The Sun Chemist Read Online Free PDF

here, they aren’t in tubes. Might take the smell.’ He pondered a moment uncertainly. The cupboards had numerous fitted drawers. Verochka had kept her underwear here. As the correspondence showed, she had made very careful specifications for this range of cupboards. She’d driven the celebrated German architect Mendelsohn half mad. Verochka had become something of a madam as her Chaimchik had risen in the world. ‘I know.’ He went to another cupboard at the far end of the room and lovingly enriched it with the precious casket. ‘That chap wasn’t attacked for his money. They were after the letters.’
    ‘What chap?… Hopcroft? ’ ‘I said, amazed.
    ‘I’ll smoke one of those tonight. My word, that’s very handsome , Igor,’ he said. ‘Yes, we’ve been having some nonsense here. You haven’t picked up any science from these letters?’
    ‘I haven’t got any scientific letters. Bergmann has them.’
    ‘You’ll pick up a bit.’ An accent of somewhere – London, N.W., perhaps–slightly asserted itself. He’d come to Palestine in 1920, had been the New York Times correspondent for years, associated with Meyer for even longer. ‘They have got keen here on Weizmann’s acetone process,’ he said. ‘It cropped up when Bergmann was in America during the oil crisis. You can make petrol from it.’
    ‘From acetone?’
    ‘Vava turned it into ketones. Do you know about ketones?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘They put the kick into petrol. That’s what that letter was. The one to Fritz Haber that you sent to Connie.’
    I tried to remember the letter. It was in German. I couldn’t remember a thing about it, except that the name Vava had cropped up, and I’d ringed it.
    ‘So now they’re all at it,’ Julian said. ‘You can make the stuff anywhere. All this crisis they’re having in the West and Japan and everywhere, they don’t need it. Any piddling little country can just make its own, and the Arabs can go back to being Arabs instead of the financiers of the world.’
    ‘Are you serious?’
    ‘Weizmann was, and he was a damned good chemist. He got blocked by the oil interests. He sent Churchill a stinker on the subject. They’re digging all the stuff out of the files now. Your Vava letter started a few things.’
    I stared at him. Churchill, oil interests, energy crisis.
    ‘You see, Hopcroft was mugged ,’ I said. ‘He had six pounds in his wallet, which they took from him. I saw him in hospital the day before yesterday.’
    ‘Yes. Connie told me. Unlikely. Other stuff has gone missing, too, you see. Bergmann passed the word round in America. A chap got hit on the head in a place called Terre Haute, in Indiana. That’s where Commercial Solvents was, the outfit that handled Weizmann’s processes. This chap had picked up a pile of correspondence and two men came and took it off him while he was going to his car. He’s dead. We only heard about it yesterday or I’d have warned you. We won’t be seeing your papers.’
    ‘But Hopcroft didn’t have any,’ I said.
    ‘Well, they’ll know that now. He was gabby, Hopcroft, wasn’t he?’
    ‘He is gabby,’ I said. ‘He’s perfectly all right. I saw him.’
    ‘That’s all right, then.’
    ‘Olga is going to post the papers. She said so. She is going to do it on Thursday.’ I suddenly realized it was Thursday. She was popping down to Wimbledon today. Her husband wouldn’t be there. It seemed suddenly a very long way away.
    ‘Yes. Doubtful. Have a cup of coffee. Nellie!’ he called.
    Nellie came in. I’d heard her slowly typing next door. She was his secretary. She worked in what had been the nurse’s room, next door to Chaimchik’s room. She was a tiny, white-haired, lamblike creature, very gentle. ‘Hello, Igor,’ she said softly. ‘I saw you flit by.’
    ‘This man has brought me a present of cigars from his friend Castro,’ Julian said. ‘He deserves a cup of coffee.’
    I heard Nellie clacking slowly and precisely down the marble