by Pat Frank
“That’s right, and it doesn’t look good.”
“Well, if he’s not back by midnight the War Department is going to take over. They’re drawing up an executive order now. This is serious, Steve.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry, Steve, but that’s the way it has to be.”
I said okay, and hung up. I felt tired. “We’re all washed up,” I told Marge. “Your husband is in disgrace. You might as well start packing.”
“Says who?” she asked, trying to sound insouciant.
“Says the President of the United States.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Oh, I’m so sorry for you, Steve. What’ll they do to you?”
“Officially, nothing. Unofficially, I don’t even want to guess. When you consider what the American public did to a baseball player who failed to touch second base, and a football player who once ran the wrong way, I can’t even imagine what they’ll do to me.”
Gableman called again, to say that Fay Sumner Knott was behaving like a bride whose husband was out with another woman on the first night of the wedding. “I just want to tell you,” he said, “that I’m cleaning out my desk and moving. I don’t want to have any part of what is going to happen.”
At ten o’clock Tex Root called the FBI. His Special Agents hadn’t developed even a likely lead. After Kathy Riddell arrived in Washington four days before, she had simply dropped into a void, just as Homer Adam had vanished when he walked into the carefully manicured woods of Rock Creek Park. “Why wait?” I suggested. “Why not blow off the lid now? She probably picked him up in a car, and the longer we wait to broadcast the news, the further away they’ll be.”
Tex Root picked up a magazine. “No,” he decided. “I said twelve and we’ll wait until twelve. Anyway, the local police can’t do much in the dark.”
“The local police?”
“Yes. They’ll have to search the park, and drag the creek. That’s normal procedure.”
“You mean, you think he might be—murdered?”
Root looked up from his magazine. “Well, that’s a possibility, isn’t it?”
Jane began to cry. She had been sitting in her chair, very quietly, and at first she tried to hide her tears, but then the sounds escaped her, and finally she could no longer hold back the steady sobs that shook her body like a great, unseen hand. Marge put an arm around her, and got her into a bedroom. Marge came back and said she hoped they wouldn’t need a doctor, but unless Jane calmed down in a few minutes we’d have to call one. “What’s the trouble with her?” Root asked.
“She doesn’t like Kathy Riddell. She’s afraid of her. She thinks she’s a bad woman. And Jane is very fond of Homer.”
“I don’t think Kathy is so bad,” I said. I knew when I said it that it was a final and a very weak defense against the fears that had been trying to burst into my consciousness. I remembered, again, how she had looked at the airport, and how I had been chilled by that glimpse of fanaticism. “Tex,” I said finally, “would you think I was crazy if I suggested that perhaps Kathy Riddell planned to do away with Homer Adam? Would you think I was crazy if I suggested that this isn’t as simple as Homer getting disgusted, and running off with her because he believes he loves her? I mean, in view of your report on her patriotism and loyalty?”
“What are you getting at?” he asked.
“Well suppose—now just suppose—that there was a group of scientists who wanted to murder not Homer Adam, but civilization? Suppose the Mississippi explosion wasn’t an accident at all. Suppose it was planned, and Homer’s escape upset the plan. So to carry out their plans completely, they have to block A.I., and that means doing away with Homer.”
“That’s horrible!” said Marge. “It makes my spine crawl. I’m frightened.”
The lines seemed to deepen in Tex Root’s thin face. “I can imagine one crazy nuclear physicist,” he said, “but not a whole bunch of them. As a class, they are about the sanest people I know. And remember that I worked on Manhattan Project security, and I know them pretty well.”
“Yes,” I said. “You’re right.”
“Besides, Kathy Riddell lost her fiancé when Mississippi blew up.”
“Sure, forget I ever mentioned it. I guess my thinking is pretty wild.”
“No, I’m not going to forget it,” Tex Root said. “This is a very peculiar world, and the most peculiar thing in it is the human mind. Now if Kathy Riddell was involved in any such plot, she wouldn’t be the brains behind it, now would she? She was a pretty small cog in the development of fission, no more important than Jane Zitter is to N.R.P. But she would be a useful tool for a particular job.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Her equipment for seduction is probably unrivalled.”
