Stop This Man! (3 page)

Jack Herron didn’t much like to go on a case with his chief. It made him uncomfortable and awkward. Jones never said much and always wore a bland face. Without talking they walked down the main corridor of the Research Center of Kelvin University until they came to a door marked “C. A. Tiffin, Director.” At the Research Center, Tiffin was top dog. He was bald, thin, and ugly, but he was top dog and he always let you know it.

“Well, gentlemen, what have you done about this outrage besides handicapping our work at the Center? I suppose you have come back for another one of your double checks?”

“Outrage, Dr. Tiffin?”

“The theft, Mr. Jones. The almost unbelievable—”

“We’re handling that matter. For the moment we are concerned with another aspect of the—uh—outrage; the aspect that was your responsibility.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The drained shielding wall around your atomic pile. The radiation leak that made the stored gold radioactive in the first place. Have you determined just how radioactive the ingot may have been at the time of the theft?”

Tiffin shuffled his papers around. He pushed his chair back abruptly and stood.

“The difficulties are such—” he started.

“Have you figured it out?”

“My assistants are still working on it, Mr. Jones.”

Jones shrugged. “Before we leave, please show us the scene of the theft once again, Dr. Tiffin.” He held the door open.

They walked through the central hall of the building and turned into a corridor. It was long and bare.

“There is not much to see,” said Tiffin. “Our atomic pile is small, extending from about here to here.” He paced off close to forty feet in the corridor and pointed to one blank wall. “The room housing the device is completely shielded. Follow me, please.”

They turned the corner of the corridor and Tiffin opened a door. A wooden sign stood next to it, face to the wall. Herron turned it around and read, “Danger. Radioactivity.”

“It’s quite safe now. The sign was only put there after the leak was discovered. Ordinarily this room is not exposed. Follow me, please.”

The small room held racks and a trapdoor in one wall. There was moisture on the floor.

“This wall,” Tiffin said, “shields the business end of the pile from the storage room in which we stand. The wall is actually a series of large canisters filled with water. Sometime during the day previous to the theft, this drainpipe—you can see it near the floor—seems to have leaked water out of the lower series of tanks.”

“And there was nothing in this room except the gold ingot?”

“Nothing else. That’s why we cannot say for how much time, if any, the gold was subject to bombardment.”

“So it may not be radioactive at all.”

“Possibly. Or it may be only partially radioactive.”

“How do you mean, partially?” Herron wanted to know.

“Only a part of its mass, let’s say a fraction of an inch on the surface, may have become radioactive. Which would be a blessing,” Tiffin added. “That is, if you can find it at all.”

“We’ll find what’s left of it,” Jones said.

“Left of it? What are you talking about, Chief?” Herron asked.

“Irradiated gold,” Tiffin said, and he sounded indulgent, “has a half-life of one day. That means that after a day has passed, its radioactivity has reduced itself by half; the following day there is again a reduction to half of what was left, and so on. What remains, young man, is not gold. What remains is pure stable mercury.”

“You mean nothing may be left to that stuff except quicksilver?”

“Hardly, Mr. Herron. That kind of total deterioration of a large ingot would require more energy than our pile can muster. And besides, the thief wouldn’t have left here alive.”

“That’s good to know,” said Herron. “So we’re still looking for gold.”

“Considering our source of radiation and the possible length of time the ingot may have been exposed, the affected part of the gold would be quite small, but nonetheless dangerous. Of course, once the radiation has dissipated itself, the body of the ingot is again quite harmless. Pure gold, with traces of mercury.”

They left the storage room and went back to Tiffin’s office.

“Will there be anything else?” Tiffin stopped by the door.

“Just your report, Dr. Tiffin. We must know how sick the thief may be, and how dangerous the ingot may be to the population.”

“Mr. Jones, our guess as to how long the gold was exposed may not help you as much as you think. Nonlethal doses of radiation may cause a variety of symptoms, and they may appear to be harmless things.”

“What are they?” Jones asked.

“In general, the first signs are weariness, headache, digestive upset. The mucosa of the digestive tract seems particularly sensitive to radiation. Sometimes skin irritations occur, like a sunburn. In severe cases skin ulcerations develop or simple sores that refuse to heal. The most specific effect, of course, is the destruction of bone marrow with consequent blood deterioration. After that, any infection becomes a serious matter. But I’m sure you knew all this.”

