In a classroom on the “old campus” of the University of Miami, four young men were engaged in a discussion of the Uncertainty Principle with Dr. Oliver Slocum, a full professor of mathematics and a large man with twinkling eyes, no hair on his head, and a goatee.
“A common mistake,” said the doctor, “made by many philosophers, has been to assume that the ‘uncertainty’ is neither logical nor empirical, and not even physical, but that it derives from a subjective interposition of the purely human observer, whereas—”
At about “whereas,” Duff Bogan, one of the four graduate students present for the seminar, lost track of the thought. Since he already knew that the interposition of a machine had the same effect as the interposition of a person, and had known it since his mathematically precocious high school days, he missed nothing essential.
Duff looked out the windows. He watched a huge truckload of dead branches proceed down the street past several pretty houses. He reflected that there were still hurricane-detached branches hanging serenely in the Yates trees. His mind passed to greater worries.
There was the matter of the proposal of marriage to Eleanor Yates by Scotty Smythe, of the New York-Bar Harbor-Palm Beach Smythes. Duff had nothing against Smythe. He was a good-looking, intelligent, witty young man. Eleanor deserved the best. Plainly, she liked Smythe. The question was: Did Smythe represent the best? A lightweight, Duff felt. No character. Too smooth. Too social. Too much given to girl-chasing. It was Duff’s belief, during the reverie, that he was thinking in abstract, detached and big-brotherly terms. Any suggestion that jealousy motivated him would have been met by a haughty, almost amused stare of his china-blue eyes.
By coincidence, yet not surprisingly — since Doctor Slocum greatly enjoyed discussing his part in the work of the Manhattan District; within the limits of secrecy, of course — Duff’s wandering attention came back abruptly to a relevant speech: “Some of our early calculations on the subsidiary effects of nuclear reactions to bomb-released particles were rendered difficult by—”
Duff listened, hoping to be able to frame a question that might start a new line of discussion which would not advance the class in any way, but which might help him with another worry. Luckily for Duff, when the professor finished a sentence as long and as neatly balanced as a complex equation, Iron-Brain Bates, the grind of the group, took an ideal tack.
“Doctor,” he said, “to deviate for a moment. How many bombs do you think Russia has?”
The mathematician frowned momentarily, as if he were not to be budged from the path of instruction. Then he grinned. “If our present political misadventuring continues, we will probably find out how many in the most pragmatic fashion. They will be dropped on us!”
The four graduate students laughed. Duff said, “Let’s hope most of them will miss.”
And he went on idly, “Of course, any nation that had only a few atomic bombs could easily smuggle them into this country and distribute them at ideal sites, to be exploded at the time chosen by that nation.”
“Easier said then done!”
“Why?” Duff asked. “Look at prohibition. Hundreds of tons of stuff brought across every border every week. Florida, here, was a center for it. Million bays, channels, waterways, lagoons, empty wastes of Everglades—”
“An atom bomb, Mr. Bogan, is pretty big. Very heavy.”
“It could be built in small pieces. Imported, so to speak, in sections.”
Hank Garvey, who intended to be a math teacher, said, “There’s radioactivity. How do you smuggle radioactive stuff?”
The professor scowled at Hank. “You really ought to know, Mr. Garvey, that neither plutonium nor the disintegrative isotope of uranium is radioactive enough to be detected readily. Oppenheimer pointed out that you’d need a screwdriver to find a bomb on a ship—
have to open every case aboard. Until you assemble a critical mass— enough of the stuff in one spot to set up a chain reaction — your plutonium or uranium would be comparatively easy to handle.”
“Then,” said Duff, “what’s to hinder a nation from mining our cities?”
“Unpleasant notion,” the professor smiled. “Mr. Bogan, you have always inclined toward the fantastic.”
“What’s fantastic about it? If you were a nation with only a few dozen atom bombs, and if you intended to attack, wouldn’t you be smart to plant all the bombs you could exactly where they’d wreck the most vital industries or kill the most people, rather than risk them in bombers that might be shot down or might miss the targets?”
“There, gentlemen, we have an example of the very sort of pseudo-logic I discussed a week ago yesterday!” Professor Slocum’s delight brought chagrin to Duff even before he went on, “Any nation with a few atomic bombs, only a few, would like to plant them in any enemy nation. True, gentlemen. Such bombs could be fabricated in sections, assembled later, armed and made ready for firing. They could be rigged for detonation by radio. The borders of the United States are comparatively unguarded; large objects and quantities of objects have been smuggled into this nation. So far, we see nothing to limit or to prevent the reality of Mr. Bogan’s shocking implication that one cold winter night or one day — one busy working day — atomic bombs might be exploded without warning in a dozen cities or more. It is logical — to a point. To what point, gentlemen?”