“All right. Now we’re getting somewhere. Who would be her bosses?” Root ticked them off on his fingers as he named them. “Logically, there’s her father, Professor Ruppe from the University of Chicago. There are Canby and Welles, in Berkeley. She worked with both of them. And of course there’s the old master, Felix Pell, in New York.”
“He’s the one I don’t like,” I said. “To me he looks like a movie villain.”
Tex Root laughed. “So to you he looks like a villain! Why, he’s one of the sweetest old men I ever met in my life! And two generations of graduates at Columbia will tell you the same thing. He’s a leader in practically every civilized movement that comes out of New York City, he’s contributed most of his income to charities—I think he even gave away his Nobel prize money—and besides he’s got five children and I don’t know how many grandchildren.”
“Still he looks like a villain.”
Root moved out of his chair and picked up the phone at my elbow. “We’ll give it a check,” he said. “We’ll soon know.” He put in calls for Professor Ruppe, in Chicago, and Dr. Pell, in New York. He got through to Chicago almost instantly. There was a good deal of talking, but not with Professor Ruppe, and he put down the telephone and said, “Ruppe isn’t in. He’s in Washington. He can be reached through the Carnegie Institute. Well, that’s interesting, but that’s all.”
Then the New York call went through, and Root talked, politely, for a few moments, and asked questions. When he finished he put the telephone down gently, almost reverently, as if it were a delicate and noble instrument. “I can’t believe it,” he said, in a soft voice that retained just a touch of drawl. “I can hardly believe it! Why old Dr. Pell is in Washington, too. He’s staying at the home of Peter Pflaum. Pflaum runs Carnegie’s cyclotron.”
I snatched the phone book and fingered my way into the P’s. Pflaum lived on Rapidan Place, N.W. It is a little, recently created street hardly two blocks long. It is a ten minute walk from the hotel, and it runs just to the edge of the park. “How beautifully simple,” I said. “He just walked out of the hotel, crossed the park, and into their house—right into their hands. He was blind as an ant that follows a trail of sugar into the flypaper. The poor guy!”
“Now wait a minute,” Root said. “Up to now this is just coincidence. We may be way off.”
“Do you believe it?”
“I don’t believe anything until I see it. But let’s get started. I’ve got my car parked outside.” He reached for his topcoat, and the phone tinkled again and Marge answered and said it was for Inspector Root.
“Damn,” Root said, and picked up the telephone, buttoning his topcoat with his free hand. “Yes, Colonel,” he said, and after that all I could catch were snatches of conversation. “I don’t think it’s necessary . . . but that’s hardly evidence . . . up to now I don’t find anything to make me see spies . . . certainly I realize the War Department is responsible for security, but so is the FBI . . . all right, Colonel, it’s all yours at twelve o’clock, but until then I’ll use my own judgment.”
“What’s up?” I asked.
“That was your pal Phelps-Smythe. He wants me to hold you.”
“Hold me?” My insides wrapped themselves into a
tight little knot. “For what?”
“Now don’t worry. The way he puts it is hold you for your own protection, but actually he’s convinced the whole thing is a Communist plot. G-2 has made a check on your secretary, Jane Zitter, and they’ve discovered she was on a Dies Committee list some years ago. It seems she got literature from the League for Peace and Democracy. I told him it could be but I didn’t see how that made you a Communist, and he said look what happened in Canada, and this smelled like the same thing, and he wants me to hold you.”
“So are you holding me?”
“He is not a Communist!” Marge protested. “He makes too much money to be a Communist, and not enough to be a capitalist, and besides he’s too lazy.”
“Thank you, dear,” I told her. “I think that is a remarkable defense.”
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” said Root. “If we stay here any longer I’ll be wacky as the rest of you people.”
And we left.
