The Rat Race by Jay Franklin (classic books to read .txt) 📗

trip to the Yalta Conference. Earlier this afternoon he complained of a severe headache and almost immediately became unconscious. He died peacefully a little later. His death came at a moment when American troops in Germany and on Okinawa were driving ahead toward the victory he—"

Cone switched it down again. "He had a headache!" he muttered. "What do you think we're going to have?"

The telephone rang. I picked up the instrument. It was one of those automatic phonograph recordings. "The Stock Exchange will not be open tomorrow by order of the Governors, out of respect for the memory of the late President Roosevelt. That is all—The Stock Exchange will not be open—" the metallic feminine voice went on. I hung up.

"You're right about one thing, Graham," I said. "That was an automatic message to say the Exchange will be closed tomorrow. It's probably on the ticker, too."

It was.

Cone sat down suddenly, as though his legs had turned to rubber.

"Now it will all start again," he said. "Sell out and pack up, pack up and clear out."

I crossed the office and put my hand on his shoulder. "Cheer up, Phil," I told him. "It won't be as bad as that. Graham and I will stick with you and that's true of Americans generally."

Cone shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. "Thanks, Winnie," he remarked. "You're a good fellow and a good friend. I've got something to say to you. You won't like it. I got worried yesterday when you started talking about Roosevelt maybe dying and I tipped the F.B.I. on what you said."

I laughed. "If the F.B.I. arrested every man in Wall Street who had ever talked about Roosevelt dying the jails wouldn't hold them. Don't worry, Phil. In your shoes I'd have done the same thing."

The phone rang again. It was the receptionist. "Mr. Harcourt is here to see you, Mr. Tompkins," she informed me. "Shall I ask him to wait?"

"Tell him I'll see him in a couple of minutes," I replied.

"This is it, boys," I told my partners. "It's the F.B.I. Now, the Market's going to drop. It will be a bear market in a big way, dignified as hell, and we're in ahead of the others. You two just carry on. Try to get a line on this guy Truman. Some of our Kansas City correspondents may have the dope. Phil, no hard feelings about this F.B.I. angle. They've been riding me for days on some crazy story Ranty Tolan started about me last week."

Wasson looked at me coldly. "If I thought that you had anything to do with this—" he began.

"Oh skip it!" I begged him. "You know me better."

I picked up the phone and told the receptionist to send Harcourt in.

"Mr. Tompkins," he said. "I've been ordered to ask you to come up to the Bureau's headquarters right away."

"Am I under arrest?" I asked.

"Well," Harcourt admitted, "I haven't got a warrant but I think maybe you better come with me."

"What's the charge?"

"My chief will tell you what it's all about," he said. "My orders were to bring you in for questioning."

"Okay," I agreed. "I'll come along quietly. Phil, will you tell Miss Briggs to ring up my wife and say I won't be home tonight and not to worry. I'll be all right."

Harcourt came and laid his hand on my arm. "Come along then," he ordered gruffly.

"How about my lawyer?" I inquired. "Graham, will you phone Merry Vail and tell him I've been taken up to the F.B.I. for questioning?"

Harcourt looked up at me. "Is Merriwether Vail your lawyer?" he asked. "I wouldn't bother to call him. We've picked him up too. All your associates, outside of business and—er—pleasure, are being rounded up. The President's dead, Mr. Tompkins, and you're going to do some talking to my chief."

CHAPTER 15

The events which brought me into the office of Edward Lamb, Deputy Director of the F.B.I., on Friday the thirteenth, had developed so rapidly that I could scarcely believe that less than twenty-four hours had passed since Harcourt had taken me into custody.

We had gone to the Federal Court House in a taxicab (paid for by me) where I was placed alone in a room for fifteen minutes. At the end of that period I was informed that Washington had asked that I be sent down for direct interrogation at the Bureau. I was told that if I preferred I could demand a formal warrant of arrest but that Mr. Vail, who had been released with an apology, advised me to go, and that I could confirm it by telephone—which I did. I was told that there was still no formal charge against me but they asked if I would let myself be fingerprinted. To this I agreed and then sat back while arrangements were completed to fly me down to Washington from the LaGuardia Airport. Harcourt was to accompany me. That had been all. They allowed me to phone Germaine and tell her I was going to Washington and invite her to join me there as soon as I could get hotel accommodations. The F.B.I. put me up for the night in one of their Manhattan hide-outs—an old house on East 80th Street—and in the morning Harcourt and I had taken the plane. The clock had barely touched noon when I was told that Mr. Lamb was ready to see me.

Lamb was a pleasant, youngish man—with that inevitable faint Hoover chubbiness—whose roomy office with its deep leather easy chairs spelled power in the F.B.I. I was amused to note that he followed Rule 1 of whistle-stop detection, by seating me in a deep chair, facing the light, while he sat at his desk on a definitely higher level and with the light behind him.

"Well, Mr. Tompkins," he began, "we've had disturbing reports about you from at least three different sources. Frankly, we still don't know what to make of them and the Director thought it would be better if you came here and talked to us."

"Always glad to help," I assured him. "If you'll tell me what the reports are, I'll try to explain."

Lamb glanced at a file of papers on his desk. "The first one is an allegation that you aren't Winfred S. Tompkins, but an imposter who has kidnapped Tompkins and taken his place. That report was anonymous and we don't attach any particular importance to it, although if necessary we could use it to detain you for questioning under the Lindbergh Law."

