attack of cold feet at the sight of her. 'No table,' he said. 'We better go someplace else.'
I practically dragged him in. 'We'll get a table in a minute,' I said.
'Julio,' said the girl, when she saw him.
He looked sheepish. 'Hello, Rosa. I'm back for a while.'
'I'm glad to see you again,' she said tremulously.
'I'm glad to see you again too—' I nudged him. 'Rosa, this is my good friend Beel. We work together in Washington.'
'Pleased to meet you, Rosa. Can you have dinner with us? I'll bet you and Julio have a lot to talk over.'
'Well, I'll see …look, there's a table for you. I'll see if I can get away.'
We sat down and she flagged down the proprietress and got away in a hurry.
All three of us had arroz con polio—rice with chicken and lots of other things. Their shyness wore off and I was dealt out of the conversation, but I didn't mind. They were a nice young couple. I liked the way they smiled at each other, and the things they remembered happily—
movies, walks, talks. It made me feel like a benevolent uncle with one foot in the grave. It made me forget for a while the look on Gomez's face when he turned from the blackboard he had covered with too-simple math.
Over dessert I broke in. By then they were unselfconsciously holding hands. 'Look,' I said, 'why don't you two go on and do the town? Julio, I'll be at the Madison Park Hotel.' I scribbled the address and gave it to him. 'And I'll get a room for you. Have fun and reel in any time.' I rapped his knee. He looked down and I slipped him four twenties. I didn't know whether he had money on him or not, but anything extra the boy could use he had coming to him.
'Swell,' he said. 'Thanks.' And looked shame-faced while I looked paternal.
I had been watching a young man who was moodily eating alone in a corner, reading a paper. He was about Julio's height and build and he wore a sports jacket pretty much like Julio's. And the street was pretty dark outside.
The young man got up moodily and headed for the cashier's table.
'Gotta go,' I said. 'Have fun.'
I went out of the restaurant right behind the young man and walked as close behind him as I dared, hoping we were being followed.
After a block and a half of this, he turned on me and snarled: 'Wadda you, mister? A wolf? Beat it!'
'Okay,' I said mildly, and turned and walked the other way. Hig-gins and Dalhousie were standing there, flat- footed and open-mouthed.
They sprinted back to the Porto Bello, and I followed them. But Julio and Rosa had already left.
'Tough, fellows,' I said to them as they stood in the doorway. They looked as if they wanted to murder me. 'He won't get into any trouble,'
I said. 'He's just going out with his girl.' Dalhousie made a strangled noise and told Higgins: 'Cruise around the neighborhood. See if you can pick them up. I'll follow Vilchek.' He wouldn't talk to me. I shrugged and got a cab and went to the Madison Park Hotel, a pleasantly unfashionable old place with big rooms where I stay when business brings me to New York. They had a couple of adjoining singles; I took one in my own name and the other for Gomez.
I wandered around the neighborhood for a while and had a couple of beers in one of the ultra-Irish bars on Third Avenue. After a pleasant argument with a gent who thought the Russians didn't have any atomic bombs and faked their demonstrations and that we ought to blow up their industrial cities tomorrow at dawn, I went back to the hotel.
I didn't get to sleep easily. The citizen who didn't believe Russia could maul the United States pretty badly or at all had started me thinking again—all kinds of ugly thoughts. Dr. Mines, who had turned into a shrunken old man at the mention of applying Gomez's work. The look on the boy's face. My layman's knowledge that present-day 'atomic energy' taps only the smallest fragment of the energy locked up in the atom. My layman's knowledge that once genius has broken a trail in science, mediocrity can follow the trail.
But I slept at last, for three hours.
At four-fifteen A.M. according to my watch the telephone rang long and hard. There was some switchboard and long-distance-operator mumbo-jumbo and then Julio's gleeful voice: 'Beel! Congratulate us.
We got marriage!'
'Married,' I said fuzzily. 'You got married, not marriage. How's that again?'
'We got married. Me and Rosa. We get on the train, the taxi driver takes us to justice of peace, we got married, we go to hotel here.'
'Congratulations,' I said, waking up. 'Lots of congratulations. But you're under age, there's a waiting period—'
'Not in this state,' he chuckled. 'Here is no waiting periods and here I have twenty-one years if I say so.'
'Well,' I said. 'Lots of congratulations, Julio. And tell Rosa she's got herself a good boy.'
'Thanks, Beel,' he said shyly. 'I call you so you don't worry when I don't come in tonight. I think I come in with Rosa tomorrow so we tell her mama and my mama and papa. I call you at the hotel, I still have the piece of paper.'
'Okay, Julio. All the best. Don't worry about a thing.' I hung up, chuckling, and went right back to sleep.
Well, sir, it happened again.
I was shaken out of my sleep by the strong, skinny hand of Admiral MacDonald. It was seven-thirty and a bright New York morning.
Dalhousie had pulled a blank canvassing the neighborhood for Gomez, got panicky, and bucked it up to higher headquarters.
'Where is he?' the admiral rasped.
'On his way here with his bride of one night,' I said. 'He slipped over a couple of state lines and got married.'
'By God,' the admiral said, 'we've got to do something about this. I'm going to have him drafted and assigned to special duty. This is the last time—'
'Look,' I said. 'You've got to stop treating him like a chesspiece. You've got duty-honor-country on the brain and thank God for that. Somebody has to; it's your profession. But can't you get it through your head that Gomez is a kid and that you're wrecking his life by forcing him to grind out science like a machine? And I'm just a stupe of a layman, but have you professionals worried once about digging too deep and blowing up the whole shebang?'
He gave me a piercing look and said nothing.
I dressed and had breakfast sent up. The admiral, Dalhousie, and I waited grimly until noon, and then Gomez phoned up.
'Come on up, Julio,' I said tiredly.
He breezed in with his blushing bride on his arm. The admiral rose automatically as she entered, and immediately began tongue-lashing the boy. He spoke more in sorrow than in anger. He made it clear that Gomez wasn't treating his country right. That he had a great talent and it belonged to the United States. That his behavior had been irresponsible. That Gomez would have to come to heel and realize that his wishes weren't the most important thing in his life. That he could and would be drafted if there were any more such escapades.
'As a starter, Mr. Gomez,' the admiral snapped, 'I want you to set down, immediately, the enfieldment matrices you have developed. I consider it almost criminal of you to arrogantly and carelessly trust to your memory alone matters of such vital importance. Here!' He thrust pencil and paper at the boy, who stood, drooping and disconsolate.
Little Rosa was near crying. She didn't have the ghost of a notion as to what it was about.
Gomez took the pencil and paper and sat down at the writing table silently. I took Rosa by the arm. She was trembling. 'It's all right,' I said.
'They can't do a thing to him.' The admiral glared briefly at me and then returned his gaze to Gomez.
The boy made a couple of tentative marks. Then his eyes went wide and he clutched his hair. 'Dios mlo!' he said. 'Estd per dido! Olvidado!'
Which means: 'My God, it's lost! Forgotten!'
The admiral turned white beneath his tan. 'Now, boy,' he said slowly and soothingly. 'I didn't mean to scare you. You just relax and collect yourself. Of course you haven't forgotten, not with that memory of yours. Start with
