Three to Be Read

by Philip Wylie

  It was a job she’d got through a friend of her mother’s, which netted a welcome eighteen dollars and ten cents a week.

  Duff wheeled Mrs. Yates up to the table. The Yates youngsters, both dark-haired and dark-eyed, like their father, were so excited over their respective successes that Harry Ellings didn’t notice the special looks directed toward him by Eleanor and Duff.

  After dinner, after Eleanor had driven away in a station wagon as weatherbeaten as the house, Duff went to his room and made plans. He’d want one of the chemistry labs on a day when it wasn’t full of freshmen doing Chemistry 101-A. He could do the physics all right—that was in his de-department. He’d need advice about the microanalysis… .

  It took a week. But one week later—with shaky hands, because he had never done anything of the sort—he looked in the beat-up phone book beside a drugstore booth for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, dialed and closed the door.

  A man answered. “I’d like to talk to somebody,” Duff said, “about making an appointment.”

  “Just a minute.” It was quite a long minute. Duff got ready another nickel.

  “Yes? Hello? Higgins speaking.”

  “Oh,” Duff said. “Well—look, sir. My name is Allan D. Bogan. I’m a graduate student at the university. I want to talk to somebody down there. I’ve run across something odd.”

  A slight pause. “Could you give me any idea of the nature of what you’ve encountered? We’re pretty busy here—”

  “I—I—I know that. Over the phone—” Duff hesitated. “Suppose I told you that I’m a graduate student in physics. The science that led to the atomic bomb—”

  Mr. Higgins’ voice, businesslike to begin with, cut him off sharply, “Would three-fifteen this afternoon do?”

  “P-p-perfectly.”

  “Ask for me. Higgins. Slater Higgins.”

  The office of the FBI looked like any office. No fancy equipment visible, no gun racks, no alarm or communication devices. And Mr. Slater Higgins, in his own small cubicle, with its swivel chair and desk, its one large window, looked like any junior executive.

  They shook hands. Mr. Higgins pointed to a chair with his pipe stem and said, smiling faintly, “What’s on your mind, Duff?” The younger man stared. “You know—”

  “Checked, sure. After your call. Registrar. Got everything from your nickname to your lack of an athletic record. Tell you so you can skip it.”

  Duff sat silent, flushing a little. “Well, it begins with where I board. Did you check that?”

  Higgins laughed. “Address is all. Shoot!”

  Duff was embarrassed about the start of his story, since it involved curiosity and his unethical behavior. So he decided to give weight to his words immediately. “I have found a stolen part of what is plainly an atomic bomb.”

  Mr. Higgins did look at him sharply. But that was all. No exclamation. No excitement. “Okay. Start where it starts. Take your time.”

  The G-man was a good listener—putting in questions only when the narrative confused him or left a gap.

  “I had to wait,” Duff wound up, “until yesterday, to get a good chance to run the tests.

  They checked, all right. It was uranium. Uranium 235, I am sure. High neutron emission—”

  “You can skip the technical part. That isn’t for me. I’m a lawyer. An accountant. You sure?”

  Duff hesitated. The sample had been extremely small. The tests had been difficult.

  The apparatus in the physics lab hadn’t worked as well as he could have hoped. “I’m—sure enough,” he finally said, “to come in here.”

  “Can you give us some of the stuff to test?”

  “That’s another thing. I did have a. trace left when I got through. But—I’m cow-clumsy. When I finished the last test I started doing a dumb-headed dance—I was excited. I batted a bottle of sulphuric off a shelf—had to wash it and the last of my sample down the drain, but quick. The place was fuming up.”

  “Too bad.” Mr. Higgins locked his hands behind his head, looked at Duff and thought for a while. “You could be mistaken about your experiment?”

  “I don’t believe so. It’s possible.”

  “Stick around a few minutes.” Higgins walked from the room. He was gone for quite a while. When he came back, his face was unreadable. He sat in his chair again.

