"Thurber, there's enough nitroglycerin here to blow this wagon and all us with it to dust." "Now if you still want to steal it, go ahead." " Mr. Paladin." " Hey Boy!" "Hey Boy, do you do these things on purpose?" "Oh, I didn't realize you know that lady." "Well, I didn't know her, and thanks to you, I probably never will." "What do you want?" "Mr. Cartwright asks if he can see you." "The assistant manager?" "Well..." "I had thought my bill was all paid up to date." "No, no, no, nothing of that nature at all." "Your account with the hotel has never been in question." "Actually, it's in the nature of a favor." "Though, of course, the hotel would expect to arrange for some proper remuneration." "What sort of a favor, Mr. Cartwright?" "It's that European person." "Uh, Swedish I think he said." "And when I saw his letter of credit from the Bank of England," "I gave him the Presidential Suite without a moment's hesitation." "At that time, the name meant nothing to me." "It might just has easily have been Smith or Jones as Nobel." "Alfred Nobel?" "Yes." "Yes, that's who he is." "Here." "The story's right here in the paper." ""Swedish inventor of blasting gelatin in San Francisco." ""Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor, is at residence in the Hotel Carlton of this city." ""He plans a series of demonstrations of his blasting gelatin, which he calls a nitroglycerin compound."" "Well, you see?" "No, I'm afraid I don't." "Here." "Five room cancellations just since that story came out in the paper this morning." "Mr. Nobel sent word to the desk that he specifically wanted to see you." "And I just thought that since you'd be talking to him anyway, uh, perhaps you could suggest to him that he might find, uh, more suitable quarters." "Yes?" "Come in!" "I will be with you directly." "Thank you." "Mr. Nobel?" "Forgive me, but I've been forced to prepare some new supplies of my nitroglycerin compound." "There has been a very regrettable, uh... what would you say in the American phrase... a mix-up, very regrettable." "Completely wrong shipment." "Mineral oil." "Pure, simple mineral oil." "You mean that somebody has your nitroglycerin by mistake?" "Yes, I'm afraid that may be the case." "But I've been put on to a gentlemen who may be able to trace it down for me." "A Mister..." "A gentlemen named Paladin." "I'm Paladin." "Oh, I see." "Forgive me." "Would you be so kind as to hold this a moment?" "This, I take it, is some of your nitroglycerin?" "Yes, but it is quite safe, as long as the chemical balances are not unduly altered." "I will show you." "Mr. Nobel, I would be very happy to take your word for that." "Of course." "But contamination is a distinct problem." "Here." "It should decompose and explode in a matter of 30 seconds." "25." "20." "Oh, there is no danger at all, you understand." "The container is two-inch thick lead, insulated by cotton batting." "Eight seconds." "Five." "Do you realize, sir, the implications this substance of mine holds for all mankind?" "I'm afraid I do." "I have calculated that effectively placed, fewer than 500 containers of nitroglycerine could essentially destroy the entire city of London." "Think of that!" "I would prefer not to." "But I can imagine what war will be like now." "But there will be no more war." "My invention will insure peace, I am certain of it." "Each nation will now have the means to destroy the other." "No army would dare to march." "When each government has supplies of nitroglycerin at its command, a balance of terror will exist." "Then, finally, there will be peace in the world because no one would dare to begin such carnage." "No one but a madman with power." "In the course of human history, hasn't there always been a ready supply of men like that?" "Hannibal ravaged Rome with swords, spears." "Rome destroyed Carthage with the same weapons." "Genghis Khan found bows and arrows adequate to his purposes, and Napoleon managed to slaughter half the population of Europe with flintlocks." "But nitroglycerin is not like bows and arrows or spears." "It is entirely different." "It is the ultimate weapon." "And human nature remains the same." "No." "No." "When men truly understand my invention, when they realize that its power can be used for good, to move mountains, build dams, change the course of rivers and turn deserts into farmland, then, surely, they will choose that rather than their own destruction." "Why, those ten missing containers alone are enough..." "Enough to destroy half this city." "Have the authorities been notified?" "No, it might cause a panic." "Well, it should be easy enough to trace, providing it hasn't fallen into the wrong hands." "Well..." "According to the shipping company records, this should be it." "Dr. Mono?" "You got customers." "Ah!" "Gentlemen!" "No need to tell why you've sought me out." "Nervous palpitations brought on by a disbalance of fluids throughout the system." "You came to the right place, sir, and may I say barely in time." "Dr. Mono's Wonder Nerve Elixir." "I am not suffering from nervous palpitations." "I am looking for a Sam Thurber." "Are you, uh..." "Are you bill collectors?" "No, it's about to a misrouted shipment." "Oh, you mean about this stuff here?" "Well, let me tell you something, I ain't about to pay for that stuff." "I ordered mineral oil, and they sent me me some kind of glycerin." "One thing Sam Thurber ain't is a chump." "Yes, this is it." "There are only nine boxes of it." "Where is the other box?" "I mixed up a batch of goods with it, but it tasted pretty awful." "I had to get rid of it by hawking it off at half-price south of Mission." "I got a couple of bottles of it around here someplace." "Get me a bottle of that bile mix." "Ahh!" "There you are." "Alcohol." "And vanilla." "This is very dangerous." "The chemical decomposition has probably set in already." "Well, then that stuff could go off any minute." "Not necessarily." "It depends upon the rate of decomposition, which