Mr. Adam

CHAPTER 12

The drive across the park didn’t take more than five minutes, but in five minutes you can have a lot of nightmares. I wish I’d never seen the Frankenstein pictures. I could imagine finding Homer Adam in the attic, strapped to all kinds of intricate and horrid machines. And I could imagine our finding a few charred bones in the basement. I could also imagine our discovering that he had been dissolved in acid, and dispatched to heaven via the bathtub drain. But the worst thing I could imagine was that these men, being handy with an atom, would simply disintegrate him without trace. No, that wasn’t quite the worst thing. The absolute worst was that we wouldn’t find Homer or Kathy at all.

When we came out of the park, and turned into Rapidan, Tex Root switched off our lights, and eased his sedan to the curb. We got out, he glanced at a house number, and said, “That will be it down the street there—the one with the lights.”

It was a large house of modern, undistinguished architecture, set within gracious grounds. It was an ample house that spoke of guest rooms and library, of a den and a play room, and the square of poplars behind it probably shielded a tennis court. It was a house within which you would expect to find a retired senator, or a justice of the District of Columbia courts, or a lobbyist for steel or rubber, or a college chancellor, or perhaps a scientist with an independent income, like Peter Pflaum. Both floors were lighted, but on the lower floor the Venetian blinds were down, and drawn so that a narrow grid of light escaped.

“Well,” I said, as we walked up the path to the door, “what do we do now?”

“We ring,” said Tex Root, and he rang. He waited a moment, and he rang again, holding his thumb against the opalescent button. He held his thumb there until the door opened. It opened only a few inches.

There was a man’s face in the opening, a broad, pleasant, middle-aged face wearing glasses. “Yes?” the man said.

“Are you Mr. Pflaum?” Root said.

“Yes, I’m Pflaum. But I’m very busy right now. We’re having a little conference here. I don’t believe I know you, but if you care to see me you will find me in my office any time after ten o’clock tomorrow.”

“I’m really sorry to disturb you, Mr. Pflaum,” Root said, “but I’m afraid I must see you now. I’m from the FBI.”

Pflaum’s polite smile set, as if it were there to stay. “Couldn’t you see me tomorrow? I can’t imagine what the FBI—”

“No, Mr. Pflaum, I couldn’t. I want to apologize in advance, but I have to come in.”

Pflaum started to say something more, but he looked at Root’s face, and what he saw there told him it was useless. His smile disappeared, and he opened the door, and he said, “What is it you want?” but he said it as if he knew what we wanted.

“We’re looking for Mr. Adam,” Root said.

“How on earth—how on earth did you know?”

Root didn’t answer. He pushed past Pflaum, and I followed him. I realized that while we waited outside I had heard voices, but that when we entered, they stopped.

“Where is he?” Root demanded, as we walked down the hall. I saw that Pflaum was following us. “In there,” he said, “that doorway on the right.”

I don’t know what I expected to see when I walked into the Pflaum library, except I knew I would see Homer Adam. I suppose I expected he would be bound and gagged, or perhaps plain dead. But whatever it was I expected, it wasn’t what I saw. I think that I was as surprised at seeing Homer and Kathy, as they were at seeing me.

Unlike most libraries, this one was constructed for reading and research. The bookshelves covered the walls, and reached from the floor to the ceiling. There was a mobile stepladder in a corner, and in another corner an enormous desk, stacked with books, pamphlets, and clippings. Pflaum must have been sitting at this desk, when we rang, for it was the only unoccupied chair in the room.

In a little semi-circle, chairs facing the desk, were Pell, a tall man with a Vandyke who I felt would be Professor Ruppe, and a much younger man whom I did not recognize. In another chair sat The Frame, a cigarette almost, but not quite, touching her parted lips. Closest to the desk, his ungainly hands gripping the arms of his chair, was Homer Adam. He looked bewildered, but hardly more bewildered than usual.

I knew that I should say something, but I felt puzzled, and out of place, as if I had invaded a family conference. Except for the presence of Homer, that was the way it seemed. “Hadn’t I better get some chairs for you gentlemen?” Pflaum said incongruously. “Don’t you want to sit down?”

I didn’t see Root take the gun out of his shoulder holster, but suddenly there it was, in his hand, a Smith and Wesson magnum, and I remember wondering how such a small man could conceal such a cannon on his person without it being noticeable. “Don’t move!” Root said, in a low voice but firmly. “I know this is an obsolete type of weapon, not fit for wiping out whole populations, but it will blow a hole through you, big as your arm, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do if anyone moves.”

Somehow, this relieved the tension. It put us all back in our proper places. We weren’t guests any more. We were there to save Homer Adam.

