The Smuggled Atom Bomb

He whistled. Eleanor went on, “They — whoever they might be — would have careful plans to bring in atomic bombs piece by piece. Plans even to substitute something plausible, that resembled the real thing, if they got caught’ up with. And maybe to use innocent people as their agents. Harry could no doubt, for instance, get one of his truck-driver pals to take a box like that, of several, to some city up north.”

Duffs Adam’s apple made a round trip as he gulped. “A lot of the top men in physics have mentioned that very possibility!” He named names familiar in the news since Hiroshima. “They’ve said atom bombs could be brought into harbors in tramp steamers. Or smuggled into the country in sections and assembled in secret and planted — like mines, like infernal machines — to be set off in the centers of cities — perhaps by radio, at some zero hour!”

“That’s what I mean,” she said quietly.

Duff leaned backward and looked cautiously around the corner of the barn toward the Yates house. He leaned back and shook his head. “No. Every time I get on the idea, really think about it, it sounds too unlikely. This place. Us.”

“Wouldn’t a beat-up place like this, nobodies like us, be ideal? Couldn’t things have been in Harry’s room, passing through, for years, without us knowing? Don’t you think you should call the FBI again?”

The cold water his imagination had needed was supplied by that suggestion. He started to speak, stammered, fell silent for a moment and then said, “Heck! The FBI probably thought of that angle ten seconds after they realized what I was talking about!”

“But they didn’t mention it, Duff!”

His smile was faint, rueful. “They have a way of not mentioning all they’re thinking about. Nix, Eleanor, but nix! I am not going to expose myself to another reprimand for taking up their time over nothing.”

Her expression was disappointed, then angry — as if she were going to argue — and finally, unemotional. She knew about arguing with Duff when his mind was made up; it was like trying to talk a hole in a rock.

“At least,” she said, after a while, “we might sort of keep watching Harry — or his room, anyhow. Then, if anything did happen—”

He nodded. “I was thinking that.”

She picked up the carpet beater and turned her back. He saw the “one-quarter profile”

again and heard himself say, “There’s a dandy movie tonight at the Coconut Grove Theater, if you’d like—”

“I’m hay riding with Scotty Smythe,” she answered. “That lamb!” She attacked a carpet Duff had hung for her.

Several evenings later, Harry Ellings, sitting on the front porch as usual, smoking a cigar, listening as usual to the radio, announced he was going to take a moonlight stroll. He announced it loudly through an open window. Upstairs, poring over a textbook, Duff vaguely heard and at first dismissed the words. Harry didn’t go for many strolls, owing to his bad legs, but occasionally he took a preslumber ramble, and this evening, warm, moon-white, was an invitation.

Duff had finished a two-page equation before it occurred to him that a “moonlight stroll” was the sort of thing which he had agreed with Eleanor ought to be watched. He turned his heavy book face down on his desk. He stepped into the dark hall and looked out the window. Through the trees, on the coral-white road, he could see Ellings walking slowly, apparently aimlessly, toward the west. Duff hurried down the back stairs, saying nothing of his departure, and started along the drive. The coral crackled, so he stepped on the grass, reflecting that he was poorly equipped by nature for any act, such as stealthy pursuit, that required a lack of clumsiness.

By walking along the roadside in the shadow of trees, Duff managed, however, to gain enough on Ellings to get him in view. And Duff was surprised — or was he, he asked himself — to find that the star boarder stopped now and again, looked back and seemed to listen, as if he worried over the possibility of pursuit.

The road was crossed by another about a half mile from the house. Harry turned.

After walking some distance, he came to a region where there were no houses at all — an area of pines, palmettos and cabbage palms which was cross-hatched with weedy streets and sidewalks and provided here and there with the ghostly remnants of lampposts. This area, a quarter of a century ago, had been laid out as a real-estate subdivision. Then the boom had burst, and since that time the vegetation of South Florida had worked its way — vegetation aided by storms, heat and the rain. Harry walked with accelerated speed in this moonlit, ruin-like place, following the cracked and broken line of a sidewalk. Duff took off his shoes and stayed behind in the shadows.

Harry was certainly headed somewhere. Beyond the ruined development was a rock pit with a moonlit pond in its bottom, used now as a trash dump. Duff thought Harry might be on his way there, but he stopped short of it. He stood still. His cigar shone brighter, twice.

He turned clear around, looking. Then he whistled.