"Well, sure," he replied. "You can't afford to look chintzy."
* * *
My appetite was not at its best that evening, and Marjorie recognized
that something was concerning me, but she asked no questions, and I only
told her about the success of the kite, and the youngsters embarking on
a shopping trip for paper, glue and wood splints. There was no use in
both of us worrying.
On Friday we all got down to work, and presently had a regular
production line under way; stapling the wood splints, then wetting them
with a resin solution and shaping them over a mandrel to stiffen,
cutting the plastic film around a pattern, assembling and hanging the
finished kites from an overhead beam until the cement had set. Pete Cope
had located a big roll of red plastic film from somewhere, and it made a
wonderful-looking kite. Happily, I didn't know what the film cost until
the first kites were sold.
By Wednesday of the following week we had almost three hundred kites
finished and packed into flat cardboard boxes, and frankly I didn't
care if I never saw another. Tommy, who by mutual consent, was our
authority on sales, didn't want to sell any until we had, as he put it,
enough to meet the demand, but this quantity seemed to satisfy him. He
said he would sell them the next week and Mary McCready, with a fine
burst of confidence, asked him in all seriousness to be sure to hold out
a dozen.
Three other things occurred that day, two of which I knew about
immediately. Mary brought a portable typewriter from home and spent part
of the afternoon banging away at what seemed to me, since I use two
fingers only, a very creditable speed.
And Hilary brought in a bottle of his new detergent. It was a syrupy
yellow liquid with a nice collar of suds. He'd been busy in his home
laboratory after all, it seemed.
"What is it?" I asked. "You never told us."
Hilary grinned. "Lauryl benzyl phosphonic acid, dipotassium salt, in 20%
solution."
"Goodness." I protested, "it's been twenty-five years since my last
course in chemistry. Perhaps if I saw the formula--."
He gave me a singularly adult smile and jotted down a scrawl of symbols
and lines. It meant little to me.
"Is it good?"
For answer he seized the ice bucket, now empty of its soda bottles,
trickled in a few drops from the bottle and swished the contents. Foam
mounted to the rim and spilled over. "And that's our best grade of
Ridgeville water," he pointed out. "Hardest in the country."
The third event of Wednesday came to my ears on Thursday morning.
I was a little late arriving at the barn, and was taken a bit aback to
find the roadway leading to it rather full of parked automobiles, and
the barn itself rather full of people, including two policemen. Our
Ridgeville police are quite young men, but in uniform they still look
ominous and I was relieved to see that they were laughing and evidently
enjoying themselves.
"Well, now," I demanded, in my best classroom voice. "What is all this?"
"Are you Henderson?" the larger policeman asked.
"I am indeed," I said, and a flash bulb went off. A young lady grasped
my arm.
"Oh, please, Mr. Henderson, come outside where it's quieter and tell me
all about it."
"Perhaps," I countered, "somebody should tell me."
"You mean you don't know, honestly? Oh, it's fabulous. Best story I've
had for ages. It'll make the city papers." She led me around the corner
of the barn to a spot of comparative quiet.
"You didn't know that one of your junior whatsisnames poured detergent
in the Memorial Fountain basin last night?"