now."
He turned and stared at me. There was enough light in the room so that I could see the movement of his head, but, not enough so that he could watch my face. I don't know why he bothered turning.
"If you need an alibi," he said, "you've sure got one. We started playing chess at somewhere around eight. You haven't been out of my sight since then, except while you were in Chief Randall's office."
"Don't think I don't know that," I told him. "And don't think I'm not happy about it. Listen, Jack. Because Roth is dead, I'm going to be a millionaire. If he was alive, I still might be, but there'd have been a legal fight about it. 1 would have been right, but I could have lost just the same."
"You mean it would have been a case of your word against his?"
"Exactly. And he's--he was--department head, and I'm only a flunky, a little better on his social scale than Alister Cole. And it's something big, Jack. Really big."
"What?"
"What kind of rat cages did you find in the basement when you looked down there?" I asked him.
"What kind? I don't get you. I don't know makes of rat cages."
"Don't worry about the make," I said. "You found only one kind. Empty ones. The rats were dead. And disposed of."
He turned to look at me again. "Go on," he said.
Now that I'd started to tell him, I knew I wouldn't even try to go back to sleep.
I was too excited. I propped the pillow up against the head of the bed.
"Make a guess, Jack," I said. "How much food do rats eat a year in the United States alone?"
"I wouldn't know. A million dollars' worth?"
"A hundred million dollars' worth," I said, "at a conservative estimate.
Probably more than a million dollars is spent fighting them, each year. In the world, their cost is probably a billion dollars a year. Not altogether--just for one year! How much do you think something would be worth that would actually completely eliminate rats--both Mus Rattus and Mus Norvegicus-- completely and once and for all? Something that would put them with the hairy mammoth and the roc and the dinosaurs?"
"If your mathematics are okay," Jack said, "it'd be worth ten billion bucks in the first ten years?"
"Ten billion, on paper. A guy who could do it ought to be able to get one ten-thousandth that much, shouldn't he? A million?"
"Seems reasonable. And somebody ought to throw in a Nobel prize along with it. But can you do it?"
"I can do it," I said. "Right here in my basement I stumbled across it, accidentally, Jack, in the course of another experiment. But it works. It works! It kills rats!"
"So does Red Squill. So does strychnine. What's your stuff got that they haven't?"
"Communicability. Give it to one rat--and the whole colony dies! Like all the rats--thirty of them, to be exact--died when I injected one rat. Sure, you've got to catch one rat alive--but that's easy. Then just inject it and let it go, and all the rats in the neighborhood die."
"A bacillus?"
"No. Look, I'll be honest with you. I don't know exactly how it works, but it's not a germ. I have a hunch that it destroys a rat's immunity to some germ he carries around with him normally--just as you and I carry around a few million germs which don't harm us ordinarily because we also carry around the antibodies that keep them in check. But this injection probably destroys certain antibodies in the rat and the germs become--unchecked. The germs also become strong enough to overcome the antibodies in other rats, and they must be carried by the air because they spread from cage to cage with no direct contact. Thirty rats died within twenty-four hours after I innoculated the first one--some in cages as far away as six feet."
Jack Sebastian whistled. "Maybe you have got something," he said softly.
"Where did Roth come in on it, though? Did he claim half, or what?"
"Half I wouldn't have minded giving him," I said. "But he insisted the whole thing belonged to the university, just because I was working on an experiment for the university--even though it was in my own place, on my own time. And the thing I hit upon was entirely outside the field of the experiment. I don't see that at all.
Fortunately, he didn't bring it to an issue. He said we should experiment further before we announced it."
"Do you agree with that?"
"Of course. Naturally, I'm not going off half-cocked. I'm going to be sure, plenty sure, before I announce it. But when I do, it's going to be after the thing has been patented in my name. I'm going to have that million bucks, Jack!"
"I hope you're right," he said. "And I can't say I blame you, if you made the discovery here at your own place on your own time. Anyone else know about it?"
"No."
"Did Alister Cole?"
"No, he didn't. I think, Jack, that this thing is bigger even than you realize. Do you know how many human lives it's going to save? We don't have any bubonic here in this country--or much of any other rat-and-flea borne disease, but take the world as a whole."
"I see what you mean. Well, more power to you, keed. And if everything goes well, take me for a ride on your yacht sometime."
"You think I'm kidding?"
"Not at all. And I pretty well see what you mean by being glad you've got an alibi. Well, it's a solid one, if my word goes for anything. To have killed Dr.
Roth--no matter how much motive you may have had--you'd have had to have had a knife on a pole a block and a half long. Besides--"