Three to Be Read

by Philip Wylie

  “Yes.”

  “I doubt it. You’re saying, man, that whole cities are being prepared for slaughter without warning! And you’re saying this is being done by people we have no whisper of, line on, word about—not a notion of, a smell, scent, track, trail or even hunch about!”

  “Exactly.”

  “Frankly, I think that’s impossible.”

  “You can’t say it’s impossible, Mac.”

  The Scotsman shrugged. “Very well. As unlikely as flying saucers. Put it that way.

  On the other hand, grant, for a second, it’s true. What then?”

  “That’s what I’d really like to discuss.” McIntosh put away his key and folded his hands across his chest. “All right. We’ll discuss it. I will. In the first place, any such an underground outfit actually doing any such thing wouldn’t hesitate for a second to murder this Bogan lad, or the whole Yates family, or any hundred other people.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Second, such an outfit actually might use the Yates house. It’s off the beaten track.

  No other houses near. Rundown. Surrounded by big trees. Not conspicuous. And protected.

  Those Yateses would be about the last persons anyone would suspect of doing anything criminal or haboring criminals. Mother a cripple. Beautiful young daughter—Orange Bowl Queen. Normal Americans. Two boarders. And a man like Ellings, if he were an enemy agent, would be ideal because he’s got such a long, hardworking, churchgoing, commonplace history.”

  “Check.”

  “Third, the whole routine you’re trying to sell me would therefore have worked—except this Bogan lad had a lot of cockeyed hobbies. Like picking locks. Like housework.

  And he’s a physics graduate student, so when he sees metal, he’s curious. He has, besides, a hobby of raising tropical fish and water lilies. When he can’t get a satisfactory answer from us, he takes on another hobby.”

  “Yeah,” said Higgins dryly. “The hobby of danger!”

  McIntosh sniffed. “Nosing! He gets nosy. He gets the girl nosing, even. And he gets bopped on the bean by a branch—and lucky his brains weren’t knocked out.” McIntosh unlocked his hands and flattened them on his desk. “Not a sign that anything happened but a branch fell! Ellings, the logical one to hit Bogan if all this wonder dust is real, was in bed.

  Mrs. Yates saw him come downstairs. So who hit him? Presumably, somebody coming for or standing guard over the alleged box in the lily pool. So now what? Four-five days, Bogan’s out of the hospital. Ready to nose some more!”

  “We could tell him to quit. Tell him the bureau was taking over from here on in.”

  The Scotsman scowled. “Which is exactly what we don’t want anybody to know!”

  There was quiet elation and relief in Higgins’ voice. “Meaning, we are taking over?”

  McIntosh frowned harder and then smiled. “If it weren’t Sunday, I believe I’d swear.

  Of course, we’re taking over! However, we won’t accomplish anything unless all and sundry really believe we’ve missed our cues by deciding the injury was an accident, the box a myth.

  You can see that?”

  “Sure. The Yates place is hot. It will be as long as we’re interested. Or the cops.

  Anybody. Maybe it always will be, from now on, and maybe—if Ellings was merely being used—we have only one hope: finding out who used him. But there’s one difficulty about telling Bogan and the Yates family that we don’t feel anything was going on around there.

  It’s Bogan himself. He really believes what he reported. I believe it. And if we give him the brush, he’s undoubtedly going to push right on with—”

  “His hobby of danger?” McIntosh smiled bleakly. “I suppose he is. But—still just being hypothetical—if there is such an outfit as you take on faith, will they be badly alarmed by a physics student’s attempt to catch up with them? I think not.”

  “They near killed him.”

  The bureau head was silent for a long time. Finally he said, “See here, Hig. If this operation is real, maybe several million people might get killed all of a sudden. Good Americans. Risking the life of one or two or even a family isn’t important. If it’s not real—which is my opinion— there’s no risk.”

  Higgins gestured as if to protect that logic. Then he said, “Yeah.”

  McIntosh consulted his watch again. “You go back to the hospital. Tell Bogan that we did have a watch on the place ever since he started bringing tales to us. Tell him no stranger or anybody else was even near the hammock trees that night. Tell him we’re calling off our men. Let him feel we’re sick and tired of a lot of to-do that pans out as nothing. Give him the notion that his accident, and his ‘theory’ that it was something different, is the last straw.

