Arlen was gazing into space over Gresham’s shoulder, but Frank didn’t look round because he knew this mannerism. ‘I’m going to,’ said Gatt. He picked up a shunting engine and turned the wheels backwards and forwards, and examined the way the piston-rods went in and out of the toy cylinders. ‘I’m going first thing in the morning.’ There was silence for a while.
Gresham broke it. ‘You know what’s worrying me? All this business about it being the metal that started everything off. Supposing we’re wrong? I’m no sort of scientist, but take the Newlands business. I’ve no doubt that Ganin was telling the truth about that piece of cobalt — he’s obviously a very good chap. But isn’t it asking a bit much to expect that fate should so conveniently provide us with the answer by means of such a happy series of coincidences?’
Arlen struck a match on one of the driving wheels and agreed it was. ‘And that isn’t the only thing that’s wrong with it,’ he said. ‘I’ve been working out the quantities. The theory is that something in the juice inside the tin might have dissolved a little of the metal (or the coating) of the tin itself. Well, in the first place that coating, whether just ordinary tin-plate or a special chemical, is there for the express purpose of not being dissolved, and in the second place the amount of radiation that could get into the food itself in this way would be infinitesimal — unless the concentration of radioactive matter in the metal were very high. Yet the original source of radiation is supposed to have come from one tiny piece of cobalt-60.’ He stood up and walked to the window, picking his way carefully between the rails. ‘It doesn’t make sense. I think when I go down tomorrow morning I shall look for something else.’
‘Any idea what?’
‘No. No idea at all. But I want to see every process those cans go through between the time the beans arrive and when they end up in the dispatch department.’ He stooped to replace the little engine carefully on the rails. ‘I think,’ he added, ‘that whatever it was that got into those tins must have got there somewhere along the production line.’
‘You mean, if it isn’t the metal?’
Gatt suddenly looked directly at Gresham. ‘Yes, that’s right. If it isn’t the metal.’
As Dick Simmel rode home in the taxi he thought, That’s funny, I shall never be able to get into a taxi again without thinking of Sophie. And that was all right because thinking of Sophie made him feel wonderful. He thought about her all the way home, and went on thinking about her while he took a bath and right up to the time he turned on the TV for the late news.
There was still no mention of radioactivity, since it had been agreed with the press that the full facts were not to be published until the green light was given. But when the announcer opened the bulletin with what news there was about the Tin Can Crisis, as he called it, Dick’s mind returned to the discovery he had made on his own in No. 2 Lab just before the press conference, and which he hadn’t mentioned to anybody.
For the simple reason that he didn’t think he could be right and everyone else wrong.
But it haunted him, and he remembered the Old Man’s ‘act first, tell me afterwards’ remark. Eventually Dick decided to phone up Manson in Birmingham.
Manson wasn’t at the wholesalers’, and when they gave the number of the hotel he wasn’t there either. The porter said: ‘Mr Manson checked out, sir. He said to say that if there were any messages he had decided to return to London on the night train and would be at the office at the usual time.’ Dick thanked him, hung up and lit a cigarette.
He smoked two cigarettes without doing anything, but after he had lit the third he phoned for a Radiocab and dressed rapidly into a pair of corduroys and a sweater, and told the driver to take him to Filbury House.
The night-porter on duty examined his pass carefully, checked it with the list of authorized personnel and gave him the key to No. 2 Lab. Simmel asked him to inform the duty officer of his intentions, and went up in the lift to the fourth floor and along the dimly lit passage to the laboratory.
Inside, the rows of tins with their brightly coloured labels looked gay and innocuous. Yet when Simmel switched on the detection equipment the meter showed a measurable reading even when the ‘microphone thing’ — in fact the detector head — was nowhere near the cans.
There were two rows of cans; one labelled ‘contaminated’ and the other marked ‘clean’. Simmel took down one of the clean cans and held it near the detector head. The meter showed no increase in radiation. Next, he took a contaminated one and did the same thing. This time the meter swung over, as it had done upstairs when Manson conducted his demonstration. It also behaved as before when he emptied the contents on to a plate and checked the radiation from them.
‘So far, so good,’ said Dick aloud.
It was at this point in Manson’s lecture that the machine had broken down the previous day.
‘Now for the bit that Manson left out.’
First he reset the selector switch on the instrument, changing its position from ‘GAMMA’ to ‘ALL’. Then he took the clean can that had given no reading on the dial and opened it up, pouring the contents on to another plate. When he held the head near the shiny, brown mess of little ovals that were the ‘innocent’ beans, the needle shot across the dial again. There was no doubt about it. ‘They’re hot, all right!’ he exclaimed in spite of himself.
After carefully noting which of the now empty cans was which, he took them over to the sink and washed them out thoroughly. Having dried them carefully, he checked them again.
One of them still gave a reading from the outside, as before.
Then Simmel phoned up the Director.
IV. THE THIRD DAY
CHAPTER TEN
When Dick Simmel arrived at the main building for the third day of the meeting, he was quiet and thoughtful. There were two things on his mind — the experiment… and Kate. Especially there was Kate. He hardly answered Sergeant Drake as he reached the main entrance, but walked straight to the lift and pressed the top button. And while the elevator hung poised in space, remaining there as the steel doors of each floor came down past it, he was wondering what to say to her. Whether to tell her now, without dragging things out, or to wait for an opportunity of doing it more gently. For he now knew intuitively — where he hadn’t known before — that she was going to care a great deal. By the time the lift had arrived at the executive floor, he hadn’t made up his mind.
He was reluctant to leave the lift; and he waited there so long after the automatic gates had opened that they had begun to shut again before he stepped out.
She was there, sitting at her desk behind the glass doors, just as if nothing had happened. It was evident that no one else had arrived, for the door leading to Hargreaves’ office was standing wide open.
He thought that now, on the whole, might be the best time to tell her; she would be too busy during the day to think about it too much, and by the end of the day the first shock of it would be over. Soft lights and sweet music, he thought, would hardly be an appropriate setting for what he had to say.
She hailed him cheerfully from the desk, cocking her head on one side. She looked very pretty, Dick thought.
‘Hallo, funny face!’ he said, trying to be cheerful.
A tiny frown appeared just above her nose. He had never called her by this nickname before. ‘Any of them here yet?’