San Francisco Journal
S. F., July 10 —
Memorial services will be held today at the Bhuddist Temple of the Golden Lotus for Ching Fu, nephew of Ching Sheng, of this city. The nephew was killed in an airplane crash in China two days ago...
“We’re jittery about surprises from the air,” said Laidlaw. “Subconscious memories of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. Unfortunately, Army Air Force failed to keep its search for the Singing Diamonds secret. A new and shiny lieutenant in Public Relations spilled the beans. I cannot believe that any foreign power has developed a radio-guided missile that will go 1,500 miles per hour — could the fool have put it more plainly?”
Basil grinned. “He might have mentioned the initial of the foreign power’s name.”
“About as smart as shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre. I’m happy to say that young man is now stationed on a lonely Pacific island, and Naval Intelligence has taken over. Pretext: Sanders, a Navy Reserve pilot. These clippings are a lesson in the manufacture of public opinion. The first stories are skeptical hut open-minded. In the last two, after we took over, what a difference! The words Singing Diamonds are always printed in quotation marks. Nice touch, that. The ‘reports’ have become ‘rumors’ overnight. The most improbable are chosen for publication. Other witnesses are discouraged by Flaherty’s complaint about ‘kidding,’ and John Q. Public is reminded that most modern mysteries are advertising gags. Hasn’t a toy manufacturer ‘admitted’ — another nice word, implying accusation — that he sent up diamond kites?”
“Did he?”
“There was no toy manufacturer. Billy Brush did write that song — at my suggestion.”
“You might have done better with your scientific stuff,” ventured Basil. “The story on the octagonals at the Frelinghuysen laboratories is spoiled by the last sentence, saying the octagonals are never let out of the workroom, even at night.”
“You just can’t teach scientists to slant things for propaganda purposes!” complained Laidlaw. “The Wave who mimeographed their report for press release was told to omit that last sentence. She forgot.”
“What Pacific island is she on now?”
Laidlaw laughed. “She’s still here. The Navy is always gallant even to its own women. And it was no worse than the stuff the scientists themselves were putting out, Verworn and Radinine. Anyway we made Singing Diamonds ridiculous so the public would forget and no foreign power would guess we were interested. Then this Russian, Nyetchkoff, talks to reporters and he jokes about it, too. That didn’t make us happy. Was he as anxious to discourage public interest as we were?”
“Of course it was you who kept the wire services from picking up those six deaths,” said Basil. “Did you get any information about them?”
“A little. We looked for some connection with... a foreign power. There wasn’t any. Then we looked for some personal connections among the people who had died. Nothing there, though come to think of it now, MacDonald went to Manhattan University fifteen years ago. Must have been about the same year as Kurt Verworn, but there were seventy-three students in the class and there was no mention of Kurt Verworn in MacDonald’s papers. Finally, we looked for something — anything — which these six people, apparently so various and scattered, had in common. There were just two things. First, all those who died had asthma, except the pilot, Sanders, and — this is a curious detail — he had a fiancée who had asthma. Second: three of the six — Amherst, MacDonald, and Mrs. Kuzak — had a box of candied ginger in the house.”
“Any autopsies?”
“Sanders and Ching Fu were burned in the plane crashes. MacDonald and Mrs. Kuzak were cremated before we got to them. Mrs. Flaherty and Amherst’s daughter agreed to autopsies. We found nothing.”
“What did you look for?”
“Radiation burns. Apparently Flaherty and Amherst died from the effect of chronic asthma on the heart. We examined the wreckage of Sanders’ plane and the hillside where Amherst said Singing Diamonds had crashed. No soap. The airport was in radio-telephone communication with Sanders two minutes before the crash. Their records report the conversation.”
Basil read the slip of paper Laidlaw took from the file. Sanders speaking. Coming down in 40 minutes and — Listen, Jim! Something bad is going to happen. I’m losing control and — God! the Singing Diamonds!
“Anyone else on that plane report Singing Diamonds?”
“Only the hostess survived. She was too busy quieting that drunken sailor to notice anything else. We asked her if the sailor could have been faking drunkenness — a plant to get the co-pilot away from Sanders. She wasn’t sure. Every lead we followed was a blind alley. Even Flaherty and the Harsch gang. Every member of the gang is now in Sing Sing.”
Basil rose to go. “It seems a pretty coldblooded business. Exterminating everyone who saw and heard Singing Diamonds.”
“War is a coldblooded business.”
“If it is war... Have you no other theory?”
Laidlaw smiled. “Rather believe in voyagers from outer space? If that’s it, Naval Intelligence is going to seem very provincial, interpreting everything that happens in terms of this planet and its miniscule wars...”
“What Dr. Tamara Radanine would call ‘consistent structuration of the external stimulus world.’ ”
“Who? Oh, the she-psychologist. We asked her for some dope on this and she gave us the usual hooey.”
“Then this is what it boils down to: Science fiction or E. Phillips Oppenheim?”
“What do you think?”
“I have glimmerings of a third explanation that would cover all the facts.”
“Even Ching Fu?”
Basil weighed the question. “Yes, even Ching Fu. The Chinese are fond of ginger...”
The Verworns’ living room overlooked a yard cunningly planted to increase the sense of space. A half-moon of close-cropped turf at the center, its chord the house wall. Along its curve the neat grass gave way to a tangle of flowering shrubs and trees. On one side was a vacant lot without any wall. There the tangle of cultivated shrubs had been infiltrated by wind-blown weeds so that the garden blended almost imperceptibly with the wasteland beyond.
Mathilde welcomed Basil warmly and introduced her husband — a slender, brown man with an ancient Roman face — predatory nose, narrow lips, watchful eyes. His bow was Continental. Basil almost caught a ghostly clicking of heels.
After he had acquired a cocktail, he sat on the window-seat beside a girl in plain black with a string of crystal beads. Her brown hair was braided, wound around her head. Her gray eyes were speculative. “What do you think of the academic world?” she asked abruptly.
“Is this the academic world?”
“A cross-section.” Merriment glinted in her eyes. “A full professor of astro-physics, Anders Verworn, and an associate professor of political economy, Kurt Verworn. Even I am a humble assistant professor of social psychology. My name is Tamara Radanine.”
“What about Mrs. Albany?” Basil asked.
“Clare? She is a mystery.”
Clare Albany’s figure was small and well proportioned, her flesh still firm and slenderly rounded. Platinum rinse made the smooth scrolls of hair a uniform silver. The brilliant petunia-pink of lips and nails drew the eye away from wrinkles in her cheeks, veins on the backs of her hands. Her dress was a distracting fantasy of hyacinth lace. In either ear she wore an enormous star ruby. Against all this paleness her eyes stood out — dark, lustrous, passionate.