“Duff, old boy, can you come over to our box for a few minutes? Dad and mother are there.
And a couple of other people who want to see you.”
Out on the sunlit field the coronation ended. Eleanor’s float led a circling parade to the jubilant blaring of bands. Duff followed Scotty along an aisle of the jam-packed stadium.
He greeted the Smythe family happily, and found himself, to his surprise, shaking hands with General Baines, and then with a physicist he had always wanted to meet, a Doctor Adamas who was a member of the Atomic Energy Commission.
The general presently murmured to Duff,” Adamas and I actually came down to see you.”
“Me!”
“We both are flying back to Washington as soon as possible after this dandy game. If you could spare us a few minutes now, for a stroll outside—”
It was there, between the stadium walls and the parked cars, that Duff got the shock of his life. He walked along slowly with the general and the scientist.
The soldier did most of the talking. “No use, Bogan, of my telling you what the country owes you. We’ve dug out that bomb in New York. One in Philadelphia. Two in Washington. Soon have them all. The Stacey woman talked.”
“I should have figured her out sooner,” Duff said, with a self-depreciatory shake of his head. “And the country owes Scotty Symthe far more than me. After all, if he hadn’t driven over to the Yateses’ to help me, and if he hadn’t come in when nobody answered his knock, he’d never have found my note or phoned Higgins where I’d gone, and why. The search for the yacht wouldn’t have started.” Duff shuddered slightly. “They’d have got away with the whole thing!”