PAUL WALLACH LOOKED at me as though he’d like to speak but didn’t want to interrupt my train of thoughts. When he could contain himself no longer, he said, “Out with it, Tom.”
“Maybe,” I muttered. “Surely there must be something physical.”
“How so?”
“The tunnel car must be full of it,” I said. “Screws?”
I turned to Saul Graben. Saul is our mechanical genius; give him a sketch made on used Kleenex with a blunt lipstick and he will bring you back a gleaming mechanism that runs like a hundred-dollar wrist watch.
But not this time. Saul shook his head.
“What’s permanent is welded and what’s temporary is snapped in with plug buttons,” he said.
“Good Lord,” I said. “There simply must be something!”
“There probably is,” said Saul. “But this Harla chap would have to use an acetylene torch