“But I don’t understand,” said Pflaum, “how in the world you ever guessed—”

“You don’t have to understand,” Root said. “But there are a lot of things that I’ll have to understand.”

“Now just a moment,” said Pell, his massive head jerking on his scrawny neck. “Nobody here has committed any crime, and I think it’s an outrage for you to come in here like this and threaten us with that weapon as if we were gangsters. After all, we’re all associates of the National Research Council.”

“Isn’t kidnaping a crime any more?” said Root.

“There has been no kidnaping,” Pell protested. “Mr. Adam came here voluntarily, and we were just having a little discussion concerning some most important matters.”

Homer tried to rise, but whenever Homer tried to get out of a deep chair it was a nerve-racking struggle, particularly when the situation was critical, for at those times his legs refused to co-ordinate. “Sit down, Homer,” I told him. “Sure, he came here voluntarily, but I’ll bet this is the last place he expected to be. Isn’t that right, Homer?”

“Steve,” he began. “Steve, I’m terribly sorry. I’m not quite sure what’s happening.”

“Naturally he’s not sure what’s happening,” I said. “He thinks he is escaping from the N.R.P.—for which I can’t blame him much—and eloping with The Frame here, for which I don’t blame him much either, and what happens? He finds himself locked up with a bunch of crazy professors. Say, what’s your name?” I asked the young man whose name I didn’t know.

“I’m John Canby, from the University of California,” he said, starting to rise. Root’s gun waved him back into his chair.

I said, “It’s certainly a nice, cozy little rendezvous, isn’t it? What were they up to, Homer? What were they going to do to you?”

“I don’t know,” Homer replied. “I really don’t understand it at all. I didn’t know it was supposed to be this way. The way I understood it, Kathy and I were to stay here for a few days, and then we were to drive to Mexico.”

“You are so damn innocent, Homer,” I said. “You’re just like a steer being led into the stockyards. Well, if you don’t know what was going to happen to you, I’ll enlighten you. This pack of respectable, scientific ghouls was going to eliminate you. And I’ll tell you why, Homer. They don’t like the human race. They want to give the world back to the lizards.”

The Frame came to her feet, blazing mad, one strand of hair falling across her face, and Root’s gun shifted accurately towards her middle. “That’s a lie,” she screamed. “That’s a horrible lie!”

“It’s outrageous,” said Pell. He was white and trembling. “I’ll sue you!”

I went over to the desk and put my knuckles on it and looked them over. “Root ought to knock you off right now, you murderous bunch of bastards! But maybe it’ll be better to let the people handle you. I’ve got a lot of faith in the people, when they get mad. They’re violent. They’ll tear you to shreds. Particularly you—” I looked at The Frame. “The women will handle you!”

“You don’t really believe—” The Frame began. There was astonishment and fear in her voice. It made me feel good.

“Believe! I know. Wait until they find out! Wait until they find out that the same bunch of fiends who blew up Mississippi, and sterilized all the men, also kidnapped Mr. Adam. In twenty-four hours there won’t be enough of you left to be worth burying!”

Homer managed to struggle to his feet. His face was so white that I could see freckles where I had never seen freckles before. “Kathy,” he said. “Kathy, that wasn’t the plan, was it? It wasn’t that. Tell me it wasn’t anything like that. Is that why you have that apparatus upstairs?”

She looked at him, across the heads of her father and Pell, and said, gravely and with all anger gone from her, “No, Homer, it wasn’t anything like that. Those machines are for elementary experimentation to test the effect of radio-active rays on the male germ. We were going to take the utmost precautions not to harm you.”

Professor Ruppe spoke for the first time. He was, except for Root, the calmest of us all. “Kitty,” he said, “I can see that what we have done, and what we hoped to do, would be hopelessly misunderstood. Hadn’t you better tell it all?”

“I think that’s best,” said Pflaum. “I don’t want any mobs tearing my arms out by the roots, or hanging me to a flagpole in front of the Capitol.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “It would be nice to know what’s really going on.”

“Do you agree, Dr. Pell?” The Frame asked.

“What is this, a round table discussion?” Root asked. “If you’ve got anything to say you’d better say it quick.”

“I agree,” Pell said. His head lolled forward on his chest, as if his neck could no longer support it.

The Frame brushed the hair from her face. “In the first place,” she began, “I feel we ought to apologize to Homer. It is true that I persuaded him to leave N.R.P., well, under false pretenses. But it was the only thing we could think of, if we were to act in time. We were just getting around to explaining to Homer when you came in.” She regarded Homer directly, even brazenly, I thought, and said, “When I’m finished, I’m not sure that Homer won’t agree with our point of view.”

“Just forget the propaganda,” I said, “and start putting one plain word after another.”

