“Harry?” She chuckled. “Heavens! I know what Harry does with every cent! Better put it back Duff.”
He went upstairs. It was about four-thirty. Harry wouldn’t be home for more than an hour. Duff had opened the closet without curiosity; the box and its peculiar lock left him with no feeling but curiosity. He struggled with his conscience — and tried certain tools. When the lock clicked, he found it hard to raise the lid because of its weight. The underside was metal-lined. Lead. Whatever was in the box was packed in cotton. He raised the cotton and saw a very odd object of grayish-silver metal, machined and polished. It looked like a segment of a big egg, saw-toothed on one face, as a cog or gear would be. When he hefted it, he judged it weighed about five pounds. Maybe more.
He tried, as a graduate student of physics and a man with mechanical hobbies, to imagine what the object was. He couldn’t, at first. When, presently, he had a single idea, he pushed it from his mind: too crazy. Nevertheless, after some very worried thought, he went downstairs again.
“Sweeping the kids’ rooms,” he called untruthfully to Mrs. Yates. “Bring you your iced tea before long.”
He worked fast after that. With fine emery paper he removed a trace of the metal; with scouring powder he polished away the scratches made by the emery. He wore gloves and took extreme care. Having obtained a microscopic sample, he restored everything to the exact state in which he had found it. He left the cigarette in Harry’s ashtray after thought which told him Harry could easily notice his room had been dusted that day.
He then hid the emery-paper sample in the barn, washed his hands repeatedly and did a quick sweeping job on Charles’ and Marian’s rooms. He was making iced tea in the kitchen when Eleanor drove up in the family station wagon.
“Let me do that,” she said. “You’ve spilled on the drainboard and got ice on the floor!” She put a load of books on the table and turned her back to him. “Unbutton.”
Duff smiled and undid little buttons between her shoulder blades where she couldn’t reach easily. The dress was one of two cotton prints she’d found at a sale — yellow like her curly hair, light brown like her topaz eyes. She hurried from the room, called to her mother, and was soon back in the kitchen wearing an old dress and moccasins, instead of her high-heeled shoes.
A match struck; the burners of the kerosene stove slowly took fire. “I wish we had gas or electricity! Kerosene’s so slow!”
She bent over a bin Duff had made from lumber scraps, and came up with an armful of potatoes. “Peel!” She emptied out a sack of green peas and started shelling. “What’s new?”