My Uncle Oswald

'Nothing can stop us,' I said. 'You'll win every time so long as you can always reach your man and feed him the powder.'

'It really is fantastic stuff.'

'I found that out in Paris.'

'You don't think it might give some of the very old ones a heart attack, do you?'

'Of course not,' I said, although I had been wondering the same thing myself.

'I don't want to leave a trail of corpses around the world,' she said. 'Especially the corpses of great and famous men.'

'You won't,' I said. 'Don't worry about it.'

'Take for example Alexander Graham Bell,' she said. 'According to you, he is now seventy-two years old. Do you think he could stand up to it?'

'Tough as nuts,' I said. 'All the great men are. But I'll tell you what we might do if it'll make you feel a bit easier. We'll regulate the dose according to age. The older they are, the less they'll get.'

'I'll buy that,' she said. 'It's a good idea.'

I took Yasmin out and treated her to a superb dinner at the Blue Boar. She deserved it. Then I delivered her safely back to Girton.

12

The next morning, carrying the rubbery thing and the signed letter in my pocket, I went looking for A. R. Woresley. They told me in the Science Building that he had not shown up that morning. So I drove out to his house and rang the bell. The diabolic sister came to the door.

'Arthur's a bit under the weather,' she said.

'What happened?'

'He fell off his bike.'

'Oh dear.'

'He was cycling home in the dark and he collided with a pillar-box.'

'I am sorry. Is he much hurt?'

'He's bruised all over,' she said.

'Nothing broken, I hope?'

'Well,' she said, and there was an edge of bitterness to her voice, 'not bones.'

Oh God, I thought. Oh Yasmin. What have you done to him?

'Please offer him my sincere condolences,' I said. Then I left.

The following day, a very fragile A. R. Woresley reported for duty.

I waited until I had him alone in the lab, then I placed before him the sheet of Chemistry Department notepaper containing the legend I had typed out over his own signature. I also dumped about a thousand million of his very own spermatozoa (by now dead) on the bench and said, 'I've won my bet.'

He stared at the obscene rubbery thing. He read the letter and recognized his signature.

'You bounder!' he cried. 'You tricked me!'

'You assaulted a lady.'

'Who typed this?'