Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 7, No. 9, September 1962

Gomez said, “You know me, Juanito. If something doesn’t ring true, I investigate it. I was interested in Henrietta, but she was too busy to get acquainted. Busy at what? So I kept her under surveillance. I listened in on a call she placed to Los Alamos.”

“It would be natural that she place a call to there. She had friends and acquaintances there.”

“Is the Director of the Security Division her friend?”

“My boss.” Randolph hadn’t known they were acquainted.

“She told him,” Gomez said slowly, “that she knew where an atomic device was being introduced into the United States in the next twelve hours. For the full amount of the reward authorized by some Atomic Weapons Reward Act, she would tell when and where it was to cross the border. That, incidentally, was ten hours ago. There are about two left.”

“It was a shake-down,” Randolph said, but was disturbed, nevertheless. “A half-million dollar shakedown.”

“She told him to arrange to have one man, authorized to negotiate, s sent to Santo Tomas. Was she wrong in thinking that it was you?”

“So you disappointed Henrietta,” Gomez said. “You weren’t the man she thought you were.”

“They wouldn’t send a security guard on a mission like that,” Randolph said. “I imagine the Director contacted the Atomic Energy Commission for instructions. It’s a cinch you couldn’t simply call up, like Henrietta did, and expect someone to show up with a half-million dollars, a few hours later. There would be at least an elementary investigation. One could be going on right now. Probably is.”

Gomez didn’t say anything for a while. When he did, he was on another subject. “I didn’t consider you seriously as a suspect in the explosion, John. But I’m thinking you might be marked down as another victim of the bomber.”

Randolph felt quick, driving anger. “I’d like to get my hands on—”

“So would I,” Gomez cut in. “My prime suspect is a man named Conrado Suarez. They call him El Cubano. A skinny man, a machinist by trade, with radical ideas about government and who has a police record. He operates the machine shop right across from where Henrietta was killed.”

“Henrietta had been observed going into his shop often. There could be a jealousy motive. The bomb in her car could have been aimed at the two of you. I believe they were old friends. But on the other hand, why would he kill her if jealousy was not the prime mover? Maybe they did make an atom bomb, and Suarez might have wanted the full half-million dollars for himself, or sole possession of the bomb. Would you know such a device if you saw one? I don’t know if I would.”

“I might.”

“Then,” said Gomez, “let’s go see if we can find one and blow my jealousy theory apart.”

A white wrecker was at work on the demolished automobile. An ambulance had carted away the dead and the suffering. All that remained to show there had been tragedy on the street was the debris of the car.

Gomez called for light and a policeman with a battery-powered flash trotted from the fringes of darkness. He said, “The building is locked against us. We have not located Suarez.”

Gomez led them through those curious ones who lingered on the death scene and talked in muted tones. He stopped beneath the gloomy facade of the tall old machine shop. Under the huge weathered doors ran railroad tracks, a short branch of the ice plant spur.

“Those doors lock from inside,” the policeman said. “There is another door at the rear.”

Gomez tapped the bone grips of the automatic at his belt. “We’ll use my search warrant and my key.”

Randolph walked gingerly in the darkest shadows, aware of danger. He did not intend to set himself up as a possible target. From somewhere close at hand, a radio blared a lively tune more suited to a gay cantina than to this dark place which death had visited so recently and so violently. A dirge would have been more fitting, Randolph thought.

Here behind the machine shop, the looming tall doors were secured with only a flimsy house door lock. Gomez shattered it with a bullet from his gun.

Flattened lead screamed off over the cluster of mud huts, getting lost among the returning echoes of the shot. A woman shrilled a worried question. A man supplied a shouted answer. A child’s sleepy voice lifted in sudden startled inquiry, a lost sound that tugged strongly at Randolph’s heart.

He stepped to one side to be out of the way of any stray bullet suddenly pumped through the door from inside. But none came, and he followed Gomez into the building.

The spotlight shifted through the dim interior. Huge lathes, long twisted endless belts, presses, and other heavy machine tools loomed, gleaming dully, like metallic monsters. The floor was of dirt, except for the concrete slabs under the larger tools. The odor of cutting oils made Randolph uneasy. He felt as though he was standing in a long dark tunnel that might explode with a careless spark.