Duff’s three seminar mates contemplated the problem. They seemed unable to find in it any major syllogistic flaw.
Professor Slocum chuckled. “What defenses have we?”
“Well,” said Iron-Brain, “there’s the FBI—”
“Correct! The Federal Bureau of Investigation! Also an active body known as Central Intelligence. Also the various branches of Military Intelligence. The Immigration men. The Treasury men. Finally, an alert police force, sheriffs and the like. In other words, an invisible net protects our people. Many nets, I ought to say. A hole in one layer is matched by a fresh fine mesh behind the hole. In addition, in the camp of any enemy, in their secret societies, their so-called underground their cells and so on, this nation has undercover agents.
Malevolent plotters are marked men. It would be impossible to set up an organization large enough to bring in, assemble, rig and conceal atomic bombs.”
Down the hall a bell rang.
Two of the four students looked gratefully at Duff. He had succeeded in side-tracking old Slocum on his favorite theme for long enough to use up the period. Professor Slocum hastily assigned a double day’s work for the next seminar and, smiling and nodding, skittered down the rather dim hall.
Duff walked into the sunshine feeling neither warmed nor illuminated. Logic was well enough. There was also such a thing as complacency. The world had been complacent about the Kaiser, about Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito. A lot of the world had been wrecked owing to such complacency. Possibly old bald-headed Slocum was on the beam. But possibly there was a radioactive beam in the making, right in Miami.
As Duff walked toward his next class he gazed rather doubtfully down the palm-lined, flower-bright streets of Coral Gables. Far in the distance he could see the tops of buildings in the center of Miami — white towers above the flat green land. He tried to imagine a sudden and unexpected brilliance flaring down there, hurting the eyes, setting ten thousand fires, launching a terrible spray of gamma rays and sending forth a steely wall of blast across the city.
Somebody clapped his back. “Shut your mouth, Bogan! Flies’ll enter!”
He grinned weakly. “Hi, Scotty.”
“Must have been some dream!”
Duff nodded and walked along with young Smythe, who continued, “What dazed you, baby?”
“Just — fantasy. I’ve been to a seminar in quantum math. Old Slocum got talking about atom bombs. I was imagining one going off in Miami.” He expected Scotty to laugh.
But the somewhat younger man merely shook his head. “That old goat will never forget his dear old Manhattan District days!”
“You know him?”
“Slightly — in a painful way. He’s head of the department where I keep flunking. Trig this year. Duff,” it was said earnestly, “do you think there is any way for the feeble-minded — meaning me— to ever catch onto the mere meaning of trigonometry?”
“Why you studying it?”
“Had to have the credit. In science. To graduate.”
“Why don’t you come and talk about it to me? I bet I could straighten you out. Trig’s a cinch. Trouble is, they teach it hard.”
“Brother! You have poured the tea! Would you run over the topic with me some night? I’d appreciate it!”
“Glad to.”
“What about day after tomorrow? It’s one of Eleanor’s working nights, so I won’t be distracted. Be able to concentrate. At least till she comes home.”
“Okay,” Duff said.
He continued toward his class alone, watching the retreat of the elegantly dressed Mr.
Smythe. Duff didn’t need to glance down at his own faded jeans and frayed shirt cuffs to visualize the comparison or to think how odious it would seem to a young lady soon to serve as Orange Bowl Queen.
He threw off the thought and replaced it with another; in the process, no doubt, merely exchanging hostilities. Professor Slocum could be overconfident about the American vigilance. He, Duff Bogan, could have been right about his tests. People — suspicion-proof people like Harry Ellings — could be busy on a project calculated to go far in overthrowing the freedom of the world. Somebody would have to investigate further, even if it was only an overtall, underweight, overworked, badly dressed graduate student named Allan Diffenduffer Bogan.
“I don’t know what to do, exactly,” Duff said later in the day to Mrs. Yates, who had listened patiently to his story. “I can keep following Harry, of course. If he has a secret date with that big guy again — that darn-near giant — I can try to follow the big man when he leaves cover. I’m a lousy follower, though.” He grinned. “One of my many hobbies wasn’t being a boy detective. Or even trailing animals in the woods. I never did make a good Boy Scout.”
