Or the World Will Die

III

I awoke the next morning and was quite discouraged to find myself approaching middle age, full of years and my own type of ponderous dignity. In my dreams I had been back at the Embassy in Rome, waiting outside in the big State Department car for my father to finish his duties. As I waited I practised Italian with the driver.

I remembered vaguely that far off to the north there was a rumbling explosion and we saw, against the blue afternoon sky, the plume of an atomic explosion, rushing with incredible speed up to forty thousand feet.

The poor driver was enormously upset, but I was calm. I tried to tell him in my youthful, amateur Italian exactly what it was, but I had no word for atom, no word for bomb and no word for war.

Those had been the years when I learned to be a brat. My father was at powerful embassies until at last, in one of those infinitely delicate decisions that must constantly be made, he grew tired and made a bad boner, partly out of boredom, I believe. For that effort, he was rewarded with a tiny post in Costa Rica where he was shot by accident one bright morning by a clumsy policeman who was aiming at a fleeing bandit fully a hundred yards from my father.

After that I was, of course, returned to the States and spent school vacations at the house of my grandfather until he too died, leaving me quite alone.

I spent a lot of the money in strange corners of the world, and in the process, I learned a good deal. I undertook a small mission for British Intelligence, Force 92, in early 1940, carried it out successfully and was given more to do. They transferred me somehow to American Intelligence in 1941 and I spent the next five years alternately in OSS, Naval Intelligence, G-2, and on special missions for the Joint Chiefs.

It was a case of stumbling into work that fits ones natural aptitudes. I did it and I pretended to myself that I liked it. But, throughout it all, I was completely and horribly afraid. The fear kept me going. The fear and the pride. I couldn’t admit to myself exactly how very afraid I was, and thus I accepted all the strangely named missions and operations. Always expecting that this one would be Operation Terminus. But it never was — quite.

During the last half of 1946, when I was once again my own man, I wrote a novel in Bermuda. In it I painted a picture of intrigue and espionage as I had wished it would be, but never was. The book sold. I wrote two more in 1947 and three in 1948. I was on my second one for 1949, on Chapter Three when Holmes Quinn had called.

I was on the sunporch, through with breakfast, ready to go to work by nine o’clock. I told myself that it was no time for nonsense, but it was no use. Holmes Quinn, as all-pervading as poorly designed wallpaper, sat in spirit at the other end of the sunporch and whispered about atoms.

I walked through the grounds and, at one point, whacked the dottle out of my pipe against an apple tree so smartly that I broke the stem in half. The ghost of Quinn walked beside me. And my answer was still no.

Why should I have taken on the job? I was doing nicely. The world wasn’t at war, I enjoyed my comfort and I was tired of roaming.

The morning seemed endless. At last twelve came and I sat in the library reading old correspondence, listening for the sound of a car motor coming up my hill. At twelve-thirty I was still listening.

James gave me my lunch on the sunporch and, during lunch, I stopped often and listened. I told myself that Holmes Quinn had decided that it was useless to try again. And yet he hadn’t looked like a man who would give up so readily. The line of his jaw... Lunch was over and I had a leisurely cigarette. One fifteen. No Quinn. He looked as if he were a punctual type, too. Men who tie small firm knots in their neckties are almost invariably punctual.

So I told myself that I needed a walk, changed to more comfortable shoes and started down the road to the village. The earth was damp with the melted snow of March, the rains of April. It seemed to steam under the May sun and I grew warm. I scored a complete victory for myself when I passed the Hoover farm and Mr. Hoover, working near his barn, looked up and nodded briefly. I bought my place in 1946. I had every hope that in another fifteen years one of the natives would give me a cheery good morning. They look with a fine, mild scorn on all city dwellers who attempt to escape to the soft hills of Connecticut.

The village square looked very pleasant, the white houses set well back, the grass coming up in pale Spring green.

I walked down to the hotel. Actually it is a restaurant with about six rooms overhead.

I stopped in the middle of the path and looked at the hotel. Its outline against the sky wasn’t quite right. A portion of the roof edge was gone and one of the gables. I hurried toward it, feeling sudden alarm.

The sidewalk was roped off and there was broken glass on it. The wood around the hole in the roof was charred and wet.

John Rennet, the village fire chief and police chief looked up and saw me and walked over.

“Was going to come out and see you, Mr. Crews. Be easier if you’d put a phone in out there.”

“What’s the trouble. Mr. Bennet?”

“I talked to Charlie. He drove a fellow out to your place yesterday, fellow name of Quinn. That right?”

“Anything happen to Mr. Quinn?”

“You know him well?”

“Just casually. Was he hurt in a fire?”

“The darn fool must have been smoking in bed. About four o’clock this morning the alarm went in. We got the fire out quick which was a surprise because the whole building should have gone up. Found him still in bed, or at least I think it’s him.”

“Can I identify him for you?”

“Hate to ask a man to do a thing like that. He’s charred real bad. Ain’t got much face left on him to speak of. He’s over to Willoughby’s Funeral Home on Pearl Street if you want to take a look.”

“Have you got his papers to identify him?”

“Yeah, we got all that. His wallet was in his pants and the pants only got scorched a little. Give his wife’s address. I guess I better send her a wire or something. I sure hate to give a woman a shock like that. Darn fool ought to know better than smoke in bed in the middle of the night.”

“Willoughby’s, you said?”

“Here, I’ll run you over if you’re sure you can stand taking a look at him. Just a little formality to have somebody that knew him identify the body. We know it’s him all right, but this is just for the record. You won’t be able to tell much.”

The body was in the workroom at the funeral home, stretched out on a concrete table with a concave top and metal drain channels. A pimply boy was working in the other end of the room and he didn’t look happy.

I knew that I had to show some emotion about it all, so I gasped as I looked at the charred face. The hair was gone and the features might have been anyone’s, but the skull had the long narrow shape that would be right for Holmes Quinn.

I said to the chief, “Let’s get out of here. I guess it’s him.”

As we walked out, Bennet laughed. “Guess you’re not used to seeing things like that. Should have seen the time we had sorting out the Miller kids when the whole family burned up six years ago. Maybe you can put this in one of those books of yours.”

“No thanks,” I said. “Anything else I can do?”

“No thanks, Mr. Crews. You sure ought to get a phone put in out there.”

“Maybe I will.”

He drove me back to the square and I walked back up the road toward my place. I told myself that there would have been no point in creating confusion by pointing out to him certain discrepancies in his theory. The first odd point was that when I had given Quinn a cigarette in my garden, he had held it awkwardly and he hadn’t inhaled deeply. He had thrown it away when only a half inch of it had been consumed. A man with those smoking habits doesn’t smoke in bed at five in the morning.

The second factor was the degree to which the flesh had been consumed. A fire hot enough to have done that, if it had started naturally, would have consumed the hotel. Some chemical had been used. Holmes Quinn had been plainly and obviously murdered.