Sight Unseen (2 page)

Another marine came running up to the guard shack.

“If you’ll get out of the car, sir,” the first marine said, “we’ll have to search you, and Sergeant Cummins here will take
you to Mr. Dzeloski’s office.”

“Search me? You’re kidding?”

“No, sir.”

“Search me for what?”

The beefy sergeant said, “To see what you got.”

Both marines had a look on their faces—blank deadpan looks of poker players with full houses or straight flushes—that made
Lockwood wary. It took them fifteen minutes to search him and his car. Sergeant Cummins took his .38 and the box of shells.

“I’m licensed to carry that, Sergeant,” Lockwood told him.

“Sir, I’ll turn it over to Dr. Dzeloski.”

Lockwood nodded. This whole thing was more and more of a mystery. He offered the first marine a Camel. As the soldier took
one, he relaxed a bit. Lockwood smiled and pressed another two on him. The sergeant glared at both of them.

“Doesn’t look like you get much company out here,” Lockwood said to the private, hoping to learn something.

“I don’t know,” the soldier answered. “We just got out here this morning. I don’t know what kind of detail this is going to
be. The C.O.’s jumpy as hell.”

The sergeant left his Springfield with the marine at the guardhouse, unhooked the restraining strap of his holstered .45 automatic,
and got in Lockwood’s car on the passenger side.

“Drive on, Mr. Lockwood. There’s a parking lot behind the building.”

As they rounded the building, Lockwood asked, “Think you’ll like it out here?”

“Park it in that third spot, if you will, Mr. Lockwood.”

They entered the huge concrete building, and Lockwood was led through a maze of corridors and stairways. None of the many
metal doors they passed had a name on it, only numbers or signs that read
KEEP OUT—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
. Odors of machine oil hit them in waves, but Lockwood heard no sounds of machinery. They met few people, and those were serious-faced
young men in white shirts and drab neckties with long slide-rule cases flapping against their hips. They displayed no curiosity
about Lockwood and his escort.

On the third floor they turned into a numbered door, and a secretary looked up and said, “Oh, there you are! Come right in,”
and she led Lockwood and Sergeant Cummins into the office behind her desk.

A small, middle-aged man with a large handlebar moustache and smile stood up from a huge desk to greet Lockwood.

“Mr. Lockwood! From Transatlantic! How good of you to come so fast.” The man came around the desk, his hand outstretched.
“I’m Josef Dzeloski, president of Northstar.”

Lockwood smiled and allowed himself to be steered into a club chair next to the sofa on which Dzeloski sat.

“Thank you, Sergeant Cummings,” Dzeloski said, dismissing him.

“Dr. Dzeloski, what should I do with Mr. Lockwood’s things?” The sergeant held up the .38 pistol and the box of cartridges.

“On my desk, Sergeant.”

When they were alone, Dzeloski sighed and said, “That’s the trouble with government work. The only thing that counts with
that kind of mentality is not breaking the rules. Now, when can we expect reimbursement, Mr. Lockwood?”

Lockwood grinned at the man’s presumption. “Mr. Dzeloski—”

“
Dr
. Dzeloski,” he was corrected with a friendly smile.

“Dr. Dzeloski, we don’t even know
what
was taken, or for sure that something
was
taken. How about you telling me what this is all about?”

The man’s friendly smile disappeared. “You mean you don’t know?”

He stood up, went to his desk, and pushed a button on an intercom.

“Myra,” he called. “Find out if that clearance on William Lockwood from Transatlantic has come through. And then, you and
Stanley come in, will you?”

When he came back, Dzeloski looked sheepish and said, “I almost forgot completely about security. God, I hate this secrecy.
I’ll just give you some general background till the others get here.”

Dzeloski began by saying he’d first started Northstar in 1931, when he’d been able to set up a refrigerator company cheaply
after the Crash. For several years the company had done poorly, had almost gone under three times, until Dzeloski had managed
to land a contract to make field refrigerators for the U.S. Army. Then the Army Air Corps needed some special parts machined
for its newest biplanes, and one thing led to another, till now—with the addition of some bright young engineering types—Northstar
invented and developed “devices” for the Air Corps. To keep what they did under wraps, the Air Corps had even come up with
the money to move them into this plant out here with the potato farmers.