Mrs. Yates smiled maternally. “I can imagine. Poor Duff.”
“Oh,” he hurriedly protested the pitying sound. “I had my compensations, remember.
Best stamp collection in town. I could send Morse Code, as I taught the kids and Eleanor.
Pick locks and do escape tricks. I was the best slingshot marksman in the county.”
She nodded and sighed. Her eyes rested on him wonderingly. He was twenty-four now, she thought. An age when lots of men had homes, jobs, families. But Duff was a sort of split personality. Half of him was stuck in his childhood and his innumerable boyish interests. The other half, abstract, precocious, was far ahead of most of the college boys brought home by Eleanor.
“Why don’t you,” she suggested, “go see that Mr. Higgins and tell him about Harry’s meeting? He seemed very shrewd, from the glimpse I had.”
Duff’s long head shook slowly. “Not me! Not again! Not until and unless I can tell him something that’ll really convince him.”
“You afraid, Duff? False pride? Or what?”
His grin reassured her about false pride. “Mrs. Yates, I’m a small-town boy from the Middle West. I hope someday to get a Ph.D. in physics and maybe even to make a small contribution in some branch of the big field of ideas. All I’ll probably ever really do is teach high-school kids about gravity and friction and Ohm’s law. I don’t think the stars wrote me down for a big melodrama like catching spies — or for a hero part, like saving my country.”
“Yet you said—”
“Sure. I said! Got more mouth than sense! If what I really suspect is true, it’s so crazy I don’t believe it.”
Mrs. Yates was a sentimental woman, though not a sentimentalist. During his recital of his hopes she had felt a mist in her eyes and turned her head away. Now, however, she looked back at him sharply.
“You say you don’t know what to do. Well, you did one thing. You followed Harry and found his walks weren’t entirely innocent moon-gazing. You can go on doing that. If I had legs to walk on, and if I were a man, and if I thought it was useless to talk to the FBI again right now, I’d look over that trucking company where Harry works. Maybe that great, tall man works there, too. Anyway, you could find out what cities the trucks serve. You could perhaps get a line on their customers. If Harry was using trucks to move — what you think — up north, then where the trucks went to would be something to learn.”
Duff nodded. “That’s not a bad idea!” He lighted a cigarette. “I could maybe apply for a job there. Look the people over. At night when Harry wouldn’t be there to notice me around.”
It seemed a useful project. Actually, if it had any immediate value, the effort served to give some occupation to Duff at a time when the conflict between his suspicions and his feeling that what he suspected was absurd kept him in a state of nervous anxiety. It also served to show him how inept he was at any sort of investigation.
The Miami-Dade Terminal Trucking Company consisted of a half-dozen large buildings in a light-industry section of the city on its northwest fringe. The buildings were low and very large. Some were warehouses, and these were provided with huge doors and long loading platforms; one was the repair garage in which Harry Ellings worked by day; in another, idle trucks of the company fleet were merely parked; the smallest building contained the business offices of the concern, which operated around the clock. At night there was a loneliness about the place in spite of the occasional arrival or departure of a huge trailer truck or of a smaller vehicle bringing merchandise from the South Florida area for reshipment.
Duff studied the scene. Colored loading crews worked here and there under flaring lights. A watchman made his rounds occasionally, throwing the round finger of a flashlight at the vast blanks of closed doors. Across the wide and intermittently rumbling street was a diner which boasted, with painted, illuminated signs, that Truck Drivers Eat Here and We Never Close.
Duff walked around the establishment twice and then entered the front office, where a half dozen men worked at desks, smoked, roamed about with invoices in their hands and marked crates and cases and bundles.
“What do you want?” one of the men yelled at him from a desk.
Duff grinned. “Looking for work.”
“What kind?”
“Any.”
“We haven’t got any kind. Just three kinds right now. Driving trucks — and you gotta be expert. Timekeeper. And paper work.”
“No experience on those big rigs.”
“You work a night shift?”
“Sure.”
“Then come around in the daytime. That’s when they hire the night force and the day force.” The man seemed to think it was pretty funny that they hired the night shift in the daytime, so he laughed.
Duff laughed. “This company go to all cities?”
The man rocked his chair back. “You looking for work? Or transportation?”
“Work.”
