"Oh, the doctor was doing some work alone one night. Something went
wrong and he telephoned for me to come over right away. When I got
there everything was all right. He apologized for disturbing me."
"Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?"
"No, I don't think so. Except the Geiger; it gave a count a little
above normal."
Somewhere here was a lead. I felt it, but I couldn't seem to get my
hands on it. "Did he have any visitors about that time?"
Budnick lowered his head, studying the gravelled road in a concentrated
attempt at remembering.
He shook his head slowly. Then his memory stirred. "Yes, I remember.
A day or so before the accident he had a visitor. Some geologist, I
believe; that reminds me, too: that night in the lab the Doctor had one
of those boxes mineral samples are kept in. It was very heavy, as if it
was solid lead."
Excited now, I shot my questions in rapid fire.
"Do you know the geologist's name?... Would you remember it if you
heard it again?... Good.... Can you get the day off?... Then go back
home and start remembering that man's name for all your life's worth.
Get a telephone directory. Go through it. Try anything but recall that
name."
2
I left Budnick a little dazed by my emphatic manner and whipped over to
the headquarters of the atomic labs. There I checked on back visitor's
lists but evidently the Doctor's geologist friend hadn't visited him
on the job. I dropped in at the telegraph office and wired Armstrong
in Washington for a list of Chetzisky's acquaintances, the names of
the members of the National Academy of Sciences, Association for the
Advancement of Sciences, the Geological Society, the OSRD.
Then I went back to Budnick and began a mental third degree, using a
rhyming dictionary, a genealogical compendium and the collection lists
from an old church bulletin. Hour after hour I kept it up. Others had
seen the Doctor's visitor, but only Budnick knew the name. It was the
only clue I had to go on.
After eight solid hours, broken only by coffee and sandwich snacks,
Budnick was begging me to call off the grilling. "Give me a break. Let
me get a little sleep." He clutched his head as if he were trying to
keep it from flying apart. His eyes were swollen and red.
"All right," I said; Budnick was at his limit. Besides, I had to wait
for Armstrong's reply to my telegram.
Budnick rolled to the floor and went to sleep on the spot. I sank down
in an armchair, tired, but too tense to sleep, and waited.
Three hours later Armstrong's reply came. I ripped the yellow envelope
open.
CANNOT GET INFORMATION YOU REQUESTED BECAUSE OF NEW SECURITY
REGULATIONS.
Armstrong.
I slumped back into the chair, swearing silently at every bureaucrat
in Washington. Served them right if we let Chetzisky fry them. But it
meant being fried ourselves; I looked over to the snoring Budnick and
decided on a trick I had seen Army interrogators work during the war.
"Come on, Budnick," I said shaking him. I called to his wife to bring
some fresh coffee. After he had gulped down two steaming cups, I opened
up on him again.
"Abeles, Aberon" ... For two hours I shot names at him from a telephone
directory without let-up. My voice turned hoarse. Budnick's eyes went
sick and he began to turn green, the color of corroded copper.
This was the moment.
I stopped my staccato fire and walked over to the window. Silence
settled in the room like a velvet hush. It was soothing, like cool
cloth on a fevered forehead.
I went over to Budnick, offered him a cigarette, and lit it for him. He
took a long, contented puff. Casually I placed an ash tray at his elbow.
"Thanks," he said.
Then, taking a grip on my banjo nerves, I spoke as quietly as I could,
"What did you say his name was?"
"Pilon."
The name sprang from his lips before he realized it. He stared at me
dumbfounded, then he was on his feet, yelling like a man suddenly freed
from a nightmare. "That's it. Pilon. Pilon. Why didn't I think of it
before?"
I said amen to that. Exhaustion took hold of me. I just wanted to
sleep. But first I had to wire Armstrong to find out all he could about
a geologist named Pilon, first name unknown. Then, without bothering
to crawl between the clean sheets, I fell on the bed in the Budnicks'
spare room and sank into a black void that kept receding into a deeper
and blacker void.
_EXTRACTS, HOSPITAL CASE HISTORY NO. 3007:_
_6:05 P.M. Patient rapidly weakening. White cell count now barely
100. Pulse very feeble. Transfusions now given continuously.
Emergency call to Vancouver to fly in fresh supply.... 6:10 P.M.
Pain more intense. Morphine given at increasingly frequent
intervals. Patient still appears rational._
The days following the visit to the atomic labs and the Budnicks were,
I remember, tedious, floor-pacing days.
Back home at the University I mechanically prepared my lecture notes
and waited tensely for word from Armstrong. Tuesday came without news.
I gave my lecture, stumbling stupidly several times, so great had the
strain on me become. I could stand it no longer and immediately after
class I phoned Armstrong in Washington.