“That much we knew, Dr. Tiffin. In the meantime, please hurry with your report.”

“I don’t see how a mere guess—”

“An intelligent guess, Dr. Tiffin. Good day, sir.”

Herron thought Jones had done that very well. He followed his chief down the long corridor and out into the open. The sun was shining and some new flowerbeds made a good smell in the air. Herron was glad to be out of the building. There hadn’t been any windows in the place.

They walked across the campus to the parking lot while Herron kept thinking about the things Tiffin had said.

“Has anybody answered our alarm yet, Chief?”

“Hundreds of hypochondriacs.”

“At least we’ll have our man worried.”

“Not necessarily, Herron. If he’s got half a brain, he’ll keep from exposing himself after hearing our alarm, and any mild symptoms he might get he’d be apt to overlook at first.”

“Till it gets worse.”

“It might, Herron. A few repeated exposures, each one
of them small, and the effect will grow. At any rate, what have you found out in the meantime?”

Herron pulled a notebook out of his breast pocket and began to recite.

“Besides the Hamilton City case of radiation, no further reports, and they’re not sure it is radiation burn. Three of our sources report heavy spending by two of the suspects, Ham Lippin and Jerald Jenner. Ham is in Miami Beach and Jerry is in San Diego. I also got that list of parolees you asked for. It narrows down to seven: the two Corvetti brothers, Sam Nutchin, Gus Eisenberg, Tony Catell, Carl Lamotte, and Mug McFarlane. Three of them aren’t very likely, considering everything. Sam Nutchin is very sick, Tony Catell is a has-been without connections, and one of the Corvettis is drunk most of the time. So that leaves us with the younger Corvetti, Eisenberg, Lamotte, and McFarlane.”

“That leaves us with a lot of nothing.”

“Sorry, Chief, that’s as far as I could get, so far.”

They walked in silence till they came to the parking lot behind the library.

“Have the two watchmen come up with anything else?” Jones asked.

“Same story. Somebody slugged them from behind. They don’t know whether there was one or more assailants.”

“How are they getting along?”

“No change. Bad concussions.”

“Any new evidence that the lab boys dug up?”

“They find evidence of one person only.”

Jones and Herron got into the car. Jones took the wheel.

“Seems like quite an order for one man,” Herron said.
“Two watchmen slugged, three doors jimmied, two electric-eye circuits ruined, one vault door blown, not to speak of the missing gold.”

“What might help us is the fact that the loot could be radioactive. I hate to think of it, Jack, but that might make it more convenient for us to track it down.”

“It hasn’t so far, Chief.”

“I know. But a thirty-six-pound block of radioactive gold is going to make somebody sick.”

“Yeah. Especially since the thief probably didn’t know the stuff could be radioactive. If he’d known, he wouldn’t have kept the stuff in the same room with him when he holed up in that crummy rooming house in Hamilton City.”

“That may not mean a thing. Don’t forget, we still haven’t a trace of the thief or the gold, which probably means he hasn’t slowed down any himself.”

The drive from Kelvin University back to St. Louis took them one hour, but at the end of that time, neither Jones nor Herron had come up with any new ideas. When the trip was over and they pulled into the underground garage of headquarters, they were glad to get out of the car. Herron looked rumpled and tired, but Jones appeared as bland and neat as ever.

“Who knows, perhaps we’ll have a break when we get to the office, eh, Chief?”

Jones smiled back for a moment, but didn’t answer. They took the elevator to their floor and entered the bureau.

“Come to my office, will you, Jack? I want you to look at the follow-ups I got on some of the possible brains behind this job. Right now we’re going on the assumption that this was not a syndicate job.”

“Why?”

“Lots of reasons. For instance, they would have used more than one man at the scene. I’ll show you the analysis later. Now, as I was saying, that narrows the field quite a bit. There aren’t too many independents left.”

Herron opened the door for Jones and they walked into the Chief’s office.

“All right, Jack. Here’s a dossier on Charles Letterman, alias Chauncey Lettre, alias Professor Letters. Sixty-five years old, convicted twice for complicity in bank robberies. Light sentence each time. One conviction for illegal possession of stolen goods. He’s suspected of planning a long list of crimes. Take a look at it. Present address, Two-o-seven Desbrosses Street, New York City. Next, there’s one Otto Schumacher, sixty-eight, no aliases. A very careful planner. When you look at the list, you’ll find he’s supposedly been behind a lot of inside jobs, but don’t let that prejudice you. Otherwise, little is known about him except that he was probably behind some of the biggest heists during the twenties. And he’s never been convicted of anything. Take the file along, Jack, and hold it, because we haven’t found him yet.”