“Florida’s full of guys that came down and couldn’t find a job and want a free ride somewhere else.”
Duff stood in front of a railing that crossed the wide, dingy room. “Look. Suppose I could bring a friend’s business here? Would that help me get a job?”
“Wouldn’t hurt none. What kind of business?” Duff invented a business. “Making a modernistic line of furniture out of bamboo. Getting popular up north. He ships by rail right now.”
“Fool to, I’d say.”
“He’s got a pretty good deal. Still, if your trucks go to all the big cities — regularly, I mean—”
“New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland and Toledo, regularly. And points between. And unscheduled trips about once a month to ten-fifteen more cities. Would that suit your friend?”
“Sounds good,” Duff said, and left.
He went over to the diner. Four big-shouldered truck drivers leaned on the counter drinking coffee, dunking doughnuts, listening to radio dance music. Duff ordered the same.
The men were alert, fresh — waiting, obviously, for trucks to be loaded and their runs to begin. By morning they wouldn’t be so tidy, so cleanly shaven, and they’d look tired.
“Miami-Dade a good company to work for?”
They looked at Duff closely. “Why?” one asked.
“Going to apply for a job.”
The men shrugged. “Good as any.”
“Where do they truck to, mainly?”
“All over,” one man said, “this side of the Mississippi River.”
“Some guy,” Duff said, “that I ran across in an eating joint told me Miami-Dade was a place where a guy could settle down to a life job. Good management.”
“It’s all right,” one of the drivers answered. “This guy,” Duff went on, “didn’t give me his name, but you might know him.” He looked at them and they waited. “Because he was the biggest guy I ever saw. Maybe near seven feet tall, and broad. A powerhouse.”
Heads shook. “Never saw no giants around the joint… You, Bizzmo?”
“Nope.”
Duff paid and went out into the night to begin a long walk to the nearest bus stop…
When, on the following afternoon, Eleanor took up the attempt to persuade Duff to see the FBI, he told her of his efforts. It was her afternoon to iron and his day to air and turn the mattresses. So their talk was conducted at intervals when he passed through the kitchen with his loads and while she continued to press clothes she had washed, with Marian’s help, on the day before. It made for a rather incoherent discussion.
“In other words,” she finally summed up, “either you don’t think much of my idea or else you’re too stuck-up to take a chance on annoying the G-men?”
He had three sun-warm pillows in each hand. He flung them up the back stairway. “I need something more before I bother the FBI.”
“Wasn’t seeing Harry meet that big man enough?”
“It’ll have to be enough,” he answered, “if it turns out to be all I can get.”
“What in the world did you think you’d find at Miami-Dade that you couldn’t find out just by idly asking Harry?”
He laughed — at himself. “Dunno. Whether there was a big guy working there, for one thing. Wasn’t.”
“Which means practically nothing.”
“I know. Then I thought maybe I could find out the main, regular customers. Crazy idea, that one. You can’t just walk into a firm and say, ‘Who do you do business with?’ and be handed a list.”
“Harry’d tell you that too.”
“Sure. And wonder why the deuce I asked. He’s probably wondered already why the G-men were interested enough in his locked closet to ask him to open it and why that box intrigued them enough to make him open that. In fact, if what we think is going on is real, and if by any chance Harry knows what it is, which I doubt, then Harry is plenty worried by what has already happened. Worried enough, anyhow, so he’d never again have anything in that box in his closet except his precious platinum. I wonder how much it’s worth?”
“Probably two or three thousand dollars,” she said. “Awful funny way to keep your life savings.”
He nodded. “Certainly is! Hard to melt. Hard to make that ingot of it. Be like Harry, in a way, though.”
Eleanor licked her finger and absently tested her iron. “If you really want to know where that company hauls its stuff, I could find out.”
“You could? How?”
She resumed ironing, spreading out one of Charles’ shirts on the board. “Well, I naturally know quite a lot of girls who work downtown — secretaries, file clerks like me, and so on. And the stuff they ship—”
“Cargo.”
“The cargo is no doubt insured. It would be easy to learn what company insures it.
Not hard to find who files for them. Possible to meet that girl or one of the girls. And you might — I might — get the dope from her.”
“Would you?”
Her eyes rested on him. “Try? Sure, Duff! Why not? I’m more worried than you seem to be. I think your experiments were right. I think my idea that the stuff is being brought into this country is true. I’m scared!”
