Cobb snapped on the radio. A puffy face came in the plate, a red face with tousled white hair and small, close set, green eyes. It was the face of Senator Jay Walker.
«You!» snapped Walker.
«You called my wave length,» Cobb declared.
Walker snarled. «I wasn’t calling you. I didn’t even know it was your length. Is there a man named Adams with you?»
Adams sat rigid in his chair.
«He asked me to call this wave length,» the senator sputtered. «Said I’d learn something interesting.»
«He’s here,» said Cobb.
Cobb backed away from the radio, motioned Adams forward with the gun.
His lips formed soundless words. «What I said still goes.»
«Naturally,» said Adams. He spoke into the radio. «How are you, senator?»
«What do you want?» growled Walker.
«An atomic plant exploded in Montana tonight,» said Adams. «More than one hundred men were killed.»
«So,» said the senator, and one could hear the breath whistling through his lips. «So. Too bad.»
«I have evidence,» said Adams, «that would convict the men who planned it. Quite complete evidence.»
«Men don’t have to be involved in an atomic explosion,» purred the senator. «The stuff’s unstable, dangerous, hard to handle. Pouf, it goes like that.»
«Men were involved in this one,» declared Adams. «A lot of men. I thought you might know some of them.»
«Mr. Adams, will you tell me who you are?» And the way the senator said it was an insult.
«I was formerly a member of the war guilt commission,» Adams said. «At the moment I’m on the legal staff of the world committee at Geneva, Switzerland.»
«And you—» said the senator. «And you—»
«I have evidence enough to hang about a dozen of you. You’re one of the dozen, Walker.»
«You’ll never make it stick,» stormed the senator. «It’s blackmail. Bare-faced blackmail. We’ll fight you—»
«You won’t do any fighting,» Adams told him. «You’ll appear before a court of justice, the world court at Geneva. A lot different than other courts. You’ll submit your defense and arguments in writing. There’ll be no legal trickery or delay. There’ll be no jury to talk into feeling sorry for you. This issue will be decided solely on merit. And there’s no court of appeal.»
«You have no jurisdiction,» sputtered Walker.
«You won’t be tried for murder alone,» said Adams. «The entire history of your attempt to impede the development of atomic power, a factor vital to world development and mankind’s welfare, will be clearly shown. That is something clearly within our jurisdiction. And we can show that murder was one of the methods that you used.»
«You’ll never get away with it,» snapped Walker.
«You’re positively archaic,» said Adams. «The day is gone forever when a million dollars can’t be convicted. It went out the day the last Axis solider died in the last fox hole of Japan. A lot of things went out that day, never to return. You’re living in a new world, Walker, and you don’t even know it.»
Walker choked, wiped his face with a pudgy hand. «But you called me. You had a reason. What do you want?»
«All existing power installations in the world today,» said Adams. «Complete restitution on all stock sold by Atomic Development. Full confessions for the record.»
«But that—» gasped Walker. «That—»
«That’s justice,» Adams snapped. «No one would gain a thing by hanging you. This way you contribute to the world’s welfare.»
«But you haven’t got atomic power,» shrieked Walker. «Butler’s dead and he’s—»
Adams purred at him. «Why, senator, how did you know that?»
Walker said nothing. His lips moved, but no words came. His face sagged and he was an old, old man.
«Cobb and I will see you this afternoon,» Adams told him.
He snapped the toggle and turned around.
Cobb had laid the revolver on the desk.
«How close are you to working power?»
«A month,» said Cobb. «Two months. No more. They got wind of it. Blasting the plant was the ace card they didn’t want to use.»
He found a cigarette, lit it with a shaking hand.
«You going to let them get away with it?» he asked.
«Get away?»
«Sure,» said Cobb, and his voice was hard. «They’ve committed murder. The law says death or life imprisonment, depending upon what court you face. It was murder, Adams, premeditated, cold-blooded murder. Done for profit.»
«You want justice done?»
«Yes,» said Cobb.
«Justice is an ideal,» declared Adams, «very rarely arrived at. We have thought our courts signified and typified justice and in theory they did, but too often they failed in practice. Take Walker and his gang before any court in this land or any other land and what is the answer? You know it as well as I do. They’d wiggle out of it. They’d be represented by an array of legal talent that would confuse and becloud the issue, would get the jury so tangled up that it didn’t know whether it was coming or going. Result: not guilty for lack of evidence.»
«But a deal,» protested Cobb. «A deal with criminals, with murderers.»
«We have to be realistic,» Adams said. «After all, we’re doing no more than any other court would do. We’re turning them loose, letting them go free, but we, in this case, will accomplish something at least. Something in the way of justice, something in the way of advancement for the world. No court, not even the international court, could confiscate a criminal’s property. But let us say the criminal is conscience-stricken, that he wants to make restitution for the crime he has committed—»
«The people won’t believe you,» declared Cobb. «They’ll know you made the deal.»
«They won’t mind,» said Adams. «For one thing, they’d enjoy it too much.»
Cobb frowned. «But a hundred lives—»
«Don’t you see, Cobb, that this is bigger than a hundred men, any hundred men. For the first time the world is on the path to a balanced scientific government. This is the stroke of work that will entrench it. Until this moment the world committee has been weak, faced by all the hatreds of nationalism, all the greed of private enterprise, all the feudalistic ideas that have persisted through the years. It had to play safe and grab its chances as they came. And atomic power, international control and administration of atomic power, is the first step to real authority.
«Give the committee another hundred years and government by demagoguery will be gone. Little men with a talent for grabbing votes will have given way to men who make a profession of good government. Men who are trained for government just as doctors are trained for medicine or attorneys are trained for law. Men of science will govern, running the world scientifically in the interest of the stockholders—the little people of the world.»
Cobb crushed out his cigarette. «If they hadn’t blasted the plant, what then? If they hadn’t handed you the club you used on them?»
«They would have won,» said Adams. «We would have had to let them win. For we couldn’t move until we had a club that would make them cower. We couldn’t come out in the open. It had to be an undercover job. We’ve been working on this thing ever since you filed your application for international status, but we had to keep it quiet. If the power gang had known we were interested, there’d be no world committee now. They would have smashed us flat—just as they smashed you. But in smashing you, they played into our hands.
«And that would have been too bad. For they—and many others—have no place in this new world. Their mentality doesn’t fit them for a place in it. It’s an old mentality, stemming from the Dark Ages and before, the idea of top dog eat underdog, of grab and hold.»