The Smuggled Atom Bomb

Scotty smirked. “Look, you jealous weevils! Olean is a town in New York State. It has history, paved streets, electric lights — and Eleanor Yates’ birthplace!”

“We are worrying ourselves unduly,” said a plump, shrewd-eyed brother who had apparently been reading a magazine. “I know, out of what we lawyers call our own knowledge, that she necked with Avalanche Billings last week. Kissed him, anyhow. I also know she gets orchids from a guy in the Miami Junior Chamber of Commerce. He raises ‘em in his yard — which shows a good business head. And there are eight thousand other guys!”

The main object of the ribbing, evidently accustomed to it, again discussed his vine.

“They graft things on trees down here,” Scotty murmured. “Maybe a graft could be managed.

If it won’t bear its own fruit, perhaps a few limes would do. A mango or two, now and then.

Even a bunch of broccoli.” He turned. “Listen, oafs! What you see in these nice gray eyes is pure loathing! My sister belongs to the Junior League, true. Mother’s farsighted and sometimes uses a lorgnette — I guess the first time most of you swamp Willies ever saw one was when she came to the Open House last year. I say, phooey to you gentlemen and I say faugh! I am going on a hayride tonight with Eleanor, so if anybody wants to borrow my car—”

He was overwhelmed by the onslaught.

Duff Bogan was standing in the Yates back yard, studying the sky. Several broken limbs needed to be removed from the live oaks, but that meant borrowing an extension ladder from a distant neighbor, and Eleanor had the car. Tree pruning, except near the house, was hopeless anyhow. There were broken branches all through the jungle. A whole tree had fallen across the water-filled sinkhole in the woods west of the house. He examined passing clouds.

There was no prospect of showers that he could discern. He decided to begin a long-postponed operation: painting the sun-faded house. With the stepladder he could reach nearly half of it. He started, some while later, on the east wall. He heard but did not see Eleanor drive in.

But presently, from the back yard, a sharp whacking commenced. A cloud of dust eddied around the house and settled grittily on the fresh paint. He came down the ladder.

Barelegged, in shorts and a blouse, with an old silk scarf around her hair, Eleanor was beating rugs. She stood with her back to him, and Duff, as often, admired the line of her chin, eye and forehead. She had high cheekbones and rather deep-set, slightly slanted eyes so his view, which he thought of as a one-quarter profile, gave a special outline of the anatomy of her beauty. The act of beating rugs in such a costume exhibited her body at its muscular best.

He watched her for quite a while before he said, “Hey!”

She turned. “Oh, hello!” Gold tendrils had escaped the scarf and curled like shavings on a damp brow.

“One of us has got to quit — or at least move. I started painting the house a while back.”

“Duff! I’m sorry! I didn’t know!”

He grinned. “Would you mind if I transferred your carpets to the line behind the barn?”

Once there, she asked abruptly, “Duff, has anything happened?”

He shook his head. “Everything’s stopped happening. I saw Higgins a while ago. The FBI checked Harry’s story about platinum. So I guess I made one really sour bunch of mistakes.” He told her the situation.

She dropped the carpet beater. “Only — you don’t believe you did. Do you?”

“No.”

Her look was thoughtful, measuring. “But you aren’t absolutely positive?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been chivvied around so much that I don’t know. The tests I ran seem okay, on review. I thought that hunk of platinum didn’t look exactly like the thing I sandpapered the first time. After all, though, it would be crazy. Us. Harry. A house like this.

Mixed up in anything of that kind.”

“Maybe not too crazy. Look at the facts that have come out of the samples swiped.

The espionage. And no doubt there are plenty of other stories that haven’t come out! That won’t come out — until we get in another war and win it. Until we find a way to disarm the world and make it peaceful. Every government has things like that n locked away. Hushed up. Some forever. It wasn’t.” the craziness that made me think you were mistaken.”

“Then what was it?” he asked morosely.

“Nothing, Duff. I never thought so. But I don’t y really believe Harry is a party to anything — sinister. I still thought there was some sort of hanky-panky. Did you ever consider it backwards?”

“What do you mean — backwards?” Suddenly his mild eyes flew wide open and his cigarette fell from limp fingers. He said, “Holy whirling cyclotrons!” He picked up the cigarette. “You mean, that was a hunk of U235 coming into the U.S.A!”

She nodded. “If it was uranium and if platinum was substituted, it means there’s a mighty ingenious gang, doesn’t it?”