What a reply Duff might have made was prevented by a distant roar, a whispering gush. It was a familiar South Florida effect: the approach of rain. Duff’s arms and legs made wide, loose-jointed motions as he flung himself from the kitchen chair to the back door and out into the yard. A moment later a mattress thudded on the kitchen floor, then another and a third.
When the squall dinned on the single roof of the old house, Duff returned. “Narrow squeak,” he said.
Harry came in behind him. They hadn’t heard his car in the rain.
The next few days were uneventful for Duff— classes, laboratory work, hard study at home and, of course, more domestic duties than he could perform adequately. In Florida, grass grows all year around and must be mowed and trimmed unrelentingly; shrubs and vines and trees also need frequent trimming. In Florida, the blazing sun and salty air make painting as constant a requirement as on shipboard. In Florida, too, fish breed year-round, a fact which was to lead Duff to a new and painful experience. For some time, however, life went on in its usual pattern.
Harry Ellings even volunteered one day to help Duff. “Son,” he said, “I generally wake around six. Leave the clippers out and I’ll get after those hibiscus bushes.”
“That’d be a help.”
The older man shook his head sympathetically. “Having money is a wonderful thing.
Not having it means day and night slaving. Work, work, work! Dunno how those Yateses keep their spirits so high sometimes. Look at that girl! Orange Bowl Queen, come Christmas!
Going to college on a scholarship, she is. Has to get good marks to earn her tuition. Runs home to wash and iron and cook. Drives downtown three nights a week to earn a measly few bucks. Then goes dancing on her free nights, or posing for pictures, or fitting a costume, or attending some college party or meeting! The young sure have energy!”
Duff nodded. “She sure has, anyhow.”
Harry Ellings went on, “Got it from her mother. Look at Sarah Yates. Lies there day and night — can’t move her legs. So what? Does she gripe and whine? No. Knits. Sews.
Makes all the clothes the kids wear. By golly, son, that’s pluck!”
“Yeah.”
“So leave the shears out. I’ll pitch in, mornings. Money! Doggone! A person could use a barrel of gold!”
Duff didn’t reply. He merely thought, for the thousandth time, that a simple, gentle good-hearted, mousy guy like Ellings could never be associated with anything un-American.
Anything dangerous, deadly, murderous. It didn’t make sense.
Harry continued to talk, which was unusual. He gave a self-deprecating laugh and said, “Nearest I ever got to any money was that melted-down platinum. Guess it was kind of dumb.”
He hadn’t mentioned the cache before, except to grunt impolite syllables concerning its discovery by the G-men.
Duff felt himself stiffen internally. But he said, “Man has a right—”
“Oh, sure. Person like me gets crazy ideas, though. I sure did hate it when the country went off the gold standard. Figured I’d stay on a standard of some sort with my savings.
Seems foolish now. I sold that metal and put the money in the bank.” As he spoke, he took a small deposit book from a hip pocket. “All I got to show now is this here ink balance. Hope we don’t get worse inflation.”
From then on, Harry put in an hour or so at gardening every morning. Duff was grateful.
The days that were humdrum for him were filled with excitements for Eleanor Yates.
Not the least of these was associated with her queenship and consisted of parade plans, the selection of maids of honor, newspaper interviews and appearances at lunches and other public affairs. Another source of excitement was the fond courtship paid to her by the amusing, cheerful Scotty Smythe in his salmon-pink convertible. He seemed to regard her tentative replies to his now-frequent proposals as proof of an arbitrary state of mind which would change in the long run. And he appeared to be unimpressed by the large numbers of other young males in the university and in the city who pursued her.
Some further part of her complicated life was made anxious, if not precisely exciting, by a decision to take into her own hands the matter of Duff’s refusal to make any further immediate contact with the FBI. She had thought over the situation and decided it was her duty to do something, whether Duff felt that way or not. So she phoned the bureau, asked for Mr. Higgins and made an appointment.
The G-man welcomed the girl in his office one evening after dinner and before she was due at work. He told her that the newspaper photographs — even the colored ones — didn’t do her justice. He asked her what was on her mind and she made the suggestion that had so startled Duff, “Did it ever occur to you that if nobody has stolen any of our bombs, somebody could be bringing parts into the country?”
She could see instantly that the idea had not occurred to the G-man. And he, realizing she could discern his surprise, made no effort to camouflage it. “No. Not me, anyhow.
McIntosh may have thought of it.”
“McIntosh?”
