Or the World Will Die

I

It began two weeks after I closed up the New York apartment and went up to the house in Connecticut. Early May of 1949. It began then, and it isn’t finished yet. Maybe it never will be. Maybe it is too late for anything except hasty patches and promises — emergency measures for our world which is pasted together with trickery and spit — and a bit of blood.

My house boy, James, of the coal-black face, the incomprehensible Tamil from Bombay, was delighted to get back to the country. He tells me that his feet get soft in New York. He was so glad to get back, that for a time the seed of revolt in him lay dormant, and he smiled at me with actual friendliness. James is a trophy. One night in ’43, on the Bombay docks, he caught a knife that was meant for me. He intends to spend the rest of his life making certain that I appreciate the extent of his sacrifice, even though it was unintentional. He sneers at my habits, deplores the fact that I live without a woman, is contemptuous of the fact that I make a living by talking into the mouthpiece of a black machine which clicks. As each one of my books is published, I faithfully inscribe one copy and hand it to him. He can’t read. He keeps them under his bed.

On the first day that was warm enough, I had James carry the mysterious black machine out into the garden. Had I carried it out, he would have sneered at me for a full week. There were robins in the hedge and the third chapter was going remarkably well. I felt very good, very content. I planned to work until four o’clock in the afternoon and then walk down to the village a mile and a half away for a series of leisurely beers and a quiet dinner at the hotel.

I could hear James chanting one of his sour Tamil numbers as he dusted the house. In the distance I heard the motor of a car laboring up the long hill. Mine is the first house at the top of the hill. I thought nothing of it until I heard the louder noise as the car turned into my drive, and the silence when the driver cut the motor.

I cursed fluently, my mouth close to the bakelite mouthpiece. I realized that I had, out of habit, pushed the button so that it would be imprinted on the wax. I grinned as I realized that that particular record would give the typist in New York a slight shock. I lost the grin as I thought of the interruption. Only my agent knew that I had gone up to the farm. I wanted to finish the current book at the indirect request of my publisher. He had stated that there were certain holes in his list that only the type of slop I write could fill. He is uncomplimentary — and stupidly generous.

My friends thought I had gone to Chicago.

The long extension cord stretched black across the grass toward the house. I switched off the machine and sat scowling at the tall, pale man in quiet tweeds who followed James out to my chair.

James had a pleased smile, because he knew the interruption would annoy me. He said, “Sahib, a visitor.”

“Get another chair,” I ordered. I could see at a glance that the man was too carefully dressed to be a native, too shy to be a salesman.

I stood up as James ran back toward the house. The stranger put out his hand, “Mr. Anthony Crews?”

“That’s what it says out there on my mailbox,” I said smiling.

“I’m Holmes Quinn. I came up from Washington to see you.”

“It was a good trick finding me.” He flushed at the faint compliment. He was quite tall and quite thin, with soft, well kept hands, a good jaw line, a lean, pale face and nervous grey eyes. His dark thinning hair was grey at the temples.

“We checked Chicago and I finally prevailed on your agent to tell me where you had hidden.”

James came back with a chair and waited for an order for drinks. We agreed on two Scotches and water.

“Just who do you represent, Mr. Quinn?” I asked.

“I’ve heard a great deal about you, Mr. Crews. Through... my superiors, I managed to get access to your files and I feel that you, more than anyone else we could possibly find, could do a certain task that...”

I laughed. “Do you talk like that all the time, Quinn?”

He looked annoyed. “This is rather difficult for me, Mr. Crews. You see, I read your letter that you sent in when they asked you if you’d take on that job for Naval Intelligence...”

“That was a year and a half ago, and they haven’t bothered me since. I made it pretty strong, Quinn. I just said that under no circumstances could I be induced into taking on any additional work of a clandestine nature. I got a belly full during the last war, six years of it in fact, and I’ve just about gotten over the habit of doubling on my tracks to see who is following me. If you’ve come up here on any sort of deal to get me back into that very dull and dirty work, you can save time by climbing back into that car and heading for the village. I’ve got work to do right here. Nice, clean profitable work and I like it.”

James brought the drinks. Quinn leaned back in his chair and sipped his, looking over the rim of his glasses at me. He said, “I’d always thought that once you were in that sort of thing, it was like a drug.”

