y insanity outweighs the promises I
have made of reward from you and causes him to run from me. My love to
Mama, the siblings and yourself and kindly regards to the great magnate.

Joe"

_69._ About the same time I also received a letter which somehow got
through the protective screening of my secretaries:

"Albert Weener,
Savoy Hotel,
Thames Embankment, WC1.

"Sir:
You may recall making an offer I considered premature. It is now no
longer so. I am at home afternoons from 1 until 6 at 14, Little Bow
Street, EC3 (3rd floor, rear).
Josephine Spencer Francis"

In spite of her rudeness at our last meeting, my good nature caused me
to send a cab for her. She wore the identical gray suit of years before
and her face was still unlined and dubiously clean.

"How do you do, Miss Francis? I'm glad to find you among the lucky ones.
Nowadays if we don't hear from old friends we automatically assume their
loss."

She looked at me as one scans an acquaintance whose name has been
embarrassingly forgotten. "There is no profit for you in this
politeness, Weener," she said abruptly. "I am here to beg a favor."

"Anything I can do for you, Miss Francis, will be a pleasure," I assured
her.

She began using a toothpick, but it was not the oldfashioned gold
one--just an ordinary wooden splinter. "Hum. You remember asking me to
superintend gathering specimens of _Cynodon dactylon_?"

"Circumstances have greatly altered since then," I answered.

"They have a habit of doing so. I merely mentioned your offer because
you coupled it with a chance to advance my own research as an
inducement. I am on the way to develop the counteragent, but to advance
further I need to make tests upon the living grass itself. The World
Control Congress has refused me permission to use specimens. I have no
private means of evading their fiat."

"An excellent thing. The decrees of the congress are issued for the
protection of all."

"Hypocrisy as well as unctuousness."

"What do you expect me to do?"

"You have a hundred hireling chemists, all of them with a string of
degrees, at your service. I want to borrow two of them and be landed on
some American mountain, above the snowline, where I can continue to
work."

"Besides being illegal--to mention such a thing is apparently
hypocritical--such a hazardous and