The Atombomb Clue

Professor Cadler aimed to make a getaway with an atombomb sample. But though he'd figured on homicide and grand larceny to help him, Cadler forgot to make the payoff to a little atomic tattletale. Note: very shortexcerptIt didn't take a great deal of courage to put a ballet through Professor Edrick Nelton's head. After all, the little scientist was nothing to look at. Only his bald head, with corrugated lines that encased a powerful brain, gave a suggestion at being stupendous. Very few knew that Professor Nelton was on the verge of creating a new atomic bomb out of radium. Cadler knew. Of course he knew. He had to, being one of the twelve assistants to Professor Nelton. But they were the only ones, out of the whole wide world, who did. It wasn't any thought of betrayal that motivated Cadler's killing of the scientist. Nothing like that. He was just built that way, with a mind firmly convinced in its own way that one man alone could dominate all world governments, if he but had a super-powerful atomic bomb. So he let the grey cells of Professor Nelton's brain ooze gently into outer air through a bullethole that neatly intersected the frontal bone and the superciliary arch. He took the sample of isotopic radium which was the key to their work, dumped it from its lead container, and caught it deftly in a small flat lead can, shaped like a tobacco tin. This he fitted into his front shirt pocket. "Damn diplomats!" snorted Sergeant Brade Wesley, his underslung jaw extended belligerently as he looked up from giving the body the once-over where it lay on the laboratory floor. He glared around at his men as if he blamed them. "Half a dozen consuls on their way here now. You'd think by the list of his assistants that he had obtained an atomic expert from every country in the world. No chance to third-degree anybody." Cadler grinned, fingered secretly at the bulge in his shirt pocket under his coat. His consul had already arrived, and he wouldn't be searched.