“Very well, Steve, don’t be so damn overbearing! Here’s the way it is, as we see it. The aftereffects of the Mississippi explosion were terrible, certainly, and yet civilization was presented with its one great opportunity to really begin over again—to really create a splendid and decent world, peopled entirely by splendid and decent humans.”

“All of them with their master’s degree in science,” I suggested.

“If you don’t shut up,” she said, “I shan’t continue.”

“Go ahead. So what happened?”

“You ought to know. You were in the middle of it, and partly responsible. It was bad enough that the government gave Homer to the N.R.P., and approved A.I., instead of turning him over to the National Research Council. But to make matters worse, no provision whatsoever was made for the scientific selection of future mothers. Here we were presented with this magnificent opportunity, and what do we do? A blindfolded man reaches into a goldfish bowl, and the future of the race is decided literally by blind chance. Not only that, but consider some of the creatures the Congress picked to possess a number in that bowl. When mated to Homer, what else could they produce but red-headed monsters?”

“Oh, I see,” I said with what I hoped was sarcasm. “So you people decided to snatch Homer, and present him with a restricted and exclusive clientele. Perhaps you were going to farm him out among your brain-heavy friends, and populate the world with a lot of fine specimens like Dr. Pell here.”

The Frame actually looked shocked. “Oh, no!” she protested. “We weren’t going to use Homer at all! Not for direct conception. Why, I think Homer himself would be the first to agree that it is a mistake for him to father children—any children at all—if we are to produce a superior race for posterity.”

“Gosh, Kathy,” Homer said, “I never thought you felt that way about me. I know I’m not very pretty, and I wasn’t a Quiz Kid, but I don’t think you’ve got any right to say I’m unfit to have children.”

“Don’t you?” The Frame asked, the corners of her mouth touched with humor. She paused, and added: “Homer, I think you’re sweet, and I’m really very fond of you. Intellectually, I think you’d do, but physically—”

“Don’t pay any attention to her, Homer,” I advised him, watching the impact of her words crush him back into his chair. “This theory of a superior race isn’t original at all. Hitler had one too. The only difference is that Hitler had his master race all set up, and she wants to start hers from scratch.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” said Professor Ruppe. “I think most intelligent men will acknowledge the soundness of our theories.”

I noticed that Tex Root’s gun was no longer in his hand. It had vanished as miraculously as it had appeared. “This is all very interesting,” Root said, “but if you weren’t going to use Adam, what or who were you going to use?”

“We were going to use Adam, but not for A.I., or any other kind of conception,” The Frame explained. “Homer is a source of priceless experimental matériel—the only source. We simply intended to borrow Homer for a few days, for experimental purposes. We had reached a stage in our experiments where it was absolutely necessary to have Homer for a few days. And we knew that once A.I. started we’d never again, perhaps, have a chance to use him. If we were able to use Homer for a short time we felt that we’d find a way—oh, it might take years—but eventually we’d find a way to restore the fertility of other men. Then, we could choose the best males and females, and in a few generations we’d have enough perfect humans so that paired with the inevitably poor stock produced by A.I., matters would not be hopeless.”

“And Homer—what were you going to do with him?” I asked.

“We hadn’t thought much about that. You see, after his services were no longer necessary, we could proceed with our work, which is the only important thing. I suppose we would have simply told Homer to walk home.”

“And the repercussions from such action?”

Kathy shrugged. “After he returned, everyone would have been relieved, and it would be forgotten. Anyway, most people would believe it was simply a clandestine affair. Wouldn’t they, Steve?”

I think I whistled. “Kathy,” I said, “you’re a wicked, ruthless woman.”

“All women are ruthless,” she replied, “when they’re really after something. And as for being wicked—the N.R.P. is wicked, but what we are attempting is, I feel, simply acting as instruments of the will of God.”

Her eyes were shining, as I had seen them before. I asked Root, “How about them, Tex? What are you going to do with them?”

Root considered this, carefully appraising The Frame, and her father, and Pell, and Canby. He was measuring them, I knew, for signs of deceit and trickery, as an experienced tailor measures with his eyes a length of cloth. “I don’t see how I can hold them for kidnaping,” he said. “Anyway, it sounds more like an intramural scrap within the government than anything else. That is, unless Adam wants to bring charges against them. Even then, I don’t see what charges he can bring, except maybe breach of promise.”

“Oh, no. No charges,” said Homer. “All I want to do is get out of here.”

He was desperate with shame. “Well,” I told The Frame, “you may be stacked, and you’re certainly clever, but when it comes to the snatch racket you’re a dope.” I suppose I said it more in revenge for the hurt she had inflicted on Homer than anything else.

“This isn’t over,” she said quietly, “not yet.”

