The other item was another discovery: Miss Sarah Jane Gooch, the charming wife of Gooby Gooch, had been on her way to Cranston's Supermarket this morning and had stumbled over a body in the snowdrifts which now "dot our streets" and had called the police who had then found another body about two hundred yards away, the location traced by Police Chief Flab because of dogs quarrelling over it, which event had been phoned in by Mrs. Emma Gross, the charming wife of Bill Gross. The police concluded that one of the men had shot the other one with a rifle and had then committed suicide with a stiletto that was still sticking in his back. Crime in the community was thus reduced by two, which was heartwarming on a cold day.
The race might as well have never happened so far as the Spreeport area was concerned!
And it looked especially quiet when it came to news about the Whiz Kid. I was worried. What was going to happen now? Was Heller going to get off scot-free and ride to glory?
I thought I had better check up on said Heller.
I had kept my receiver-viewscreen loaded with strips to record Heller's actions and by replaying them I found out what he had been up to this morning.
He had come into his office! On Sunday? That was a bad sign. Awfully industrious!
The first thing he did was dig Izzy out of that closet-office he uses as a bedroom.
"I gave you a device some time ago," said Heller. "I want to look at it."
Heller went into his own office, turned on a heater and stood for a while gazing out across the snow-covered expanses of lower Manhattan. He seemed to concentrate on soot patches already darkening the snow. He was evidently letting his office warm up, for presently he took off a ski mask, a white fur hood and parka and sat down.
Izzy came in with the item. It was the unmodified carbon converter Heller had brought from Voltar and a duplicate of the one he had put in the now-defunct Cadillac.
Heller broke out some tools and, with very rapid motions, soon had the device spread all over a cloth on his desk. A small feeling of alarm began to rise in me.
One by one, holding each close to his eye, he began to go over the parts. Suddenly he stopped. He was holding a thin metal bit about an inch long.
"A notch!" he said.
Magnified by his own eyesight, I could see it too on my screen. Just a little V notch, the one our saboteur had cut to embarrass Heller.
"Look!" he said to Izzy, holding it out.
But Izzy couldn't see it no matter how he twisted his horn-rimmed glasses around. Heller got a huge magnifier and showed him.
"That caused the wrong electrical value to pour into the next component!" said Heller. "It built up to red-hot overheat! These were just cheap school kits. I should have known better."
Izzy gazed at him blankly. "School kits?"
"No, no," said Heller, probably realizing he was on the edge of a Code break. "They will work fine. All I need to do is redesign it slightly to guarantee its electrical values in this area and it will run forever. Get me the plans back."
Izzy got them and Heller made the changes. He seemed quite cheered up. The stupid idiot didn't suspect it was the farsightedness of Lombar Hisst that had cost him that race!
"Izzy," he said, "what do you do when you have lost a race?"
"You don't engage in one in the first place," said Izzy.
"No, no, really, I want to know."
"You leave for South America," said Izzy. "There's this place up the Amazon where there are only soldier ants. Peaceful! No people! Even the reporters have been eaten up. I'm holding your ticket. I can get you a Pan American reservation in seconds!" He was starting to lilt with enthusiasm.
"No, no," said Heller. "I'll just fix up this thing, get another car and challenge them again!"
"Oh, no!" wept Izzy.
And "Oh, no!" wept I! I could not possibly tolerate that much strain again, ever! This was a REAL emergency.
I reached for the phone, found I was holding the viewscreen. I put it down and tried to make a call on my Colt Bulldog. I ran about, slamming doors, trying to get dressed.
Utanc, my darling Turkish love, stuck a sleepy head through the bedroom door. "Whatever is going on, Sultan?"
I had not seen her in days. But I had no time now. "The world is liable to fall "in!"
"Oh?" she said, closed the door, locked it and apparently went back to bed.
I didn't, let me tell you! I knew duty when I saw it calling! It was screaming at me!
I found the phone where I had knocked it off under the bed.
I managed to find Madison's number. I forced the hotel operator to dial it: I couldn't hit the right buttons.
A very concerned, older female voice answered. His mother!
"I must talk to J. Walter at once!" I yelled at her.
"Oh, dear," she said, "I'm afraid that is impossible. He is lying in bed. Three doctors have been here and they ordered absolute rest. I can't even go near him myself."
And, indeed, I could hear tiny suppressed screeches in the background.
I hung up.
Bury. I must phone Bury!
It was a tangle! His number was unlisted. The Octopus Oil Building Exchange would not give me his home phone.
Ah, I had it! That night he had gone home in the police car! I knew where he lived!
Sunday or no Sunday, Mr. Bury was going to have a caller!
I still had the van, the rental office being closed on Sunday.
I piled into some warm clothes, got the car brought around front and was soon tooling uptown.
The streets were deserted tunnels piled high on both sides with snow, the tops of cars showing vaguely in the mounds. The snowplows had been industrious! Some of those motorists would not see their vehicles until spring!
I was soon standing before his mailbox. It said Mrs. Destuyvescent Depleister Bury.
I rang. I got him at once.
Within a minute I was in an upper hall and he was letting me through a door.
"It's an emergency," I said desperately.
His reply was strange. "Oh, good," he whispered.
Then, with a conspiratorial finger he beckoned me into the sitting room. He was carrying a sheet of Sunday paper and he didn't have any shoes on.
A torrent of words was coming from an inner room-things like "When I married you, I expected..." and "Time and again my whole family told me..." and "That is what I get for marrying beneath..." Quite a blur.
Bury whispered, "Tell me again, real loud!"
"THIS IS AN EMERGENCY!" I yelled at him and meant it.
"OH, HEAVENS!" he shouted back. "AN EMERGENCY ON SUNDAY!"
He grabbed his shoes and put them on. He grabbed some overshoes out of a hall closet. He got into an overcoat. He put on his snap-brim, little New Yorker hat. He grabbed an attache case, rushed into a side room and filled it with white mice. He closed it.
Then he rushed into the room his wife's voice was coming from and said something to the effect that the office demanded his presence.
He rushed out. A storm of small pillows and perfume sprays and nail files poured after him. He got us into the hall.
"Thank God," he said. "I've never been so pleased to see anybody in my life, Inkswitch. I will remember this as a kindly act! So rare, kindly acts!"
He was pushing me along as he spoke. We got outside and we climbed into the warm van.
I handed him a half pint of applejack I had taken to the race in case of emergency. "You're going to need this." And I told him first how Madison had planned to kidnap Wister, send him to Russia, blame the Communists and start World War III.