I smiled. “You’ve been reading my books, Quinn. I wrote novels of intrigue as she never happened. Meet me at the Ritz at four and wear a white carnation, and a silencer on your automatic. Nuts, Quinn. Espionage work is a case of making yourself as comfortable as possible in an alley and watching the front door of a house for hours on end. Sure, you go around expecting somebody to slip a knife into your gut, but they don’t do it in a duplex apartment or a sleek hotel. They give you the business while you’re standing in the rain waiting for a bus. It’s no drug with me. The happiest day of my life was the day I got out of it. Now I’m fortyish, thick in the middle and utterly content. I’ve got friends, a little money and an educated taste for the best in food and drink. I’m not going to throw all that overboard for some piddling little mission that the State Department or the War Department has dreamed up. Say, whom do you represent?”

“I can offer you one hundred thousand dollars, Mr. Crews, for two months of your time. If you haven’t solved it then, we’ll call the deal off.”

“Then you don’t represent any branch of the government.”

“But I do!”

“They don’t play around with that kind of dough.”

“But the money would interest you?”

“Not at all, Quinn. I’m in a pretty stiff tax bracket right now, and I couldn’t keep enough of the hundred thousand to make it worth while.”

He seemed to sag. He finished the rest of his drink in one gulp. I was suddenly sorry for him. His face was haggard. But I wasn’t sorry enough for him to step back into the rat race that he was offering me.

He said, “I’ve got a bit of money. Inherited. I was offering my own money to you.”

“You must consider it pretty important.”

“I do. I consider it the most important thing that I’ve ever come across. It’s more important than you or I.” His voice was hoarse. He leaned forward in the chair and said, “Mr. Crews, the entire future of the world, of the human race, might depend on this talk that we’re having. I can’t tell you much...” He faltered, stopped, looked away. I felt uncomfortable for him. The poor guy was really sold on his own line of chatter. But I wasn’t buying any.

I said, “Why come to me, Quinn. There are others.”

He looked back at me. He said, “I went over your record very carefully, Mr. Crews. I talked with General Patrick. He confirmed what your record said — that during the war you, more than any other man, had success in working from the vaguest clues and bits of information. He said you have an unusual combination of boldness and brilliant inductive and deductive reasoning. We’ve got others working on this. They’re getting nowhere. I have no confidence in them. This is the sort of case that you might be able to handle. I don’t know anyone else that could do it.”

“Those are kind words, Quinn. But maybe I haven’t made myself clear. I have no interest at all in going back into that kind of work. I had enough.”

He sighed. “I hoped that I’d be able to get you to agree to take it on without giving you the details.”

“Even with details, the answer is no. A large, fat no.”

“But you’ll listen to the details?”

It was my turn to sigh. “I suppose I’ll have to.”

He hitched his chair closer and lowered his voice. He had lost his shyness, as a shy man will when he talks about something in which he believes deeply. His grey eyes glowed. “Well over a year ago, just before the United Nations arrived at the Agreement of 1948 regarding control of atomic research and production, I transferred from the State Department to the Security Control Division, United Nations Commission. If you will remember, it was decided at that meeting that all nations would contribute funds toward the establishment of an atomic research center, and that no independent research or production would be attempted by any nation. France, Russia and Argentina all stated that they had constructed atomic bombs and agreed to turn over all their data, plus the completed bombs to the Atom Foundation.

“By late summer of 1948, the Atom Foundation had been set up in New Mexico, and the physicists of all countries were at work there. You remember that it was agreed that the Atom Foundation would be open to inspection at any time by any nation. The bombs were disassembled and the raw materials stockpiled.

“At the October meeting last year, China brought up the point that, since there was no inspection of all nations, any nation could be secretly working on atomic bombs. That was squelched by Mr. Hodgkins of Canada who proposed that funds be expended to perfect apparatus that could detect the presence of atomic fission taking place anywhere on the face of the earth. Expert witnesses were called in, and it was agreed that such an apparatus could be developed, utilizing micro-waves and certain other principles with which I am not familiar.

