“Now it’s too hot to pour into the trash bin,” Danny said. “Let’s take it over to the window sill and let it cool for a minute or two.”
Just as they were lifting it to the sill, there came a loud whistle. A thin dark boy with a mournful expression on his face had come into the garden. Under one arm he carried a football.
“Hi, Dan,” he called. “Hello, Irene. Come on out.”
“Can’t Joe,” Danny replied, resting his elbows on the sill. “We’re busy.”
Joe Pearson, who was Danny’s closest friend, eyed the crucible. “What’s that thing?” he said. “A cooking pot? Or a chemical pot?”
“Both,” Danny grinned. “We’re cooking some chemicals.”
Joe paused, and a wary look came over his face. “Oh—oh,” he said. “Another experiment, eh? When is this one going to explode?”
“It isn’t,” said Danny. “This is Professor Bullfinch’s experiment. I have to throw it away.”
“Won’t he mind?”
“Oh, Joe, don’t be a glop,” said Irene. “He wants us to throw it away.”
“Why? Doesn’t he like it any more?”
“It was an experiment that didn’t work out.”
“I see,” Joe sighed. “There are lots of things about this I will never understand. Just tell me one thing. What’s a glop?”
Irene laughed. “It’s what you are when you talk foolishly.”
“I get it. Looks to me as if we’re all glops together. Well, when are you going to be finished with the throwing away? Because I just got this neat football from George Cahill in a trade. I swapped him my boxing gloves for it.”
They could see, now, that one of Joe’s eyes was swollen and discolored.
“July is a little early for football, isn’t it?” Danny asked.
“Oh, I’m doing my Christmas shopping early,” said Joe airily. “Anyway, I didn’t want the boxing gloves any more. Come on out, and we’ll have a game.”
“Looks like a pretty good ball,” Danny commented.
“In perfect condition.” Joe tossed it up and caught it a few times. The sight was too tempting for Danny.
“Pitch it here,” he said. “Let’s see it.”
Joe drew back his arm.
“Danny,” said Irene. “I really think that’s—”
Joe threw the ball. Danny reached out for it. It hit his fingers and bounded sideways. With a soggy kind of splash, it fell directly into the crucible.
“—not a very good idea,” Irene finished with a sigh.
CHAPTER THREE
“The Answer to All Your Problems!”
Professor Bullfinch led his friend, Dr. A. J. Grimes, into the front hall. They made an amusing pair—the Professor short, plump, and rosy, and Dr. Grimes tall and craggy, with a lean face that looked as if he were perpetually tasting something sour. He put his suitcase down and looked about the hall. In a harsh voice, he said, “Good to be here, Bullfinch.”
The Professor smiled. He could tell—although no one else would have guessed—that Dr. Grimes was laughing heartily, for there were two tiny wrinkles at the corners of his mouth.
“Good to have you here, old man,” said the Professor. “Let’s go into the lab before we get you settled. There’s something I must check on.”
Dr. Grimes rubbed his hands together. “One week of rest,” he said, “and then to work. My deep-diving ship, Bullfinch, is going to be the most perfect undersea laboratory ever seen. All I have to do is work out a few—hrmph!—minor details.”
“Yes, so you wrote me,” said the Professor. “Minor problems! The type of metal to use to resist pressure, the question of space inside the vehicle, the problem of observation—”
“All very minor,” Dr. Grimes interrupted. “Nothing to them. Within the year I’ll be diving into the Pacific Ocean.”
“I certainly hope you’ll have the ship ready by the time you dive,” murmured the Professor. “As I remember it, you’re not a very good swimmer. However, I may have the plastic for the observation window ready for you.”
Dr. Grimes put a lean hand on the Professor’s shoulder. “Now look here, Bullfinch,” he said. “You keep talking as if I were going without you. I’m not. Drat it, man, we don’t always agree but I—well, I just couldn’t go on an expedition like this and leave you home. I’d have no one to argue with!”
The Professor peered up into his friend’s face with a grin. “You touch me, Grimes,” he said. “But I’m not surprised—I have been expecting this. Yes, and I’ll admit I’ve been thinking about it for some time. Why shouldn’t I go? It might be a pleasant vacation.”
“Vacation? Don’t be absurd. We’ll be working hard. We might find a moment or two for relaxation, but no more. Well, what do you say?”
The Professor stroked his chin pensively. Then he said abruptly, “I’ll do it!”
“Excellent,” said Grimes, and they shook hands.
“Now, what about Danny?” asked the Professor, leading the way down the hall toward the laboratory. “It would be a wonderful trip for the boy.”
Dr. Grimes scowled. “You know my views on children, Bullfinch. They are always in the way. And Danny is reckless and headstrong.”
“I’ll admit he sometimes jumps into things,” the Professor murmured. “But then, he’s a boy, after all. He is essentially very serious, very calm, quiet and reliable—”
As he said this, he threw wide the door. There came a crash of glass, and something hurtled through the air toward the two scientists. Instinctively, Dr. Grimes held up his hands. The object landed right in them.
Danny, Irene, and Joe stood wide-eyed in surprise. Danny held a hammer, and there were bits of broken test tubes scattered about from a rack that had fallen to the floor. Dr. Grimes looked down at the thing he had caught.
“A football!” he sputtered. “Playing football in a laboratory! Is that what you call calm and quiet, or serious and reliable?”
“Gosh, I’m sorry, Dr. Grimes,” said Danny. “It was an accident.”
“Do you expect us to believe you were playing football by accident?” cried Grimes.
“We weren’t playing,” Danny said. “We were trying to break it. I had just hit it with the hammer, and it flew off to one side and knocked over the test tubes and just happened to shoot toward you as you opened the door.”
Professor Bullfinch blinked in a dazed fashion. “Just a moment, Dan,” he said. “For some reason, the more you explain, the more confused I become. You say you were trying to break the ball? But you weren’t playing with it? Why do you want to break it?”
“Professor,” said Danny earnestly, “I don’t think that ball can be broken. I think we’ve invented an unbreakable football!”
Professor Bullfinch slowly took the football from Dr. Grimes’s hands and stared at it. Now he could see that the football itself had been deflated, and that it was inside a very thin shell of plastic. This shell, however, was shaped like a football. The Professor pressed it with his fingers. It was as rigid as steel.
“Perhaps you’d better explain,” he said.
“Really,