'This is exciting, isn't it?' he remarked in his lilting Cambridge voice.
'What is it?'
'Don't know, quite. But don't worry about secrecy, Miss Fisher. I work for the police often, I give evidence in court. My integrity is exceptionally important to me. Hmm. I think we'll give this a bit more of a stir.'
'Dr Treasure, what is this compound? All I can see is a clear fluid and a bit of paper with letters and numbers.'
'Ah, yes, well, how am I to explain this? Are you familiar with the term polymerization?'
'Never heard of it,' said Phryne firmly.
Dr Treasure did not seem cast down by the lamentable ignorance of his visitor. In fact, he seemed pleased to have an auditor who really wanted to know the answer. Phryne reflected that his wife must be far too busy with the baby to pay proper attention to chemistry lectures and he was probably suffering from audience starvation. And, judging by the way he was now drinking in the sight of Phryne in her close-fitting blue dress, other sorts of deprivation as well.
'Well, let's start from the beginning. In nature, the polymer process is a biogenesis and we are not too clear about how it works. It's very complex, but it does not seem to induce polymerization by the manufacture of an isoprene monomer as such. Which is what this formula is endeavouring to do, I believe.'
'It is?' asked Phryne.
Dr Treasure pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. 'Yes, you see, here—it says -CH2-C(CI) = CH-CH2—times n, and there's an additional CI, that makes it poly-chloroprene. Which is CR. Derived, as you know, from oil, though mine is made out of butyl alcohol, made of fermented grain. Much cleaner, don't you think? And it uses up all that surplus wheat. Yes, the formula is quite clear, though it's strange. Whoever wrote this, wrote it backwards.'
'The rabbi,' said Phryne, delighted to confuse this confusing man in her turn, 'is used to writing Hebrew, which goes from right to left.'
He gave her a puzzled look before he went on, 'The rest of the steps are expressed the same way. Dashed peculiar way of setting out a process but there you are, scientists are odd bods.' Then he started like a guilty thing surprised, and leapt to his feet. 'Oh, gosh, Miss Fisher, please excuse me. That's the doorbell. My wife will be feeding little Bobbie ... back in a moment. Keep stirring. Don't let it boil!'
He was gone with a slam of the door and flourish of his lab coat, and Phryne was torn between extreme frustration and a serious fit of the giggles. She had never, not even when someone had insisted on explaining political economy to her, been so thoroughly informed without having the faintest idea of what was happening. But he understood the formula, which was good, and it was some sort of discovery, which was excellent. Yossi might get his guns for Zion after all, though he would not be able to buy them in Australia. And he might decide that violence was not a solution, and try and make peace with the inhabitants after all. Try as she might, Phryne could not imagine a Jewish State. What language would it speak? How would it live? And what would persuade people who had big houses and good jobs and flourishing businesses to move to the other side of the world where they were emphatically not welcome and work breaking rocks in a desert, probably while being shot at?
Patently impossible.
The colourless fluids in the large vessel did not actually bubble, but something was happening in them. Before Phryne had time to worry about a) whether the scientist had been kidnapped or b) whether the laboratory was about to explode, the young man with the curly hair was back, bearing a tray of tea. There was a silver teapot, milk jug and sugar basin, but the Royal Doulton cups were mismatched to bone china saucers. Dr Treasure's household, Phryne thought, was not short of a shilling.
'Sorry it took so long, it was the chap next door wanting to talk about the rates, and when people around here talk about rates the conversation can get positively passionate. Will you be mother?'
Phryne, resigned to deferred explanation, poured the tea.
It was good tea and there was tea cake to go with it. Dr Treasure informed Phryne that he had come to Australia because he had been in the Great War and couldn't bear Europe.
'The fields look green, but they are bloodsoaked, for the longest time men have been killing each other in Europe, and I was sick of it. So I came here. Australia has no history. I like that in a country.' He made a broad gesture, distributing cinnamon and sugar. 'It's spacious and it's civilized. They don't trust chaps like me here, and they have good reason. Look what science did in the war,' he said soberly. 'We found new and horrible ways to kill people. I decided that we had to be useful, or there was no excuse for us.'
Phryne murmured agreement. His fresh face and bright eyes were charming.
'Funny thing,' he said, 'I heard a rumour that someone had actually succeeded in doing this, but I discounted it. It's a philosopher's stone, you know, an impossible dream. Now, I have the other reagents, acid and a salt, and if I just pour them into the mixture very gently,' he did this without spilling a drop, 'now all we have to do is wait. Shall we have some more tea?' he asked chattily.
'What are we waiting for?' asked Phryne, refilling his cup.
'Why, for polymerization. Should be visible any tick of the clock—if the formula works.'
'I can see something,' said Phryne.
'Yes, there's the little chap,' commented Dr Treasure.
The mixture was thickening before Phryne's eyes. As the reagents mixed, they were forming some sort of compound. It was cooling and hardening, until there was perhaps half a pound of the substance.
Then Dr Treasure siphoned off the remaining fluid and spilled the substance into a glass dish. It was as thick as cream and beige in colour.
'Not long now,' he told Phryne. 'Soon find out if it works.'
'What is it doing?'
'Coagulating, I hope.' Dr Treasure picked up his tea cup. He was not calm, but excited. Phryne could hear his breathing quickening. He really wanted to know if this was going to work.
So did Phryne. She finished her tea and replaced the cups on the tray and put the tray out of reach of any wild gestures. She didn't think that Mrs Treasure would view the advancement of science as any excuse for the loss of Royal Doulton china.
'Oh, yes,' whispered Dr Treasure.
He reached into the glass dish and pulled off a piece of the compound, which was now almost solid, darkening a little as it hardened. He offered it to Phryne reverently, in both hands, like a priest handling the host.
It was soft, warm and gave when poked. It rolled easily into a ball. Somewhere Phryne had seen something like it. She racked her memory.
A twin of the object she was now holding had been found in dead Shimeon Ben Mikhael's pocket.
'Why, it's rubber,' she said. 'It's artificial rubber.'
'That's what it is,' Dr Treasure affirmed. 'It's artificial rubber. And I just made it. I just made artificial rubber!'
He gathered Phryne into an embrace and kissed her.
Fourteen
Cut that in three which nature hath made One Then strengthen hit, even by itself alone, Werewith then cutte the poudred Sonne in twayne, By lengthe of tyme, and heale the wounde again.
John Dee, Monas Heiroglyphica
She was almost at her own door when someone grabbed for her handbag.
At first she thought that she had caught the strap on a rosebush. Her neighbour loved roses beyond anything and was prone to forbid a blade to bruise a twig. But when she reached back to free it, she encountered a hand.
'Never drag, always yield,' her street fighting lessons came to mind. Therefore she did not pull against the grasp, which might have broken the strap, but threw herself unexpectedly backwards. She heard a grunt as her Louis heel impacted on an instep, and she spun, hands out, ready to kick or to flee.