  “We’d like a look at that cached stuff, Bogan. I take it there’s always somebody at home. Mrs. Yates.”

  “Not always. On sunny Sundays we wheel her to the car and lift her in and take her wheel chair along. Church. Harry Ellings never misses church.”

  “Good. You see, we’d also like to look at that thing without anybody knowing. If it does happen to be uranium, we want to know more than just that Ellings has it.”

  “Naturally.” Duff felt better. “You’d want him to keep right on doing whatever he may be doing. He’s probably innocent. The Yates family knows him mighty well. He doubtless thinks he’s keeping something for a friend.”

  “Could be.”

  “And by watching him, you’d be led to some group that’s stealing not just atomic secrets but actual bombs.”

  “The trouble is,” Higgins answered slowly, “that, except for a trace stolen during the war, and a bit some character took home for a collection, we’ve never lost any uranium, Bogan. Nothing remotely approaching the quantity that would make the lump you described.”

  Duff’s pale blue eyes were surprised. “No! Are they sure? Couldn’t they make a mistake?”

  Higgins chuckled without mirth. “Brother, can’t you conceive the guarding and checking and cross-checking that goes into protecting something worth maybe half a hundred thousand bucks a pound? Something that we’ve spent billions to be able to make? They can tell you where every thousandth of an ounce is, every day, every minute!”

  Duffs reaction was one of humiliation. “Then I must have pulled a boner at the lab!

  Maybe—having got that cockeyed notion—I saw what I wanted to see, in my tests.”

  The G-man’s eyes were unsympathetic. “Probably. But you came in here and told us.

  We’re used to that. Stories and rumors of A-bomb spies come in here as thick as reports of flying saucers. And we waste our lives on ‘em all. Thanks, however. Provisionally.”

  Duff stood. “If you’re going to investigate, I could leave a plan of the house. And some notes on the lock on the box. How to open it, I mean. And my door key.”

  Higgins grinned. “Right. Would help.”

  The following Sunday when they came home from church, Duff tried to find evidence that the FBI had entered and examined the house. There wasn’t any such evidence.

  On Monday, however, Duff was called from a class to talk to a Mr. Higgins who

  “insisted,” according to a girl from the front office, “that the call was important and you should be disturbed.”

  “In a few days,” Higgins said, when he had identified Duff, “we will call on your friend at your place. Ostensibly, we’ll be checking another matter. Actually, we’ll make ourselves an opportunity to take a look at the matter we’ve discussed. You aren’t to give away the fact that we may have seen it previously. On some pretext, we’ll call you up. We want you to see it again and tell us, if you can, whether it’s what you originally— sampled.”

  “Did you see—the matter?” Duff asked breathlessly.

  “Yeah. And don’t act astonished when you learn what it is!” Mr. Higgins hesitated.

  “You might tip off the rest of the family, since you’ve discussed it with them.”

  It was curt, perfunctory, unsatisfying. He told Eleanor and her mother exactly what he had done, precisely what he had been advised to do. A few more days passed. There was no change in the behavior of Harry Ellings. The graying, inconspicuous boarder played bridge with his postman pals, went out to practice with his casting rod on an illuminated target range, did his work, and said nothing unusual until the end of the week.

  Then, one night
during supper, he changed the subject, which was a popular and interminable one: the kidding of Eleanor about her various dates by her younger brother and sister, who were particularly diverted by the salmon-pink convertible of a Mr. Prescott Smythe, of Omega fraternity.

  “Don’t be surprised,” Harry interrupted abruptly, “if the Gestapo calls on me.”

  Duff felt the beginning of a start, and repressed it. He wondered quickly, too, if any man who had reason to fear the FBI would refer to the bureau in so insulting a term. It was evidence that Harry had no reason for worry.

  Mrs. Yates was saying, “Gestapo?”

  Eleanor said calmly, “He means the FBI. You been kidnapping people, or something, Harry?”

