nhappily. "I have premonitions of
disaster, but I suppose if we've come this far we should see the
experiment through."

Patricia said ungraciously, "At least the lout will be limited in his
accomplishments by his lack of imagination. Imagine going into that
French girl's dressing room."

"Yeah," Ross said ludicrously trying to make his big open face look
dreamy.

"You wretch," Patricia laughed. "The wedding is off!"

* * * * *

But Crowley was no lout. He was full of the folk wisdom of his people.

_God helps those who help themselves._

_It's each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost._

Not to speak of.

_Never give a sucker an even break._

_If I didn't do it, somebody else would._

Had he been somewhat more of a student he might also have run into that
nugget of the ancient Greek. _Morals are the invention of the weak to
protect themselves from the strong._

Once convinced that the three eggheads were incapable of realizing the
potentialities of their discovery, he had little difficulty in arguing
himself into the stand that he should. It helped considerably to realize
that in all the world only four persons, including himself, were aware
of the existence of the invisibility serum.

He spent the first day in what Marx called in "Das Kapital" the
"original accumulation of capital," although it would seem unlikely that
even in the wildest accusations of the most confirmed Marxist, no great
fortune was ever before begun in such wise.

It was not necessary, he found, to walk into a large bank and simply
seemingly levitate the money out the front door. In fact, that would
have meant disaster. However, large sums of money are to be found
elsewhere on Manhattan and for eleven hours Crowley used his native
ingenuity and American know-how, most of which had been gleaned from
watching TV crime shows. By the end of the day he had managed to
accumulate in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars and was
reasonably sure that the news would not get back to his sponsors. The
fact was, he had cleaned out the treasuries of several numbers rackets
and those of two bookies.

It was important, he well realized, that he be well under way before the
three eggheads decided to lower the boom.

The second day he spent making his preliminary contacts, an operation
that was helped by his activities of the day before. He was beginning
already to get the feel of the underworld