I stretched out my hands toward him. "My fingerprints were taken last night," I said. "They ought to settle that question."

Lamb laughed. "Unfortunately," he admitted, "it takes a little time to establish identity by fingerprints. The first tentative identification suggested by yours was a man named Jonas Lee. He is a Negro currently employed in the Charleston Navy Yard. However, I think we can assume that the final identification will bear you out. They're working on it now."

There was a buzz and he picked up the desk-telephone. "Oh, they do," he remarked. "Good!"

He turned back to me. "That was the Finger-Print Division. They're your prints, all right, so we'll cancel the kidnapping charge."

"What's the second strike on me?"

"That's a report phoned in by one of your partners that you seemed to expect President Roosevelt's death two or three days before it happened."

"I did," I explained. "A man named Axel Roscommon came to my office, said that he was the chief Nazi agent in the United States, and told me that Roosevelt had been poisoned at Yalta. I had already reported Roscommon to the Bureau and was told to let him alone. Roscommon said that only a few people, including Roosevelt, knew about the poisoning. I wanted to pass on the warning but was told that it was too late, that I would simply expose myself to suspicion. So what I did was to make normal business preparations to take advantage of its effect on the Stock Market."

Lamb looked up at the ceiling and remained silent for a few minutes. "So that's the way it was," he said. "For your personal information, Mr. Tompkins, Roscommon told the Director the same thing a month ago but when Mr. Hoover tried to warn the Secret Service he had his ears slapped back. If I'd known about the Roscommon angle in your case I would have told the New York office not to worry. I thought perhaps that this was another angle on the same story."

"Do you believe that President Roosevelt was assassinated, Mr. Lamb?" I asked, point-blank.

He shrugged his shoulders. "No, I do not," he replied. "Not officially, that is. It is not inconceivable and the Secret Service is so set in its ideas and methods that—well, frankly I'd rather not believe it. I have no evidence, aside from a verbal warning which might have been coincidence. Some of our toxicologists say that it could be done, others deny that there is a virus which can produce the symptoms of a paralytic stroke. In any case, it's outside of our jurisdiction."

I heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank God I'm clear of that one," I said. "I shouldn't like to be mixed up, even by accident, in anything like that. I remember what happened to Dr. Mudd."

Lamb nodded. "The doctor who bandaged Booth's leg after the murder of Lincoln? Yes, I can see your point."

"How about the third charge?" I asked.

Lamb looked serious. "That's not going to be so easy, Mr. Tompkins," he announced. "Harcourt reports that he doesn't think there's anything to it, but Naval Intelligence has the jitters about this Alaska business. It seems to be pretty well established that on the afternoon of April second you stated that the U.S.S. Alaska had been sunk in an explosion off the western Aleutians. That was over ten days ago and there is still no word from the carrier. The last report came from Adak which had picked the ship up by radar on the first. The report given us was that you represented that it was all a dream. What worries the Navy about this explanation is that no public announcement had ever been made of the Alaska's launching or commission. She's a sneak-carrier built under stringent security regulations and until you came into the picture the Navy was pretty sure that there'd been no leak."

I nodded dismally. "Knowing the Navy," I replied, "I can see how they feel. All that I can suggest, Mr. Lamb, is that this is a case of mental telepathy. There have been plenty of other instances of it on record. Often they call it intuition or second sight. I can only say that if you investigate and can find any other explanation I'll be delighted."

"I don't think that Admiral Ballister—he's the present head of O.N.I., though they change so fast we almost lose count—will be satisfied with the theory that it is a case of E.S.P. That's 'extra-sensory perception' and there have been plenty of scientific experiments in that field but the Navy doesn't know about them. And then, of course, there was the bomb—"

I nodded. "The thorium bomb—" I began, and stopped as I noticed an official change in Lamb's attitude.

"Exactly, Mr. Tompkins," he observed. "The thorium bomb. Nobody—at least outside of the President, the Secretary of the Navy and Professor Chalmis—was supposed to know that there was such a thing as a thorium bomb. The security arrangements on the thorium project were so drastic—"

"Roscommon knew all about it," I said. "He also mentioned Chalmis to me."

The Deputy Director looked slightly ill. "He did, did he?" he growled. "That will teach the Navy not to let the Bureau handle domestic security. Hell, this thing gets bigger and bigger every minute. If Roscommon knew about it, then anybody could have known. Why, it's been an offense against the Espionage Act, even to print the word 'thorium' outside of chemical textbooks, and Chalmis is supposed to be in the T.B. sanitarium at Saranac. Wonder what happened to him?"

I leaned forward. "He's dead, Mr. Lamb," I assured him. "Everybody on the Alaska is dead. The bomb went off and there's nobody left to tell the tale."

"How do you do it, Tompkins?" Lamb demanded. "If you will give us the details and the names of your accomplices I think I can promise you a life sentence instead of the electric chair."

"Mr. Lamb," I replied, "You can promise till the cows come home. I—W. S. Tompkins—had no connection with it at all and you can't prove that I had. I know about it only because of—well, call it mental telepathy. I could sit down and tell you exactly what happened on the Alaska before Chalmis deliberately touched off the bomb, but I couldn't prove it and there isn't a living soul who could support or disprove my story. And if you place me under arrest I'll be in a position to