Not so. Hallam had no use for the tungsten; it was of no earthly value to him and any tampering with it could be of no possible importance to him. However, he hated any interference with his desk (as so many do) and he suspected others of possessing keen desires to engage in such interference out of sheer malice.

No one at the time admitted to knowing anything about the matter. Benjamin Allan Denison, who overheard the initial remark, had an office immediately across the corridor and both doors were open. He looked up and met Hallam’s accusatory eye.

He didn’t particularly like Hallam (no one particularly did) and he had slept badly the night before. He was, as it happened and as he later recalled, rather pleased to have someone on whom to vent his spleen, and Hallam made the perfect candidate.

When Hallam held the bottle up to his face, Denison pulled back with clear distaste. “Why the devil should I be interested in your tungsten?” he demanded. “Why should anyone? If you’ll look at the bottle, you’ll see that the thing hasn’t been opened for twenty years; and if you hadn’t put your own grubby paws on it, you would have seen no one had touched it.”

Hallam flushed a slow, angry red. He said, tightly, “Listen, Denison, someone has changed the contents. That’s not the tungsten.”

Denison allowed himself a small, but distinct sniff. “How would you know?”

Of such things, petty annoyance and aimless thrusts, is history made.

It would have been an unfortunate remark in any case. Denison’s scholastic record, as fresh as Hallam’s, was far more impressive and he was the bright-young-man of the department. Hallam knew this and, what was worse, Denison knew it too, and made no secret of it Denison’s “How would you know?” with the clear and unmistakable emphasis on the “you,” was ample motivation for all that followed. Without it, Hallam would never have become the greatest and most revered scientist in history, to use the exact phrase Denison later used in his interview with Lament.