The Golden Gizmo Read Online Free PDF Page B

from the kitchen told Toddy where he was. Toddy set his box upon the old-fashioned library table, and went on back to the rear room.
    As usual, the swarthy and sullen Italian who delivered Milt's beer was late, and, as usual, Milt was reading him off. He followed the man to the back door, gesticulating, complaining with humorous querulousness.
    "Have you no sense of the importance of things? Is there no way I can appeal to you? Suppose I had run out! What then, loafer? That means nothing to you, eh, that I should be left here without so much as a swallow-"
    The roar of the delivery truck shut off his protest. Muttering, face pink with outrage, he faced Toddy.
    "I ask you, my friend, what should I do with such a dummox? What would you do in my case?"
    "Just what you do," Toddy chuckled. "You wouldn't know what to do if you didn't have that guy to fight with every night. Anyway, I'll bet you've got your refrigerator full of beer."
    "But the principle involved! The fact that I exercise a certain foresight does not affect the principle."
    "Okay," said Toddy. "I think I'll drink a bottle of this warm, if you don't mind. On a night like this, I-"
    " Stop!"
    "Huh!" Toddy jerked his hand away from the beer case.
    "Never!" said Milt with mock severity. "Never in my house will such a sacrilege be permitted. Warm beer? Ugh! Aside from the shock to the senses, there is no telling what the physical results might be."
    "But I like-"
    "I will do nothing to nourish such an unnatural appetite. Come! I will get us some that is only mildly cold."
    Milt took two bottles from the bottom of the overflowing refrigerator and carried them into the living room. They took chairs on opposite sides of the table, toasted each other silently, and then went to work at grading and weighing the gold.
    This, checking-in time, was virtually the only time of day when the scales were in use. Simply by hefting it, any good gold-buyer can tell what an article weighs within a margin of a few grains. His clients can't, of course. They have only the vaguest idea as to the weight of the things they sell. They live in a world of ounces and pounds. and they remain there, if the buyer has his way. He won't use his scales unless he has to.
    In dealing with Milt, a wholesale buyer, the scales were, naturally, necessary. Estimated weights, correct within a few grains, were not good enough. A grain is only one-four-hundred-and eighth of a troy ounce, but multiplied by several dozen purchases it might cost the wholesaler his week's profit. As for the grading, that went swiftly. The quality of gold is determined by its brightness, and it was seldom that either Milt or Toddy lingered over an article.
    Toddy took the bills which Milt gave him, and stuffed them into his wallet. A good day, yes, but if he could turn that watch, that pound of twenty-four-karat bullion now hidden in the back of his dresser drawer… If there was some way of tapping the source of that watch-
    "There is," said Milt, "something troubling you, my friend?"
    "Oh no." Toddy shook his head. "Just daydreaming. Tell me something, will you, Milt?"
    "If I can, yes."
    "Where would-how much scrap gold like this would it take to make a pound of twenty-four karat?"
    "Well," Milt hesitated. "Your question is a little vague. Scrap of what quality-ten, fourteen, eighteen karat? Say it was all fourteen, well, that is easily estimated. Fourteen karat is sixty per cent pure. Roughly, it would take not quite two pounds of fourteen to refine into one pound of twenty-four."
    Toddy whistled. "Where would you get that much gold, Milt?"
    "I would not. So much gold, why it is more than two or three of my boys would take in in a week. And if I did buy it, I would not refine it into twenty-four. Why should I? It would gain me nothing. The mint would pay me no more for a pound of twenty-four karat than it would for two pounds, or whatever the exact figure is, of fourteen."
    "Suppose you didn't sell it to the mint?"
    "But where else