50 in 50

"How dare you! You sent a note, I received it, asking me to come there, to trap me. Perhaps you broke those bottles!"

Livermore yawned and rubbed at his eyes, then bent and groped under the couch for his shoes.

"That's what Dick Tracy here thinks." He grunted as he pulled a shoe on. "Finds me sleeping here, doesn't believe that, tries to take my pulse and see if I've been running around with that hammer, faster pulse than a sleeping pulse. Idiot!" He snapped the last word and rose to his feet. "I am in charge of this project, it's my project. Before you accuse me of sabotaging it, you had better find a better reason than baseless suspicion. Find out who typed that fool note, and maybe you will have a lead."

"I fully intend to," Blalock said, and the phone rang.

"For you," Livermore said, and passed it to the FBI man, who listened silently, then issued a sharp command.

"Birmingham here."

Before she left, Catherine Ruffin made a sworn statement, and it was recorded on Livermore's office taper. Then Livermore did the same thing. Yes, he had not been in his apartment. He had worked late in his office, and as he did many times, he had slept on the couch in the adjoining room. He had gone to sleep around 0300 hours and had neither seen nor heard anything since that time, not until Blalock had wakened him. Yes, it was possible to get from the bottle room by way of the rear door, and through the business office to this office, but he had not done that. He was just finishing the statement when a stranger, with the same dour expression and conservative cut of clothes as Blalock, brought Gust Crabb in. Blalock dismissed the man and turned the full power of his attention on Gust.

"You were not in your apartment all night. Where were you?"

"Go to hell.”

"Your attitude is not appreciated. Your whereabouts are unknown — up to a few minutes ago when you arrived at your office. During the time in question someone broke into the bottle room and sabotaged this project with a hammer. I ask you again. Where were you?"

Gust, who was a simple man in all except his work, now enacted a pantomime of worry, guilt, and unhappiness complete with averted eyes and a fine beading of sweat on his forehead. Livermore felt sorry for him and turned away and harrumphed and found his tie and busied himself knotting it.

"Talk," Blalock said loudly, using all the pressure he could to increase the other's discomfort.

"It's not what you think," Gust said in a hollow voice.

"Give me a complete statement or I'll arrest you now for willful sabotage of a government project."

The silence lengthened uncomfortably. It was Livermore who broke it.

"For God's sake, Gust, tell him. You couldn't have done a thing like this. What is it a girl?" He snorted through his nose at the sudden flushing of Gust's face. "It is. Spill it out, it won't go beyond this room. The government doesn't care about your sex life, and I'm well past the age where these things have much importance."

"No one's business.” Gust muttered.

"Crime is the government's business—" Blalock said but was cut off by Livermore.

"But love affairs aren't, so will you shut up? Tell him the truth, Gust, tell him or you'll be in trouble. It was a girl?"

"Yes," Gust said most reluctantly, staring down at the floor.

"Good. You stayed the night with her. A few details would be appreciated, and then you will no longer be a suspect."

Under painful prodding Gust managed to mumble these details. The girl was a secretary with the engineering commission; he had known her a long time. She liked him_; but he stayed away from her until last night, a fight with Leatha, he had stamped out, found himself at Georgette's door — you won't tell anyone? — and she took him in, one thing led to another. There it was.

"There it is.” Livermore said. "Do your work, Blalock, Gust will be here with me if you want him. Find the girl, get her story, then leave us alone. Investigate the mysterious note, take fingerprints from the hammer, and do whatever you do in this kind of thing. But leave us be. Unless you have some evidence and want to arrest me, get out of my office."

When they were alone, Livermore made some coffee in his anteroom and brought a cup to Gust, who was looking out at the hillside now shaded by clouds and curtained with rain.

"You think I'm a fool," Gust said.

"Not at all. I think there's trouble between you and Leatha and that you're making it worse instead of better."

"But what can I do?!"

Livermore ignored the note of pleading in the man's voice and stirred his coffee to cool it. "You know what to do without bothering me. It's your problem. You're an adult. Solve it. With your wife or family counseling or whatever. Right now I have something slightly more important to think about with this sabotage and the FBI and the rest of it."