  He’s already sore at us for apparently doing little. If you say we did a job of watching he knew nothing about, and are quitting now because this time we know he was mistaken—well, it’ll leave him high and dry.”

  “Sure will,” Higgins said. “And I hate to do it to him. He’s a nice guy, Mac. Got brains. Sense of humor. Guts.”

  “Can you think of a better way to handle it?” McIntosh rose and set his Panama carefully on his head. “If I hurry, I can just about hit the middle of the sermon. My wife’ll be annoyed.” He put his arm over Higgins’ shoulder and propelled him toward the single elevator in service on that Sunday morning. “You haven’t really got this thing focused yet, Hig. Remember what I said. If it’s all a pipe dream, no harm done. If it’s not, we have to run the risk of one man being in danger in order to have any chance at all, ourselves, of stopping something”—as the elevator came, he hesitated—“that we’d gladly sacrifice every man in the bureau to stop.”

  Higgins, with whose words, felt the full impact of his chief’s fear. He walked around the building and got in his car and started toward the hospital again. He could tell Bogan that a man under great strain often mistranslates what he sees and hears, and Duff Bogan had certainly been under strain.

  Thinking about it alone in bed, after Higgins had gone, Duff agreed that Higgins might be right. After all, they had watched the house. They had acted, when he’d assumed they were ignoring his story. It could have been a lily box, bright insect eggs, a falling branch. Or could it? In his mind’s eye, going over and over the scene, he could see the slots in the screw heads. Insect eggs didn’t have slots. He could tell them that. But they wouldn’t believe it. He could hardly believe it himself. Maybe it wasn’t true. The FBI didn’t believe it, and the FBI wasn’t dumb, so why should he?

  With the last shreds of consciousness—of consciousness free of head-splitting pain—Duff answered himself: It was real and awful and growing worse because nobody would do anything about it. So he would have to do what he could, as soon as he was able to leave the hospital. He’d have to work alone.

  It was only afterward, long afterward, that Duff could collate and define the moods and incidents that followed. At the time they seemed unrelated and inexplicable.

  His head mended rapidly. The doctors were pleased. Duff explained to them with simulated hauteur that physicists had tough brains. He missed Thanksgiving at the Yates home, but not the meal, as Eleanor borrowed from a restaurant a portable foodwarmer and brought turkey with trimmings to the hospital. Three days later he was released, bandaged, but whole again.

  Immediately upon his return he noticed a difference in the temper of the household.

  Mrs. Yates seemed nervous and worried. The two younger children were cross and strained.

  And Harry Ellings had been suffering from what he described as “attacks”; he stayed away from work twice. Eleanor showed the change most sharply if more subtly.

  She was, if anything, lovelier than ever and seemed more aware of her attractiveness.

  Miami’s best beauty parlors had vied for a chance to give her wavy, tawny hair its prettiest cut; they had taught her new uses of make-up. Stores in Miami and Miami Beach had supplied her, for the first time in her li
fe, with a luxurious wardrobe. These gifts were, of course, donated for publicity—the traditional due of a Bowl Queen.

  She was edgy, Duff thought. No doubt she was overtired. The mere fact that he had lain for a week in the hospital had meant a large addition to her work. And now that Charley Yates spent every afternoon carrying newspapers, she was short another helper. Her own job, the demands made on a Queen-elect and the burden of housework were more than enough for any girl. But, in addition to that, she had arranged several dates with other young men than Scotty: Avalanche Billings, the fullback, for one; and Tony Bradley, a Miami businessman, for another.

  She seemed glad to have Duff back at home one minute, and the next, annoyed at everything. “Christmas is coming,” she kept saying, “and we’re so broke and there’s so much to do.”

  When he tried to reassure her, she turned away.

  Finally, they quarreled over the subject of most quarrels: practically nothing. He had worked late in the laboratory on a difficult problem. When he reached home, Eleanor was in the kitchen, and he went immediately to help.