He sounded high-strung himself. Unable to get official cooperation
he was being forced to dig up the information on Pilon by devious
methods. "We have to get official support, Arnold," he snapped angrily.
"Otherwise, some of these Washington worshippers of red-tape, clerks
parroting, 'That's another department, sir,' and 'put it through
channels' sticklers are going to kill any chance of our tracking down
Chetzisky."
"And kill two billion people," I added with wry humor.
When I hung up, I had my mind made up. I was going to look up an old
Princeton schoolmate, Nevil Oxford, now a famous newscaster for the
Federal Broadcasting Company.
* * * * *
Nevil was sipping coffee from a paper cup as he bent over the news
bulletins on the clattering teletypes when I entered his office in
the F.B.C. Building. After a preliminary exchange of the usual alumni
gossip I got down to cases and told him about Chetzisky.
"And you really believe he could do it, Arnold?"
"I do. Most certainly."
Nevil's face hadn't much color in it now. "Come on," he said, "Let's go
downstairs; I need a drink."
Over scotch and sodas I hammered away at him, trying to get him to
break the Chetzisky story on his eleven o'clock broadcast.
"I can't, Arnold. We've been asked to lay off the sensational stuff.
Besides, it would start a panic. Remember what happened a month ago
when some jaded announcer pulled the gag about the Russians being in
the outskirts of the city."
"But, Nev, it isn't a case of Orson Welles tom-foolery; it's a life and
death necessity of stirring the government to action through public
opinion."
"I can't." He turned to the bartender and ordered a double scotch. No
soda this time. "It isn't that I don't believe you, Arnold. It's--ah,
hell."
He threw down his drink quickly. For a moment he stood twirling the
empty glass in his hand, staring at the lone amber drop rolling in arcs
at the bottom. "You know, Arnold, I'm scared. Scared stiff," he said
suddenly, turning to me. He looked at his wrist-watch. "I'm on in half
an hour; maybe I _will_ tell them."
I watched him walk unsteadily out of the bar, his shoulders set
squarely in an attitude of defiance. I toyed with a drink for twenty
minutes, then went upstairs to the studio reception room to listen in
on Nevil's broadcast. Twice during it he paused significantly as though
he was going to break the Chetzisky story, but each time he must have
lost his nerve. Or the effects of the scotch had worn off too quickly.
Disappointed, I left without bothering to say goodbye to him.
Thursday I phoned Armstrong again. He had no word on Pilon. He had
succeeded, however, in tracking down the man who sent out Chetzisky's
letters. The man was a retired school-teacher, an old friend of
the physicist, to whom Chetzisky had given a number of letters and
telegrams to be sent out according to a prescribed schedule. That was
as far as the school-teacher's participation went.
The next few days I acted like a caged lion, my eyes cocked fearfully
on the calendar, waiting for something to happen. My nights were
sleepless. It was nerve-wracking to stand by and watch time run out on
the world. And on myself. At first, my stomach simply turned without
relish from food; soon, it was turning sick at the sight of it.
* * * * *
A special delivery came from Armstrong Monday night. It was a teletype
he had torn right off the machine and rushed to me.
IDENTIFICATION MADE AS HECTOR PILON. AGED 34. DOCTORATE IN GEOLOGY,
COLUMBIA U. SPECIALIST IN RADIOACTIVE ORES. MEMBER OF COMMISSION
NOW CHECKING URANIUM DEPOSITS IN CONGO. WAS PRESENT IN U.S. DURING
PERIOD QUERIED.
There was a hastily written post-script. "_Will arrange passport,
plane passage, etc., for you. Draw some money from bank for expenses.
Armstrong._"
My heart pounded. The Congo! The site of the world's richest uranium
deposits, it would be just the natural workshop for Chetzisky.
Perhaps, I mused, trying to reason out a pattern, this fellow Pilon
discovered or heard of a new ore find in, say, the jungle area east of
the famous Katanga district, and told Chetzisky about it.
Of course, I admitted to myself, there was the problem of how the
Doctor could get equipment into the area unnoticed. But maybe the
answer lay in what Chetzisky had said to Chaslington; maybe there was
no equipment problem. Who could tell but that Chetzisky may have found
a simplified method of handling and working radioactive ores? He had
told Chaslington our present methods were utterly outmoded, hadn't he?
It took Armstrong nearly a week to arrange for my trip to the Belgian
Congo. He sent cables to Belgian officials at Leopoldville and to
George Disney, chief of the commission with which Pilon was working,
inviting their cooperation. In this way he hoped that the prestige of
his title and name would lend a semi-official tone to my mission.
Meanwhile, Nevil Oxford phoned me twice, inquiring about our search for
Chetzisky. His voice betrayed his uneasiness.