CHAPTER 12
The drive across the park didn’t take more than five minutes, but in five minutes you can have a lot of nightmares. I wish I’d never seen the Frankenstein pictures. I could imagine finding Homer Adam in the attic, strapped to all kinds of intricate and horrid machines. And I could imagine our finding a few charred bones in the basement. I could also imagine our discovering that he had been dissolved in acid, and dispatched to heaven via the bathtub drain. But the worst thing I could imagine was that these men, being handy with an atom, would simply disintegrate him without trace. No, that wasn’t quite the worst thing. The absolute worst was that we wouldn’t find Homer or Kathy at all.
When we came out of the park, and turned into Rapidan, Tex Root switched off our lights, and eased his sedan to the curb. We got out, he glanced at a house number, and said, “That will be it down the street there—the one with the lights.”
It was a large house of modern, undistinguished architecture, set within gracious grounds. It was an ample house that spoke of guest rooms and library, of a den and a play room, and the square of poplars behind it probably shielded a tennis court. It was a house within which you would expect to find a retired senator, or a justice of the District of Columbia courts, or a lobbyist for steel or rubber, or a college chancellor, or perhaps a scientist with an independent income, like Peter Pflaum. Both floors were lighted, but on the lower floor the Venetian blinds were down, and drawn so that a narrow grid of light escaped.
“Well,” I said, as we walked up the path to the door, “what do we do now?”
“We ring,” said Tex Root, and he rang. He waited a moment, and he rang again, holding his thumb against the opalescent button. He held his thumb there until the door opened. It opened only a few inches.
There was a man’s face in the opening, a broad, pleasant, middle-aged face wearing glasses. “Yes?” the man said.
“Are you Mr. Pflaum?” Root said.
“Yes, I’m Pflaum. But I’m very busy right now. We’re having a little conference here. I don’t believe I know you, but if you care to see me you will find me in my office any time after ten o’clock tomorrow.”
“I’m really sorry to disturb you, Mr. Pflaum,” Root said, “but I’m afraid I must see you now. I’m from the FBI.”
Pflaum’s polite smile set, as if it were there to stay. “Couldn’t you see me tomorrow? I can’t imagine what the FBI—”
“No, Mr. Pflaum, I couldn’t. I want to apologize in advance, but I have to come in.”
Pflaum started to say something more, but he looked at Root’s face, and what he saw there told him it was useless. His smile disappeared, and he opened the door, and he said, “What is it you want?” but he said it as if he knew what we wanted.
“We’re looking for Mr. Adam,” Root said.
“How on earth—how on earth did you know?”
Root didn’t answer. He pushed past Pflaum, and I followed him. I realized that while we waited outside I had heard voices, but that when we entered, they stopped.
“Where is he?” Root demanded, as we walked down the hall. I saw that Pflaum was following us. “In there,” he said, “that doorway on the right.”
I don’t know what I expected to see when I walked into the Pflaum library, except I knew I would see Homer Adam. I suppose I expected he would be bound and gagged, or perhaps plain dead. But whatever it was I expected, it wasn’t what I saw. I think that I was as surprised at seeing Homer and Kathy, as they were at seeing me.
Unlike most libraries, this one was constructed for reading and research. The bookshelves covered the walls, and reached from the floor to the ceiling. There was a mobile stepladder in a corner, and in another corner an enormous desk, stacked with books, pamphlets, and clippings. Pflaum must have been sitting at this desk, when we rang, for it was the only unoccupied chair in the room.
In a little semi-circle, chairs facing the desk, were Pell, a tall man with a Vandyke who I felt would be Professor Ruppe, and a much younger man whom I did not recognize. In another chair sat The Frame, a cigarette almost, but not quite, touching her parted lips. Closest to the desk, his ungainly hands gripping the arms of his chair, was Homer Adam. He looked bewildered, but hardly more bewildered than usual.
I knew that I should say something, but I felt puzzled, and out of place, as if I had invaded a family conference. Except for the presence of Homer, that was the way it seemed. “Hadn’t I better get some chairs for you gentlemen?” Pflaum said incongruously. “Don’t you want to sit down?”