  She said petulantly, “Where in heaven’s name have you been?”

  “Over on the campus. Working.”

  “Fine thing! I needed you here! The pipe’s plugged under the sink!” She picked up a pan of hot vegetables and drained them over a larger vessel. “See?”

  “I’ll fix it right after dinner.”

  “You’ll have to or wash dishes in the yard! The kids are going to the movies tonight.”

  She lifted the lid on a skillet of sizzling meat. He noticed that she was wearing no apron and hadn’t changed from a particularly pretty dress—gray and scarlet—in her new wardrobe. Her mood communicated to him.

  “You’ll get spattered,” he said. “Let me turn the chops. You’ve no apron on.”

  “You set the table,” she said. “It isn’t yet… . I don’t know why Marian’s late!”

  “But that meat’s spitting all over the place.”

  She muttered something that sounded like, “Mind your own business,” seized a fork, and immediately was splashed so that the fresh dress was turned into something for the dry cleaner.

  She said, “Damn!”

  “I told you so.”

  She whirled from the stove. “You tell me nothing, Duffer Bogan! All the aprons were dirty and I was too darn tired to change!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sure, you’re sorry! So am I sorry! I’m sorry my kid sister is probably giggling with some pimply boy in a schoolyard somewhere! I’m sorry you had to work late and Harry’s feeling rotten! I’m sorry we can’t afford a cook, or to eat out once in a while, or even own enough aprons to keep neat! I’m sorry we’re so mouse-poor, and right now I’m even sorry I’ve got what people think are good looks—except that maybe I can use ‘em, somehow, to get this family out of a lousy mess that goes on forever!”

  It wasn’t like Eleanor. It was nothing like her, Duff thought glumly. She had even called him by the derogatory form of his nickname. He felt pity but he thought it was no time to show it. Perhaps, too, he felt in a deep recess of his personality, where his aware mind couldn’t look, the blaze of resentment.

  “All you have to do,” he said stonily, “is to say ‘yes’ to Scotty Smythe. I’m sure he’d manage things fine for everybody. You wouldn’t need boarders, so I’d be delighted to hunt up some other place—” It was childish.

  He had never heard her shout in anger. She did now. She raised her fork and stabbed it in his direction and yelled, “Get out of this kitchen!”

  As he went through the living room, Mrs. Yates called nervously, “What’s wrong, Duff?”

  He answered, “Nothing,” and began to set the table. She didn’t offer to make up, so he didn’t.

  The day after that, Harry Ellings announced he was going to take a week of his annual two weeks’ vacation to go up to Baltimore to see some doctors about his condition.

  When Duff learned that, he wanted, once again, to let the FBI know. But Higgins, the G-man, had been very final in his last talk at the hospital. The FBI wouldn’t be interested in Harry’s trip, and though Duff ached with anxiety over the potential danger of it, he felt he could do nothing.

  When Harry returned, he didn’t seem improved. His color had become a grayish yellow. His appetite was bad. His hands shook constantly. His neatly parted gray hair seemed to be getting thinner almost day by day. He talked little and spent most of his time, when he wasn’t at work, lying on his bed.

  Nobody gave him much attention—the Yates family was demoralized. Dinners were hurriedly prepared. Every night, afterward, Eleanor either drove to Miami to her job or went to a meeting or had a date, leaving the dishes and most of the housework to Marian, Charles and Duff. With Eleanor absent, and while he worked with the youngsters, Duff could revive the old feeling of cheerfulness, but when Eleanor was at home a jittery gloom prevailed.

  In early December there was a cold spell. It was the sort that Florida chambers of commerce would like to keep hushed up. Frost crept over the Everglades. The power company put every generator in service to meet the load of electric heaters glowing in tens of thousands of homes. People with fireplaces stoked them, so that all Dade County was spiced with pine-wood smoke.

  During the night, millions of dollars’ worth of winter vegetables stiffened, took on frosty carapaces and perished ignominiously. Duff chopped wood and the younger Yateses did their homework around a fire while a kerosene heater burned odoriferiously in their mother’s room. In the morning, which was sunny, but, to natives, shockingly cold, public schools stayed closed and many business firms failed to open, owing to the absence of employees who had no overcoats to wear to their jobs. Duff went to his classes, however.

