The Smuggled Atom Bomb

“Well, if you were a foreign agent in somebody else’s country, for instance, and you thought you might be nabbed at any point and you wanted to be sure you’d never talk, you’d carry around, something about like that. Taped to you someplace. In a crisis, you could pop it in your mouth, bite, swallow — and quick curtains.”

Higgins said, “Thanks, Ed. Keep it to yourself.”

“Right.”

When Duff wakened, it was after ten. He leaped guiltily out of bed and took a shower. Then he tiptoed downstairs and learned from Mrs. Yates that the precaution hadn’t been wasted: Eleanor was still sleeping.

“A whole bunch of people drove her home last night around three,” she said. “This being Queen is bad for girls, Duff. I thought I’d brought up Eleanor so nothing in the world could turn her head. But with everybody in the city at her feet — with dates every second and things to do and all the clothes and the photographs! I’d hate it if—”

“If what, Mrs. Yates?”

“Oh, if she got glamour-struck. Thought she could get in movies. Anything like that.

Eleanor’s actually serious — and a simple person. A homebody. If she got yearning to be rich and famous and all that, she could make a wrong marriage! Even if she didn’t try Hollywood.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much. She’s level-headed. And I don’t believe it hurts a girl to be Cinderella once in a lifetime. Something to remember.”

“If she doesn’t develop a prince complex! Yes.”

The doorbell rang and Duff answered it.

Higgins was standing there, smiling. “Hi, Bogan.”

Duff opened the screen door. “Come out in the kitchen, will you? I just got up.”

In the kitchen, Mr. Higgins told Duff briefly about the capsule.

“You see,” he concluded, “how we can all go haywire. My men went through his things with the police. Never looked under the bed — which is the first thing an old maid would do. Never looked, I mean, beyond seeing nothing big was there. Thought I’d have a squint, myself.”

Duff bit toast he had made. He shook his head. “Too late. I cleaned the place yesterday. You think, then, that Harry—”

Higgins exhaled slowly. “Knocked himself off. Sure. They do. The heat was on him.

His people”—Higgins cursed softly—”whoever they may be, were probably sore at him because you started uncovering Harry’s business. I think when Harry went to Baltimore he was trying to contact somebody. We had men on him the whole time.”

“You did!”

Higgins’ eyes smiled, but not his lips. “This isn’t any amateur outfit, Bogan! Yes. But he never made a contact — not that our men saw, anyhow. He did consult doctors. He said he was sick — and I guess he was. Sick from fear. The doctors couldn’t treat that. So he came back here and maybe got the word. Or knew his number was up because they didn’t get to him in Baltimore. So he took that thing — and probably coughed the skin of it out as he died.”

“That means,” Duff said gravely, “Harry knew what he was doing the whole time.”

Again the G-man swore. “It means that, whatever the hell they are trying to do! By now, I’d give a leg to know. A life, I guess! I’ll take a fast gander at the room, even though you did clean it up.”

Duff nodded. “Okay. Incidentally, I tried to find your agents around here yesterday.

They must have been taking a day off.”

Higgins stared. Then he laughed. “You thought you could deliver the capsule to my men, hunh? They were here, just the same, son. As I said they’d be.”

“But there wasn’t a soul! Except some colored road workers!” Duff, seeing the G-man’s look, broke off and blushed. “Oh!” He joined ruefully in Higgins’ chuckle. “I did find one thing, though. There’s a sinkhole”—he pointed out the window—”beyond the banyan and those gumbo-limbo trees.”

Higgins said he’d have it looked over. Perhaps it had been; Duff couldn’t tell from the G-man’s response. Higgins went upstairs and returned to the kitchen shortly. He said to Duff, who was eating a home-grown banana and drinking coffee, “Brother, you sure would make some girl a wonderful wife! When you clean, you clean!”

Duff walked down the drive with him. “Thought you didn’t want any — people to know you were still interested in this place?”

Higgins nodded. “I checked with my road crew before this call. If anybody peculiar had showed up, I’d have got a signal and you’d have had to sneak me out.”

“There’s another item. Harry’s funeral. That’s tomorrow. Since we know now what Harry was, perhaps the family—”

The G-man shook his head. “No. They’re going?”

“They intend to. Even Eleanor plans to cut some of her schedule.”

“Lovely girl,” Higgins said absently. “No, Bogan. Things have to keep seeming normal around here. We’ll have a man at the services, of course. There won’t be many people. Some of his old letter-carrier pals. A few from the garage. Some of the cronies he used to fish and spot-cast with. You and the kids and the missus, you go. Don’t tell ‘em Harry was a spy.”

The word, even then, shocked Duff. “A funny person to be one.”