McGill's concern over this new object of interest had been so intent
that for a few minutes our attention was diverted, but now Molly began
to pace up and down. There didn't seem to be anything for us to do, and
unlike most nurses, waiting makes her nervous. She was looking at the
display of various chemicals and reagents on the shelves.
"What's that stuff?" she asked, pointing to a large jar of black powder
labeled Deflocculated Graphite. "I bet those cops have gone for a
search warrant."
"Finely divided carbon," McGill said. "Damn, I wish I could think of
something! A chunk of glass ... blowing up...."
"Graphite is carbon?" Molly said. "You don't think they'd actually
_do_ anything to Alec, do you?"
"It's another form of carbon. A diamond is still another: the rare
crystalline form," he said. "I wouldn't put it past that mob to do
anything."
"Oh, yes. I remember that in chemistry," Molly said. "But the police
wouldn't let them, McGill, would they?"
"I've got an idea--" I tried to break in.
"They might not be able to stop them," McGill replied.
"We've got to get _out_ of here!" Molly said for the second time.
"If a diamond--" I began.
"With a helicopter, we might," McGill said. "Right now, we're
surrounded."
"How about hiding Alec?" Molly asked. "You and I could act innocent."
"I don't _want_ to be hidden," I objected. "My idea is--"
"Or better yet, we could act guilty. That would appeal to them,
wouldn't it, McGill?"
"They'd tear the place apart if they got in," McGill said.
* * * * *
I took a surreptitious look out of the windows again. It seemed to hit
me that our being surrounded was an exaggeration; most of the crowd was
centered about the police car directly in front of the main door. They
had an ugly look, and while I didn't like the idea of being alone,
neither did I relish the thought of my presence possibly causing my
wife and my best friend to be the victims of mob violence, for although
the police might, in the absence of a warrant, refrain from breaking
in, the mob might not. So I decided to leave, confident that some
bizarre manifestation would lead them away from the lab, and that no
matter where I went, I could hardly be worse off. To keep moving was my
best bet.
Molly and McGill were still discussing the situation as I tip-toed
into the hall. There surely would be a back door--probably in the
basement--and I went down three flights to a cement-floored corridor.
Then, with lighted matches, I found my way to a door at the back of the
building, at the end. I opened it and peered out, to see a retaining
wall and stone steps leading up to ground level. I eased out into the
areaway and pulled the door shut, noticing that I still held the folded
filter-paper with the fragment in it. The lock clicked and I realized
that my bridge was, as they say, burned behind me.
Two cops were talking together a little way to my right, but their
backs were turned and they were looking up. I, too, looked and saw
the whirlpool of debris, which was exactly as Molly had described and
quite as attention-calling. Clutching the filter-paper like a talisman,
I climbed the steps and gumshoed away to the left, but as I got to the
corner, I met a group of young men, also looking up.
One of these was saying, "That's a lynch mob, if ever I saw one! I
don't get it."
"Mob psychology, that's the answer," explained another.
My heart congealed, but they walked right by me. It suddenly occurred
to me that any newspapers that had carried the story would scarcely
have been able to dig up a photograph of me yet. All I had to do was to
walk out of the campus, for who would recognize me? Where I would go
then was something I could decide later.
So I started out with more assurance, but I took the precaution to act
like an onlooker by glancing up over my shoulder now and then at the
airborne maelstrom.
As I got to the other side of the open space, I had another shock. A
few yards ahead was another group of policemen, one of whom, I saw with
dismay, was the lieutenant from Charles Street, and he was beginning to
turn around. I barely had time to duck into a doorway to avoid being
seen. I had the feeling of a member of the I.R.A. in Dublin during the
Troubles, and I crouched against the door.
I could now hear the lieutenant's voice: "Of course he's up there!
Maddigan'll be here with a warrant any minute now and we'll ...." His
voice faded away.
* * * * *
Behind me, the door suddenly opened and I almost fell. A young student
holding some notebooks emerged.
"Sorry," he said, and walked toward the crowd.
The door had not yet closed and I slipped in, with my heart
irretrievably contracted to the size of a buckshot. I could just make
out in the dim light that I was at the bottom of the fire stairs, so I
climbed to the third floor and went into a classroom, then on into an
office somewhat like McGill's, that faced toward the lab building.
From here, I had a perfect view of the crowd, the police, the upper
facade of the labs, brightly lit by the searchlight and, over all, the
spinning papers and dust, which even as I looked began to die down. I
was unable to see Molly or McGill and wondered whether they had noticed
my absence and were worrying.
