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Rat Race

<h2>CHAPTER 10</h2> "Well, there it is, Harcourt," I ended my recitation. "Miss Briggs believes me, my wife doesn't, and I don't expect you to. But if you're interested, I can prove I'm Frank Jacklin any number of ways." The G-Man finished his drink and stared absent-mindedly at the ceiling, while Arthurjean poured him a new shot of Bourbon and water—his fifth. "Mr. Tompkins," he said at last. "I'm drinking your liquor in your house—or Miss Briggs' apartment, whichever it is—and it's not for me to call you a liar." "Don't you dare!" Arthurjean warned him. "Not while I'm around, G-Man or no G-Man. Say, what do the initials A. J. stand for in your name? Abba Jabba?" "What do you think? Andrew Jackson, of course. No, Mr. Tompkins, I won't call you a liar because, to tell the truth, I'm not sure that you are. Lots of funny things have happened in this war. This might have happened. But I can't do anything about it." "Can't you at least check on the Jacklin angle?" I asked. Harcourt shook his head. "Before I could do any checking, I'd have to report my reasons to the chief. If I was asked for a reason, I'd have to explain that I had grounds for thinking that Commander Jacklin's soul—and the F.B.I. has never established a policy on souls—had been blown from the Aleutians clear into Westchester County and is now running round in the body of Winfred S. Tompkins, stock broker. That report from me would go from my chief right up to J. Edgar Hoover, the Attorney-General, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Cabinet and President Roosevelt. Now, wouldn't that look nice on my record? Wouldn't that just put me right in line for promotion? Be reasonable, you two. I'm not saying I don't believe this yarn, but it would be worth my job to act like I believed it—and I got a wife and three kids in Brooklyn, no fooling." Arthurjean remained silent for a few minutes, "Andrew Jackson Harcourt—" she began. "You haven't said anything about this sinister guy Roscommon," I interrupted. "You could do something about him without worrying about me and my story." "Roscommon?" Harcourt shrugged his shoulders. "Going after him would remind me of the time we hit the Governor of North Carolina with a Great Smoky barbecued bear. Roscommon is all he says he is and orders are out not to touch him. How do you think we ought to fight this war, anyhow? Blind-fold?" "What about that Great Smoky bear?" Arthurjean demanded irrelevantly. "You-all from the South, honey-chile?" "The Old North State, sugar! And you?" "Tennessee, thank God! And the name's Arthurjean, Andy, and for the millionth time I'll explain that my dad's name was Arthur and my mother's name was Jean, so they ran 'em together, like Johns-Manville or Pierce-Arrow, but it's all one word. No hyphen. So, there!" I urged them to get over their rebel yell and come back to the subject of the bear. "Well, Mr. Tompkins," Harcourt explained. "It's this way. Up in the Smokies we have a special way of cooking bear. All you need is a bear, a bee-tree, a two-handed saw and a stick of dynamite. First, you kill your bear. That's mighty important. You skin him and you gut him and truss him up like a chicken. Then you ram him up as far as you can deep inside a bee-tree, just below the honey, and wedge him in so he won't slip. Then you start a slow fire underneath him inside the tree. The fire sort of slow-cooks the bear, like a Dutch oven, drives off the bees and melts the honey-comb. The honey just naturally drips down on the bear meat while she's cooking. Just about the time the tree's ready to fall—course, I should have explained you saw off the trunk just above the honey so the bees can get away from the smoke and the old tree will draw like a chimney—you set a fuse to a stick of dynamite, toss it in the fire and run like hell. Well, sir, the dynamite goes off and just naturally shoots the old roast bear out the tree like a projectile. Then you pick it up, lug it back to the picnic grounds, and I tell you, Mr. Tompkins, it's mighty sweet eating. Now this time we nigh hit the Governor of North Carolina, he was making a political speech over at the old fair grounds, and—" "I think I get the picture, Harcourt," I said, cutting in on him rapidly. "We did pretty much the same thing with baby seals and popcorn in the Aleutians. When we were after Jap subs, the depth-charges killed no end of baby seals—concussion, I guess. So we'd pick 'em up in a life-boat, clean them, stuff them with unpopped popcorn, and stick them in the fourteen-inch guns. Then we'd