Philip Wylie - The Smuggled Atom Bomb

“Where do they truck to, mainly?”

“All over,” one man said, “this side of the Mississippi River.”

“Some guy,” Duff said, “that I ran across in an eating joint told me Miami-Dade was a place where a guy could settle down to a life job. Good management.”

“It’s all right,” one of the drivers answered. “This guy,” Duff went on, “didn’t give me his name, but you might know him.” He looked at them and they waited. “Because he was the biggest guy I ever saw. Maybe near seven feet tall, and broad. A powerhouse.”

Heads shook. “Never saw no giants around the joint… You, Bizzmo?”

“Nope.”

Duff paid and went out into the night to begin a long walk to the nearest bus stop…

When, on the following afternoon, Eleanor took up the attempt to persuade Duff to see the FBI, he told her of his efforts. It was her afternoon to iron and his day to air and turn the mattresses. So their talk was conducted at intervals when he passed through the kitchen with his loads and while she continued to press clothes she had washed, with Marian’s help, on the day before. It made for a rather incoherent discussion.

“In other words,” she finally summed up, “either you don’t think much of my idea or else you’re too stuck-up to take a chance on annoying the G-men?”

He had three sun-warm pillows in each hand. He flung them up the back stairway. “I need something more before I bother the FBI.”

“Wasn’t seeing Harry meet that big man enough?”

“It’ll have to be enough,” he answered, “if it turns out to be all I can get.”

“What in the world did you think you’d find at Miami-Dade that you couldn’t find out just by idly asking Harry?”

He laughed — at himself. “Dunno. Whether there was a big guy working there, for one thing. Wasn’t.”

“Which means practically nothing.”

“I know. Then I thought maybe I could find out the main, regular customers. Crazy idea, that one. You can’t just walk into a firm and say, ‘Who do you do business with?’ and be handed a list.”

“Harry’d tell you that too.”

“Sure. And wonder why the deuce I asked. He’s probably wondered already why the G-men were interested enough in his locked closet to ask him to open it and why that box intrigued them enough to make him open that. In fact, if what we think is going on is real, and if by any chance Harry knows what it is, which I doubt, then Harry is plenty worried by what has already happened. Worried enough, anyhow, so he’d never again have anything in that box in his closet except his precious platinum. I wonder how much it’s worth?”

“Probably two or three thousand dollars,” she said. “Awful funny way to keep your life savings.”

He nodded. “Certainly is! Hard to melt. Hard to make that ingot of it. Be like Harry, in a way, though.”

Eleanor licked her finger and absently tested her iron. “If you really want to know where that company hauls its stuff, I could find out.”

“You could? How?”

She resumed ironing, spreading out one of Charles’ shirts on the board. “Well, I naturally know quite a lot of girls who work downtown — secretaries, file clerks like me, and so on. And the stuff they ship—”

“Cargo.”

“The cargo is no doubt insured. It would be easy to learn what company insures it.

Not hard to find who files for them. Possible to meet that girl or one of the girls. And you might — I might — get the dope from her.”

“Would you?”

Her eyes rested on him. “Try? Sure, Duff! Why not? I’m more worried than you seem to be. I think your experiments were right. I think my idea that the stuff is being brought into this country is true. I’m scared!”

What a reply Duff might have made was prevented by a distant roar, a whispering gush. It was a familiar South Florida effect: the approach of rain. Duff’s arms and legs made wide, loose-jointed motions as he flung himself from the kitchen chair to the back door and out into the yard. A moment later a mattress thudded on the kitchen floor, then another and a third.

When the squall dinned on the single roof of the old house, Duff returned. “Narrow squeak,” he said.

Harry came in behind him. They hadn’t heard his car in the rain.

The next few days were uneventful for Duff— classes, laboratory work, hard study at home and, of course, more domestic duties than he could perform adequately. In Florida, grass grows all year around and must be mowed and trimmed unrelentingly; shrubs and vines and trees also need frequent trimming. In Florida, the blazing sun and salty air make painting as constant a requirement as on shipboard. In Florida, too, fish breed year-round, a fact which was to lead Duff to a new and painful experience. For some time, however, life went on in its usual pattern.

Harry Ellings even volunteered one day to help Duff. “Son,” he said, “I generally wake around six. Leave the clippers out and I’ll get after those hibiscus bushes.”

“That’d be a help.”

The older man shook his head sympathetically. “Having money is a wonderful thing.

Not having it means day and night slaving. Work, work, work! Dunno how those Yateses keep their spirits so high sometimes. Look at that girl! Orange Bowl Queen, come Christmas!

Going to college on a scholarship, she is. Has to get good marks to earn her tuition. Runs home to wash and iron and cook. Drives downtown three nights a week to earn a measly few bucks. Then goes dancing on her free nights, or posing for pictures, or fitting a costume, or attending some college party or meeting! The young sure have energy!”

Duff nodded. “She sure has, anyhow.”

Harry Ellings went on, “Got it from her mother. Look at Sarah Yates. Lies there day and night — can’t move her legs. So what? Does she gripe and whine? No. Knits. Sews.

Makes all the clothes the kids wear. By golly, son, that’s pluck!”

“Yeah.”

“So leave the shears out. I’ll pitch in, mornings. Money! Doggone! A person could use a barrel of gold!”

Duff didn’t reply. He merely thought, for the thousandth time, that a simple, gentle good-hearted, mousy guy like Ellings could never be associated with anything un-American.

Anything dangerous, deadly, murderous. It didn’t make sense.

Harry continued to talk, which was unusual. He gave a self-deprecating laugh and said, “Nearest I ever got to any money was that melted-down platinum. Guess it was kind of dumb.”

He hadn’t mentioned the cache before, except to grunt impolite syllables concerning its discovery by the G-men.

Duff felt himself stiffen internally. But he said, “Man has a right—”

“Oh, sure. Person like me gets crazy ideas, though. I sure did hate it when the country went off the gold standard. Figured I’d stay on a standard of some sort with my savings.

Seems foolish now. I sold that metal and put the money in the bank.” As he spoke, he took a small deposit book from a hip pocket. “All I got to show now is this here ink balance. Hope we don’t get worse inflation.”

From then on, Harry put in an hour or so at gardening every morning. Duff was grateful.

The days that were humdrum for him were filled with excitements for Eleanor Yates.

Not the least of these was associated with her queenship and consisted of parade plans, the selection of maids of honor, newspaper interviews and appearances at lunches and other public affairs. Another source of excitement was the fond courtship paid to her by the amusing, cheerful Scotty Smythe in his salmon-pink convertible. He seemed to regard her tentative replies to his now-frequent proposals as proof of an arbitrary state of mind which would change in the long run. And he appeared to be unimpressed by the large numbers of other young males in the university and in the city who pursued her.