“Head of this office.” He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. “Interesting—
highly unpleasant idea.”
“There’s this.” She told him about the night Harry Ellings had gone for a stroll, about Duff’s secret pursuit and about the furtive meeting with the man seven feet tall.
He doodled while she talked. “That’s odd,” he said. “But, again, we’ve got everybody who might be involved in any such a thing pretty well tagged. And there’s no superman in the bunch. I know that. It’s my business to know.”
“Harry Ellings isn’t tagged.”
“No.”
“Isn’t it possible, somehow, that there could be a whole group you aren’t on to?”
His eyes flickered. “Hardly. I won’t say it couldn’t be. We’ve had one or two nasty surprises along that line. Like some of the scientists the high-ups cleared, who turned out later to be plain spies.”
“That’s what I mean.”
He pondered again. “Look here, Miss Yates. I’ll talk to Mac. We did a pretty good work-up on your boarder. There are a thousand reasons why a man could meet a pal in an empty lot at night. Some legal, some not, but none necessarily what you’re thinking about. I doubt, for instance, if the kind of organization you imagine would ever use a guy so big he’d be identified half a mile away. Ever think of that?”
Eleanor shook her head. “No.”
“Your other boarder, Bogan, probably never did either.”
“I guess not.”
“Well, I’ll talk to Mac. We may see Bogan again. We may want to talk to you again.
There’s a lot we might do. Of course, if anything else should come up — anything of the sort that young Bogan’s waiting for — inform us at once. And don’t let anybody else know you’ve noticed any such happening. You or Bogan.”
Eleanor flushed. “He doesn’t know I came here. He wouldn’t come. He was too much afraid he’d merely be starting another wild-goose chase.”
Higgins chuckled. “He should see our files! That’s our commonest form of chase!
Well, thanks.”
It wasn’t particularly satisfactory. Mr. Higgins had been polite, but not much worried.
He had thanked her. Yet she felt that if she had been Duff, instead of a pretty girl, Mr.
Higgins might have delivered a scolding for suspecting fire where there was hardly even smoke. She kept the visit to herself.
In the matter of learning the regular large customers of the Miami-Dade Terminal Trucking Company, Eleanor was more effective. She had no trouble finding the name of the insurance company that did the underwriting for Miami-Dade. She knew two girls who worked for the firm. She found out where they had lunch. She cut two classes to be at the right drugstore at the proper time. Both girls were flattered to eat lunch with what they called a “celebrity.” When they learned Eleanor had “a friend” who was thinking of using the Miami-Dade concern for shipping, but who was trying to find out exactly where the truck fleet went regularly — so as not to pay special or excessive rates — the girls were amused by Eleanor’s “friend’s” astuteness and readily agreed to supply her with a list of regular drop points.
Two days later Eleanor had the list: firm names, street addresses and cities. “Miami-Dade,” one of the girls had scrawled, “hits all these joints at least once per wk.”
Eleanor proudly gave the typewritten pages to Duff that evening.
He was pleased. “Marvelous! Marvelous!”
“Elementary,” she answered, in Sherlock Holmes’ conventional words. “Elementary, my dear Watson.”
“What about a movie tonight?” he asked.
Her head shook. “Gotta work tonight. Overtime.”
“Doggone! It’s Saturday. I forgot!” He laughed. “Can’t go, myself. I’ve got a date with your boy friend again.”
“Which boy friend?”
He made a face at her. “Guess, gal.”
“You mean Scotty’s coming? For some more math tutoring?”
Duff chuckled. “Yep. And you know what? I’m getting paid! Three bucks for an hour of the old sines and cosines.” Suddenly he was embarrassed. “Is that all right? I did it for free the first time. He got by his next exam after that. But then he insisted on coughing up. Said he’d pay any other tutor. And he can afford it.”
Eleanor’s eyes were shadowy. She sighed. “Of course, it’s all right, Duff. It’s just too bad, somehow that you have to tutor my—”
He pushed the tip of her nose with his forefinger fraternally, fondly. “Tutor your suitor? Glad to. Three bucks a week comes in right handy.”
She looked away. “And Scotty can sure afford it. Goodness, he’s rich!”
“Pretty nice guy,” Duff nodded. “The dough doesn’t seem to dizzy him any. And he’s a bright lad, besides. It’s only that he and trig aren’t soul mates. Still he’s coming along. I taught him what trig was for. That interested him. Once Scotty got onto the fact that there’s a practical angle, he did real well.”