I didn’t see Root take the gun out of his shoulder holster, but suddenly there it was, in his hand, a Smith and Wesson magnum, and I remember wondering how such a small man could conceal such a cannon on his person without it being noticeable. “Don’t move!” Root said, in a low voice but firmly. “I know this is an obsolete type of weapon, not fit for wiping out whole populations, but it will blow a hole through you, big as your arm, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do if anyone moves.”
Somehow, this relieved the tension. It put us all back in our proper places. We weren’t guests any more. We were there to save Homer Adam.
“But I don’t understand,” said Pflaum, “how in the world you ever guessed—”
“You don’t have to understand,” Root said. “But there are a lot of things that I’ll have to understand.”
“Now just a moment,” said Pell, his massive head jerking on his scrawny neck. “Nobody here has committed any crime, and I think it’s an outrage for you to come in here like this and threaten us with that weapon as if we were gangsters. After all, we’re all associates of the National Research Council.”
“Isn’t kidnaping a crime any more?” said Root.
“There has been no kidnaping,” Pell protested. “Mr. Adam came here voluntarily, and we were just having a little discussion concerning some most important matters.”
Homer tried to rise, but whenever Homer tried to get out of a deep chair it was a nerve-racking struggle, particularly when the situation was critical, for at those times his legs refused to co-ordinate. “Sit down, Homer,” I told him. “Sure, he came here voluntarily, but I’ll bet this is the last place he expected to be. Isn’t that right, Homer?”
“Steve,” he began. “Steve, I’m terribly sorry. I’m not quite sure what’s happening.”
“Naturally he’s not sure what’s happening,” I said. “He thinks he is escaping from the N.R.P.—for which I can’t blame him much—and eloping with The Frame here, for which I don’t blame him much either, and what happens? He finds himself locked up with a bunch of crazy professors. Say, what’s your name?” I asked the young man whose name I didn’t know.
“I’m John Canby, from the University of California,” he said, starting to rise. Root’s gun waved him back into his chair.
I said, “It’s certainly a nice, cozy little rendezvous, isn’t it? What were they up to, Homer? What were they going to do to you?”
“I don’t know,” Homer replied. “I really don’t understand
it at all. I didn’t know it was supposed to be this way. The way I understood it, Kathy and I were to stay here for a few days, and then we were to drive to Mexico.”
“You are so damn innocent, Homer,” I said. “You’re just like a steer being led into the stockyards. Well, if you don’t know what was going to happen to you, I’ll enlighten you. This pack of respectable, scientific ghouls was going to eliminate you. And I’ll tell you why, Homer. They don’t like the human race. They want to give the world back to the lizards.”
The Frame came to her feet, blazing mad, one strand of hair falling across her face, and Root’s gun shifted accurately towards her middle. “That’s a lie,” she screamed. “That’s a horrible lie!”
“It’s outrageous,” said Pell. He was white and trembling. “I’ll sue you!”
I went over to the desk and put my knuckles on it and looked them over. “Root ought to knock you off right now, you murderous bunch of bastards! But maybe it’ll be better to let the people handle you. I’ve got a lot of faith in the people, when they get mad. They’re violent. They’ll tear you to shreds. Particularly you—” I looked at The Frame. “The women will handle you!”
“You don’t really believe—” The Frame began. There was astonishment and fear in her voice. It made me feel good.
“Believe! I know. Wait until they find out! Wait until they find out that the same bunch of fiends who blew up Mississippi, and sterilized all the men, also kidnapped Mr. Adam. In twenty-four hours there won’t be enough of you left to be worth burying!”
Homer managed to struggle to his feet. His face was so white that I could see freckles where I had never seen freckles before. “Kathy,” he said. “Kathy, that wasn’t the plan, was it? It wasn’t that. Tell me it wasn’t anything like that. Is that why you have that apparatus upstairs?”
She looked at him, across the heads of her father and Pell, and said, gravely and with all anger gone from her, “No, Homer, it wasn’t anything like that. Those machines are for elementary experimentation to test the effect of radio-active rays on the male germ. We were going to take the utmost precautions not to harm you.”