Higgins glanced at him, grinned, gazed at the road again. “Do you suppose they’d tell even us that? What they did hint at — not say — was that we were goons down at this office to even rise to any reported ‘uranium.’ Suggested we should know the bombs were plutonium now. There’s a difference, apparently. Wouldn’t know what it is.”
“Different elements,” Duff said absently. “Like iron and nickel. The Hiroshima bomb was uranium. The Nagasaki one was plutonium. I suppose that is what they use now.”
“The last loose end,” Higgins answered, turning back toward the Yates house, “was your identification. Since you aren’t sure about that, the whole picture falls completely apart.
You find the kitty of a gold-standard crank. So you pop off, having bomb jitters, like everyone. But you weren’t smart to run your own tests. You should have given us the sample, since you suspected it was something a lot different from platinum.”
“It wasn’t platinum,” Duff said earnestly, but not quite certainly.
“Maybe it was hamburger.” Higgins stopped to let out an abashed Duff. “Next time you run across any espionage, keep it to yourself. We got trouble enough at the bureau with real agents of foreign powers!”
“Cute college types,” said Prescott Smythe, gazing at one through the porch screens of the Omega house, “are a dime a dozen!”
A brother at his side examined the girl, from auburn hair to flat-heeled green sandals.
“Make it two bits. Everything’s high these days.”
“That one,” said another brother, “is named Althena Bailey.” Faces turned and the brother went on, “A transfer. From ‘Johjah.’ She is interested in collecting. She’d like to collect an Omega fraternity pin. Otherwise she is not interested. Any further questions?”
A man with a crew-cut, freckles, a gold football, said, “Why is it so many women who want to act unsteady have to go steady first?”
“Ask Heartbreak Smythe! He’s gone steady with more unsteady dames than an assistant director of B pictures!”
Prescott Smythe, or Scotty, ignored the reference. He rose. He crossed the porch to a large concrete urn in which was growing a huge vine with dark green, lacily slit leaves. He peered intently at the vine.
“There is nothing for breaking hearts,” said a thin brother, “like a convertible. That’s what the word means. It converts ’em.”
Scotty Smythe finally spoke. “You know,” he said in elegant tones, “when I stole this vine it was hardly two feet tall. I’ve had to swipe four pots for it, through the years. In graduated sizes. Now, look at it! Magnificent foliage. A monstera deliciosa, the botany boys tell me. Should bear fruit. Edible fruit. Never had so much as a cucumber on it!”
The brothers ignored the countermeasure. “Sad thing about Smythe,” said the football player. “Stealing flowerpots. Now he’s trying to swipe the Orange Bowl. The Queen, anyhow. As soon as a man recognizes a cutest college type, he’s through.”
Scotty grinned. “Okay! So, okay! I got it bad.”
“What will your family say?” the thin brother asked in a somber tone. “Imagine the scene. You take la Yates to Manhattan, ride up in a marble elevator to your familial penthouse, whip out your golden latchkey, open the door and say, ‘Mother, here’s the girl I’m going to marry! This po’ cracker chile.’ Your mother can see the babe is a looker who would bring a blush of envy to the proud features — all’ the proud features — of Kim Novak.
And has topaz eyes, besides. But your mother isn’t fooled by mere externals. Not like you, Smythe! Raising a jewel-encrusted lorgnette, she frigidly asks the girl, ‘Where are your Junior League papers? Even your first papers?’”
“Where does Eleanor’s family come from?” a brother asked. “Anybody know?”
“Olean,” said Scotty.
“I thought olean was something you spread on bread.”
Scotty smirked. “Look, you jealous weevils! Olean is a town in New York State. It has history, paved streets, electric lights — and Eleanor Yates’ birthplace!”
“We are worrying ourselves unduly,” said a plump, shrewd-eyed brother who had apparently been reading a magazine. “I know, out of what we lawyers call our own knowledge, that she necked with Avalanche Billings last week. Kissed him, anyhow. I also know she gets orchids from a guy in the Miami Junior Chamber of Commerce. He raises ’em in his yard — which shows a good business head. And there are eight thousand other guys!”
The main object of the ribbing, evidently accustomed to it, again discussed his vine.
“They graft things on trees down here,” Scotty murmured. “Maybe a graft could be managed.
If it won’t bear its own fruit, perhaps a few limes would do. A mango or two, now and then.
Even a bunch of broccoli.” He turned. “Listen, oafs! What you see in these nice gray eyes is pure loathing! My sister belongs to the Junior League, true. Mother’s farsighted and sometimes uses a lorgnette — I guess the first time most of you swamp Willies ever saw one was when she came to the Open House last year. I say, phooey to you gentlemen and I say faugh! I am going on a hayride tonight with Eleanor, so if anybody wants to borrow my car—”
He was overwhelmed by the onslaught.
Duff Bogan was standing in the Yates back yard, studying the sky. Several broken limbs needed to be removed from the live oaks, but that meant borrowing an extension ladder from a distant neighbor, and Eleanor had the car. Tree pruning, except near the house, was hopeless anyhow. There were broken branches all through the jungle. A whole tree had fallen across the water-filled sinkhole in the woods west of the house. He examined passing clouds.
There was no prospect of showers that he could discern. He decided to begin a long-postponed operation: painting the sun-faded house. With the stepladder he could reach nearly half of it. He started, some while later, on the east wall. He heard but did not see Eleanor drive in.
But presently, from the back yard, a sharp whacking commenced. A cloud of dust eddied around the house and settled grittily on the fresh paint. He came down the ladder.
Barelegged, in shorts and a blouse, with an old silk scarf around her hair, Eleanor was beating rugs. She stood with her back to him, and Duff, as often, admired the line of her chin, eye and forehead. She had high cheekbones and rather deep-set, slightly slanted eyes so his view, which he thought of as a one-quarter profile, gave a special outline of the anatomy of her beauty. The act of beating rugs in such a costume exhibited her body at its muscular best.
He watched her for quite a while before he said, “Hey!”
She turned. “Oh, hello!” Gold tendrils had escaped the scarf and curled like shavings on a damp brow.
“One of us has got to quit — or at least move. I started painting the house a while back.”
“Duff! I’m sorry! I didn’t know!”
He grinned. “Would you mind if I transferred your carpets to the line behind the barn?”
Once there, she asked abruptly, “Duff, has anything happened?”
He shook his head. “Everything’s stopped happening. I saw Higgins a while ago. The FBI checked Harry’s story about platinum. So I guess I made one really sour bunch of mistakes.” He told her the situation.
She dropped the carpet beater. “Only — you don’t believe you did. Do you?”
“No.”
Her look was thoughtful, measuring. “But you aren’t absolutely positive?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been chivvied around so much that I don’t know. The tests I ran seem okay, on review. I thought that hunk of platinum didn’t look exactly like the thing I sandpapered the first time. After all, though, it would be crazy. Us. Harry. A house like this.