I scanned the two columns of stumbling enthusiastic prose that trailed
over on to Page Two. Stein came over and leaned over my shoulder and
breathed on my ear as we read. He hadn't seen the sheet, either. It
ran something like this:
America, it was learned today, has at last an absolute
defense, not only to the atomic bomb, but to every gun,
every airplane, every engine, every weapon capable of being
used by man. Neither admitted nor denied at this early date
by even the highest government officials, it was learned by
our staff late last night that America's latest step
forward....
Column after column of stuff like that. When the reporter got through
burbling, he did have a few facts that were accurate. He did say it
was my doing that set off the last atomic bomb test; he did say that I
was apparently invulnerable to violence powered by electrical or
internal combustion engines; he did say what I could do, and what I
had done, and how often. He didn't say who I was, or what I looked
like, or where I'd come from, or what I did or didn't know.
Sprinkled through the story--and I followed it back to Page 32 and the
pictures rehashed of the traffic jam in Detroit--were references to T.
Sylvester Colquhoun, the boy who dumped the original plate of beans.
He attested this and swore to that. Whoever he was, wherever he got
his information, he--there was his picture on Page 32, big as life and
twice as obnoxious; Mr. Whom and the van Dyke.
Guiltily I handed the paper over to Stein, who turned back to the
front page and started again from the beginning. I tried to carry
things off in the nonchalant manner, but I couldn't. I had to watch
the Old Man light a cigarette with fumbling fingers, take a few
snorting puffs, and crush it viciously under his heel. Miller and his
temper.
Whom--or T. Sylvester Colquhoun--had, quite obviously, a grudge
against the short left that had given him his concussion. According to
the _Sentinel_, he had babbled a bit when he was released from the
hospital, and an alert newshawk had trailed him to his home and
bluffed him into spilling the whole story. He had sense enough, at
that late stage of the game, to keep my name out of it, if he ever
knew it. The reporter had gone to his editor with the story, who had
laughed incredulously at first, and then checked Kellner at the
laboratory. Kellner had clammed up, and when the now suspicious editor
had tried to check Colquhoun's tale personally, Colquhoun had
vanished. A snooping neighbor had noted the license of the car that
had taken him away. The Highway Department--the editor must have
moved fast and decisively--showed the license plate as issued to a man
the editor knew personally as a special agent of the Kansas City
Branch of the FBI.
Then hell began to pop. Repeated long-distance calls to Washington ran
him up against a stone wall. The answers he got convinced him that
there was something to Colquhoun's wild tale, something weird and yet
something that had a germ of truth. (Half of this, understand, was in
the _Sentinel_. The other half I picked up later on, adding two and
two.) As he was sitting mulling things over it was his turn to get a
call from Washington. The State Department was on the line; Morgan,
the Under Secretary.
Morgan fairly yelled at him. "Where did you get that information?
What's the idea?" and so on. That clinched it for the editor. Then it
was he knew.
Morgan made his mistake there. He began to threaten, and the editor
hit the ceiling. Hit it hard, because he stretched things a little. He
stretched it more than just a little.
He said, "Furthermore, that's on the street right now--this is a
newspaper, not a morgue!"
It wasn't on the street, the editor knew. Perhaps he wanted to throw a
scare into Morgan, perhaps--But Morgan!
Morgan gasped, "Oh, my God!" and hung up with a bang.
The editor flipped a mental coin. His circulation was not what it
should be, the boss had been riding him lately, his job might be where
a beat would tilt the balance up or down. The national safety that
Morgan had shouted about--well, if we had the perfect weapon and the
perfect defense, what was there to fear? And this _was_ a newspaper,
not a morgue! They replated, and the first extras hit the street to
wake up half the city. The wire services had the story and extras were
rolling throughout the country, or the world, about the time I was
watching the sun over Lake Ste. Clair.
Neither the State Department nor the FBI were on their toes that day.
Instead of denying everything, or instead of laughing heartily at the
pipedream of an editor trying to sell an extra edition or two, whoever
was pulling the strings behind the scenes demanded flatly that all
wire services kill and disregard all references to Colquhoun. No one
ever made a newspaperman do what he really didn't want to do. The very
fact that the government was so eager to kill the story made every
newsman worthy of his salt all the more eager to break the paper-thin
shell around the meaty yolk. By noon, the time we landed for fuel,
every Washington correspondent for every news service had a little
different story for his boss, the White House was practically besieged
at the mere rumor that the President was to issue a statement, and the
State Department was going quietly mad.
"Not so quietly, at that," the Old Man said sourly. "One hour straight
I stayed on that telephone. One hour straight I talked to one bunch of
raving maniacs, and all the common sense I heard would go into your
left eye."
By that time his temper had cooled below melting, and we were again on
reasonably good terms. I was curious to know just who the Old Man had
talked to.
He grunted. "Just about everyone in Washington with any authority at
all. No one with any intelligence."
I could appreciate that. I have a very low opinion of anyone who stays
in Washington any longer than necessary.
I asked him, "We're apparently heading back there. Why? Where were we
going when they stopped us?"
He wasn't sure. "I wanted to keep on going," he said, "and get you out
of the country. I still think that would have been best. There was to
be a cruiser waiting at Bremerton for a shakedown cruise. But whoever
is running all this--and I don't think that the President has thought
too much about it--wants us to get back to Washington for another
conference."
* * * * *
"Another meeting?" I was disgusted. Washington political rashes
manifest themselves most often by the consistent eruption of
conferences in which nothing is said, nothing decided, nothing done.
"What does who think what?"
He blinked, and then smiled. "I couldn't say. I've been in this game
only twenty years. At any rate, you can see who's worried."