  The star boarder grinned and then frowned. “Everybody at the plant”—it was his word for the trucking company that employed him—“is being processed. Supposed to keep it to themselves. But you know how fellows talk.”

  “Processed?” The term was unfamiliar to Mrs. Yates.

  Harry stirred his coffee. “Checked. Questioned. There’s been some fancy counterfeiting going on. A few guys on the lam. Unlawful flight, the Gestapo men call it.

  And they’re looking for counterfeiting plates that have eased out of the state they were used in. A big trucking company, like Miami-Dade, is always being suspected of doing something against the law.”

  In the person of Mr. Higgins and an assistant, the “Gestapo” called that night.

  Although he had a chance to wink or mutter a word when Duff answered the doorbell, Higgins behaved as if Duff were a stranger. He asked for Mr. Harry Ellings and was conducted upstairs. Charles Yates said loudly as the two men climbed, “Real G-men! Golly!

  Maybe I’ll be one!”

  Nearly an hour passed. Eleanor and Duff washed and dried the dishes. Marian and Charles pretended to do homework and actually discussed the visit of the FBI, speculating horrendously on its possible causes.

  Then Higgins came to the head of the stairs. “Oh, Miss Yates?” When Eleanor appeared, he added, “You are Miss Yates? Will you come up a moment?” And that other young boarder, too, if he will.”

  They went up. The box was open, in the middle of the room. Harry was sitting in his easy chair, looking angry. Higgins pointed to the object in the box. “Either of you ever seen that before?”

  They had been instructed. They looked at the object. Duff squatted down by the box and scrutinized the curious piece of machined metal.

  “No,” he said positively.

  Eleanor shook her bright head. “Not even the box!”

  “I told you!” Harry said crossly. “I brought it in when they were on a picnic. Ye gods!

  Government snoops! Government snoops! I’m well within my rights—”

  “What is it?” Duff asked.

  Higgins smiled tightly and looked at Harry.

  Harry raised his eyes to Duff and shrugged. “It’s my life savings, that’s what it is!

  Since way back when Roosevelt threw us off the gold standard and I had to turn in the gold I kept. I bought platinum. Finally made one piece of it. Harder to swipe. Made that box, in the end, and melted down old pieces of solder to wall it in lead. Too heavy now for any housebreaker to snitch. Then I got bad legs and had to have a lot of medical care. An operation. After that, a year in machinist’s school —with board, room and tuition to pay! So I began cutting out wedges of the stuff and selling it. That’s what’s left! It’s perfectly legal to own it and I’ll be damned if I see what right the G-men have to make me haul it out and explain it. My secret—the only one I ever had—and no harm in it.”

  Duff looked at Higgins. Higgins said, “Ellings isn’t kidding. He has a right to stash platinum away, and I did snoop. No search warrant—just noticed he kept his closet locked and asked for a look. We’re hunting some of the best counterfeit plates ever made—and that box was heavy… . I hope you’ll accept our apology, Ellings.”

  “How much good would it do me, if I refused?” the boarder asked tartly.

  And that was that. Higgins and his companion left quickly with no further word.

  Duff was on his way home from the campus the next afternoon when Higgins overtook him in a sedan and picked him up. He started driving in a direction tangential to the Yates place.

  He said, “All right! Was it the same dingus?”

  Duff had asked himself a thousand times. “I don’t believe it was. It was brighter, shinier, I think. And the machining on the first one was more precise, as I remember it. Of course, I was hurrying then. There were saw marks in this casting. Was it platinum?”

  Higgins said, “Yeah. A little impure. Commercial stuff. Also, he did buy at least some of it a long while back. Years. We checked that. He did make the box in spare time at his garage. It looks, Bogan, as if you’d been fooled. After all, you got that brainstorm about it being part of an A-bomb before you ran the tests. Not after. Could have conditioned your reading of the tests. Must have. We’ve checked Harry Ellings through his whole life.

  Checked his friends and family. Nothing whatever on the record. No convictions. No arrests.