“As a member of the Security Control Division, I was put in charge of the administrative end of the project, the allocation of funds, the acquiring of personnel to handle it. Dr. Jean Lessault of France had been working along those lines, so he was put in charge. He promised completion by February or March of this year. It is now May. The work is not completed.”

“I don’t see yet why you want me, unless some outside agency is interfering with the work in progress.”

He looked startled. “That’s exactly right. Three weeks ago Dr. Lessault destroyed his notes and damaged the partially completed apparatus. He wouldn’t tell us the reason. At last he admitted that his daughter had been missing for a week and that he had received instructions to stop the project and destroy what he had done or his daughter would be returned to him... in bad shape.”

“Dead?”

“They said that they’d send her to him a piece at a time.”

“Pleasant people. Well, is Lessault the only man in the world who can do the work?”

“There are three others. All Americans. Dr. Charles Brinker of Chicago. He was shot to death in his apartment over two weeks ago. Dr. Walter Hurz. He is in a hospital in New York with a fractured skull, the result of a taxi accident. Dr. Janus Wing of Philadelphia who has disappeared. No one has seen him in weeks.”

“Aren’t there others?”

“I thought it seemed odd, and then I found out that those four, Lessault, Hurz, Wing and Brinker were the only four who had carried on successful experiments in the long range detection of radioactivity. It is a special, highly technical branch of physics. Everyone else who attempts it is starting from scratch. The only one available to us who could do it quickly is Lessault. He refuses to work. Hurz won’t be able to work for months. We’re stopped.”

“The inference is logical,” I said.

“Certainly. That some one nation is sufficiently afraid of what the apparatus would show that they were willing to take active steps to prevent completion. That, with that unknown nation, time is peculiarly important. In other words, they are arming themselves with atomic bombs in violation of the Agreement of 1948. They can’t afford to be caught while the job is only partly completed. Thus, they have to delay the Lessault Device until they will be so strong as to be able to ignore the rest of the nations.”

“Which nation is it?”

He looked down at his hands as he answered. “We have a suspicion, but that isn’t enough. The Lessault Device would give us proof. All we really know is that the agents have been clever and thorough. We must find out soon. It may be too late next week, or tomorrow.” He paused. “Or today.”

James brought us another drink and I lit his cigarette and my own. “Has any publicity been given to this at all?”

“None. It would require the authorization of the United Nations to request the Atom Foundation to begin the manufacture of bombs. Publicity would have to be given to that authorization. We are afraid of the effect of fear on the people of the world. Now, that we have just begun to wipe out international suspicion, this would set us back a dozen years.”

“Your agents have found out nothing about the shooting and the kidnapping and the taxi accident?”

“Nothing at all. Neither the police nor our agents. I have two people working with me on this that used to work with you.”

I jumped and then remembered that he had seen my file. “Karl Zetwicz and Alice Christoph. They’ve found out nothing?”

“Nothing at all.”

He didn’t press me. He let me sit and quietly consider all the angles of it. By telling me that Karl and Alice had discovered nothing, he impressed me with the cleverness of the opposition. I had trained Karl and taken him into Occupied Poland with me. I had brought Alice out of Occupied Norway and sent her back there. She had a part in sending out the information about the heavy water plants. Karl had been successful because he was stolid and sober and careful. Alice was a superb natural actress — disquietingly beautiful. I taught both of them how to wait, and watch, and survive. I knew that they had both stayed in clandestine work.

At last he glanced at me and said, “How about it, Mr. Crews.”

“No,” I said firmly.

The lines around his mouth deepened with disappointment. I added, “I’m not as young as I should be for the work. My name is too well known. I haven’t got the anonymity that I should have. I’m soft and old and too damn comfortable to move, Quinn. Get yourself some smart young man to crack the case, and forget me.”

He stood up and there was a faint curl to his lip, though he spoke quietly enough, “You’re intelligent enough, Mr. Crews, to realize the importance of what I’ve told you. I think you’ve given me a hasty answer. I’ll be back tomorrow at twelve noon and see if you’ve reconsidered.”

He jumped up before I could move and stalked off toward his car. When the car was halfway out of the drive, James came out the back door with two more drinks. He saw that Quinn was gone and turned to take them back, but I whistled at him and he brought them out. I drank both of them in a very few minutes.