"Hiding Place" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

later. The hint came in an old progress report that had been filed away and
forgotten. It wasn't much, but it was enough to start them looking for Burroughs
again. And when he wasn't willing to talkЧthey knew."
"They'd been working in the laboratory on the same general problem all the
time?" Bales asked.
"Full speed ahead. But no luck."
"Then there's nothing to do but keep watching him," said Bales.
But there was something else to do, and he knew it. No use telling it to Ridley
though. Not when they were both thinking of a handsome bonus, and what one man
got the other would undoubtedly lose.
Keeping an eye on Burroughs wouldn't get them anywhere. They could watch his
comings and goings for the next week or month or year, and learn nothing. The
thing to do was to use their brains.
Twelve years, and nobody else had hit on it in the laboratory. That meant that
the discovery Burroughs had made was a lucky accident. It mightn't be made again
for another hundred yearsЧa thousand. And yet Burroughs had said people would
eventually be able to use itЧ
It was Poe all over again, the "Purloined Letter" lying around in plain sight.
Only, they weren't as simple-minded as Poe's detective had been. When they
searched, they searched everything. Everything physical, that is. They hadn't
been able to search Burrough's mind.
Bales was beginning to know something about that mind. Burroughs was not a man
who cared much for physical comforts, and he wouldn't have chosen a physical
hiding place, either. It would have to be something in plain mental sight.
Bales finally said with pretended weariness, "I don't think he intends to leave
the house. I'm going down the street for a few drinks. Maybe I'll get an idea."
But he didn't want a drink. Whatever fictional detectives might say, he had
never found that alcohol improved his powers of reasoning. Detectives and the
people who wrote about them might drink at their work. Einstein and company
didn't. All he needed was to get away from Ridley and have time to arrange his
thoughts. The answer was in his grasp, it must be, or Burroughs wouldn't have
considered putting the dog on him.
He went down the street into a cheap, almost deserted restaurant, and got
himself a cup of coffee.
A mental hiding place. Now, what would that be?
Somebody elseТs brain? No good. A man died, the brain died, and the hiding place
died too. Look at that Latin teacher. A book? That would be both physical and
mental. But they wouldn't have overlooked that. After they had read that old
progress report they must have gone through every piece of paper in Burroughs'
place.
They'd have read every book, paid attention to every note scribbled in the
margins. Besides, that was out because it wasn't in plain mental sight. People
wouldn't be able, when the time came, to find it, to use it.
Three cups of coffee got him nowhere. He left the restaurant and began to walk
the streets.
A mental hiding place. A mechanical brain? No, it didn't fit, any more than a
human brain would have fitted. A phonograph record? A tape recording?
Bales' eyes narrowed. He'd have to check with Ridley about that.
But it was no good. The next day he didn't ask any direct questions, but he got
Ridley talking, and it was plain that this couldn't be the answer. Besides,