"Hiding Place" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

"Well?"
"I've got a hunch, Ridley, that the thing can be found," said Bales. "A hunch?"
"A hunch. Nothing more." No use telling Ridley about the slip Burroughs had
made. Nor about the way the man had thrown him out. In this business it didn't
pay to tell everything yon knew. When you told too much about other people, you
also told too much about yourself.
Ridley said, "Is it in the apartment?"
"It can't be. When he got away from the other place, he didn't have a chance to
take anything with him."
"I don't know. He didn't come home that time, but he might have found a way to
manage."
"He didn't find any way," said Bales flatly.
"Well, he didn't have the thing on him."
"I know," said Bales. "You searched him."
Ridley said, with a certain amount of irritation, "Not in his apartment, not on
his person. Where do you think it is? Put away in some locker room somewhere?
Not after all these years. A safety deposit box? He'd have to pay the rent for
it year after year, and we'd have traced it. Left with a friend? He had only one
friend who was close to him, and we searched that one's home too. And besides,
the man is dead now."
"So I've been told. I never heard how he died."
"Heart attack," said Ridley. "Don't worry, Bales, we had nothing to do with it.
We didn't go around murdering."
"Good for you. By the way, how much do you yourself get when we find what we're
looking for?"
"I get ten thousand," said Ridley. "Maybe an extra-special bonus if I'm very
smart. You must get more. Maybe an even more extra-special bonus if you are
smart. Still, it's out because there's no sense to it. This friend of his was
another Latin teacher. He had nothing to do with science. And he was no man to
keep secrets, either. We had him under our eyes for a couple of months, and he
didn't even suspect it.
"Hell, even the kids he taught could read his mind. They could always figure out
when he was going to spring a test, and other things like that. You don't leave
an important secret with that kind of man."
"No, you don't. StillЧ How did he die, did you say?" asked Bales.
"Bad heart," said Ridley. "He was putting out a new edition of Julius CaesarЧyou
know, that 'All Gaul is divided into three parts' stuffЧand the excitement must
have been too much for him. He keeled over just before he finished the last
page."
"Nothing there, then. StillЧall the sameЧand yetЧ"
Ridley nodded understandingly, the irritation in his voice stronger than ever.
"Damn it, everything would have been different if we had been called in right
away. But they never suspected. At first they thought that laboratory explosion
was something ordinaryЧvapor fumes near an oxygen tank, or something like that.
There were some details that didn't quite fit in with that theory, but you know
how these investigators are. It was the easiest answer, and they took it. And
when Burroughs quit, he gave them a sob story about losing his nerve. Two of the
guys who worked with him had been killed and he said he was afraid of its
happening to him. They didn't know he had found anything important."
He paused an instant, then went on, "They didn't catch on until almost ten years