Pat Frank - Mr. Adam

However, that was all S.O.P. What was truly puzzling were some of the stories out of the War Department. There was a little squib that said the War Department was sending Homer Adam to Camp Blanding, in Florida, to absorb sunshine and recreation, because his duties in Washington had been so arduous. There were stories about meetings of the Joint Chiefs, at which a number of things were discussed, including Arctic maneuvers, and Mr. Adam. The War Department sometimes said its Arctic maneuvers were not directed at any specific power, but really at the elements, but it never explained about about Mr. Adam. Finally, there were stories about the difficulties of using Mr. Adam, and hints that Adam wasn’t really essential, at all. He could be useful, it was admitted, but the N.R.C. didn’t regard him as absolutely essential.

One day Marge and I went to a double-header between the Yanks and the Nats. We were propped up on our pillows in Smith Field, watching the remnants of the immortal Yankees make fools of themselves around second base, and I was telling Marge about Ruth and Gehrig and Dickey, and without warning my favorite sports announcer, Malcolm Parkinson, poked his ruddy face into our bedroom, and said, inspecting a sheet of yellow teletype paper:

“Well, folks, I’m sorry to have to interrupt this ball game, but we’ve just received an important news flash. But before I read this flash I want to tell you that for calm nerves—nerves able to withstand the shock of modern living—smoke…” And he went on, and on. Finally he finished his commercial, and said, “And here is that flash, folks. Homer Adam ruined! Yes, sir, a flash from Washington tells us that Homer Adam has been ruined. That is all for now, but as we receive additional details we’ll give them to you, so you might as well keep tuned to this exciting ball game, with the Yanks gamely fighting against a driving Washington team which at this moment has a six run lead. And the next batter for the Nats it…”

I switched him off, and his face faded off the screen, looking a bit disturbed. “I knew it!” I said. “I knew it would happen.”

“You knew what?” Marge asked.

“I knew that they’d sterilize Homer!”

“How do you know he was sterilized? All they said was that he was ruined.”

“How else could he be ruined?”

“Oh!” Marge said. “Isn’t that awful!”

I turned on our bedside radio. It was beside itself. It rattled as if men from Mars had appeared, and it wished to duck under the sheets. It said that the War Department had informed the President that the National Research Council had sterilized Mr. Adam. It said this had happened several weeks ago. It said that the announcement was withheld until it was utterly certain that Mr. Adam had been sterilized. It said that the National Research Council announced it was a complete accident. The War Department agreed with the N.R.C. that it was a complete accident, and the President agreed with the War Department. Nobody was to blame.

Marge stared at the radio as if it were foul and repugnant and untouchable. “There it goes,” she whispered.

“There goes what?”

“Everything. Just everything. That pitiful little man!”

“He’s not pitiful,” I said, simply for something to say.

“He is. He is, too, pitiful. When I think what’s happened to him it makes me feel unclean, as if I’d seen a murder, and hadn’t done anything to stop it.”

“We all did our best,” I said.

“Did we?” she asked, not of me, but of herself. “Did we really?”

I felt a little wave of anger and resentment ripple over me, like the first chill that heralds the onset of fever. I wasn’t exactly sure at whom I was angry, but somebody had hurt and damaged my wife, and I wanted to strike back. I wondered who had sterilized Adam, and how, and why. Somehow, the radio didn’t go into that part of it. The radio contented itself with announcing that Homer Adam had been ruined, and then erudite commentators rushed to the microphones to assure us that the ruination of Adam wasn’t necessarily fatal to mankind. Their conjectures were that Adam had already contributed as much as he could to science, and anyway, Russia had never denied possessing the two potent Mongolians. Looking at the whole matter logically, and without undue hysteria, it could be seen that the loss of Adam’s services wasn’t so important after all. Perhaps the situation in Indo-China was of more immediate importance, and they spoke learnedly of the situation in Indo-China.

Our telephone rang, and it was J.C. Pogey, and he wanted to know whether I’d heard the news, and I said I had, and he said, “I think you’d better handle the local angle on the Adam story?”

“What local angle?” I asked.

He said there were a good many local angles. He reminded me that some of the N.R.C. directors lived in New York, and that they should be interviewed, and Adam himself had returned to Tarrytown, according to the Washington Bureau. The story wasn’t by any means cleaned up. As a matter of fact, the details of Adam’s sterilization remained a mystery. I said I’d get right on it, and as I shaved and dressed the pattern began to take shape in my mind. The first person I was going to visit was Felix Pell. He might be the last, too.

I tried to remember where I had cached the Browning. It was my one souvenir of the war, a handsomely machined, Belgian-made automatic. I rummaged through the hall closet until I found it, and Marge saw me drop it into my coat pocket. “Stephen! Why are you taking that gun?” she demanded.

I didn’t reply.

“Don’t be ridiculous. If the police find that gun they’ll throw you in jail because of the Sullivan law. Anyway, you can’t hit anything with it more than ten feet away.”

“What I’m going to shoot,” I said, “won’t be more than ten feet away.”

Marge stared at me, astonished as if I’d just announced I was a bigamist. “Stephen,” she said, “are you serious?”

“I am,” I said.

“I won’t let you go out of the house with that weapon.”

I took her by the shoulders. Maybe I was a little rough. I said, “Darling, up to now I have been a mild and civilized man. But now I have a killing to do.”

I left before she could say anything more.

I went up to Columbia, and the home of Felix Pell. The maid opened the door a crack, and I could see it was secured by a chain latch. On occasion, I think it is fair to use deception. Mostly I think it is crude and stupid, but once in a while, when the stakes are high enough, it is the only thing to do. “Quickly,” I said, “undo that chain and let me in. Before the reporters come. They’ll be here in a minute.”

She blinked at me, and said, “Dr. Pell told me especially he doesn’t want to see reporters.” She unhooked the latch and let me in.

“Naturally not,” I said.

“I don’t think he wants to see anybody,” she said. “Who are you?”

“Tell him Mr. Smith is calling,” I said, “on a matter of greatest importance.” She scuttled upstairs, and I followed her. I followed her into Pell’s bedroom, morose with old-fashioned walnut furniture. Pell was propped up in bed, his picturesque head supported by pillows. He glared at me, one eye winking erratically. Since I had last seen him, he had developed a tic.

The maid looked at Pell, and she looked at me, and she saw that we knew each other, and she vanished. “How did you get in here?” he demanded.

The standard defense, in a killing, is that everything either goes black, or it goes red, and in any case the first thing the killer knows is that the other person is dead and he is standing there with a smoking gun in his hand. The verdict, his attorney hopes, will be temporary insanity. It isn’t exactly like that. It is simply that things are hazy, and move with annoying slowness. I took the Browning out of my pocket. The hammer caught in the lining, and it seemed a long time before I ripped it loose. I thumbed the safety, and it released with a definite click. A nice, final, decisive sound, that click. “This isn’t going to be much satisfaction for anyone except me,” I said, “but for me it will be fun.”