Eleanor smiled. “He’s a practical sort of boy, Duff, in spite of the gay-blade exterior.”
“Yeah.” Duff felt suddenly very much outside Eleanor — her life, her friends and the places where her life would undoubtedly lead her. “Yeah. He’s nice.”
That was when she kissed him. She kissed him hurriedly, almost in confusion, certainly impulsively, and she missed his cheek, getting his chin instead. But when she did it her eyes were shiny. And she said, “Duff, you’re a love!”
Then she ran out to the barn and drove away. Duff heard Scotty’s car hoot as they passed each other; the pink convertible came crackling up the drive. But during that time Duff stood where he was, beside the front door, even when he heard Scotty Smythe’s feet on the worn porch boards. She kissed me, Duff thought. And he thought, She kissed me because she feels sorry for me. It was the kind of idea that made a man want to kick walls down, even in sandals, such as he had on. Nobody wants to be felt sorry for by a girl. By anyone.
But when Scotty reached the door, Duff had recovered. His smile was hospitable; he took in Scotty’s new, herringbone-Angora sports jacket, and said, “Hello, Pythagoras.”
Scotty replied in the gravest tone, “Good evening, Euclid.”
After Scotty had paid gay respects to Mrs. Yates and briefly teased the younger children, who were studying, they went up to Duff’s room and settled down to work.
Duff possessed the second most important faculty of a true teacher, as well as the first — which is to present new knowledge lucidly. The second is the ability to perceive the mental gaps and blocks in a student — the points at which, for individual reasons, he fails to grasp the subject. Often it is not stupidity, but a particular shape of a special personality or a bad background in previous teaching which causes a student to appear unintelligent. In Scotty’s case it was both; no previous teacher had ever given him the feel, the sense and excitement of mathematics. Under Duff’s tutelage, Scotty’s attitude changed; he learned to appreciate the reasons behind die symbols.
Their hour went quickly and was extended to a second hour. Finally, however, Scotty broke up the session, “Getting late, pal. And we’re already a week ahead of my class.
Wouldn’t my old man be startled if I got good marks in trig!”
“You will.”
“Darned if I don’t believe you’re right!” Scotty went down the stairs, looked into Mrs. Yates’ room to say good night, and opened the front door. “Tell Eleanor I couldn’t wait for her. Omega meeting in the a.m. Tell her”—his eyes lighted up—“that any time she wants to shop for jewelry suits me.”
Two red taillights swept down the drive. Duff stayed on the porch. An old moon had risen; it threw shadows across the silver nebula of lawn. An automatic smile on Duff’s long, earnest face slowly faded. He imagined the excitement with which Eleanor might “shop” with Scotty, or some other boy, for a diamond ring. He would have been less than human if he had not also reflected that any diamond he could buy would be almost invisible. Yet no purposeful thought of himself and Eleanor and an engagement ring entered his head.
He sighed into the moonglow and noticed the glint of it on the lily pool he’d built the year before — partly in pursuance of a hobby and partly to embellish the Yates’ lawn, which, at the time of his arrival, had been unkempt.
Years before, in Indiana, Duff had become interested in aquariums. He’d built several of wood and window glass, stocked them from local brooks, and sold a few. In Florida he had soon observed that pools could be dug in the underlying limestone; they needed only a little cement to waterproof them, and frost never heaved the ground. He had also found that tropical fish could be raised outdoors, that some species were native, and that colored water lilies of many varieties could be obtained at no cost when the university was separating its plants. So he had built a pool some twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide, trapped mollies in a nearby canal and bought a pair of wagtails.
Having noticed, some days before, that a new crop of mollies was due — and not feeling in a mood to sleep — Duff now went back to the house, procured a flashlight and walked down to the pond.
Sure enough, half a hundred tiny minnows swam in the open places and among the water plants and hid under the lily pads. Four of his crimson, night-blooming lilies were out, each one as big as a dinner plate. His torch moved about, touching the flowers, penetrating the clear water to search out snails and to follow the upward dive and downward lunge of water beetles. A small branch had dropped on one of the day-blooming lilies, and Duff walked over to a cabbage palm where he kept a dip net for retrieving such objects.