On the morning of my departure from Idlewild the _New York Times_, as
if given confirmation to our conjectures, carried a front page story
announcing a new uranium deposit in the Katanga area. Two university
scientists who assayed samples stated the ore was among the highest
grade yet discovered. Yield about three kilograms per ton.
As I boarded the _Constellation_ I was confident that the chase was
coming to an end. I was feverish with a sense of an approaching climax.
For a long time I sat in quiet, optimistic thought, staring out the
window port at a blue monotone of sky.
After lunch served by a stately blonde stewardess, the Englishman
across the aisle struck up a conversation with me. He knew Africa very
well, having served there many years for the Unilever enterprises.
He tried to teach me Swahili in one easy lesson, a sort of Esperanto
devised by the Arab slave-traders and the _lingua franca_ throughout
Africa. I was interested, but a poor student. When I finally crawled
into my berth at day's end, it was to dream of tangled jungles of
African cedar and wild rubber trees, with limbs festooned with great,
wrist-thick vines and monkeys scolding from the tree tops; and through
it all the steady chatter of natives saying over and over again,
"Simba," "Mungo," "N'Gana," "Bwana," stray bits of Swahili floating in
my mind.
When I awoke, we were three hours out of Santa Maria in the Azores
after refuelling. I took out my pocket calendar and checked off another
day. Only twelve more remained to Chetzisky's deadline.
The plane swung down over the west African coast and then turned
inland. Thirty-two hours after leaving Washington, it touched down on
the runway at N'Dolo airfield in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo.
"Zero hour," I thought with a quiver of excitement as I stooped through
the cabin door onto the landing ramp. On hand to meet me was George
Disney, head of the commission, who drove me to the Hotel Albert where
I was to put up. He was the leisurely type. Pilon, he said, was up
country. He could be called down, or I might go up, just as I wished.
In any case I was to consider myself a welcome guest of the Disneys.
Disney's conversation had a soft, easy charm. He sipped his aperitif
without any sense of urgency, an affable victim of the tropical languor.
I proposed leaving right away to meet Pilon. His eyes took on the hurt
look of a polite host whose suggestions have been refused. I pressed
my point and he reluctantly consented to arrange transport. He left
without finishing his drink, a silent rebuke for what he felt was my
unseemly haste, I suppose.
In half an hour I was flying over the wooded savanahs of Kwango towards
the mountains of Lualaba Kasai. The plane set down at Katanga eight
hours later, where I fretted for twenty minutes before the commission
jeep picked me up for the bumpy ride along a _piste_ through a forest
of giant trees.
3
I found Pilon at camp, sitting in his tent in the middle of a jungle
clearing, making coffee over a Primus stove. I introduced myself.
He said he knew I was coming; had received a message a few hours
before from Disney. I accepted his coffee and eased into a casual
interrogation.
I wove my opening questions around bits of information I had gleaned of
Pilon's movements from Disney and the jeep driver. I wanted to test his
straightforwardness.
But I had to be careful about my questions. Having no official
credentials, I dare not overstep my mark and draw a challenge for them.
Disney had accepted me, without question, solely on the strength of
Armstrong's cable.
"Just think," I said with the proper air of wonderment, "last Tuesday
I was lecturing quietly in a classroom and here I am sitting in the
jungle. What were you doing last Tuesday?"
His blue eyes narrowed. "Tuesday?" He paused. "Yes, I was checking ore
samples up in the Lake Mwera region."
That was true, I knew. Pilon continued to answer me truthfully and
with apparent frankness. But I was not satisfied; his eyes had a sly,
mocking look to them as if he were really aware of the purpose of my
visit and enjoyed this verbal sparring. I distrusted him.
Suddenly he broke in vehemently on one of my queries, "Why all these
questions? Am I suspected of subversive activities?"
I said nothing, scrutinizing him closely. I felt he was acting, his
anger a mere pretense to force me to the point of my visit. I stalled
for time to think, refilling my cup from the pot on the Primus.
"May I see your credentials, sir?"
I froze in the act of stirring my coffee. Was Pilon just being nasty?
Or had the timidity of my questioning given me away?
I couldn't afford to be trapped. Not only would my trip to the Congo be
fruitless, but worse, Armstrong would be hauled on the carpet for his
part in it and severely disciplined. I myself would probably face ugly
disloyalty charges. A bold bluff was my only way out.
I laughed good-naturedly. "After having seen Mr. Disney I didn't
expect to have to carry my papers around with me. They're a down-right
nuisance to carry around in this outfit I'm wearing." I gestured to the
khaki shorts and short-sleeved shirt I had on.
He laughed, a forced, hollow laugh. He was uncertain of his ground.
"Of course," I went on, "if you wish, we could go to Leopoldville
and...."
"No, that won't be necessary. I'm sorry. I lost my temper. Living alone
in this jungle wears a person's nerves a little thin."