I saw a phone on the desk at my side and considered calling up McGill's
office, but first I wanted to think over my new idea. I pulled down
the shades and turned on the reading lamp, by the light of which
I re-examined the fragment I had been carrying around all day. It
sparkled brilliantly. On the desk, beside an onyx pen-set, a golf
trophy and a signed golf ball, was a leather-framed photograph of a
blank-faced young woman holding a pudgy little boy. I picked it up and
rubbed the glass with the tiny fragment. It left a faint but undeniable
scratch. So I was right about one thing.
Then I called McGill's office. In a few moments, I heard the receiver
lifted, but no voice. "This is the nucleus," I said, and I heard of
sigh of relief from McGill.
"Where in hell are you?"
"Across the way. Look, out of your window and I'll turn my light off
and on again." I did so.
"You're in Professor Crandal's office. Why did you leave?"
"We'll go into that later. McGill, that fragment is a diamond."
"What!"
"At any rate, it scratches glass."
"Why didn't you tell me that before? And where is it? I couldn't find
it anywhere."
"I was sidetracked. I've got it here. Now my idea--"
"A diamond! I begin to see light. Give with the idea, Alec."
"Well, there was all this talk of crystals and then you were telling
Molly about carbon and diamonds, and it occurred to me that what we
have is something trying to crystallize--something that once _was_ a
crystal, and got broken up and wants to re-form. It keeps trying with
playing cards and pigeons and automobiles, but it's no go. Why don't we
give it some carbon to play with, McGill?"
* * * * *
There was a short silence. I looked across at the office, but I
couldn't see him. I noticed a piece of dirty newspaper that had fallen
out of the maelstrom and had caught on a thick wire that stretched from
one of the lab windows to immediately below mine--some kind of aerial,
I imagined. Then I saw that the maelstrom, rather than breaking up, as
I had thought, was moving over in my direction. I would be pointed out
again.
"You mean the graphite, I suppose," McGill said. "Why in hell did you
leave and take the fragment with you?"
"I forgot it was in my hand," I said, dodging the first part of the
question. "Nobody on the campus recognized me, so I guess I can walk
back." Then I remembered the locked basement door and the fact that
I could scarcely be let in by McGill, with the cops standing around,
but I was feeling light-headed and damage-proof. It was protecting
its nucleus, which, even if I wasn't any more, I had in my hand. My
crystalline rabbit's foot.
"Hold on a second," I said. "I've got another idea."
I put down the receiver, and picked up the golf ball from the desk,
and put it on the floor. I stood up and put my right foot on it and,
holding my breath, I raised my other foot. In any event, I would not
have far to fall--but I did not fall. I remained upright, holding
the filter-paper and wobbling a little. Then I relaxed and closed my
eyes--still I did not fall. The rabbit's foot was working, just as
McGill said. I stepped down two inches and picked up the phone.
"I'm coming across," I said. "That is, if the wire that runs over here
from the lab is strong enough to hold me."
"Alec! You're nuts!" McGill said, and I hung up. (Diamonds of the
world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your nucleus.)
I took a look over the sill at the wire. It was held by a powerful
steel eye-bolt, securely attached to the brickwork. Clutching the
diamond fragment in its paper, I climbed over the sill and put a foot
on the wire and felt immediately seasick. The wire vibrated like a
harp-string, but did not give noticeably, and I put my other foot on
it. Then I almost blacked out and closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, I found I had progressed some distance into
the void. Nothing was holding me from over-balancing, but my body
seemed to right itself automatically, as if I were a veteran tightrope
walker.
In a frozen daze, I edged along, keeping my eyes fixed on the distant
window in which I could see McGill and Molly watching me with white
faces.
* * * * *
When I was about half way, the crowd caught sight of me and yelled. A
man with a broad-brimmed hat ran out from the others and, to my horror,
pulled out a gun. Another man picked up a stone, wound himself up like
a sand-lot pitcher, and hurled it just before the other pulled his
trigger. They were excellent shots: the stone was hit by the bullet and
both disintegrated. The man's gun jammed at his second try and the two
heroes were grabbed by the police.
With my heart pounding, I kept going, until, about four yards from
safety, my foot caught, and I looked down again. There was a splice
in the wire, sticking up from which was a sharp end. I staggered and
righted myself ... and let go of the filter-paper.
By now, the maelstrom was directly over me and my talisman was caught
in the up-draught. It did not fall, but I did. After a sickening
instant, I was brought up with a jerk that nearly strangled me. The
back of my coat had caught on the projecting wire and I swung there
like an unused marionette.
