He drew a breath; the hands had not tightened at all. “The tetrodotoxin was a catalyst rather than an end in Millie’s experiments — a tool, you might say. It’s too difficult to isolate in large quantities ever to be considered a weapon. The first I heard of it was when Millie asked me to come and see her fish. She had a large tank of blowfish, and I quite understand why she wanted me to see them. They’re delightful, look a little like marine puppies. I had no idea they were poisonous until she told me about tetrodotoxin, which she intended to isolate herself because the substance is hard to get and very expensive. Millie is a superb technician, I knew obtaining it was well within her level of skill. But it didn’t really impinge, if you know what I mean. That day I was on the verge of making another discovery of my own, so what she was prattling on about was as far from whereabouts my mind was as Mercury is from Pluto. I went back to my own work and forgot all about Millie’s tetrodotoxin.”
“Even though you knew all about this government agency?” Carmine asked incredulously. “Scientists are in the forefront of opposition to exactly the kind of thing this government agency is encouraging, and now I find you actively praising your wife’s source of funding?”
The eyes flashed magnificently. “You squeezed a great deal out of very little, Captain, if you inferred that. What you also appear to forget is that this was Millie. I would never do anything that made her work harder, and the agency involved is, after all, interested in enemy action against us. I know Vietnam is a cancer and I don’t believe a word Nixon says about getting our boys out of there, but Millie’s research has nothing to do with Vietnam or who is in the White House, no matter how shifty — I voted for Hubert Humphrey!” He sat back, folded his arms across his mighty chest, and looked as if he was quite willing to take on half of the Holloman PD.
Carmine let him calm down during five minutes of silence, then: “When did her tetrodotoxin next impinge?” he asked.
“When she came home and told me someone had stolen six hundred milligrams of it. Last Thursday. She was upset enough about it to have gone to her father for advice, so I knew she regarded the theft very seriously. She asked me then if I’d mentioned the stuff to anyone, and I said no because I hadn’t.”
“Did you know where it was? How she’d stored it?” from Buzz.
“Frankly, no. If you’d asked me, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you if it was water-soluble, or actually in solution. In fact, I assumed it was in solution, but I was wrong — she said she’d put it into vacuumed ampoules and refrigerated it. You don’t usually bother doing that with powders, but it added another step to preparing it for use, and once I realized how absolutely lethal it was, I admired her thoroughness.”
“Did she tell you at the time how it affected a victim?” from Carmine.
“No. I was too concerned with cheering her up. And I freely confess that my mind was elsewhere — I was busy with the problem Dr. Tinkerman was going to be. I was terribly worried.”
“Not any more,” said Buzz.
Hunter shot him a reproachful glance. “Oh, come on, guys, what else would I be than worried?” he asked. “All that work writing the book, then the chance of some extra income going down the gurgler because of one man’s power and prejudice? Worried? Sure I was worried! So would any of you be!”
“You have some powerful allies at Chubb, Doctor,” Carmine said. “Instead of churning with worry, why weren’t you trying to have Tinkerman’s stand reversed?”
Jim Hunter writhed, apparently in frustration. “For reasons you wouldn’t understand!” he snapped. “Tinkerman could not halt publication of A Helical God — he couldn’t even bludgeon me into a less intriguing title — but what he could do was refuse to put C.U.P.’s weight behind the book once it was in the stores — take too long shipping orders, refuse to authorise more print runs — that’s how he would have gone about it. Tunbull Printing stand to make big profits — so does C.U.P. itself, for that matter!— but Max already did a bad thing in printing without authorization, and it wouldn’t have been let happen again. So before you decide I’m the one with motive for Tom Tinkerman’s death, you’d better look at the Tunbulls. Or,” he said, leaning forward, excited, “look at any of the other authors who are publishing with C.U.P. but whom Tinkerman detests. He’s the kind of scholar who’d damn a fellow scholar for quibbling about a minor detail in the life of Jesus Christ. There are suspects up the wazoo!”