“That marine guard at the gate is certainly an advertisement,” Lockwood said.

Dzeloski grimaced. “He’s a case of too little and too late. We didn’t have anyone but our own staff till this morning, depending
on the loneliness of this spot to keep us invisible.”

A fast knock at the door announced a tall, nervous-looking man of thirty-five, whom Dzeloski introduced as Stanley Greer,
“our chief engineer.” Before Lockwood could sit, an alert-looking woman in her early thirties with a mane of fiery red hair
entered. Dr. Dzeloski introduced her as “Myra Rodman—our head of research—our own Madame Curie.”

Myra stepped forward with her hand outstretched and surprised Lockwood with the firmness of her grip.

“Haven’t you worn out that joke, Josef?” she asked Dzeloski, who only beamed at her.

She was something to beam at, Lockwood told himself as he sat down. She looked intelligent, bright, crisp, and female as all
getout. The room had taken on a snappier, more alert tone just on her entry. Lockwood felt his nostrils open with excitement
and smiled at himself. The three men averted their eyes as Myra sat with suave grace and crossed her legs.

“Can any of you tell me whether this missing object is animal, mineral, or vegetable?” Lockwood asked them.

The three shot each other fast glances.

“He doesn’t have clearance yet, does he, Myra?” asked Dzeloski.

Before she could answer, another knock at the door, and a WAC burst in with a folder she delivered silently to Myra before
she withdrew just as quickly. Lockwood saw his name on the folder’s cover. Myra opened it and read silently for several long
seconds.

“Congratulations, Mr. William Lockwood, born 1901, age thirty-seven, claims investigator at Transatlantic for five years,
Columbia law graduate, and hero of New York’s Fighting 69th.”

Lockwood gaped. “You’ve got all that there? This quickly?”

“And much more,” she said in her smart bright way. “You’ve passed security. You can tell him anything you want to about the
missing object, Josef. But not about anything else.”

“Terrific!” said Josef. “A bombsight, Mr. Lockwood, that’s what was stolen last night.”

“A bombsight?” Lockwood asked, amazed. “Five hundred pounds of bombsight? $75,000 worth?”

Myra and Greer gave wry smiles, and Josef chuckled. “$106,000 worth of bombsight, my dear fellow. Over the past four years,
we’ve developed three bombsights, each one more complex than the last. This one is for the next XB-17 Flying Fortress bomber.”

Puzzled, Lockwood gestured feebly and asked, “But what’s so complicated?”

Greer answered, “Mr. Lockwood, when a plane is flying at 15,00 feet at 300 miles per hour, with a bank of clouds below and
a wind of 20 miles an hour blowing across the bomb’s path, it takes more than a tube with a couple of cross hairs to calculate
when the bombs should be released.”

Myra took up the explanation, “We have devices now that can put a 500-pound bomb, at night, within 2000 feet of the target.
The bombsight that was stolen last night was a working prototype that I expected would put that same 500-pounder within 150
feet of where we want it—at night, with no moon or stars.”

Lockwood whistled. “But who would—that’s something! But who would want it besides the government?”

“America has enemies,” Myra said.

“And they’d love to get their hands on it. It could put them a couple years ahead in their own programs,” Greer said. “And
put us six months behind.”

“And you think maybe they got it last night?” Lockwood asked.

“We are sure
one
of them got it last night,” Myra answered.

“We’ll expect our reimbursement at once, Mr. Lockwood,” Dzeloski said. “Or you might say, since they had a hand in negotiating
the insurance contract, the G-men will expect it.”

“They’re on their way up from Washington now,” Myra said.

“We’re out of funds till July 1, the beginning of the fiscal year,” Greer said. “You will pay in ninety-six hours, won’t you?
We were ready to make delivery to the Air Corps, when we were to receive $125,000.”

Lockwood held his hand up. “Look, we don’t want to hold up America’s military affairs, but we have our procedures. First,
I have to make sure there was a product, and then that it was in fact stolen—not misplaced in a closet someplace. And then
that perhaps someone here, a member of this firm, didn’t steal—hold it! hold it!—misplace it, let’s say—”

“Mr. Lockwood,” Dzeloski interrupted. Lockwood saw that he was flustered and shaky. “We
have
to have that money—it’s not just that
we’ll
be wiped out in weeks without it—although we will. If we fold, this country will go from being a year or two ahead of certain
European countries to being twelve to eighteen months behind.”

