The Smuggled Atom Bomb

The very emptiness of the building had at first seemed meaningful. The meaning now appeared only to be that it was waiting for some new and perhaps different cargo. It had been a storage garage; more recently a warehouse. Now, perhaps, it had changed hands and was being prepared for other uses by the towering and somehow terrifying figure of the man whose face Duff had not yet clearly seen. The giant. Duff thought of him in that term.

He left the building cautiously and hurried for the subway. No use to call Scotty now; Scotty would be at a post-Christmas party.

And no use, Duff thought to get in touch with the New York FBI office. What would be added to his story by the report of a menacing figure lost in the night and an empty building?

He was hungry, wet and weary as he went up the steps of his nondescript hotel.

The desk clerk stopped him. “Mr. Bogan! A Mr. Smythe has been trying to get in touch with you. Been here twice and phone every fifteen minutes since!”

Puzzled, Duff went into a phone booth and dialed. The ring was answered instantly by Scotty, “Duff! Thank the Lord! Look! Eleanor phoned at half past four this afternoon—”

“Eleanor!”

“Asked for you. Talked to me. I’ve talked again to her since.”

“How’d she know where I was?”

“Called your family in Indiana, first! You evidently wrote ‘em you were spending Christmas with me — gave ‘em my name — something.”

“Oh. Yes, I did! You mean Eleanor phoned clear to Indiana?”

“Listen, chump!” It as then that Duff got the overtones in Scotty’s voice. “Harry Ellings is dead.”

“Dead?”

“Died in bed. The family thought he’d been up early working in the yard and got a ride to Miami. So they didn’t find him till afternoon. Charley.” Scotty said the name grimly.

“Tough on the kid to find the body. Could have been heart failure — probably was, the doctor thought. But that’s not all. Eleanor said she’d found something. Can you imagine what? She said she wasn’t able, to move it.”

“A box!” Duff all but shouted.

“I presume so. Look, pal! We gotta get back, and fast! I’ve been frantic for you to call! My old man’s working on the air lines — they’re loaded. If he can’t chivvy space for us, I have a pal in Mineola with a sweet, fast job. War surplus plane he bought. I told Eleanor to phone Higgins or Mr. McIntosh at once.”

“I’ll be over in fifteen minutes!” Duff said. “Whatever is happening, this time it looks as if we were going to prove something they’ll believe!”

FOUR

The commercial air lines were sold out to the last seat for the holiday season. Scotty’s father was unable to get reservations. So it was in the plane of Scotty’s friend that they left an ice-coated airfield, shortly before midnight. The plane, as Scotty had promised, was fast. They made one stop for fuel, in Savannah, and swept south over the Everglades at dawn.

A red sky at morning, Duff reflected, wasn’t a “sailor’s warning” in Miami. Just a custom of the country. And he reflected — thinking of whatever came to mind in order to wear away the interminable hours of flight — that it was an advantage to be rich, like the Smythes. To have friends with planes, who’d make an emergency hop from New York to Miami just for fun. To be able to have a convertible you were too rushed to drive put aboard a freight car by the family chauffeur. Money meant things like that. But it didn’t necessarily

“corrupt character,” as Duff’s preacher father firmly believed and as Duff himself had vaguely assumed. There was nothing corrupt about Scotty Smythe’s character.

Duff was dozing when the plane bounced, braked, turned and taxied. Its pilot looked back. “All out!”

Scotty said, “Thanks a million, Al! Go on over to my place—”

“Nope. Gotta get back. Check in here, and out.”

“Wonderful thing of you to do.”

“Rather fly than eat. Well—”

There was the slant of morning sunshine, the Florida smell of flowers and mold and warmth, the sleepy look of people around an airport at daybreak. They carried their own bags to a taxi and started for the Yates home.

When they reached the house no one appeared to be awake. Duff unlocked the front door. Scotty tiptoed in behind him.

From across the living room came the murmur of Mrs. Yates, “Who’s there?”

Duff was smiling. “Me and Scotty Smythe. A pal of his flew us down.” A hand-knit bed jacket, blue as her eyes, covered her shoulders. Her golden hair was disheveled and as she sat up she reached for a comb. “I’m a sight! I’d dropped off—”

“I’ll get you some coffee. Eleanor and the children asleep?” He waited for her nod and went to the kitchen.

When, after a few minutes, he came back with three cups of coffee on a tray, Mrs.

Yates had fixed herself up. She smiled tiredly at him. “It’s like you two boys to rush down here—”

“We were badly worried!”