touch off a reduced charge behind 'em. Seals are naturally oily so they went out the muzzle like a regular shell. The intense heat of the explosion not only cooked the seal but popped the popcorn. That puffed out, set up air resistance and reduced trajectory. Then we'd send a helicopter out to pick 'em up and have 'em in mess. Cold with chili sauce, they were delicious. One time when we were bombarding Attu, the crew of No. 3 turret forgot we had a seal in the center gun and fired it at a Jap redoubt. It hit—" "I can see," Arthurjean remarked, "that I've been missing a lot of fun here in New York, though I'll never forget the time we pretended we found a dead mouse in a mince pie at the Waldorf—Now, who in hell can that be?" The door-bell rang insistently. Harcourt looked a little uneasy. "I thought it might save a lot of time and trouble," he said, "if I asked Mrs. Tompkins to meet us here. I told her that Miss Briggs was a friend of mine—sugar, you'd better go in the other room and put on red night-things—so you don't need something more de trop than those to worry, Mr. Tompkins." "That's just dandy, Harcourt," I agreed. "Did you ever see a wife who couldn't spot a sex-situation at a hundred yards up-wind on a dark and rainy night?" "Can't say I did," the Special Agent admitted, "but I've never had but one wife and she's busy with the kids." There was a knock on the door and Harcourt opened it with a courtly manner. "Come right in, Mrs. Tompkins," he said. "My friend, Miss Briggs, is in the other room and will be out in a moment. Mr. Tompkins and I—" "This," said Germaine, "is Mrs. Rutherford. After Winnie didn't turn up for a couple of nights, we put our heads together and decided that two could worry as cheaply as one. So when I got your message, I just phoned Virginia and here we are. Hullo, Winnie, is this another of your homes away from home?" Virginia Rutherford looked pretty much the way a roasting bear in a bee-tree might be expected to feel while waiting for the dynamite to explode: very sweet, red-hot and not giving a damn whether she hit the Governor of the Old North State. "Hullo, Winnie," she remarked dangerously. "This another of your tousled blondes?" "I resent that," Arthurjean said from the doorway. "This is my flat and I didn't invite you and I'll have you know that I'm a very respectable—well, rather respectable—working girl." The effect of virtue was only slightly marred by the fact that, as she spoke, a pair of silk panties slowly but inexorably slid below the hem of her skirt and settled in a shimmer at her feet. Arthurjean looked down. "Oh, hell, girls," she said, "What's the use? Have a drink!" "Thank you, Miss Briggs," Germaine replied. "I will. Make mine straight Scotch and the same for Mrs. Rutherford. Are you, by any chance, employed in my husband's office?" "I'm his secretary," Arthurjean admitted. "Winnie," Jimmie turned on me with a snap like those doors in Penn Station which open by an electric eye, "and you swore that you had nothing to do with the office-girls. I was fool enough to believe you." "At the time, dear," I explained guiltily, "I didn't know it myself." Harcourt came lumbering to my rescue. "Before you leap to any conclusions, Mrs. Tompkins," he urged, "I think I ought to explain that I represent the F.B.I. and that Mr. Tompkins came here today at my request. Your husband happens to be in very serious trouble under the Espionage Act. I personally am convinced that there's been a mistake and that he's innocent, but my opinion is of no value unless I can find evidence to support it." "What's he done?" Virginia Rutherford asked eagerly. "Will he go to jail?" "Unfortunately, Mrs. Rutherford," Harcourt replied, "I'm not allowed to discuss the nature of the charges against him. No formal indictment has been lodged and if you can help me, none will be made. The important thing is to know where he was and what he was doing from the twenty-fifth of March until the second of April." "Why the twenty-fifth of March?" my wife demanded. "He was with me at Bedford Hills most of that time. I, and the maid at the house, Myrtle, can testify to that. I don't think he went to the office much that week. It was Holy Week. He and I went to church." "Mrs. Tompkins," he said, "you are a true and noble lady. It's just too bad that one of our agents has already interviewed the Hubble girl, who testified that Mr. Tompkins didn't come home once all that week." Germaine sank back in her chair and looked at me with an air of misplaced consecration. "Winnie," she urged, "go ahead and tell him where you were. I'm your wife