Rebel in Time

Troy stood on the scale. One seventy-five fully dressed; the thing was at least five pounds off. That wouldn't matter. He made a note of the weight in his notebook then stepped back onto the scale holding the attaché case with its burden of gold. He did this three times, making careful record of the total weight each time. When he was finished he replaced the gold exactly as he had found it.

The mathematics were simple indeed. His weight, along with that of the unburdened attaché case, was one hundred and eighty-three pounds. He multiplied that by three, then multiplied his fully laden weight by three, and subtracted the smaller number from the larger.

The result was just over thirty-nine pounds.

Thirty-nine pounds of gold.

That was an awful lot of gold. A moment's work with the calculator verified that. The last time he had looked gold was around four hundred and thirty-six dollars an ounce. But a Troy pound was only point eight-two-three of an Avoirdupois pound. He fed this correction in, then divided by twelve since there were only twelves ounces to the Troy pound.

Troy stared at the final figure and nodded his head. Yes indeed, yes indeed! This was something that the admiral would have to hear about at once.

It was a quick phone call. Kelly put him right through to the admiral when he said that he had urgent news.

'Admiral Colonne speaking. Is that you Sergeant Harmon?'

'Yes, sir. I've found the safe where the colonel keeps his gold. Before I closed the safe I weighed the gold, roughly, but accurate enough so that there is probably no more than a five per cent error either way. It appears that the colonel is a sharper operator than the FBI realized. He has more gold here than the hundred thousand that they reported.'

'More? How much more?'

'I would say that the colonel now has over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of gold in that safe, admiral. A quarter of a million dollars.'

Chapter 4

'I prefer a verbal report,' the admiral said. 'You can write up your conclusions later on. But for the moment I just want to hear what you have found out.'

Troy nodded and spread his notes out on the conference table before him. The room was the same as it had been on his last visit; the curtains drawn, a hushed quiet, just the two of them present. He tapped the figure on the first sheet.

'You know, of course, that the colonel has at least two and a half times as much gold as we thought he had?' The admiral nodded grimly as he spoke.

'That is indeed relevant — but it just raises more questions. How did he get that much without the FBI noticing it? And it also adds additional force to our original question. What does he want it for? Have you come up with any answers to that one yet?'

'No, sir. But I do have some leads.' Troy pulled over the next sheet of paper. 'Colonel McCulloch has shown some remarkable changes in his behaviour patterns during the last year. He has been buying books, going to libraries and museums, things that he never did before. I've had all of his school records checked, right back through high school in fact, while the FBI has interviewed a number of his military instructors. Under the guise of a routine security check. His new interests just don't fit his normal behaviour pattern.'

'What do you mean?'

'For all of his life, as far as I could discover, McCulloch has never had any intellectual interests whatsoever. That doesn't mean that he is a stupid man. His classwork in school was good enough when he wanted it to be. But he had to study hard in order to get his grades above average. After leaving school he apparently put away all of his books and as far as I can determine appears to have never voluntarily opened one ever again. This is confirmed by men who have served with him. And he has never even been known to go to the movies. If he watches television it is only when in company with others, and usually only a ball game. He does not own a television set of his own.'

'What does he do with his spare time?' the admiral asked, digging at the dottle in his pipe with a penknife. 'Don't tell me he just sits and looks at the wallpaper when he goes home?'

'No, sir. He works out in the gym very often, plays squash, golf on week-ends as well. Physical things. He is sociable, drinks with friends at least once a week, but always in moderation. And he dates very often. Dinner and drinks, dancing afterwards, then into the sack. He leads a busy life, keeps fit. But he doesn't read. That's what I find so disconcerting about his new interests. And they seem to overlap, this period of gold buying and book buying.'

'Do you think that there is a connection?'

Troy pushed the papers into neat rows, silent for a moment before he answered. 'On the surface I guess that I don't have any evidence at all to say that there is any connection. But I have to think of Occam's razor.'