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

Rails ran the length of the building. Heavy materials could be unloaded from flat cars with the powerful overhead crane. The doors at either end were high enough to accommodate a box car. Or a locomotive.

“A man who knew how could build a cannon with this equipment,” Randolph said.

“Or an atomic device?”

“Provided he had the materials.”

Gomez said, “Then we’ve got to find Suarez. We’ve got to know if he really built one, and where it is now.”

Randolph, watching the spotlight dart about and touch here and there, saw nothing in its beam that wouldn’t fit into any machine shop anywhere.

Gomez located a master switch. Dim lights sprang glowing in the cavernous shop. They searched for half an hour and found nothing, except the place where Suarez apparently slept — a greasy pad in a corner.

Randolph said, “If Suarez built a bomb here, I don’t have the training to spot the tracks. And if he did build one and it’s not here, where is it? And what is he going to do with it?”

“When we find him,” Gomez said, “we’ll find the answers.”

He switched off the master switch and they walked the darkness, following the spotlight beam. As they passed a giant lathe, a sudden odor of hot metal stopped Randolph. Gomez also stopped.

The spotlight’s beam came quickly back. The concrete slab under the lathe was conspicuously clean compared with the rest of the shop.

Standing there in the windy vastness of this machine shop-isolated in the middle of a great desert country, an ominous feeling chilled Randolph. In his mind’s eye appeared the sinister shape of the mushroom cloud.

For out of his memory had emerged one relative, pertinent fact: bits of uranium, laid across or against each other, create heat. If left alone long enough, they glow.

And just before the light had touched that concrete slab, Randolph had seen a tiny red spot!

Soberly, they walked outsider

The street was quiet. It was about as it had been when he handed Henrietta into her car, Randolph thought. Except that now the wind was dying. And a full moon, yellow as butter and big as a balloon, was slowly rising.

A policeman lingered under the cottonwood tree. He was Gomez’ driver.

Gomez, said, “Suarez is our man. He killed Henrietta because he wants the bomb all to himself.”

Randolph listened to him spout orders over his car radio. Finished, Gomez said, “My men will have him by dawn.”

“He could have gone north.”

“Not legally. He has been refused border-crossing privileges by your country.”

“A man with an atom bomb would hardly be liable to cross the border in the regular manner,” Randolph said. And then, “Well, my vacation is shot, anyway. I’ll have to call the Project.”

“You said they were probably investigating already.”

“An investigation will be, made. But it might not be given the top priority that the discovery of the uranium scraps now demands. Henrietta’s telephone call might have been dismissed as the call of some kind of a nut.”

“Use our telephone,” Gomez suggested, inviting Randolph into his car. “We’ll drive you there.”

“The phone in the United States Customs House will be more direct,” Randolph said, and thanked him. From past experience, he knew that connections between the two countries were often unreliable.

Gomez lifted his hand in acknowledgement and got into his car. Randolph walked back around the corner to his own vehicle. Driving north to the border, he had an opportunity to think.

When he had first seen Henrietta at the, La Osa, he had been surprised. Pleasantly so. A week on the border with her seemed like the stuff of a young bachelor’s dreams. But it had turned out to be a nightmare.

Putting those thoughts from his mind he dragged out the others. Where would Suarez have hidden the atomic device? Why had Henrietta chosen Santo Tomas and Suarez? Was it something that Randolph himself had told her about in their conversation regarding the border? Remembering that Suarez had not been here during his own sojourn in Santo Tomas with Customs, he wondered if Henrietta had contacted him, and if he had activated the machine shop for the sole purpose of making an atomic device. And where had Henrietta known him before? What was their common background?

These led to other questions for which he could not readily find answers and his approach to the border brought speculation to a stop. A dim light beamed over the doorway of the Mexican guardhouse. A single inspector dozed in a chair leaned against the adobe wall. His pants were too short, and Randolph could see that he wore no socks.

He had not forgotten Randolph. “Anda tarde, Juanito,” he said. “Like old times.”

“But out late tonight on a more serious matter than those that kept me from my bed, before.”

“I heard. The shock shook this building. A sad thing. The woman was beautiful. Her car was very pretty.”

“Tell me a thing. Was she always alone when she crossed here?”

“Except for the first time.”

“Who rode with her then?”