Philip Wylie - The Smuggled Atom Bomb

“You’re right about that,” she said contritely. Then, hearing a car in the drive, she murmured, “There Harry is now. Go clean up, and I’ll finish supper. At the least, get that repulsive apron off. You look like a cross between Mother Hubbard and the Scarecrow in the Oz books!”

His smile was sheepish. “Okay.”

Before he left the kitchen she asked hastily and in a low tone, “Can you tell, from such a tiny sample?”

“I’m no microchemist. But I should be able to, yes.”

“I hope you’re crazy,” she said earnestly.

Duff’s room was not much different from Harry’s save that it was less neat and contained more books. In order to save time, he had availed himself of an old-fashioned pitcher and wash bowl which he’d found in the attic. He began shaving while Harry took his daily shower. Charles Yates came whizzing home, bike siren loud, his voice shrill as he shouted through his mother’s window, “I got the old paper route!”

Duff grinned, grinned again when Marian, panting after running three blocks from the bus stop, dramatically announced she would be Titania in the play. He felt at home with the Yateses; there had been a troop of young Bogans.

Gazing into the mirror, still wearing the apron over his work-stained T-shirt, Duff thought about Eleanor’s description of his looks. Mother Hubbard and the Oz-book Scarecrow. His grin faded somewhat, but a glimmer remained. He certainly was on the bean-pole side. No girl like Eleanor would ever think of any guy like himself in romantic terms.

She was already Orange Bowl Queen. Why, if she just wanted to, she could be in the movies!

Perhaps she’d do something like that when she graduated — to compensate for being so poor, for endless cooking, washing, mending, cleaning and bargain hunting. And for the constant care of her mother.

In his small and rather dappled mirror, Duff saw that his eyes were shiny. “Nuts,” he said, and attacked his face with such energy that he cut himself.

Dinner was early. Eleanor had to leave at seven. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, from eight to eleven, she did filing in the offices of the Florida Electric Company.

It was a job she’d got through a friend of her mother’s, which netted a welcome eighteen dollars and ten cents a week.

Duff wheeled Mrs. Yates up to the table. The Yates youngsters, both dark-haired and dark-eyed, like their father, were so excited over their respective successes that Harry Ellings didn’t notice the special looks directed toward him by Eleanor and Duff.

After dinner, after Eleanor had driven away in a station wagon as weatherbeaten as the house, Duff went to his room and made plans. He’d want one of the chemistry labs on a day when it wasn’t full of freshmen doing Chemistry 101-A. He could do the physics all right — that was in his de-department. He’d need advice about the microanalysis…

It took a week. But one week later — with shaky hands, because he had never done anything of the sort — he looked in the beat-up phone book beside a drugstore booth for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, dialed and closed the door.

A man answered. “I’d like to talk to somebody,” Duff said, “about making an appointment.”

“Just a minute.” It was quite a long minute. Duff got ready another nickel.

“Yes? Hello? Higgins speaking.”

“Oh,” Duff said. “Well — look, sir. My name is Allan D. Bogan. I’m a graduate student at the university. I want to talk to somebody down there. I’ve run across something odd.”

A slight pause. “Could you give me any idea of the nature of what you’ve encountered? We’re pretty busy here—”

“I–I—I know that. Over the phone—” Duff hesitated. “Suppose I told you that I’m a graduate student in physics. The science that led to the atomic bomb—”

Mr. Higgins’ voice, businesslike to begin with, cut him off sharply, “Would three-fifteen this afternoon do?”

“P-p-perfectly.”

“Ask for me. Higgins. Slater Higgins.”

The office of the FBI looked like any office. No fancy equipment visible, no gun racks, no alarm or communication devices. And Mr. Slater Higgins, in his own small cubicle, with its swivel chair and desk, its one large window, looked like any junior executive.

They shook hands. Mr. Higgins pointed to a chair with his pipe stem and said, smiling faintly, “What’s on your mind, Duff?” The younger man stared. “You know—”

“Checked, sure. After your call. Registrar. Got everything from your nickname to your lack of an athletic record. Tell you so you can skip it.”

Duff sat silent, flushing a little. “Well, it begins with where I board. Did you check that?”

Higgins laughed. “Address is all. Shoot!”

Duff was embarrassed about the start of his story, since it involved curiosity and his unethical behavior. So he decided to give weight to his words immediately. “I have found a stolen part of what is plainly an atomic bomb.”

Mr. Higgins did look at him sharply. But that was all. No exclamation. No excitement. “Okay. Start where it starts. Take your time.”

The G-man was a good listener — putting in questions only when the narrative confused him or left a gap.

“I had to wait,” Duff wound up, “until yesterday, to get a good chance to run the tests.

They checked, all right. It was uranium. Uranium 235, I am sure. High neutron emission—”

“You can skip the technical part. That isn’t for me. I’m a lawyer. An accountant. You sure?”

Duff hesitated. The sample had been extremely small. The tests had been difficult.

The apparatus in the physics lab hadn’t worked as well as he could have hoped. “I’m — sure enough,” he finally said, “to come in here.”

“Can you give us some of the stuff to test?”

“That’s another thing. I did have a. trace left when I got through. But — I’m cow-clumsy. When I finished the last test I started doing a dumb-headed dance — I was excited. I batted a bottle of sulphuric off a shelf — had to wash it and the last of my sample down the drain, but quick. The place was fuming up.”

“Too bad.” Mr. Higgins locked his hands behind his head, looked at Duff and thought for a while. “You could be mistaken about your experiment?”

“I don’t believe so. It’s possible.”

“Stick around a few minutes.” Higgins walked from the room. He was gone for quite a while. When he came back, his face was unreadable. He sat in his chair again.

“We’d like a look at that cached stuff, Bogan. I take it there’s always somebody at home. Mrs. Yates.”

“Not always. On sunny Sundays we wheel her to the car and lift her in and take her wheel chair along. Church. Harry Ellings never misses church.”

“Good. You see, we’d also like to look at that thing without anybody knowing. If it does happen to be uranium, we want to know more than just that Ellings has it.”

“Naturally.” Duff felt better. “You’d want him to keep right on doing whatever he may be doing. He’s probably innocent. The Yates family knows him mighty well. He doubtless thinks he’s keeping something for a friend.”

“Could be.”

“And by watching him, you’d be led to some group that’s stealing not just atomic secrets but actual bombs.”

“The trouble is,” Higgins answered slowly, “that, except for a trace stolen during the war, and a bit some character took home for a collection, we’ve never lost any uranium, Bogan. Nothing remotely approaching the quantity that would make the lump you described.”

Duff’s pale blue eyes were surprised. “No! Are they sure? Couldn’t they make a mistake?”

Higgins chuckled without mirth. “Brother, can’t you conceive the guarding and checking and cross-checking that goes into protecting something worth maybe half a hundred thousand bucks a pound? Something that we’ve spent billions to be able to make? They can tell you where every thousandth of an ounce is, every day, every minute!”