The branch lay among the lily pads at a place where they intermingled — reddish leaves floating alongside green. The surface was covered densely in an area as big as the top of a dining-room table. But, in dipping out the branch with one arm while with the other hand he aimed the flashlight, Duff opened up a space between the pads. It wasn’t a wide gap, but it was wide enough to allow the light beam to penetrate the water to what should have been the bottom of the pond— and wasn’t. A board was revealed.
Duff tossed out the small branch and pulled the lily pads farther apart. He presumed the board had fallen into the pond during the October hurricane, and wondered why it hadn’t floated. He thought it might be a section of one of the boxes in which the lilies were planted, a section came loose, but held under water by a nail.
With the idea of “box” on his mind, Duff gasped audibly. He pushed hard at the leaves. It was not a side of a lily box and it was not a board. Leaning, holding his light closer, he could now see the top, the grain of hardwood, the glimmer of varnish or wax, and a glint of brass screw heads around the sides. Probing again with the net and changing his position, he thought he made out handles at both ends of the box.
He switched out his light. He let the lily pads float together, covering a hiding place that wasn’t as ideal as Harry’s closet, since, from time to time, Duff cleaned out excess algae in the pond and scrubbed its sides, wading hip-deep. But it was a good-enough hiding place now, because he performed those chores at long intervals and had finished them just after the blow in October.
Those thoughts had taken seconds only. He leaned the net against a tree and walked along the east side of the house. Harry’s lights were on. After a moment, he saw Harry as he passed the window — Harry in pajamas.
Duff went back quietly to the pool. The thing to do, he reflected, was to wade in, get the box and hide it somewhere else. Or, better, put it in it in the station wagon as soon as Eleanor returned from work and drive straight to the FBI. This one, Duff thought, would probably contain uranium — pure uranium — shaped for a certain use.
Duff sat down on the grassy edge of his pool. He took off his shoes and socks. He was excited, exultant, and also afraid. He did not know just what he feared, just why he was afraid. Then, abruptly, he did know. It was the disturbance of a leaf behind him or the tiny sound of a pine needle snapping underfoot. A very near sound, too near to give him time to escape or even to whirl around for attack. For he was sitting and there was something, somebody, in the dark right behind him.
For a second or two he was unable to think at all. Then, when he thought he heard the whisper of a swung weapon of some kind, he tried to lunge as far forward as he could. Fear was a sickness in him as he plunged, and fear was his final recollection. There was a ringing sound, a bursting in his head that he sensed at the instant and never afterward remembered…
In the house, Harry turned out his light and went to his window. He looked at the moonglow. From the sinkhole west of the house came a murmurous croaking of bullfrogs. At last he walked to his bed and lay down to sleep.
Mrs. Yates, weary and warm under her reading light, pulled toward herself the pivoted bedside table that Duff had built. With a pencil, she wrote a goodnight note to her daughter. She pinned the note to her wheel chair and gave it a push which rolled it through the door and into the living room where Eleanor would see it.
Marian Yates slept peacefully; damp curls of her dark hair overspread her pillow.
Charles Yates, having finished the last installment of The Queen of the Planet Brandri, tossed Fabulous Science Magazine onto the floor and switched out his light. There was silence, deep and tropical.
After a while, car headlights swept into the Yates’ driveway. Eleanor parked in the barn, came in by the back door, read her mother’s note, smiled a little, and switched out the living-room light. The porch was in the shadow, but moonlight poured on the lawn. She stepped out to look at it and saw, as her eyes accommodated themselves, that one of the big branches torn off by the hurricane and stuck in the trees had come loose and fallen into the lily pool. She also saw something that glinted beside the water. Even so, she would have gone to bed; she was very tired. But, as she turned, she heard a sound. A low, bubbling mutter. A horrible sound. She rushed for the flashlight, but it was not in its place. She knew instantly that what she had seen glinting on the lawn was the light.
“Duff,” she whispered frantically, and she ran out the front door.
She picked up the light. Worked the switch. Aimed at the mass of dead leaves, twigs and thigh-thick branch in the pond. With flinching nerves she saw that the water was stained red. And then she saw Duff — Duffs head. The scalp was open. His eyes were shut. He didn’t seem conscious. But his hands, on the pond edge, were grasping feebly and he had his mouth out of water. He was trying to say something.
“Duff!” she cried.
He muttered.
“Duff! I’ll get help! Can you hang on?”
His blood-streaked face looked up. His eyes showed now as slits. His teeth bared. His lips worked. “Scream,” he finally enunciated. “And look behind you.”
She swung around — and saw no one. But she screamed.