Three to Be Read

by Philip Wylie

  He took her down the dunes to the beach and they washed in the limpid, warm salt water. Eleanor had a spell of shuddering and sobbing. He held her in his arms until she had mastered the spasm.

  “What happened? Where is this?”

  Duff shook his head. “Bahamas. It was their base. A Coast Guard plane came by twice. Might have been an accident. But probably Higgins is close to the answer. I left a note, anyhow! So they beat it. Blew up the works. But they’d built that cellar like a fort, luckily for us! The blast didn’t bring the ceiling down—which they probably presumed it would. Just caved the walls some.”

  “Bury us?” she said in a sore-throat tone. “Alive?”

  “Would they have cared which way?” The wind blew on them. The sun shone. “We’ll have to figure out how to get along here till somebody comes for us or till we can signal a boat going by,” he said.

  “Let’s find some shade. We’ll sunburn.”

  They moved to the shade of three coconut palms. The yacht was gradually lost on the blue emptiness of the Gulf Stream. For a while they lay on the sand, silent, resting.

  Then Eleanor cried, “Look, Duff! Look!”

  He barely glanced toward the sea. Then he threw himself on top of her and forced her to lie face-down on the earth. She gasped, struggled.

  “Lie still!” he ordered.

  A wave of pressure eventually swept the island, bending the trees; it was accompanied by an immense rumble. Only after that did Duff sit up. Far out on the sea a cloud made unforgettable by the news pictures rose toward the blue zenith. A many-hued, mushroom-shaped cloud with fire flashes eddying enormously in its midst.

  “Atom bomb,” she whispered.

  Duff spoke, too exhausted for emotion and yet unable to stop the working of his mind. “Maybe they destroyed themselves that way. Maybe they thought they—and it—would be captured. Maybe an accident. They could have got too many cases of uranium too close together—a last one, dropped down through a hatch. That might have done it.”

  For perhaps an hour they watched the cloud rise, change shape in the strong winds aloft, and start to dissipate.

  “Somebody else,” Duff had said, “should have seen it. Though there are darn few ships in these parts, I imagine.” His eyes moved from the distant, separating clouds to the beach; they followed its curve to the Bahama Banks, a glittering, empty infinitude of shallow sea. “Anyhow, it’ll show up on plenty of instruments and a slew of people will be down here, looking, pretty soon.”

  Eleanor said, “Was it close enough to—to hurt us?”

  He stared at her, then smiled, and found a lump coming in his throat. “Lord,” he murmured, “why didn’t you ask that before? No. Too far away. The radiation here couldn’t have amounted to anything.”

  The girl smiled back. “Glad I had a physicist along to tell me.”

  The first half of the Orange Bowl game ended in the usual pandemonium. Teams trotted from the field and were replaced by bands in red uniforms, in blue, in green, in gold and in the white of the University of Miami. Thousands of colored balloons rose in the sky.

  The combined bands began to play. Floats moved sedately from the corners of the stadium and paraded around the field. One of these—an immense replica of an orange—proceeded to the center of the field and opened magically. The Orange Bowl Queen stood inside it, and girls on the floats, pretty girls in bathing suits, began to throw real oranges to the crowd. The governors of three states marched forward with what the program called “a retinue of beauty” to crown the queen.

  Standing in her robes, smiling, waving, Eleanor felt happy. She was very tired, but everything would soon be over.

  In the Yates box, Duff grinned at the yelling of Marian and the shrill whistling of Charles. He handed a pair of borrowed field glasses to Mrs. Yates, who faced her wheel chair to see every detail of the coronation.

  Duff gazed at Eleanor, standing straight and lovely, as he mused on the recent, dramatic past. They had been discovered on the island by a Coast Guard plane which flew in to investigate. A second plane had taken them back to Miami, where they had landed secretly. Eleanor had given out the story that she had suffered a “loss of memory” due to “exhaustion and an accidental fall” and spent two nights with “a friend in Fort Lauderdale.”

  Nothing about kidnapping, about enemy agents, about a mushroom cloud rising where a boat had vanished. That would not become public, Duff reflected, until it was all over.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see the grinning face of Scotty Smythe.