  He was chilled through by midafternoon and stopped in the Student Club cafeteria for a cup of coffee before taking the bus. There he spotted Scotty Smythe, sitting alone, looking morose. Duff carried his cup over to Scotty’s table.

  “Coming for your lesson tomorrow, Sir Isaac?”

  Smythe looked up. “Hi, Einstein! Guess so.”

  “Haven’t seen you around lately. What gives?”

  Scotty stared thoughtfully at Duff. His lips drew out in a somber line, but his eyes flickered. “You observe here,” he presently replied, a young man, five foot ten and a quarter, one hundred and fifty-eight pounds. Hair, muddy black; eyes, putty gray; occupation, college senior. He is carrying the torch.”

  “Fight?” Scotty contemplated the question. “No. Brush.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “You notice any change in Eleanor lately?”

  “She’s tired. Nervous. On edge.”

  The younger man turned over those words in his mind. “Minimally,” he said in the end. “She is also suddenly interested in a laddy-boy named Tony who owns half the hardware stores in Florida, or will, when his pappy kicks off or retires. This chump is pretty to look at; he went to Princeton, and he has a convertible too. Chartreuse.”

  “I’ve seen it. And him.” Scotty went on musingly, “Now, Eleanor never did okay my proposition exactly. But I felt she was interested in me. Seems not. No time for Smythes these days. She’s also taken to going places with that large charge of human barge known as Avalanche Billings.”

  “A wholesome boy,” Duff said, not enthusiastically.

  “In a nutshell, man, you’ve said it all! It’s not enough that his pappy is a brewer. His boy had to be an athlete too. Nearly All-American, you may have noticed. Avalanche is a clown—makes the girls laugh. Outside of rugged good looks— destined to become bloated as the years pass—”

  “Very little,” Duff agreed.

  “A cipher. A zero. A zed. What she sees in him—”

  “Not even a convertible,” Duff murmured.

  “Touché, pal!” Scotty chuckled dolefully. “You don’t sound so doggoned elated yourself.”

  “Things are melancholy,” Duff agreed.

  Scotty was silent. He finished
his coffee. He eyed Duff for a while. “Speaking of beer and such,” he said, “and I was, by inference, a while back, are you a drinking man?”

  “No,” Duff replied. “Not a matter of scruples. Purse. And lack of experience.”

  “I was sitting here,” Scotty continued, “considering the poor condition of my soul. I was thinking of ringing up a babe and buying same a drink or two. Only a lack of companionship prevented me from recourse to the anodyne. But it runs through my mind, now, that if you’d consent to the measure, I might ring up two babes.”

  Duff grinned. “You forget my devoirs, chores, duties.”

  “On the contrary. I know your routine. I know the kids could manage things one evening without you. You could meet me at the Palm Paradise Café at eight o’clock, and I would bring the ladies. It would be my party. Celebration for an A in a math test.”

  “You know,” Duff answered after a moment, “I think I will! I feel in a mood to do damned near anything!”

  “I’ll pick a dame accordingly,” Scotty grinned.

  When Duff had gone, Prescott Smythe took from a pocket a small black notebook and began earnestly to con its pages. Listed in them were the names and phone numbers of several scores of young ladies who would gladly consent to help lift any shadow from the Smythe soul. The problem was to find one who would serve Duff in the same way. Duff was not, Scotty reflected, the kind of collegian, or post-collegian, who impressed young women.

  His small talk was unreliable. He had said once that he didn’t dance much. As far as Scotty knew, he had never been seen to take a cocktail or even a beer. He had dated no coeds, so there was no grapevine information available on him.

  Scotty turned pages all the way to the S’s before he halted for any length of time. His finger rested on the name of Indigo Stacey. “Indigo Stacey,” the entry read, “99-7663.” And under that “bru— vgl—s—tt—cw—wfi.” That, in Scotty’s code, meant, “Brunette, very good-looking, sexy, too tall, college widow, worth further investigation.” He remembered.