and I don't care what silliness you were up to or what woman you were with, just so they don't send you to prison." I smiled at her. "Jimmie," I replied, "I give you my word, I simply don't remember. I don't know where I was. As I told you the other day, I've drawn a blank as to what happened before last Monday afternoon." Mrs. Rutherford took advantage of the moment of incredulous silence which followed this announcement. "Don't try to be chivalrous, Winnie," she urged me. "We hadn't planned to advertise it, Jimmie, but Winnie spent that week with me. He rented a flat for me uptown, Mr. Harcourt, about six weeks ago, and we put in a whole week together. I daresay you think I'm a loose woman but—" Harcourt looked quite painfully embarrassed. "I surely do not want to contradict a lady," he told her, "but the Bureau checked up on that apartment yesterday. The janitor and the cleaning woman both stated that, except for last Monday afternoon and evening when you were there by yourself, neither you nor Mr. Tompkins had been near the place for at least two weeks. The bed linen and the bath towels hadn't been used and the food in the ice-box was stale. There had been no garbage." "Oh!" flared Virginia, "of all the low-down snoopers!" "The country's at war, Mrs. Rutherford," the Special Agent replied. "And while I'm at it I might as well save Miss Briggs the trouble of telling me that Mr. Tompkins spent that week here with her. He did not. We've checked this apartment house most thoroughly, as well as Mr. Tompkins' office." "Why that particular week?" I asked. Harcourt turned to me apologetically. "In view of your earlier statements to me," he declared, "I'm sure you will understand this explanation. A certain ship did not sail from a certain port until the 26th of March. A certain article was not delivered on board that ship until after she had sailed. Before then, the individual who brought the article to the ship had no knowledge which ship had been selected. Before then, nobody on that ship had any knowledge that any article would be brought on board and had no knowledge of the nature of its voyage. Whatever arrangements were made must have been made during the following few days. That, at any rate, is the working theory the Bureau has adopted. Have you no idea of where you might have been in that period, Mr. Tompkins?" I placed my head in my hands and thought back to that misty morning ten days before, when the Alaska pulled out of Bremerton Navy Yard and headed north through Puget Sound for Victoria and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I remembered how, as we returned recognition signals to the Canadian base at Esquimault, a destroyer had put out, come alongside and put a civilian passenger aboard us. I remembered the fuss he raised on the bridge while we made a lee for the destroyer and hoisted a large packing-case on board, and how it was hurried below decks with a Marine guard. Then I thought of the run out west, past Dutch Harbor and Adak, our light carrier slipping through the drifting fogs of the Aleutians, while the slow Pacific swell pounded against our port beam and the turbines whined and ship shook and the icy wind whipped across the flight-deck. And I remembered that last night in the mess when Windy Smith—of Texas, naturally—boasted that he— "No, Mr. Harcourt," I told him, "I'm afraid that the things I remember wouldn't help either of us. You go ahead and see what you can find out about me, and so will I." "Winnie," Germaine said reproachfully. "Tell him where you were, dear. It's no use pretending that you don't remember. I know that you can explain. I know there's nothing really wrong." Arthurjean walked across and put her hand on Jimmie's arm. "You'd better have another drink, Mrs. Tompkins," she remarked, "and so had I. This sort of thing is tough to take." Virginia looked up brightly at Harcourt. "If Winnie won't help himself, I will," she said. "I'll find out what the big dope was doing and when I do—look out!" "Come on, Jimmie," I told my wife. "Let's go home. I've had about as much of this as I can stand. Harcourt, you know where you can reach me, if you get the word from Washington. In the meantime, why don't you follow up that Roscommon angle? That's the best lead I've struck." Harcourt finished his Bourbon. "Mr. Tompkins," he observed, "you're quite right but there isn't a single thing I can do about it. We've had top-level orders to lay off that guy and with the Bureau, orders is orders." <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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