The phone rang. Jones picked it up and said, “Jones.” He listened for a while, then said, “Good. Thanks.” He put the receiver down and told Herron not to bother with the other dossiers. “Just read the one on Otto Schumacher. They found him. It seems he spent last month in Kelvin, presumably to use the university library. He roomed at the same house as one of the night watchmen of the Research Center, and they often played checkers together. At present he lives in Detroit, where the local office has him staked out. They’re going to pull him in tomorrow, and I want you to be there. We have little to go on with
Schumacher except that his cleaning woman showed up at the county clinic today. Complaint, headache and diarrhea, plus a possible radiation burn of the sole of one foot. Could be a coincidence, though. He’s your case, Jack, but remember, he’s never been convicted. Good luck.”

“Good luck, Otto. I think I found a contact out West who’ll take the stuff.”

“Tony, for God’s sake, where have you been.” Schumacher yelled into the phone. His hands were shaking. “Do you realize that damn thing is still in this apartment? Have you any idea what a time I had trying to keep from going nuts waiting for you? Either you come at once or I’ll get somebody else to take it out of here. Tony, are you listening?!”

There was a short silence at the other end of the wire and then Catell’s voice, very quiet: “Don’t do it, Otto. I’m warning you.”

“All right, all right. Are you coming?”

“I’ll be there, Otto. Have you moved it any?”

“Are you insane? I haven’t—”

“Don’t blubber, Otto You could have done something to shield it. I heard lead—”

“For God’s sake, Tony, get over here and don’t lecture me. I haven’t been able to think straight with that thing under the floor!”

“I’ll be over, Otto. I got a lead apron from a guy, like they wear when they take X rays. We’ll wrap it in that. I’ll be there this afternoon.”

Schumacher sighed with relief and wiped his forehead. “Thank God. Make it soon, Tony. I’ll be waiting. Ah, Tony…are you in town, Tony?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Nothing Just make it soon. And Tony—”

“Yeah, what is it?”

“Ah, everything O.K. with you?”

“Sure, sure. See you later, Otto.”

“Tony, is Selma all right? Tony?”

But the line was dead. Schumacher put down the receiver and walked to the window. Four stories down he saw three kids playing with a ball. Two of them were tossing the ball back and forth and the third kid was trying to catch it away from them. Then a man walked up and caught the ball out of the air. He put it in his pocket and turned down the street, the three kids running after him.

Schumacher left the window and wiped his forehead again. He went to the kitchen to get a drink of water, then changed his mind. Schumacher felt sickish and sticky.

There were three rooms in the apartment and Schumacher kept pacing back and forth from the living room to the bedroom, from the bedroom to the living room. The third room was closed and Schumacher didn’t go near it. Nobody had been in the room since Catell had come back, except for the cleaning woman. Schumacher had found her standing near the bookshelf, dusting and humming a tune. He argued with her from the doorway to come out and leave his books alone. He screamed at her and she screamed back, but she didn’t move from her spot till she finished dusting the books. Right under her feet, under the flooring, lay the radioactive gold.

Schumacher remembered the incident and looked at the closed door. The thought of that silent yellow thing, radiating death with no noise, no odor, no natural signs at all, made him feel clammy. “I’m cracking,” he mumbled. “I’ve got to hold on, for God’s sake.”

He went to the bathroom and turned on the cold water. When he leaned over to wash his face, his vision blurred and he lost his balance. Schumacher grabbed the washbowl with both hands, but his head slammed into the cabinet over the basin. The sudden pain cleared his head and he felt better. Straightening he inhaled deeply, but his eyes refused to focus. He doubled over, a sharp cramp twisting his insides, and retched. He retched till he thought his head would split with the pressure. When it was over, Schumacher staggered from the bathroom, found the front window, and pulled it open. He leaned over the windowsill and took greedy breaths of the fresh, cool air. After a while his strength came back, and with it the horror of the knowledge that he was sick. Not just sick like anyone else, but sick with the hard live rays from the radioactive gold. His mouth shook.