late hours to them to explain the use of extra electricity, and I told them you wouldn’t do it again. But you did, and left later—or earlier—than ever! Five o’clock! One of the owners had a man posted to watch.…”
Albert was silent.
“It’s a pity,” the manager said, sighing. “After twenty years of good service. You’ve got to go, though. Don’t blame me—I’m only doing as I’m told. Here are your insurance cards.”
Albert took them and smiled wryly. “Fired, you mean?”
“As from now. Wages up to date and a week ahead. Why the devil you were such a chump I’ll never understand.”
“No, you’ll never understand,” Albert admitted vaguely, pushing the cards in his pocket. “Doesn’t matter much, anyway. I’ve finished what I had to do, which was why I stayed extra late last night.”
“Your reading, you mean?”
“Uh-huh; might as well call it that. Anyway, don’t worry over me. Twenty years in one place is too long anyhow. Wish the staff the best of luck for me, will you?’
The manager nodded slowly, surprise obvious on his round face. He watched Albert leave the office, entirely preoccupied, and the door closed. Still in the same lost frame of mind Albert returned home—and Emily gazed at him as though he were a visitor from Mars.
“You! At this hour! What’s the matter? Feeling ill?”
“No; quite well. Better than I’ve felt for twenty years. Did you never accomplish something, Emmy, just in time before the fall of the axe?”
“Eh?”
Albert sighed and relaxed in the armchair. “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I can understand that you’re at home when you ought to be at work. What’s wrong?”
“I got fired. Working too late and burning too much light. Doesn’t matter. The firm can afford it, and I can’t. Besides, I had everything I needed there, and I haven’t here.”
“Fired, did you say?” Emily gave a start. “Great heavens, you’ve lost your job after twenty years? What did you do?”
“I just told you. But don’t let it worry you. I’ll take a day or two off and then get another job of a totally different type. Something scientific after my own heart.”
Emily looked as though she would open the floodgates, but she did not. She knew, too, that she ought to feel fearful for the future, but here again her emotions did not register that way. Albert was looking mysteriously confident and certainly not like a man who has lost a job and has no other in sight.
It did indeed take him a fortnight to discover a fresh situation—a lowly one indeed—as a cleaner in a laboratory devoted to electronics. Emily could not appreciate that it was the electronics that appealed to Albert, not the humdrum procedure of mopping floors and dusting endless shelves.
The laboratory was one of fifty scattered up and down Britain under the new Science and Electronics legislation, by which all scientists of all European countries were teamed together to pool their knowledge. Every branch of science was included under the new law, but chiefly experimental work in electronics, guided missiles, and tests of interplanetary space were being carried out—this latter by means of high altitude rockets loaded with instruments.
CHAPTER TWO
Into this web-work of science, therefore, came Albert—quiet, mysteriously confident about something, offering himself to No. 9 Laboratory in North London as a cleaner.
“Done laboratory work before?” questioned the sharp-eyed doyen who controlled the establishment.
“No, sir.” Albert gave a meek smile. “I hardly see that cleaning a laboratory can be very different from cleaning anywhere else. It’s simply the process of removing dirt.”
“It is more than that, Simpkins. You may get mixed up with radioactive isotopes and all manner of things. Part of the time you may even have to wear protective suiting. I’m warning you in advance in case the job doesn’t appeal.”
“It appeals immensely, sir. I feel at home amongst scientific apparatus. I’ve studied science as a hobby all my life.”
“I see.” The doyen studied the filing system. “Formerly a chief projectionist, eh? Mmmm, scientific after a fashion. Integrity beyond question. Very well, Simpkins, the job is yours at the salary quoted in the advertisement. You are prepared to sign a bond of fidelity that no word shall ever escape you as to any scientific experiment which you may witness whilst employed here?”
“Quite prepared, sir.”
“Right!” And upon appending his signature, Albert became one of the staff. His salary was far below that which he had formerly earned, but he was entirely happy. Emily, on the other hand, was exactly the opposite, and never forgot to upbraid him every time he returned from his slogging and cleaning.
“I can’t imagine what you’re thinking of!” she declared flatly one evening when she and Albert were alone. “You have a profession in your hands as a projectionist—and in the present cinema boom there’s plenty need of them—and yet you’re content to clean floors!”
“Not by any means, Emmy. I’m learning a lot. All about altitude rockets, supersonics, electronics, and a host of scientific accomplishments. Besides, I’m friendly with several of the senior scientists who’ll always talk to anybody interested in science, even if he is only a cleaner—and they are giving me valuable information.”
“What about, for heaven’s sake?”
“About those theories I’ve been tossing round in my mind for so many years. I’m tying them up now, one by one, and in the finish I’ll have one grand, practical plan. Then things will really happen.”
“What things?” Emily was relentless.
Albert gazed into the fire. “Emmy, I once said that all the unhappiness in the world is caused by selfishness and greed. Suppose something happened to change all that? Suppose people everywhere did the right thing because they just couldn’t do anything else?”
“Ridiculous! More of your crazy dreaming, Albert!”
“No.” Albert shook his head slowly, his eyes having a light in them that Emily had never seen before. “No, Emmy, it isn’t crazy. It’s practical. Everything I am doing is with a fixed purpose. Just leave me alone and wait. A day will come when we’ll not only have all the money we need, but all the happiness as well.… It isn’t natural that living, thinking beings should be anything else but happy. That’s part of my philosophy.”
“Then it’s out of joint! Everybody’s unhappy about something. I defy you to find a really contented person on the face of the earth!”
“At the moment you’re right. But later.…” Albert, however, had drifted off into speculations, and Emily could not get any further explanations from him. Finally she gave it up, and Albert returned to his inevitable magazine.
So, for many weeks, matters pursued an apparently humdrum course. Albert came