  “Duff, old boy, can you come over to our box for a few minutes? Dad and mother are there.

  And a couple of other people who want to see you.”

  Out on the sunlit field the coronation ended. Eleanor’s float led a circling parade to the jubilant blaring of bands. Duff followed Scotty along an aisle of the jam-packed stadium.

  He greeted the Smythe family happily, and found himself, to his surprise, shaking hands with General Baines, and then with a physicist he had always wanted to meet, a Doctor Adamas who was a member of the Atomic Energy Commission.

  The general presently murmured to Duff,” Adamas and I actually came down to see you.”

  “Me!”

  “We both are flying back to Washington as soon as possible after this dandy game. If you could spare us a few minutes now, for a stroll outside—”

  It was there, between the stadium walls and the parked cars, that Duff got the shock of his life. He walked along slowly with the general and the scientist.

  The soldier did most of the talking. “No use, Bogan, of my telling you what the country owes you. We’ve dug out that bomb in New York. One in Philadelphia. Two in Washington. Soon have them all. The Stacey woman talked.”

  “I should have figured her out sooner,” Duff said, with a self-depreciatory shake of his head. “And the country owes Scotty Symthe far more than me. After all, if he hadn’t driven over to the Yateses’ to help me, and if he hadn’t come in when nobody answered his knock, he’d never have found my note or phoned Higgins where I’d gone, and why. The search for the yacht wouldn’t have started.” Duff shuddered slightly. “They’d have got away with the whole thing!”

  “There is nothing tangible we can do for young Smythe,” the general replied, grinning at the disclaimer. “His father, my good friend, is amply endowed with worldly goods. In fact, Bogan, the father thinks your influence has made a serious man out of a rather featherbrained boy.”

  “Scotty was always a man,” Duff answered defensively. “He just liked to look frivolous.”

  “The point is,” Adamas said dryly, “you’ve done a very great, very brave and very brilliant service to your country, and one for which there cannot be, at this time, any public reward whatever.”

  Duff laughed. “Reward? Why should I get a reward? Anybody would have done what I did—and better. If I hadn’t been so dumb—”

  The general’s mouth dropped open and snapped shut. The scientist coughed, cleared his throat and looked closely at the trunk of a nearby palm. And he spoke. “We’ve gone over your records, Bogan. The FBI has quite a dossier. Besides being a twenty-one-carat fool for danger, you’re a good man in the field. My field. Our field. A certain nuclear project is being moved down here under old Slocum. We’d like you to work on it as you continue your studies. We’ve fixed it so the work itself will contribute toward a doctorate.”

  Duff had been trying to say he’d be glad to work on any project the Atomic Energy Commission thought he was worthy of. But the mention of an opportunity to get his final degree made him stand still. Tears came in his eyes.

  “D-d-don’t deserve anything of the sort,” he stammered.

  General Baines snorted, “Damn it, man! Stop the modesty! Surely you realize what you saved the country from!”

  “A lot of people besides me—”

  “Fiddlesticks! Rubbish! You can continue your studies here. Take your M.A. Then your Ph.D. And have a job meanwhile
. It will pay you seven fifty a month, Bogan, and I have orders from the President of the United States—who wants to shake your hand someday, incidentally— that you’re to accept.”

  A roar came from inside the stadium as the opposing teams returned to the field. The scientist, after a look at Duff, took the general’s arm. “Let’s watch the kickoff.”

  Duff couldn’t speak. When he was able to control his emotions, he walked back into the frenzied stadium and joined the Yates family. He saw the game, and didn’t see it. He was thinking that he was a rich man now. For a minute he had imagined that “seven fifty” a month had meant seven dollars and a half. Then he knew. He could rent Harry’s room and they wouldn’t need to find another boarder. He could put in some improvements, like an electric stove. By and by he’d be a doctor of philosophy, an atomic scientist. Miami made a touchdown and he was only dimly aware—

  After the sun set and as the first unimportant-looking buds of the night-blooming jasmine commenced to explode their honey-sweet perfume into the twilight, Duff sat alone beside his lily pool. They’d just come home from the game. He hadn’t told the Yateses, yet, about his reward; he was afraid, still, that he’d break up—maybe blubber.

