"If we release the story to the press," I suggested, "this might make a fine action shot. You see, Kujack used to be one of the best kickers in the Big Ten, and a lot of newspapermen will still remember him." Then I sprang the biggest news of all. "During the last three days of practice, sir, he's been consistently kicking the ball twenty, thirty and even forty yards farther than he ever did with his own legs. Than anybody, as a matter of fact, ever has with real legs."
"That's a wonderful angle," the boss said excitedly. "A world's record, made with a cybernetic leg!"
"It should make a terrific picture," Kujack said. "I've also been practicing a big, broad, photogenic grin." Luckily the boss didn't hear him—by this time he was bending over the legs, studying the solenoids.
After Kujack left, the boss congratulated me. Very, very warmly. It was a most gratifying moment. We chatted for a while, making plans for the press conference, and then finally he said, "By the way, do you happen to know anything about your friend Ellsom? I'm worried about him. He went off on Thanksgiving and hasn't been heard from at all ever since."
That was alarming, I said. When the boss asked why, I told him a little about how Len had been acting lately, talking and drinking more than was good for him. With all sorts of people. The boss said that confirmed his own impressions.
I can safely say we understood each other. I sensed a very definite rapport.
November 30, 1959
It was bound to happen, of course. As I got it from the boss, he decided after our talk that Len's absence needed some looking into, and he tipped off Security about it. A half dozen agents went to work on the case and right off they headed for Steve Lundy's apartment in the Village and, sure enough, there was Len.
Len and his friend were both blind drunk and there were all sorts of incriminating things in the room—lots of peculiar books and pamphlets, Lundy's identification papers from the Lincoln Brigade, an article Lundy was writing for an anarchist-pacifist magazine about what he calls Emsiac. Len and his friend were both arrested on the spot and a full investigation is going on now.