“We’ve
got
to build a replacement,” Myra said, “At once.”

“Or get the bombsight back,” Lockwood countered.

“That’s the G-men’s job,” Greer said.

“Well, if Transatlantic finds it,” Lockwood said, “then we save ourselves a lot of money, don’t we?”

Lockwood paused to let this sink in. He had been in this spot a thousand times before with clients, and he could see from
the way they set their faces and snapped glances at each other that they were furious with his failure to pay at once.

He stood up and said, “Would one of you show me where a bombsight sleeps when its keepers go home for the night?”

With ill-concealed anger, Myra Rodman and Stanley Greer took Lockwood to Area C on the third floor, from which the bombsight
had been stolen.

Area C was a long room, thirty by sixty feet, with design tables at one end and a full machine shop at the other. This morning
it was deserted, but Myra said it was usually full of engineers and machinists. “The G-men asked me not to let them in and
trample down the evidence.”

“What evidence?” Lockwood asked.

She shrugged. “Got me.” She led the way to a metal table about three feet high. “Here’s where the Northstar 3 Bombsight sat
when we left last night at 7:00. When the machinists came in this morning at 8:00, it had disappeared.”

“How can you get in and out of here? Besides the elevator we came up in?” Lockwood asked.

Greer said, “That’s just it. The elevator’s the only way.”

Lockwood frowned. “The
only
way! What about the fire codes? An elevator isn’t a fire exit.”

Myra smiled a thin smile. “Patchogue doesn’t have a fire code. We built Areas A, B, and C according to the government’s notions
of security.”

“So, no windows and just the elevator to get in and out,” Lockwood said. “This thing had to go down the elevator. How’s it
operated? You used a key when we came up?”

“That’s right,” Myra said. “It’s run off a key switch.”

“Who has keys?”

“Well, Myra and I do,” Greer said. “We give our keys to the elevator operator during the day.”

“One of us has to be here on duty whenever the operator’s running the elevator,” Myra said.

“And those are the only two keys?” Lockwood pressed.

Myra and Greer looked at each other, and Lockwood wondered what the look meant.

“Dr. Dzeloski has one,” Myra said. “And security has another. Pops would need a complete set to make his rounds.”

“Who’s Pops?”

“The night watchman,” Myra said. “He and Bingo, his dog, come on at 7:00 when we close down, and leave when we open up in
the morning. I usually lock up. Stanley opens up in the morning.”

“So that’s four keys,” Lockwood said. “Can’t the elevator be run without a key? Can somebody override the key switch?”

Greer made a grimace. “I doubt it. When we built this place, we put most of the wires in steel pipes, and the control box
is here in Area C.”

“How much did this thing weigh?” Lockwood asked.

“Five hundred pounds,” Myra said.

“What? How did they get it out? How would they carry it away?”

“Ah—one of our little dollies is missing, too,” Greer said.

Lockwood groaned. “You mean you left something in here that could be used to carry off the bombsight? Don’t you know you never
leave a safe’s wheels on?—that thieves can just roll it away?”

The two of them looked sheepish and shook their heads.

“So nobody ever conducted a theft work-up out here, checking procedures?” Lockwood asked.

“Does that mean you won’t pay?” Myra asked.

“No, probably not,” Lockwood said. “But whoever wrote this policy ought to have his head examined, that’s all.”

Lockwood had them show him over the room and explain the operation. The bombsight had been in its final stages of completion,
during which time it was undergoing final bench tests before being loaded next week into a real XB-17 at Lakehurst, New Jersey,
for field trials.

“Odd it should be stolen this week, just as it’s completed, isn’t it?” Lockwood said in a suggestive way. He watched the two
of them closely.

“You think somebody who works here told the thieves when to take it?” Myra said.

“And
how
, and
gave
them the key, and
set
up some way for them to cart it off.”

“You’re making us sound awfully dumb,” Stanley said.

Lockwood looked at him. “You have been. I’m just surprised they waited this long. I bet they waited till you’d put the finishing
touches on it before carting it off.”