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(Continued from page 50)

"I want you to be sure you know what you're getting into," Casey said. "They won't give up trying to get you, and I can't give you any protection."
"I'll take care of myself."
"I'm not so sure that you can. A punch in the nose isn't going to stop anyone like Sammy Kohler."
"Suppose I get a bodyguard. There's a plain-clothes cop in San Francisco I can borrow for a few days. He's an ex-pug and a gunman. He did the job for me once before."
"How much would you have to tell him?"
"Nothing, except that I need to be covered."
"Well, all right. You'd better get him here in a hurry. Sammy will be looking for another chance to get you when he recovers from his headache."
"I'll telephone to the city tonight."
"Good. In the meantime you'd better get back to your hotel and hole up. I've got work to do."

WHIT let himself be led to the door, but he still wanted information. "Are you working all alone in this, Casey? I mean here in Reno?"
"I'm not going to tell you any more than I have. If Gates does get hold of you-and I hope for your sake and mine that he doesn't-I'm the only one who'll go down with you."
"You haven't got much faith in my ability to keep my mouth shut, have you?"
"I just know Gates, that's all. And another thing. You'll have to keep this from your wife."
"You don't have to worry about her."
"The hell I don't. I have to worry about everything." Casey opened the door a crack. "The hall is clear. Go on, beat it."
"How will I get in touch with you if I pick up any useful information?"
"You can come here, if you're careful."
Casey showed him a loose knob on one post of the brass bedstead. "I won't be here often. Leave a message. If I want to talk to you I'll come to the hotel."
Casey took Whit's hand in a brief hard grip and thrust him into the hall. 
"Good luck, guy. Don't get killed."
The door closed softly behind Whit. 
-

Whit has a hard time obeying Casey's command. His honeymoon with Kitty becomes a gamble with death, as next week's crackling installment discloses. 

[[box]] 
[[image]] Dog biting chair. [[/image]] COLONEL STOOPNAGLE'S FICTIONARY (unabashed) FURNICHEWER: A dog who bites chairs
CHAMPEON: Strongest of the Mexican peasants. 
AIN'TCIENT: Something new. 
INCHOIR: What about the singing in church?
SIRCULAR: A round man
CORPUZZLE: When it's a question whether you have any or not. 
ERAZOR: A blade instead of a rubber.
DOMESSTIC: A frowzy second maid. 
ESCAPAID: Palm-greasing jail break. 
MATRI-ARK: MRs. Noah
[[/box]]

THE MIRACLE OF THE FLYING SIEVES
Continued from Page 10

graduated at Asheville, North Carolina, high school, and received his A.B. degree at Cornell in 1929. The following year he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was graduated with a B.S. degree in chemical engineering. He has been with Goodyear ever since. 

At thirty-seven, Jim Merrill is tall, dark, slender -and reticent. When he says he is "just doing his job," he isn't using an old bromide to cover affected modesty. He means it. It irks him to hear somebody say he perfected the self-sealing gas tank. It makes it sound as if he had invented it-and he didn't.

Jim Merrill was a kid spinning tops and playing marbles in Akron when the French, during World War I, made the first attempts at bullet-seal airplane gas tanks. They tried it with their Salmson and Breguet bombers, many of which were assigned to American squadrons. They weren't very successful. The A.E.F., for example, lost thirty-three of these two types of planes, and one third of them were equipped with the French self-sealing tanks. 

Then the Army Air Corps asked American manufacturers to tackle the problem. Goodyear carried out hundreds of experiments for more than a year and a half. Finally it came up with the answer-a truly successful bullet-puncture-sealing gas tank. The Army Air Corps put it to exhaustive tests in 1920 and pronounced it practical. 

Those first tanks were covered with a thick layer of soft rubber, a special compound, bound tightly to the tank by several wrappings of heavy tire fabric. The rubber expanded immediately when wet be gasoline and completely filled the hole. One trouble was that the tanks were heavy and bulky. Then peace had come and self-sealing tanks were put in cold storage.

Then came 1939 and war in Europe. The British and Germans were using metal tanks with a rubber puncture-sealing lining in their planes. We wanted better ones. Goodyear had been experimenting for twenty years with a synthetic rubber which gasoline does not dissolve. In a short time it came up with new type 

[[sidebar]] A bank president was interviewing a customer whose name was unknown to him. The customer, however, readily knew the banker. So the latter, not wishing to hurt his customer's feelings, decided to carry on as though he knew his caller.
But suddenly a situation arose which required the banker to write the customer's name. At first the bank president didn't know what to do. Finally he said:
"Let's see, how do you spell your name?"
"S-m-i-t-h." spelled out the customer. 
"Yes, yes. I know," the banker quickly replied. "but I mean your first name."
"J-o-h-n." came the response. 
[[/sidebar]]

of tank seal, an improvement upon its original design. 

Essentially, "bullet-proofing" is made possibly by two layers of rubber. The inner layer is synthetic rubber, highly resistant to gasoline. The outer layer is a special, soft natural rubber compound. The synthetic inner layer protects it from the deteriorating action of the gasoline. When a bullet punctures a tank lined with this material, a slight amount of gasoline seeps out and causes the other layer of soft, expandable rubber to swell and and seal the hole. 

Fuel tanks of this type performed handsomely, but the researchers weren't yet satisfied. Their goal was a completely non-metallic tank. The impact of bullets caused metal to flare and hold open the protective lining; so a rubber plastic was substituted. The result was tiny entrance and exit bullet holes instead of the gaping tears left in the conventional aluminum thank; there were no jagged fingers of mental to keep the rubber seal from getting in its quick-healing work. 

These principles were made available to all companies and soon the rubber industry was making bullet-seal gasoline tanks by the tens of thousands. They went into combat and they saved lives, but suddenly an unexpected problem arose. The Allied air forces were using aromatics in their fuel-stuff like benzene, xylol, and toluol. They stepped up the power of the gasoline all right, but they did something else, too. They didn't much damage the inner layer of synthetic rubber, but they permeated it and rotted the outer layer of soft rubber in jig time. 

It was a critical stumbling block. A barrier had to be developed that would resist the aromatic fuels, prevent them from diffusing through the synthetic rubber and disintegrating the vital sealing layer. 

THAT'S where Jim Merrill came in. It wasn't an altogether new problem to him. He had already been instrumental in adapting latex to new uses and diverting that rubber product to exclusive war production in bladders for life vests and rafts. 

Several years earlier he had made his first venture in rubber tank material when his company marketed a lining for storage tanks, and he had worked with other chemists for two years in the development of the bullet-seat tank. 

But now he really went to work. For ten and twelve hours a day he kept at it. He tried every chemical he could get his hands on. This went on for nearly a year. Jim, you should know, is a fisherman. In the better days, he had spent most of his spare time at the sport. Perhaps that explains his patience. Anyway, he was close 

LIBERTY