Page:Fantastic v08n11 1959-11.djvu/82

Why, as long as ten years ago he'd been the one to get his aunt interested in occultism, but had he reaped any of the benefits of her craze? No! That had been reserved for the slick operators like Mr. Espy, Dr. Yorn, and their dozen or so predecessors. They'd taken hundreds, thousands of dollars from her over the years. She'd even sent money by mail to Tibet, Ceylon and Southern California "to further occult research," while he, who'd started the whole thing, was lucky if from time to time he got a few cans of corned beef hash or spaghetti from her pantry hoard!

Not that Ronald lay awake nights scheming how to murder his aunt without being suspected or how to defraud her on a large scale. He wasn't that sort of person at all. He just grieved occasionally that a man with a commanding gaze and a confident pseudo-professional manner should be able to charm a twenty-dollar bill out of someone else's pocket and into his own, while he, with ten times the education, ingenuity, and honest idealism, couldn't!

Now if I just had the kind of cheap ability that a Yorn or an Espy has, Ronald told himself, I'd figure out a dozen childishly simple ways to profit from this battery and, what's more important, I'd have the nerve and know-how to put them into action.

He shook his head and shivered. He'd just had a vision of himself, days or months hence, the battery completely dead, finally going to the "proper authorities" with a crazed gleam in his eyes and assuring them that, yes, once this battery had held gravitic energy . . .

What I obviously need, he told himself, is an improper authority.

His gaze lit on Mr. Espy and his aunt talking at the far end of the garden. Almost at once his aunt went inside and Mr. Espy lit a cigarette and began to stroll.

Normally Ronald was anything but a man of action, but sleeplessness and desperation had transformed him. He grabbed the battery and completed the connection. It glowed brilliantly and surged powerfully upward in his hand, the coil consisting now of some twenty turns of tinfoil-wrapped nylon. Ronald headed for the garden.

Strike while the iron is hot, he told himself exultantly. Espy's my man. With this to show him and let him feel it won't take me twenty seconds