  Eleanor had been escorted home, minutes before. He expected she would leave again, soon, for another dinner party.

  Charles kicked open the front screen. “Hey, Duff! Kitchen faucet’s leaking!”

  The homely need somehow bolstered Duff. He laughed. “Washer coming up!” He had shut off the water when Eleanor appeared—in a house dress.

  “I thought—”

  She read the thought. “I begged off, Duff. After all, I did say I’d been ill. I’m cooking tonight— thank heaven! No more Cinderella! The coach is a punkin again and the horses are mice. And am I happy about that!”

  Duff nodded vaguely. He felt that women were impossible to understand. He tinkered with the faucet and she came close, watching him. There was a way her hair curved at the nape of her neck. There was a certain shape of her eyes and a special light in them, a topaz light. A warmth and a femininity about her. She had lovely lips. And he knew the girl very well—though not, perhaps, well enough to do what he did, which was to put down the wrench, take her in his arms and kiss her, hard. Alarmed afterward, he let go.

  “I’m sorry! I couldn’t help it! I’m still distraught —judgment’s shot!”

  Her eyes shone. “Sure is! You let go. Why?”

  Duff turned away a little. “I’ve tried to be a brotherly kind of a guy, Eleanor. It’s a beam I can’t entirely stay on. But after all, your type of man is some really elegant person, like Scotty.”

  “Scotty is pretty elegant,” she answered very softly. “He had a big crush on me. I had to kind of bust it up—pretend I was crazy about six other lads. He caught on. I mean, he caught on to who I really did care for. So he pitched in to help that guy. It’s like Scotty.”

  Duff nodded and his blue eyes were never more vague, more forlorn. “Then there is somebody.”

  Her first words of love were, “What does a girl have to do in the case of scientists—hire a marriage broker? You dope! You oaf! You nitwit! You precious dumbbell!”

  Marian, who had come quietly through the door, yelled, “Mother! Duff and El are having a quarrel!”

  Her big sister ignored the interruption and went on talking to Duff in a strange voice,

  “Yes, there’s somebody! Somebody who ought to find out—seeing I phone all over the country to get him when I’m in trouble! Seeing how jealous I am about his dating another girl! Somebody I’ve practically been married to for a year and a half! At least, I’ve had him around, like a husband. And we’ve had all the trials and tribulations and domestic problems and discomforts and the scrimping and misery and work of marriage, together. Enough to know for sure we could make a swell team! And none of the joy, except a sort of—distant companionship.”

  “Mother,” Marian bawled jubilantly, “I was wrong! They’re necking!” She added in mock horror, “You better come out here and chaperon!”

  Eleanor drew away a little and said, “I’ve loved you, you lug, since the day you came stammering in here, towering and shuffling, polite and uneasy, asking for a place to board that was ‘reasonable’! Everything at the Yateses’ is reasonable, Duff—even poor—and maybe we’re crazy if we get married, the way it is. But we’ll make out. I know it!”

  “About that,” he said, and gulped, “maybe I ought to tell you. I just got a job.”

  THE END

  Sporting Blood

  I

  “Crunch,” said the girl.

  “Present,” the skipper replied, without looking up from his work.

  “Hello!”

  He took a turn with a wrench. “Hello, Marylin.”

  There was a brief silence on the Gulf Stream Dock. The sun of early autumn shone fiercely on the city of Miami and its grey-green Bay. Sandals tapped. The Poseidon rocked minutely as the girl came aboard.

  “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  Crunch grinned in the relative gloom. “All I can see in here is machinery.”

  Marylin Brush was one of his favorite female fishermen. But you couldn’t let Marylin dominate a situation—quite. She had a tendency to try to do so.

  “We just got back.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Aren’t you going to leap up and hug me, or anything?”

  “You’d have to spend the weekend at a dry cleaner’s.”

  “Oh.” She came closer. A blonde who wore her locks in long natural waves. A tall girl, strong looking, dressed in what is called a play suit—a garment separated amidships by a sun-tanned stretch of no garment at all. It would have caused Marylin’s grandmother (who had been presented by the American Ambassador to Queen Victoria) to fan the air with her kerchief and fall in a. quick swoon.