The crowd shouted and milled around, and the cops called out directions
to each other. One order was to send for the Fire Department. I found I
could breathe, but I could not look down.
The all-important paper was fluttering around near the lab window
and McGill was making grabs at it. Then it suddenly blew right in by
him. His head reappeared and he shook his clasped hands at me. Molly
remained at the window, her eyes round, the fingers of each hand
crossed. I essayed a debonair smile, which she tried to answer. In the
distance, I heard the owl-sound of approaching fire engines.
From behind Molly there suddenly came an intense blue light, which
rapidly increased until she became a dark silhouette, and I could just
make out McGill looking at the glare, his eyes shielded by what I took
to be a deep-blue bottle. His stance suggested elation. There appeared
to be a terrific in-draught--all the window shades were blowing
straight into the lab and Molly's red hair streamed behind her.
In what was actually almost no time, I heard the Fire Department turn
into the campus, and one piece of equipment skidded to a stop directly
under me. There was the sound of a winch and then I felt something
touch my foot. At that moment, my jacket gave way with a tearing sound,
Molly closed her eyes, and I landed like an oversize tarantula on top
of the fireman's ladder.
Firemen and cops were climbing toward me, alternated like meat and
tomatoes on a shish-kebab. First to reach me was my friend the
lieutenant. He re-arrested me and pulled. I shook my head to his
earnest entreaties and hung on with the tenacity of the unbrave. It
seems to be impossible to detach a determined man from a ladder when
you are also on it.
He and his friends gave up finally and ordered the ladder lowered, but
one last fluke intervened--if it was a fluke. The machinery refused to
work and we drove away, with me swaying grandly on my perch.
* * * * *
The lieutenant had the hook-and-ladder driven to a distant police
station, where in due course Vinelli, the lawyer, arrived with his
foot in a cast, and I was bailed out. The cops showed me surprising
consideration; it turned out they were furious at the irresponsible
riding they had been getting from Bill Bart. A scientific big-shot
that McGill knew, named Joe Stein, convinced them I was in no way to
blame, and the case was dropped. Professor Stein gave a wonderfully
incomprehensible but tranquilizing statement to the press, and Molly
and I went to Oyster Bay.
"In two weeks, everybody'll have forgotten all about it," the
lieutenant told us. "You may even be a hero. I don't know."
Before we left, we went with McGill to the lab and saw the diamond. It
sat on a bench, gleaming brilliant, smooth-faceted and without a flaw.
It was at least two feet across, about the same as the chunk of "glass"
on Fifty-first Street.
"The cops never recognized what it was," McGill said, "it being so big."
"Who would?" Molly asked. "McGill, I've got an idea--"
"All I had to do," McGill said, ignoring her, "was to put the graphite
on some cinder blocks and the fragment on the graphite. Then I turned
a bunsen flame on it and it caught fire with a terrifically bright
flame--very small--I guess you saw it." I nodded. "It didn't give off
any heat," he went on. "Adiabatic process. And it got its necessary
pressure from the random motions together of the graphite particles.
Some random motions! When that was used up, it started on the cinder
blocks and then the CO_{2} in the air. That's what caused the suction:
the blinds were blown straight in. You probably missed that." I shook
my head. "Anyway, this thing--"
"McGill," Molly interrupted, "I've got an _idea_!"
"--this thing has got to be dumped out at sea."
"Oh," Molly said, looking crest-fallen. "I was just going to say why
don't we break a piece off and sell it in Amsterdam?"
"Good God, no! That would only start it up all over again!"
"Just a _little_ piece, McGill?"
"NO!"
With Stein's help, McGill convinced the police that the thing had to
be dumped, and we dropped it off a police launch beyond Sandy Hook, to
their bored perplexity. They would have been still more puzzled if
they had known what it was.
McGill came down to Oyster Bay for the weekend and we played a game of
gin rummy--a truly memorable game, because the cards behaved and I even
lost a little.
He congratulated me in a pre-occupied way, which annoyed me. "I should
think you'd be gladder than that," I told him.
"I am," he said. "But there's something else--"
"What's that?" asked Molly, worried.
"The schools of fish are traveling head to tail. I'm wondering if
that's just the beginning of another mess."
We went back to playing gin rummy, but our minds weren't on what we
were doing. They haven't been since. Just yesterday, an ocean liner
chased its berthing tugboats away and went sightseeing up the Hudson
River.