Philip Wylie - The Smuggled Atom Bomb

Duffs reaction was one of humiliation. “Then I must have pulled a boner at the lab!

Maybe — having got that cockeyed notion — I saw what I wanted to see, in my tests.”

The G-man’s eyes were unsympathetic. “Probably. But you came in here and told us.

We’re used to that. Stories and rumors of A-bomb spies come in here as thick as reports of flying saucers. And we waste our lives on ’em all. Thanks, however. Provisionally.”

Duff stood. “If you’re going to investigate, I could leave a plan of the house. And some notes on the lock on the box. How to open it, I mean. And my door key.”

Higgins grinned. “Right. Would help.”

The following Sunday when they came home from church, Duff tried to find evidence that the FBI had entered and examined the house. There wasn’t any such evidence.

On Monday, however, Duff was called from a class to talk to a Mr. Higgins who

“insisted,” according to a girl from the front office, “that the call was important and you should be disturbed.”

“In a few days,” Higgins said, when he had identified Duff, “we will call on your friend at your place. Ostensibly, we’ll be checking another matter. Actually, we’ll make ourselves an opportunity to take a look at the matter we’ve discussed. You aren’t to give away the fact that we may have seen it previously. On some pretext, we’ll call you up. We want you to see it again and tell us, if you can, whether it’s what you originally— sampled.”

“Did you see — the matter?” Duff asked breathlessly.

“Yeah. And don’t act astonished when you learn what it is!” Mr. Higgins hesitated.

“You might tip off the rest of the family, since you’ve discussed it with them.”

It was curt, perfunctory, unsatisfying. He told Eleanor and her mother exactly what he had done, precisely what he had been advised to do. A few more days passed. There was no change in the behavior of Harry Ellings. The graying, inconspicuous boarder played bridge with his postman pals, went out to practice with his casting rod on an illuminated target range, did his work, and said nothing unusual until the end of the week.

Then, one night during supper, he changed the subject, which was a popular and interminable one: the kidding of Eleanor about her various dates by her younger brother and sister, who were particularly diverted by the salmon-pink convertible of a Mr. Prescott Smythe, of Omega fraternity.

“Don’t be surprised,” Harry interrupted abruptly, “if the Gestapo calls on me.”

Duff felt the beginning of a start, and repressed it. He wondered quickly, too, if any man who had reason to fear the FBI would refer to the bureau in so insulting a term. It was evidence that Harry had no reason for worry.

Mrs. Yates was saying, “Gestapo?”

Eleanor said calmly, “He means the FBI. You been kidnapping people, or something, Harry?”

The star boarder grinned and then frowned. “Everybody at the plant”—it was his word for the trucking company that employed him—“is being processed. Supposed to keep it to themselves. But you know how fellows talk.”

“Processed?” The term was unfamiliar to Mrs. Yates.

Harry stirred his coffee. “Checked. Questioned. There’s been some fancy counterfeiting going on. A few guys on the lam. Unlawful flight, the Gestapo men call it.

And they’re looking for counterfeiting plates that have eased out of the state they were used in. A big trucking company, like Miami-Dade, is always being suspected of doing something against the law.”

In the person of Mr. Higgins and an assistant, the “Gestapo” called that night.

Although he had a chance to wink or mutter a word when Duff answered the doorbell, Higgins behaved as if Duff were a stranger. He asked for Mr. Harry Ellings and was conducted upstairs. Charles Yates said loudly as the two men climbed, “Real G-men! Golly!

Maybe I’ll be one!”

Nearly an hour passed. Eleanor and Duff washed and dried the dishes. Marian and Charles pretended to do homework and actually discussed the visit of the FBI, speculating horrendously on its possible causes.

Then Higgins came to the head of the stairs. “Oh, Miss Yates?” When Eleanor appeared, he added, “You are Miss Yates? Will you come up a moment?” And that other young boarder, too, if he will.”

They went up. The box was open, in the middle of the room. Harry was sitting in his easy chair, looking angry. Higgins pointed to the object in the box. “Either of you ever seen that before?”

They had been instructed. They looked at the object. Duff squatted down by the box and scrutinized the curious piece of machined metal.

“No,” he said positively.

Eleanor shook her bright head. “Not even the box!”

“I told you!” Harry said crossly. “I brought it in when they were on a picnic. Ye gods!

Government snoops! Government snoops! I’m well within my rights—”

“What is it?” Duff asked.

Higgins smiled tightly and looked at Harry.

Harry raised his eyes to Duff and shrugged. “It’s my life savings, that’s what it is!

Since way back when Roosevelt threw us off the gold standard and I had to turn in the gold I kept. I bought platinum. Finally made one piece of it. Harder to swipe. Made that box, in the end, and melted down old pieces of solder to wall it in lead. Too heavy now for any housebreaker to snitch. Then I got bad legs and had to have a lot of medical care. An operation. After that, a year in machinist’s school — with board, room and tuition to pay! So I began cutting out wedges of the stuff and selling it. That’s what’s left! It’s perfectly legal to own it and I’ll be damned if I see what right the G-men have to make me haul it out and explain it. My secret — the only one I ever had — and no harm in it.”

Duff looked at Higgins. Higgins said, “Ellings isn’t kidding. He has a right to stash platinum away, and I did snoop. No search warrant — just noticed he kept his closet locked and asked for a look. We’re hunting some of the best counterfeit plates ever made — and that box was heavy… I hope you’ll accept our apology, Ellings.”

“How much good would it do me, if I refused?” the boarder asked tartly.

And that was that. Higgins and his companion left quickly with no further word.

Duff was on his way home from the campus the next afternoon when Higgins overtook him in a sedan and picked him up. He started driving in a direction tangential to the Yates place.

He said, “All right! Was it the same dingus?”

Duff had asked himself a thousand times. “I don’t believe it was. It was brighter, shinier, I think. And the machining on the first one was more precise, as I remember it. Of course, I was hurrying then. There were saw marks in this casting. Was it platinum?”

Higgins said, “Yeah. A little impure. Commercial stuff. Also, he did buy at least some of it a long while back. Years. We checked that. He did make the box in spare time at his garage. It looks, Bogan, as if you’d been fooled. After all, you got that brainstorm about it being part of an A-bomb before you ran the tests. Not after. Could have conditioned your reading of the tests. Must have. We’ve checked Harry Ellings through his whole life.

Checked his friends and family. Nothing whatever on the record. No convictions. No arrests.

No association with subversive groups or people. Just a stolid, hard-working bachelor who’s a churchgoer and not a bad bridge player. If a segment of a bomb had been stolen, I’d say this business might somehow be connected. None has.”

Duff rode uncomfortably. Finally he said, “Would a segment of the uranium heart of a bomb look like that?”

Higgins glanced at him, grinned, gazed at the road again. “Do you suppose they’d tell even us that? What they did hint at — not say — was that we were goons down at this office to even rise to any reported ‘uranium.’ Suggested we should know the bombs were plutonium now. There’s a difference, apparently. Wouldn’t know what it is.”