The Smuggled Atom Bomb

He closed the book, tossed it on his table and clattered downstairs. Mrs. Yates had wheeled herself into the living room. Her anxiety had visibly increased. “Charley just reached someone who was there, Duff. They waited for Eleanor till half past four. They tried to call here, but the line was busy all the time. No wonder. The calls that come in. So they went ahead without her.”

Duff said, “Probably got her dates mixed. Wouldn’t be surprising! She had some shenanigan at Fort Lauderdale for tomorrow. Bet she went there by mistake. Probably come in, any minute.”

“It isn’t like her,” Mrs. Yates insisted.

Duff grinned rather soberly. “She isn’t herself, these days.”

“She wandered off with somebody,” Mrs. Yates went on. “I didn’t see who. I’d wheeled into the kitchen to block a sweater, and she’d changed to that gorgeous brown dress she was to wear at the Fashion Parade today. She didn’t take the car and I don’t know who was to call for her. Scotty came by and they talked a while, and then he drove away and I had a glimpse of her standing out by the banyan. After that, somebody must have picked her up.”

Marian, who had gone into the stair hall, now called, “She certainly is getting absent-minded! She didn’t even take along the hat that goes with the new brown rig!” Marian came, then, carrying a hat the color of Eleanor’s eyes, with canary-yellow trimming.

It was not until then that Duff became alarmed. But alarm, when it appeared, was instant and formidable. She wouldn’t go without the hat. She was orderly. She was responsible. She had a good memory. And lately, she’d been almost vain; so much attention would have made anybody conscious of beauty. It was hard to imagine that Eleanor would barge away when somebody arrived to pick her up — without a hat that, obviously, was a main part of a planned costume for a very important social event.

As he felt ice inside himself, Duff instantly dissembled. “Maybe Scotty knows about it.”

He went to the phone and dialed. He got Scotty’s roommate and, presently, Scotty himself.

“Hi, you phony Sherlock!” Scotty said.

Duff frowned at the greeting and then realized that, as far as Scotty knew, his idea about the boxes had been mistaken and their trip to New York a blunder. He grinned tensely and asked about Eleanor.

“No,” young Smythe answered. “I didn’t see the Queen depart. I had a little colloquy with her around three, and I blew. I left her among the Yates trees and shrubs.”

Duff thanked him. He tried two members of the Orange Bowl Committee without success. He phoned the people who were sponsoring the banquet and asked if they had heard anything from Eleanor. They hadn’t. The family tried some of Eleanor’s closest girl friends.

Nobody knew anything about her.

“We’re probably going bats for nothing,” Duff said. “After all, she was terribly balled up with dates. Let’s eat.”

Eight o’clock.

No sign of Eleanor. Duff called a number Higgins had given him, and a sharp voice said, “Rolfe, here.”

“My name is Allan Bogan. I live at the Yates house—”

“Right. Where you calling from?”

“There.”

“Better use another phone.”

“No. The thing is, Eleanor Yates has disappeared. I mean, she was due home over two hours ago — been missing since around four.”

“Right. We’ll check.”

Duff hung up, wild-eyed.

“Who was that? The police?”

Duff nodded. “Sort of.”

Mrs. Yates began to cry a little.

Duff nervously walked out on the porch. If they had seized her — if they had taken her away — who were “they”? Why had they done any such thing? Where had they taken her?

There could be a reason. Weeks before, unsatisfied by his effort to convince the FBI that something was happening, she had gone to see Higgins without telling him. Since his return from New York, Duff hadn’t exchanged confidences with Eleanor or anyone else.

Higgins had forbidden that. It was possible that Eleanor had found out something so final, so telling, that she’d been— What?

“They” wouldn’t mind killing a girl. “They,” perhaps, were working to kill millions of people. You couldn’t even think, rationally, of what “they” might be planning.

Duff paced back and forth on the porch. It was a warm evening, but not so warm as to explain the sweat that burst on his brow, soaked his shirt. Only fear could explain that.

FIVE

Four night-blooming-jasmine bushes which Duff had raised from cuttings blossomed along the edge of the veranda. Their perfume, so heady that some people cannot bear it, saturated the darkness and drifted downwind, exotic and sweet. When Duff noticed it, his attention came only in the form of a memory, a memory that Eleanor was very fond of jasmine. He tried to tell himself it was insane to imagine that, simply because she was missing, Eleanor had been kidnapped and perhaps killed by people whose very existence was shadowy.