in turn depends on the interaction of the ingredients." "I must have all of this mixture back." "I don't know." "That other stuff I put in there is pretty costly." "I wouldn't want to... $100?" "Uh, drag out the other bottle of that bad bile mix." "Now just a minute." "Whoa!" "Whoa!" "Aah!" "I'll get it." "How many bottles of this did you sell?" " 17 of them." " Thank you." "We must find those 17 bottles." "Wait a minute." "What about this stuff?" "It is stable." "This is our main concern." "Nobel, I can't leave this here with him." "You are right." "What a minute!" "What about my mineral oil?" "We'll send you the mineral oil from the hotel." "Look!" "I found another one." "Except it's almost empty." "Well, throw it out." "Yeah." "No wonder they paid so much to get that stuff back." "But I think I know somebody who will pay even better." "Liver tonic?" "Nope, don't think so." "Well, It was sold around the neighborhood." "Perhaps you've seen somebody else with a bottle like this." "Oh, that stuff." "My old woman bought some of it." "Couldn't gall it down, though." "I've been using it to grease axles." "Aah!" "Here it is." "Stuff ain't no good for man, beast, or wagon, though." "All it done was smoke up and fizzle when I put it on the axle." "Here, let me show you." "Sir, I'd be very happy to take your word for that." "$10?" "And I will pay the same to anyone else who has a bottle of this." "Oh." "I'll sure enough tell anybody I see." "Just a moment." "May it see it for just a moment, please?" "Dr. Mono apparently has a label for every ailment." "The other three bottles, please." "Sure!" "Hey, you!" "You!" " You wanna a drink?" " No, but I want that bottle." "Oh, no you don't!" "Ha ha!" "No!" "The best stuff I ever had!" "It's got a real kick to it!" "I know!" "I'll pay you for it." "Oh, no, you don't!" "We must get this man quick to a doctor." "In large doses, it is poisonous." "And you were going to create a balance of terror?" "Give everybody in the world nitroglycerin?" "What about this, the innocent misuse, the regrettable mistake?" "Death by miscalculation." "But I will tell them." "And they will listen?" "Yes, yes." "The decomposition is following an exact molecular ratio." "Can you tell now how long the compound will remain stable?" "Yes, within approximate limits." "By 11:00 tomorrow morning, the mixture will have reached a point of spontaneous explosion." "After that, any slightest jar, hardly more than a pin drop, will be enough to..." "Mr. Nobel, how large an area would one of the bottles effect?" "It would depend on several factors, the degree of compression, the vector of impact forces." "At the very least, it would be extensive... too extensive." "Nine bottles of Dr. Mono's cure-all still loose in this city." " We dump these into the bay." " No, no!" "The shock waves would open the seams of the stoutest ships." "Don't you see?" "That is why ships of war are through, finished." "Then the only thing we can do is find those other bottles and get them out of the city." "But how do we find them?" "Yeah." "Well, it's too late to trace them." "I think the only thing we can do is circulate warnings through the city, have the bottles hopefully brought to one specific point for collection." "Yes, but we would still need someone willing to take the bottles out of the city for disposal." "And with the risk involved, I do not know where I would hire such a man." "Mr. Nobel..." "You already have hired him." "I meant, of course, where I would find such a man to accompany me." ""Any person or persons possessing bottles of Dr. Mono's Liver and Bile Tonic..."" ""Dr. Mono's Skin Salve, Dr. Mono's Kidney Tonic," ""Dr. Mono's Catar Solvent, and/or any other preparations of a similar..."" ""nature, will place the said bottle on that section of Terman Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues no later than 7 A. M. Thursday morning."" "They're offering $50 gold for every bottle." "$50!" "Half a bottle of that stuff will blow in the whole side of a bank." "$50." "Ha!" "Well, they ain't cheating Sam Thurber that easy." "Come on!" "That is all of them, all 17 bottles." "Time?" "26 minutes past the hour of 8." "We can't make any time on this route they've got roped off." "We may make it, and then again we may not." "But the mixture might remain stable past 11." "Then again it might break down in the next five minutes." "Isn't that possible?" "Yes." "Time?" "17 minutes before 11." "How far now, Mr. Paladin?" "Just over a mile." "Whoa." "Whoa." "Is it possible to repair it?" "We just don't have the equipment or the time to fool with it." "Whoa!" "How much time?" "Nine moments." "You'd better pray your calculations were wrong." "Now when I lift up on this wagon, push that wheel on the axle the best you can." "Hold it!" "All right, I'm taking over this buckboard." "Thurber, there's enough nitroglycerin in this buckboard to blow you and us, the buckboard and that hill to dust!" "I know it, and I'm selling the whole batch for a big fat price." "But you do not understand!" "The compound is no longer pure!" "The people I'm selling it to won't know the difference." "And don't go for that gun." "All right." "Come on, come on." "Thurber, you wanna steal this wagon, huh?" "All right, you go ahead." "You steal it." "But I do not understand." "There will always be men who do not understand." "But they do not see what it means to have that amount of nitroglycerin." "They see, but their vision is too narrow." "Exactly one moment before." "Montaigne observed that men did not invent devils, they merely looked within themselves." "Yes, but they also found the stuff of angels there, too." "One will triumph." "Which one?" ""Have Gun Will Travel"" "Reads the card of a man" "A knight without armor in a savage land" "His fast gun for hire" "Heeds the calling wind" "A soldier of fortune" "Is the man called Paladin" "Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam?" "Paladin, Paladin, far, far from home"