  Crunch spun the wrench. “How’s the family?”

  “Wonderful. As usual.” She sounded lugubrious.

  “Excepting you.”

  Her voice was startled. “How’d you know that?”

  “Elementary, my dear—”

  She interrupted. “Crunch! I’m in love! And it’s ghastly!”

  “What’s happened between you and Roge?”

  “It isn’t Roger.”

  Crunch put down the wrench. He wiped his hands on some overused waste. He stood-bringing above the deck level a face, shoulders and chest clad in honest perspiration and much black grease. Marylin Brush and Roger Benton had been “one of those things” ever since he’d been the captain of his prep school football team and she’d been a swimming star at Miss Wainwright’s Florida Academy for Girls. Brush-Benton.

  The nuptial headlines had waited only upon their graduation from the University of Miami. Then their two families would unite as naturally as the confluence of rivers and life among the elite would go on—re-inforced in strength and impressiveness.

  “Not Roger?” His eyes—bluer, clearer, for the dark streaks around them—took in the tall girl, from painted toenails to the matching bow on the top of her head. Everybody liked Marylin. He smiled. “Hello, again.”

  “I guess I hadn’t better shake hands, at that. Crunch, you old such-and-such, I’m glad to see you! How’s fishing?”

  He swung himself on deck. “Good. Who’s the unfortunate guy?”

  “Everything’s wrong with him,” she answered dolefully, sitting on one of the daybeds. “For instance. His name’s Ramsay. And not only that—but Ramsay Binney. Isn’t that silly?”

  “Is it?”

  “The family thinks so. They keep referring to him as Rusty Penny and Dopey Benny and Rumsey Bunny and names like that—as if they couldn’t remember. All my brothers—and Dad and Mother, too.”

  “What else?”

  “His parents were medical missionaries.”

  “Hardy lot. The best.”

  “He grew up with them—they tutored him till he was ready to come to America for college.”

  �
�Very enterprising.”

  “I think so,” she said, nodding. “But it was on Poaki.”

  “Poaki?”

  “There!” She jumped to her feet, rummaged amongst some charts and spools of line, found a package of cigarettes, put one in Crunch’s mouth and one in her own, and lighted both. “You don’t know, either. And you’re a ship’s captain! Nobody—positively nobody—ever recognizes Poaki. That’s where Ramsay came from-and it’s simply unheard-of!”

  “What’s Poaki?”

  “It’s an island in the South Pacific. Copra and pearls and the natives were head-hunters when the Binneys landed there—”

  “Had you heard of it before you met—uh—Ramsay?”

  She sat again. “No. Not even me. But that’s not all. He’s a research epidemiologist.”

  “Certainly your folks can’t complain about that. After all—with the Brush Foundation—”

  “Can’t they! That’s where I met him-at our Foundation this summer. We went to Cincinnati to dedicate a new wing—and he made a little speech—and I met him afterward.

  1 saw to it that I did. But you should hear my family! He’s only interested in tropical epidemics. And they keep telling me if I marry him I’ll spend my life in places like—well—Poaki. Catching things—eastern sprue and filariasis and so on. It’s practically unbearable!”

  “The guy in love with you?”

  “How do I know?” she asked.

  Crunch started to say, “Oh,” and changed it to, “I see.”

  “When they noticed I was getting a crush on Ramsay, they yanked me places. The Adirondacks in July and Maine in August and I didn’t catch up with him again till six weeks ago in New York. But he’s coming down here soon.” She said it with firm satisfaction. “He’s going to do some work on Brill’s disease. Isn’t that marvelous?”

  Crunch smoked.

  The girl’s lovingly shaped mouth became somewhat straight and possibly even hostile. “Don’t say you’re against me, too! Crunch. I’m going to marry Ramsay—and that’s final.”

  “What about Roge?”

  “He’ll still have football—and polo, when he graduates.” She gave Crunch no opportunity to comment upon games as a solace for her graceful, sun-tanned hand.