The Smuggled Atom Bomb

Not any. Which wasn’t surprising in a girl elected Miss Freshman in her first year, the Belle of the Junior Prom, and who now, as a senior, was Queen-elect of the Orange Bowl festivities.

Upstairs in the bathroom, Duff Bogan had gone to work with equipment of his own devising — a “gun” for spraying insecticides and a second “gun” for dusting. First he dampened all porcelain, metal and tile surfaces with a water spray. Then he dusted with a scouring powder. Thereafter, a damp cloth in each hand, he polished furiously — which caused the din Mrs. Yates had heard. In fifteen minutes the bathroom glittered.

Perspiring in the damp warmth of the day, he called down the stairway, “What about Harry’s room?”

“That, too,” she responded. “He never locks it.”

So Duff entered the quarters of the other boarder, Harry Ellings. A light dust mopping only was needed there. For Harry, who had been with the Yateses ever since the father’s death, made his own bed and kept his own premises picked up. It wasn’t, Duff thought, much of a home for a fifty-year-old bachelor like Harry. A living-sitting room in somebody else’s house — a day bed and a desk, a shelf of books, bridge lamps, old chair, a worn rug, a radio, a few photographs, a calendar hung on the knob of the closet door. That was Harry’s residence.

He had a job as a mechanic with a trucking concern; before that he’d been a letter carrier. He had quit during his early years with the Yateses because of varicose veins, and had gone to school to learn his present trade.

Church on Sundays, a Friday bridge game, his Wednesday evenings practicing casting, a lot of porch sitting and radio listening, occasional fishing trips, few visitors, little mail — that summed up all Duff knew of the other boarder.

Maybe, from Harry’s viewpoint, it was a good life, whole and satisfying. The thought depressed Duff. He finished dusting, helped himself to one of Harry’s cigarettes and stared out at the sunshine, wondering, as young men do, what he would do when his degree had been awarded and the uncertain world said wordlessly, “Okay, Bogan; beat me if you can!”

He picked up the mop and noticed then, behind the calendar that hung from the knob, a lock on the closet door, a lock newer than the hardware of the Yates house, which he constantly repaired and replaced.

If he had not observed the lock, it is possible, although unlikely, that Duff Bogan’s life might have been relatively speaking, as colorless as his estimate of Harry Ellings’. But Duff did notice the lock and wonder about it, and nothing was ever the same for him afterward.

Wondering about locks was not, in Duffs case, an idle exercise in bafflement. Early in life he had been discarded by his schoolmates as a possible pitcher, fielder, end or basketball center. Competitive sports revealed him as something of an Ichabod Crane and, since his middle name was Diffenduffer, after his mother’s father, he had been called Duffer from the age of ten. He was Duff only to the kindly Yateses. But though a duffer at games and sports, he excelled in hobbies. Among them was a know-how concerning locks.

At eleven, Duff had sent ten cents for a booklet called The Boy Locksmith. Finding that people were either charmed by or aghast at his proficiency with skeleton keys, he had advanced to more elaborate literature on the subject. Before he reached high-school age he was much in demand where keys were lost or where trunks, barns, cabinets and the like refused to open. In high school, while other boys mowed lawns for extra change, Duff had repaired luggage and started cars that lacked keys.

To look at Harry Ellings’ lock-fitted closet door, then, was to know how to get the door open rather quickly. Since it was unthinkable that the drab, good-natured star boarder had anything important or secret locked away, Duff felt no curiosity. But it would be fun, he thought, to open the door, set something alien in the closet — and wait for results.

Grinning, Duff ran down the back stairs, came back with selected tools, and took steps three at a time while Mrs. Yates gripped the binding of her magazine tightly — sometimes, when he rushed that way, Duff fell.

His hands, however, were not clumsy. They worked rapidly over the lock and soon the door swung open. Inside, Harry’s suits hung neatly. On the shelf were suitcases, old and dusty. On the floor was a cubical hatbox of cardboard. Duff procured a metal wastebasket and set it on top of the hatbox.

He thought his joke would be more noticeable if he put the hatbox on the basket.

Only he couldn’t lift the hatbox. He took another hold and tried again. The cardboard threatened to tear, but the box didn’t budge. So Duff untied the tape and raised the lid. Inside, was a hardwood box, well made, waxed, with an inset handle and a lock of a kind Duff had never before seen. He stared at this and then tipped over the box and its hatbox disguise—

which could be done only with effort. The whole thing weighed about a hundred pounds.