Whole industries shut down for lack of workers and executives. There was privation and unemployment because death was in the air. There had not been so much as a firecracker set off, but the United States faltered in its stride and its life came almost to a standstill because of the imminence of atomic war.
BUT the owners of roadside taverns grew rich, and county fairs flourished, and roller-coaster proprietors bought new diamonds, and—dirt-track auto races in small towns were thronged with patrons. And Bud Gregory followed the dirt-track races. He had a trick that brought in plenty of money, nowadays. Plenty! Ten, fifteen, sometimes even twenty dollars in a single day, and without his doing a tap of work. He sat in blissful somnolence beside his antique car. His children brought him beer. Now and again he sent one of them to make a small bet.
Bud Gregory, who was the only hope of the survival of the American way of life, loafed blissfully, dozed contentedly, idled magnificently, and drank beer comfortably. He did not lift a finger unnecessarily from one day's end to another.
It was purest accident that, as civilization toppled in America, newspaper clippings reached Murfree which told him where Bud Gregory was.
He got a plane-ride to California by a combination of luck and desperation. On the way West he read and re-read the three newspaper clippings on which he believed the fate of the United States depended. One was an account of the impossible ride of an ancient jalopy through Los Angeles traffic at ninety miles an hour. The reporter who wrote it didn't believe it himself.
One was a digest of tall tales current among motor tourists, of a mysterious mechanic roaming the highways and performing miraculous repairs for ridiculously low prices. It was a feature-story, suggesting that motor-tramps were devising a legendary figure who would some day rival Paul Bunyan.
But the third was the important one. That told of a dirt-track automobile race in which the winner made absolutely unparalleled time, averaging three laps to the field's two, and achieving turns that even those who saw them didn't believe.
Murfee knew better than the eyewitnesses what had happened in all three cases. Bud Gregory had made his way across the continent in a car which should have fallen apart in the first ten miles. He was using that outrageous gift of his to keep from working. And no more than four clays before Murfree boarded a plane in Washington, he'd been somewhere near the dirt race-track at Palo Bajo, in California.
Murfree made for that place as fast as wangled passage on an Army plane could take him. He was lucky. There was a major-general on board, with a date with a blonde at Laguna Beach. The plane made only two stops between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
But Los Angeles, which had been thriving a week before, was nine-tenths deserted when Murfree arrived. Trains ran irregularly and buses practically not at all, and those which did run were scenes of riot as they loaded up.
Murfree spent seventy-five dollars of very hard-saved cash for a ride behind a motor-cyclist to a town ten miles from Palo Bajo. He trudged the rest of the way.
The open country was thickly populated and every roadside tree shaded a group of campers from the cities. But there was an extraordinary holiday air everywhere. Murfree was acutely conscious of it as he trudged along the highways with his single hand-bag for luggage.
Since bombs were apt to fall on the cities at any time there were camps and bivouacs of city people everywhere. But since none had fallen so far—and would not fall except on cities—there was a general effect of slightly apprehensive vacationing.
When Murfree trudged wearily into Palo Bajo his feet burned, his shoulders ached, and the muscles of his arms were sore from the unaccustomed labor of carrying a burden. He was worn out and dispirited but he went doggedly to the fairgrounds where the dirt-track races went on.
He went to the pits where the small, souped-up cars were serviced. He felt that there was no time to rest, and anyhow his appearance in an exhausted condition was in line with his plan for locating Bud Gregory. He went to the first pit, where a particularly greasy and especially dilapidated small racing-car was being worked on by two besmeared individuals.
"Look!" said Murfree heavily, "I've got to find a good mechanic. My car's stalled ten miles back. It ran dry and heated up and froze. I can't get a garage to touch it. They're jammed!"
THE last was true. With every car in California on the road and out of the cities, rural garagemen rubbed their hands in fiendish glee. It was so everywhere. One of these two men looked up gloomily;
"We're busy!"
"But I've got to get my car fixed," .said Murfree desperately. "Five bucks if you just tell me where to find a mechanic who'll do the job!"
One of the two got up and pointed.
"Try Mose," he said sourly. "That beefy-looking guy over there. He's bound to be some mechanic because the car he's got ain't any better than this one, and it goes faster and makes turns no car has a right to make. He watches it night and day—blast him—and you won't get nowhere, but you can talk to him."
Murfree handed over five dollars. He limped toward the shed that had been pointed out. A bulky man with squint eyes reared up as he approached. A grease-monkey I looked at him suspiciously.
"No visitors!" the big man snarled. "Clear out!"
"I've got a car in a ditch," said Murfree, "and the motor's frozen. I'll pay a hundred bucks for a mechanic to fix it."
"Beat it!" repeated the beefy man, formidably.
"I'll pay you ten bucks if you'll name a mechanic," said Murfree. "I can pay a hundred for fixing it."
He had barely two hundred dollars in the world, and this man was not Bud Gregory. But Murfree was sure he was on the right track. A car that went impossibly fast and made impossible turns. His own car, of course, was imaginary, but he looked worn-out and dusty and very convincing.
The grease-monkey said, drawling: "That fella could do it, Mose, and ten bucks'd come in handy."
"He'll do it for fifty," the squint-eyed man said shrewdly. "I get fifty or he don't do nothing. Take it or leave it." He turned to the grease-monkey. "You know where to find 'im."
Murfree handed over fifty dollars. He felt weak at the knees. It was enormously important to find Bud Gregory. Nobody else in the world would do!
The grease-monkey came back with Bud Gregory, who looked at Murfree.
"Howdy," Gregory said in an unhappy voice, and looked uneasily around for policemen. Murfree swallowed.
"Hello, Bud. I want to talk to you. Anywhere you say. How about some beer?"
CHAPTER III
Three Racketeers
INSTANTLY Bud Gregory brightened. He was tall and gangling and drooping. He was typically poor-white—Appalachian Highland version—bony and listless. He had worn an air of complacency until he saw Murfree, but that was gone now because he'd made a device which was a neutron-shield and set a monstrous atomic pile to work back in the Smoky Mountains.
Murfree was the man who had found out his responsibility for the devastation which resulted. But on the other hand, Murfree had paid him six hundred dollars for a device which absolutely abolished friction, and with that as capital he had set out to tour the United States without being bothered by detectives, and practically without working.
"Why—uh—sure, Mr. Murfree," said the man who knew by instinct all the things that the scientists of the world struggled to learn. "Beer? Sure! There's a place right close, Mr. Murfree. But I cain't go fur. There's some fellas comin' to see me today. They told me if I'd fix a dinkus for 'em, they'd pay me wages for as long as it works, without me doin' a tap of work more."