my invention is everything I say it is—"

"Henry!"

The little man jumped as if a red-hot flatiron had just been applied to that portion of his trousers designed for sitting.

"Urghk!" he exclaimed profoundly.

"You prying Piltdown[1]!" flamed the professor. "Is there anything you won't do for money?" A moment of thunderous silence. "I'm surprised you're not doing a fan dance yourself, if these would-be Peeping Toms are willing to pay for nakedness."

The red-headed man guffawed.

"And you!" exploded the savant, turning on the spectators. "Get out of here! Yes, all of you, you riffraff! I won't have you on the place!"

Henry's potential customers fled before the Paulsen wrath like chaff before the wind, leaving the quaking little entrepreneur to face his fate alone. He stood braced against the verbal cloud-burst, eyes squeezed tight shut behind steel-rimmed glasses, goatee sticking straight out.

"For days these snoopers have driven me half-crazy!" raged the professor. "I've tried every trick I could think of to keep them out. I've put signs forbidding trespassing on every tree. I've threatened mayhem and murder. Yet still they come!"

"But Joseph—"

"Keep quiet 'til I'm finished, you disgrace to science!" The lean scholar ran trembling fingers through his greying hair. Then:

"And now—today! Major Coggleston and I go down to the end of the meadow to drive three of the sneaking human dung beetles away from knot-holes. When we get back, what do we find?"

"Joseph, please—"

"We find you—my colleague, my partner, my friend! You—peddling the use of your binoculars to the slimy creatures!" He glared savagely at his victim. "If you were in Paris, Henry Horn, you'd be selling French postcards to tourists!"

Still purple with rage, the savant turned away. Stared dourly back toward the high board fence that surrounded the nudists.

The next instant he jerked as stiff as if an electric shock had jolted through him.

"Henry!"

"Yes, Joseph." The other's voice was meekly plaintive as he awaited a renewal of the diatribe.

"Henry, that fence is between us and the nudists! How could you see them, binoculars or not?"

Henry's face brightened. His goatee moved to a more confident angle.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you, Joseph," he explained. "It's my new invention—"

"Invention!" There was a hysterical note in the way Professor Paulsen exclaimed the word. "Please, Henry, not that! Don't tell me you've been inventing again—"

His little colleague bristled.

"And why shouldn't I be inventing, Joseph Paulsen?" he demanded querulously. "My inventions are mighty valuable. Why my new explosive—"[2]

"—Which you ran onto quite by accident, and which turned out not to be an explosive at all," the professor cut in grimly.

"Well, the government—"

"The government doesn't have to live with you. Nor to put up with your 'inventive' ways." Henry's tall partner was fierce in his vehemence. "You've cited one of your devil's devices that turned out well. Well, now let me mention a few. Remember what happened when you decided to find the universal solvent[3]?"

"But scientists all make mistakes sometimes, Joseph—"

"And how about that time you wiped out every peony within ten miles? Was that a mistake too?"

"Honestly, I didn't think it would kill anything but ragweed," Henry