Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 9, No. 2, February 1964

The Baby by Jonathan Craig

In this day of aspiring spacemen and atomic wonders, it is wise to keep in mind that “Rock-a-bye, baby” may not always be in reference to the nursery.

It had to be tonight, Harry Cogan knew. He’d lost his nerve last night and the night before, but tomorrow would be Vince Miller’s last day in the lab before Vince and Susan left for Europe, and so it had to be tonight.

He glanced across the wide lab to the bench where Vince was cleaning up after his last experiment, getting ready to call it a day. Everyone else in the Radiobiology Section of Barth & Embick, Research Consultants, had left hours ago, but he and Vince had worked late, as usual, and it was now almost seven.

Harry stilled the tiny tremor in his hands, dried the damp palms on the sides of his knee-length lab coat, and got to his feet. The time had come; if he hesitated a few minutes longer, it would be too late.

“Don’t forget to put the baby to bed,” Vince said pleasantly as Harry passed him on his way to the lounge. “Tuck the little baby into its little bed and put it in its little house.”

Harry smiled. “The baby’s already in bed and asleep,” he said. It was a ritual, a standing reminder and reply that had been used in the lab as long as Harry could remember. The baby was a piece of radium half the size of an aspirin tablet; its bed was the small lead box in which it was kept; and its house was the lead-lined safe in which it and other radioactive materials were locked when not in use.

Just now, the baby was in its bed, but the bed itself was not in its house. It was in the right-hand pocket of Harry Cogan’s trousers. It weighed two pounds, and felt like ten.

A very handsome man, Harry reflected as he entered the lounge. Too handsome. That was Vince Miller’s big trouble. Too handsome and too brilliant. Before Vince had come to work there, Harry had been engaged to Susan, and heir apparent to the Chief of Section. Now, only seven months later, it was Vince Miller who was engaged to Susan, who was going to marry her next Saturday and leave with her for a honeymoon in Paris. And it was Vince Miller who had become Chief of Section.

Harry walked to the row of lockers against the far wall, trying not to think, not to feel. It was at this point that he’d had the failure of nerve last night and the night before; if he started thinking, started feeling, it might happen again. The chance of his being found out, he reminded himself, actually was almost nonexistent. Vince wouldn’t notice any symptoms for at least two or three weeks, perhaps longer. By then, Vince and Susan would be in Paris, and there would be no reason for anyone to suspect that Vince’s radium poisoning had been anything but accidental, the result of a risk recognized and assumed by all persons who worked with radioactive materials, as Vince and Harry did.

Once in Vince’s clothing, next to his body, the baby would start him on a slow and horrible road to death. For radiogenic poisoning there was no antidote, no cure. By the time Vince had carried the baby home and back again, he would be doomed.

For Vince himself, Harry had no concern. No more concern than Vince had had for Harry when he stole his fiancée and his promotion. Harry had worked for two years to win Susan, and for eight years to win the promotion, only to have Vince deprive him of both in seven short months.

It was just too bad about Vince, Harry reflected as he took the small lead box from his pocket and opened it; just too bad. Trembling, he lifted the tiny wafer of radium from the box with forceps, and with his other hand opened Vince’s locker. A moment later the baby was deep in the inside breast pocket of Vince’s suit coat. No matter how many times Vince might reach into that pocket, the chance that his fingers would delve all the way to the bottom had to be reckoned in the thousands.

Harry closed the locker door soundlessly, wiped the sweat from his face with a paper towel, and walked back into the lab.

“Still working on that paper on radiothermics, Vince?” he asked as he crossed to his bench.

Vince nodded, pushed back his chair, and started for the lounge. “Still at it, Harry,” he said. “Maybe I’ll be able to finish it up tonight. I’m going to give it a good try, anyhow.”

“Maybe it’ll make you famous,” Harry said.

Vince laughed. “Oh, sure,” he said. “Well, good night, Harry. See you in the morning.”

Harry watched the broad back beneath the white lab coat disappear through the door, and then he sank down at his bench and sat very still, listening to the grate and clang of Vince’s locker being opened and shut, and then the sound of Vince’s footsteps fading rapidly down the long corridor that led to the street.

When Harry reached his apartment that night, he made a pitcher of martinis, put a Bartok album on the hi-fi, and sat down in the big leather chair Susan had given him for Christmas a year ago. A lot had happened this year, he thought. A lot more was going to happen before it was out.

Sipping his martini slowly, he tried for the hundredth time to discover any possible hitch, anything that could conceivably go wrong. But there was no possible hitch, nothing that could go wrong. True, Vince Miller might wear a different suit tomorrow. But that was no problem. Harry would be attending Vince’s bachelor party tomorrow night at Vince’s apartment, and with bachelor parties being what they were, finding an opportunity to visit Vince’s closet and remove the baby from Vince’s pocket would be simple indeed. Neither would the baby be missed tomorrow in the lab, because there was an identical baby in the next section, which Harry could ‘borrow’ for the day.