I looked at my watch, and was amazed to find it wasn’t yet twelve. It seemed that we had been away from the hotel for a day or two. I thought of Mary Ellen, and what news of this might do to her. “Root,” I said, “I think we’d better keep this whole thing as quiet as possible, don’t you?”

“That’s okay with me,” Root said.

“Please,” said Pell. “Please, no publicity. It is bad enough as it is. I do feel, now, that perhaps we went too far. But we were only doing what we thought was the sole right thing to do.”

“Well, please don’t try it any more,” I warned him, “because from now on if anything happens to Adam something is going to happen to you too. Something fatal.”

Kathy was smiling again, in a way that wasn’t funny. “I’m sure everything will work out all right. I’m quite sure, now. Please go home, because you bore me.”

Outside the night air was cool and clean. “Smells good, doesn’t it, Homer?” I said.

He didn’t answer. “I’m not sore at you, Homer. I’m not blaming you a bit. It wasn’t your fault.”

We got into Root’s sedan, Homer and I in the back. He didn’t say anything. I felt he should say something. “Homer,” I said, “there’s been no damage. Things have just been delayed for a day.”

He put his head in his hands and pulled at his hair. “Oh, what a fool I was,” he said, the words forcing their way out of him. “What a fool, fool, fool!”

“Don’t feel that way Homer. You’re not the first guy who has been taken by a scheming bitch. It happens to millions, every year. Lots of them smarter than you. Usually, they’re after money, or want to get their names in the Social Register, or run a business from behind the scenes. With you, there was a different motive, but in every other way it was exactly the same. Just tell yourself, ‘I’ve been taken,’ and then forget about it.”

He didn’t answer. He kept his face buried in his hands.

Root parked the car in the hotel driveway and we all got out and Homer walked to the elevator silent and stiff-legged as if he were going to a place of execution.

Marge was waiting for us at the door. “Just like Cinderella, on the stroke of twelve!” she said. “Homer, I’m so glad to see you back.”

He walked past her without speaking, and she looked at his face and didn’t say anything more. He walked to his bedroom, and lunged inside and shut the door behind him.

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked. “What happened? Should I bring him a drink, or anything?”

“We’d better leave him alone,” I said. “He’s had a harrowing experience.” Root went to the telephone, and called his office, and began talking, and while he was on the phone I told Marge what had happened.

When Root was finished with the phone I took it. I called Gableman, at his home, and told him Homer was back. “I’m very glad to hear it,” he said, with about as much interest as if he had just heard that his second cousin, in Des Moines, had been elected secretary of the Kiwanis. “But I’m through, Steve. I’ve taken that job in Interior, and I think if you are smart you will remove yourself from N.R.P. and go back to the AP. If I know anything about the government at all, I know that it is neither smart nor healthy to stay with N.R.P. Good night, Steve.”

I called Klutz. He said he was delighted, but his voice sounded shaky. He said he hoped there wouldn’t be any publicity, and I assured him there wouldn’t be any. He said that was fine, and he would visit Mr. Pumphrey in the hospital first thing in the morning and tell him the good news, and he was sure this would speed Mr. Pumphrey’s recovery.

I called Danny Williams. He said he’d pass the word along to the President right away. He asked me what had happened, and I told him I didn’t think I could describe it adequately over the telephone, but that anyway Homer was back, and seemed undamaged.

When I was finished Root was putting on his topcoat, and nibbling at the edge of a cracker. “Well, good night,” he said. “If anything more happens don’t call me. Call somebody else—anybody. This business is too much for me.”

“Are you completely satisfied,” I said, “that they weren’t really going to knock him off?”

“No,” he admitted, “not completely.”

“I’m not either,” I told him. “I still think that Pell is a villain.”

Tex Root shook his head. “Spies, I can catch,” he said. “Kidnaping for ransom is a cinch. Murder and bond thefts and embezzlement are normal activities. But this is different. This, I don’t like. I can’t tell who is a criminal, and who isn’t, and I can’t tell right from wrong. For all I know this Kathy Riddell—and she is a remarkable woman, isn’t she?—well, she may be perfectly right. All my life I’ll wonder whether what I’ve done tonight didn’t put the world back ten thousand years. Good night, Steve. Good night, Marge. Pleasant dreams.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What do you think I ought to do?”

“If I were you,” he said, before he closed the outer door, “I would retreat to Little America.”

I went into Homer’s room. He was undressed, and in bed, the pillow pulled over his head so I could not tell whether or not he was asleep, and his feet hanging nakedly over the bed’s end. As I put out his light I told myself that we really should get a special extra long bed for Homer.

Out in the living room Marge was folding up dresses. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Packing,” she said.