  No association with subversive groups or people. Just a stolid, hard-working bachelor who’s a churchgoer and not a bad bridge player. If a segment of a bomb had been stolen, I’d say this business might somehow be connected. None has.”

  Duff rode uncomfortably. Finally he said, “Would a segment of the uranium heart of a bomb look like that?”

  Higgins glanced at him, grinned, gazed at the road again. “Do you suppose they’d tell even us that? What they did hint at—not say—was that we were goons down at this office to even rise to any reported ‘uranium.’ Suggested we should know the bombs were plutonium now. There’s a difference, apparently. Wouldn’t know what it is.”

  “Different elements,” Duff said absently. “Like iron and nickel. The Hiroshima bomb was uranium. The Nagasaki one was plutonium. I suppose that is what they use now.”

  “The last loose end,” Higgins answered, turning back toward the Yates house, “was your identification. Since you aren’t sure about that, the whole picture falls completely apart.

  You find the kitty of a gold-standard crank. So you pop off, having bomb jitters, like everyone. But you weren’t smart to run your own tests. You should have given us the sample, since you suspected it was something a lot different from platinum.”

  “It wasn’t platinum,” Duff said earnestly, but not quite certainly.

  “Maybe it was hamburger.” Higgins stopped to let out an abashed Duff. “Next time you run across any espionage, keep it to yourself. We got trouble enough at the bureau with real agents of foreign powers!”

  “Cute college types,” said Prescott Smythe, gazing at one through the porch screens of the Omega house, “are a dime a dozen!”

  A brother at his side examined the girl, from auburn hair to flat-heeled green sandals.

  “Make it two bits. Everything’s high these days.”

  “That one,” said another brother, “is named Althena Bailey.” Faces turned and the brother went on, “A transfer. From ‘Johjah.’ She is interested in collecting. She’d like to collect an Omega fraternity pin. Otherwise she is not interested. Any further questions?”

  A man with a crew-cut, freckles, a gold football, said, “Why is it so many women who want to act unsteady have to go steady first?”

  “Ask Heartbreak Smythe! He’s gone steady with more unsteady dames than an assistant director of B pictures!”

  Prescott Smythe, or Scotty, ignored the reference. He rose. He crossed the porch to a large concrete urn in which was growing a huge vine with dark green, lacily slit leaves. He peered intently at the vine.

  “There is nothing for breaking hearts,” said a thin brother, “like a convertible. That’s what the word means. It converts ‘em.”

  Scotty Smythe finally spoke. “You know,” he said in elegant tones, “when I stole this vine it was hardly two feet tall. I’ve had to swipe four pots for it, through
the years. In graduated sizes. Now, look at it! Magnificent foliage. A monstera deliciosa, the botany boys tell me. Should bear fruit. Edible fruit. Never had so much as a cucumber on it!”

  The brothers ignored the countermeasure. “Sad thing about Smythe,” said the football player. “Stealing flowerpots. Now he’s trying to swipe the Orange Bowl. The Queen, anyhow. As soon as a man recognizes a cutest college type, he’s through.”

  Scotty grinned. “Okay! So, okay! I got it bad.”

  “What will your family say?” the thin brother asked in a somber tone. “Imagine the scene. You take la Yates to Manhattan, ride up in a marble elevator to your familial penthouse, whip out your golden latchkey, open the door and say, ‘Mother, here’s the girl I’m going to marry! This po’ cracker chile.’ Your mother can see the babe is a looker who would bring a blush of envy to the proud features—all’ the proud features—of Kim Novak.

  And has topaz eyes, besides. But your mother isn’t fooled by mere externals. Not like you, Smythe! Raising a jewel-encrusted lorgnette, she frigidly asks the girl, ‘Where are your Junior League papers? Even your first papers?’”

  “Where does Eleanor’s family come from?” a brother asked. “Anybody know?”

  “Olean,” said Scotty.

  “I thought olean was something you spread on bread.”

  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.