Before the pitcher of martinis was half empty, Harry felt better than he had at any time since Vince Miller came to work at Barth & Embick. It wasn’t the alcohol, he knew; it was the feeling that he had triumphed over Vince after all, that in a few short weeks, the promotion he deserved, and someday perhaps even Susan, would be his.

Half an hour later he felt an irresistible desire to call Vince up and talk with him. It would be good to sit here with his martini, knowing that Vince was doomed and that Vince didn’t know it, making small talk with him while he enjoyed the secret wonder of having been the man who had doomed him. He smiled to himself, lifted the phone from the coffee table, and dialed Vince’s number.

“Hello?” Vince’s voice said.

“Harry, Vince.”

“Oh, hello, Harry. What’s up?”

“Nothing much. I was just sitting here thinking about you and Susan.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I just wanted you to know that there are no hard feelings.”

“Because of Susan and me, you mean?”

“Yes. And the promotion, too, of course. I’ve written them off completely, Vince. The best man won, and I’m the first to admit it.”

Vince laughed, a little uncertainly. “That’s good to know, Harry,” he said. “You’d already told me as much, but I’m glad to hear you say so again, just the same.” He paused. “Was there anything else, Harry?”

“Only that I want to wish you and Susan all the luck in the world. I mean it, Vince.”

“Well, thanks, Harry. Are you... sure there wasn’t anything else?”

“No, nothing else,” Harry said. “Just felt like giving you a call, that’s all.”

“Glad you did,” Vince said. “See you tomorrow, then?”

“Right,” Harry said. “Good night, Vince.” He hung up, sat smiling down at the phone in his lap for a long moment, and then put it back on the coffee table. Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow. For seven months he’d dreaded each tomorrow. Now, he could scarcely wait for tomorrow to come.

When, finally, tomorrow came, and Harry walked into the lounge, he found he had the place entirely to himself. It was unusual for this time of morning, and he lost no time in making the most of it. Even before he exchanged his suit jacket for one of the white lab coats, he opened Vince Miller’s locker, smiled when he saw that the suit coat hanging there was the same one Vince had worn yesterday, and reached down into the inside breast pocket for the baby.

It wasn’t there.

Harry swore softly, probing hard into first one corner and then the other.

“Looking for something, Harry?” Vince Miller’s voice asked from the doorway.

Harry felt something cold surge up through his body. It took all his strength to turn toward Vince, and when he spoke, his voice sounded like a stranger’s.

“I was looking for a match,” he said, forcing a grin he knew was as sickly as his lie. “I seem to have misplaced my lighter.”

Vince nodded, reached into his pocket, and handed Harry a folder of matches. He laughed. “Now if you only had a cigarette, you could have yourself a smoke.”

Harry laughed too. In his ears, it sounded like a death rattle. He took the pack from his shirt pocket, fumbled a cigarette to his mouth, and glanced at Vince. “Gare for one, Vince? They’re your own brand.”

“No, thanks,” Vince said, smiling. “I guess that’s what happened last night,” he said. “I mean, you must have been looking for matches then, too.”

Harry made two attempts to light his cigarette, failed both times, and finally put both the cigarette and the folder of matches in his pocket. “Last night?” he said.

“Yes. While you were out here in the lounge, just before I went home. I had to put something in the safe, and I noticed the baby wasn’t there. You’d just got through telling me you’d put it to bed, so I thought I’d better call it to your attention.”

“You mean you came...?” Harry began. “You came out here in the lounge, Vince?”

“Well, not quite in the lounge,” Vince said, smiling. “I got only as far as the door. And then... I don’t know, I guess marrying Susan, and going to Paris and all has sort of put me in a fog lately, Harry. Anyhow, I got as far as the door, and then suddenly, for some reason, I forgot about mentioning the baby to you.” His smile widened. “Odd, wasn’t it?”

Slowly, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on Vince’s face, Harry sank down on the bench in front of the row of lockers.

“You look a little pale, Harry,” Vince said. “Is it the baby you’re concerned about? Listen, don’t let it worry you. It’ll turn up, all right — probably in the last place you would expect to find it.” He stood smiling down at Harry, his lips pursed, whistling almost soundlessly.

As Harry stared up at Vince in mounting horror, and his hand strayed involuntarily toward his inside jacket pocket, he could almost see the way Vince’s face must have looked as he stood at the door of the lounge and watched the baby being placed in his coat. And then later, on his way out, Vince had merely switched the baby from his own pocket to Harry’s.

Vince walked to the door, then paused, and turned back toward Harry. “I appreciated your calling me last night, old man,” he said. “It’s good to know there aren’t any hard feelings.”

Harry tried to take his eyes from Vince’s face, but he could not. He ran his tongue across his upper lip. It was dry and numb.

“I’ll drop you a card from Paris,” Vince said, turning toward the door again. “And you must write me, too, Harry. Just a line or so — to let me know how you’re feeling.”