“Well.” He hesitated. “The further the two foci separated are, the more flexible the bond. It must a certain length be before into the present it can he drawn. In other words, I must at least one hundred fifty years into the past go.”

“I see,” I said (not that I really did). “Let’s summarize.”

I tried to sound like a lawyer. “You want to bring something from the past out of which you can coin a little capital. It’s got to he something that exists and which you can see, so it can’t be a lost object of historical or archaeological value. It’s got to weigh less than a thirtieth of an ounce, so it can’t he the Kullinan diamond or anything like that. It’s got to be at least one hundred and fifty years old, so it can’t be a rare stamp.”

“Exactly,” said my uncle Otto. “You’ve got it.”

“Got what?” I thought two seconds. “Can’t think of a thing,” I said. “Well, good-bye, Uncle Otto.”

I didn’t think it would work, but I tried to go.

It didn’t work. My uncle Otto’s hands came down on my shoulders and I was standing tiptoe on an inch of air.

“You’ll wrinkle my jacket, Uncle Otto.”

“Harold,” he said. “As a lawyer to a client, you owe me more than a quick good-bye.”

“I didn’t take a retainer,” I managed to gargle. My shirt collar was beginning to fit very tightly about my neck. I tried to swallow and the top button pinged off.

He reasoned, “Between relatives a retainer is a formality. As a client and as an uncle, you owe me absolute loyalty. And besides, if you do not help me out I will tie your legs behind your neck and dribble you like a basketball.”

Well, as a lawyer, I am always susceptible to logic. I said, “I give up. I surrender. You win.”

He let me drop. And then – this is the part that seems most unbelievable to me when I look back at it all – I got an idea.

It was a whale of an idea. A piperoo. The one in a lifetime that everyone gets once in a lifetime.

I didn’t tell Uncle Otto the whole thing at the time. I wanted a few days to think about it. But I told him what to do. I told him he would have to go to Washington. It wasn’t easy to argue him into it, but, on the other hand, if you know my uncle Otto, there are ways.

I found two ten-dollar bills lurking pitifully in my wallet and gave them to him.

I said, “I’ll make out a check for the train fare and you can keep the two tens if it turns out I’m being dishonest with you.”

He considered. “A fool to risk twenty dollars for nothing you aren’t,” he admitted. He was right, too…

He was back in two days and pronounced the object focused. After all, it was on public view. It’s in a nitrogen-filled, air-tight case, but my uncle Otto said that didn’t matter. And back in the laboratory, four hundred miles away. the focusing remained accurate. My uncle Otto assured me of that, too.

I said, “Two things, Uncle Otto, before we do anything.”

“What? What? What?” He went on at greater length, “What? What? What? What”

I gathered he was growing anxious. I said, “Are you sure that if we bring into the present a piece of something out of the past, that piece won’t disappear out of the object as it now exists?”

My uncle Otto cracked his large knuckles and said, “We are creating new matter, not stealing old. Why else should we enormous energy need?”

I passed on to the second point. “What about my fee?” You may not believe this, but I hadn’t mentioned money till then. My uncle Otto hadn’t either, but then, that follows.

His mouth stretched in a bad imitation of an affectionate smile. “A fee?”

“Ten per cent of the take,” I explained, “is what I’ll need.”

His jowls drooped. “But how much is the take?”

“Maybe a hundred thousand dollars. That would leave you ninety.”

“Ninety thousand – Himmel! Then why do we wait?”

He leaped at his machine and in half a minute the space above the dentist’s tray was agleam with an image of parchment.

It was covered with neat script, closely spaced, looking like an entry for an old-fashioned penmanship prize. At the bottom of the sheet there were names: one large one and fifty-five small ones.

Funny thing! I choked up. I had seen many reproductions, but this was the real thing. The real Declaration of Independence!

I said, “I’ll be damned. You did it.”

“And the hundred thousand?” asked my uncle Otto, getting to the point.

Now was the time to explain. “You see, Uncle, at the bottom of the document there are signatures. These are the names of great Americans, fathers of their country, whom we all reverence. Anything about them is of interest to all true Americans.”

“All right,” grumbled my uncle Otto, “I will accompany you by playing the ’Stars and Stripes Forever’ on my flute.”

I laughed quickly to show that I took that remark as a joke. The alternative to a joke would not hear thinking of. Have you ever heard my uncle Otto playing the “Stars and Stripes Forever” on his flute?

I said, “But one of these signers, from the state of Georgia, died in 1777, the year after he signed the Declaration. He didn’t have much behind him and so authentic examples of his signature was about the most valuable in the world. His name was Button Gwinnett.”

“And how does this help us cash in?” asked my uncle Otto, his mind still fixed grimly on the eternal verities of the universe.

“Here,” I said, simply, “is an authentic, real-life signature of Button Gwinnett, right on the Declaration of Independence.”

My uncle Otto was stunned into absolute silence, and to bring absolute silence out of my uncle Otto, he’s really got to be stunned!

I said, “Now you see him right here on the extreme left of the signature space along with the two other signers for Georgia, Lyman Hall and George Walton. You’ll notice they crowded their names although there’s plenty of room above and below. In fact, the capital G of Gwinnett runs down into practical contact with Hall’s name. So we won’t try to separate them. We’ll get them all. Can you handle that?”

Have you ever seen a bloodhound that looked happy? Well, my uncle Otto managed it.

A spot of brighter light centered about the names of the three Georgian signers.

My uncle Otto said, a little breathlessly, “I have this never tried before.”

“What!” I screamed. Now he told me.

“It would have too much energy required. I did not wish the university to inquire what was in here going on. But don’t worry! My mathematics cannot wrong be.”

I prayed silently that his mathematics not wrong were.

The light grew brighter and there was a humming that filled the laboratory with raucous noise. My uncle Otto turned a knob, then another, then a third.

Do you remember the time a few weeks back when all of upper Manhattan and the Bronx were without electricity for twelve hours because of the damndest overload cut-off in the main power house? I won’t say we did that, because I am in no mood to be sued for damages. But I will say this: The electricity went off when my uncle Otto turned the third knob.

Inside the lab, all the lights went nut and I found my self on the floor with a terrific ringing in my ears. My uncle Otto was sprawled across me.

We worked each other to our feet and my uncle Otto found a flashlight.

He howled his anguish. “Fused. Fused. My machine in ruins is. It has to destruction devoted been.”

“But the signatures?” I yelled at him. “Did you get them?”

He stopped in mid-cry. “I haven’t looked.”

He looked, and I closed my eyes. The disappearance of a hundred thousand dollars is not an easy thing to watch.

He cried, “Ah, ha!” and I opened my eyes quickly. He had a square of parchment in his hand some two inches on a side. It had three signatures on it and the top one was that of Rutton Gwinnett.