Short Fiction by Mack Reynolds (ready to read books .TXT) 📕

but not objectionably so. Not to the point of giving you an inferiority complex.

But, Holy Smokes, she’d never do as a career man’s wife. He could just see the Boss’ ultraconservative better half inviting them to dinner. It would happen exactly once, never again.

He obtained his car, lifted it to one of the higher levels and headed for Newport News. It was a half-hour trip and he wasn’t particularly expectant of results. The tip Sam Sokolski had given him, wasn’t much to go by. Evidently, Frank Nostrand was a friend of the Professor’s but that didn’t necessarily mean he was connected with the movement, or that he knew Voss’ whereabouts.

He might have saved himself the trip.

The bird had flown again. Not only was Frank Nostrand not at the Madison Air Laboratories, but he wasn’t at home either. Larry Woolford, mindful of his departmental chief’s words on the prestige these people carried, took a full hour in acquiring a search warrant before breaking into the Nostrand home.

Nostrand was supposedly a bachelor, but the auto-bungalow, similar to Larry Woolford’s own, showed signs of double occupancy, and there was little indication that the guest had been a woman.

Disgruntled, Larry Woolford dialed the offices, asked for Walt Foster. It took nearly ten minutes before his colleague faded in.

“I’m up to my eyebrows, Larry. What’d you want?”

Larry gave him Frank Nostrand’s address. “This guy’s disappeared, Walt.”

“So?”

“He was a close friend of Professor Voss. I got a warrant to search his house. It shows signs that he had a guest. Possibly it was the Professor. Do you want to get some of the boys down here to go through the place? Possibly there’s some clue to where they took off for. The Professor’s on the run and he’s no professional at this. If we can pick him up, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion we’ll have the so-called Movement licked.”

Walt Foster slapped a hand to his face in anguish. “You knew where the Professor was hiding, and you tried to pick him up on your own and let him get away. Why didn’t you discuss this with either the Boss or me? I’m in charge of this operation! I would have had a dozen men down there. You’ve fouled this up!”

Larry stared at him. Already Walt Foster was making sounds like an enraged superior.

He said mildly, “Sorry, Walt. I came down here on a very meager tip. I didn’t really expect it to pan out.”

“Well, in the future, clear with either me or the Boss before running off half cocked into something, Woolford. Yesterday, you had this whole assignment on your own. Today, it’s no longer a minor matter. Our department has fifty people on it. The F.B.I. must have five times as many and that’s not even counting the Secret Service’s interest. It’s no longer your individual baby.”

“Sorry,” Larry repeated mildly. Then, “I don’t imagine you’ve got hold of Frol Eivazov yet?”

The other was disgusted. “You think we’re magicians? We just put out the call for him a few hours ago. He’s no amateur. If he doesn’t want to be picked up, he’ll go to ground and we’ll have our work cut out for us finding him. I can’t see that it’s particularly important anyway.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Larry said. “But you never know. He might know things we don’t. See you later.”

Walt Foster stared at him for a moment as though about to say something, but then tightened his lips and faded off.

Larry looked at the phone screen for a moment. “Did that phony expect me to call him sir,” he muttered.

The next two days dissolved into routine.

Frustrated, Larry Woolford spent most of his time in his office digesting developments, trying to find a new line of attack.

For want of something else, he put his new secretary, a brightly efficient girl, as style and status conscious as LaVerne Polk wasn’t, to work typing up the tapes he’d had cut on Susan Self and the various phone calls he’d had with Hans Distelmayer and Sam Sokolski. From memory, he dictated to her his conversation with Professor Peter Voss.

He carefully read the typed sheets over and over again. He continually had the feeling in this case that there were loose ends dangling around. Several important points he should be able to put his finger upon.

On the morning of the third day he dialed Steve Hackett and on seeing the other’s worried, pug-ugly face fade in on the phone, decided that if nothing else the Movement was undermining the United States government by dispensing ulcers to its employees.

Steve growled, “What is it Woolford? I’m as busy as a whirling dervish in a revolving door.”

“This is just the glimmer of an idea, Steve. Look, remember that conversation with Susan, when she described her father taking her to headquarters?”

“So?” Steve said impatiently.

“Remember her description of headquarters?”

“Go on,” Steve rapped.

“What did it remind you of?”

“What are you leading to?”

“This is just a hunch,” Larry persisted, “but the way she described the manner in which her father took her to headquarters suggests they’re in the Greater Washington area.”

Steve was staring at him disgustedly. How obvious could you get?

Larry hurried on. “What’s the biggest business in this area, Steve?”

“Government.”

“Right. And the way she described headquarters of the Movement, was rooms, after rooms, after rooms into which they’d stored the money.”

“And?”

Larry said urgently, “Steve, I think in some way the Movement has taken over some governmental buildings, or storage warehouse. Possibly some older buildings no longer in use. It would be a perfect hideout. Who would expect a subversive organization to be in governmental buildings? All they’d need would be a few officials here and there who were on their side and⁠—”

Steve said wearily, “You couldn’t have thought of this two days ago.”

Larry cut himself off sharply, “Eh?”

Steve said, “We found their headquarters. One of their members cracked. Ben Ruthenberg of the F.B.I. found he had a morals rap against him some years ago and scared him into talking by threats of exposure.