'The greatest boon to divorce lawyers and spies since the Mickey Finn. A microminiaturized wire recorder. The wire is spring driven so that it can't be spotted by a snooper circuit. The insides are transistors and resistors and capacitors and stuff, all packed in plastic - you could drop it out of a cab and not hurt it. The power is about as much radioactivity as you would find in a watch dial, but shielded, The wire is good for twenty-four hours. Then you slide out a spool and stick in another one - the spring is part of the spool, already wound.'
'Will it explode?' she asked nervously.
'You could bake it in a cake.'
'But, Ben, you've got me scared to go back into his room now.'
'Unnecessary. You can go into the room next door, can't you?'
'I suppose so.'
'This thing has donkey's ears. Fasten the concave side flat against a wall - surgical tape will do nicely - and it picks up every word spoken in the room beyond. Is there a closet or something?'
She thought about it. 'I'm bound to be noticed if I duck in and out of that adjoining room too much; it's really part of the suite he's in. Or they may start using it. Look, Ben, his room has a third wall in common with a room on another corridor. Will that do?'
'Perfect. Then you'll do it?'
'Umm? give it to me. I'll think it over and see how the land lies.'
Caxton stopped to polish it with his handkerchief. 'Put on your gloves.'
'Why?'
'Possession of it is slightly illegal, good for a short vacation behind bars. Always use gloves on it and the spare spools - and don't get caught with it.'
'You think of the nicest things!'
'Want to back out?'
Jill let out a long breath. 'No. I've always wanted a life of crime. Will you teach me gangster lingo? I want to be a credit to you.'
'Good girl!' A light blinked over the door, he glanced up. 'That must be your cab. I rang for it when I went to get this.'
'Oh. Find my shoes, will you? No, don't come up to the roof. The less I'm seen with you from here on the better.'
'As you wish.'
As he straightened up from putting her shoes on, she took his head in both hands and kissed him. 'Dear Ben! No good can come of this and I hadn't realized you were a criminal type - but you're a good cook, as long as I set up the combination? and I just might marry you if I can trap you into proposing again.'
'The offer remains open.'
'Do gangsters marry their molls? Or is it 'frails'? We'll see' She left hurriedly.
Jill Boardman placed the bug without difficulty. The patient in the adjacent room in the next corridor was bedfast; Jill often Stopped to gossip. She stuck it against the wall over a closet shelf while chattering about how the maids just never dusted high in the closets.
Removing the spool the next day and inserting a fresh one was just as easy; the patient was asleep. She woke while Jill was still perched on a chair and seemed surprised; Jill diverted her with a spicy and imaginary ward rumor.
Jill sent the exposed wire by mail, using the hospital's post office as the impersonal blindness of the postal system seemed safer than a cloak amp; dagger ruse. But her attempt to insert a third fresh spool she muffed. She had waited for a time when the patient was asleep but had just mounted the chair when the patient woke up. 'Oh! Hello, Miss Boardman.'
Jill froze with one hand on the wire recorder. 'Hello, Mrs. Fritschlie,' she managed to answer. 'Have a nice nap?'
'Fair,' the woman answered peevishly. 'My back aches.'
'I'll rub it.'
'Doesn't help much. Why are you always fiddling around in my closet? Is something wrong?'
Jill tried to reswallow her stomach. The woman wasn't really suspicious, she told herself. 'Mice,' she said vaguely.
''Mice?' Oh, I can't abide mice! I'll have to have another room, right away!'
Jill tore the little instrument off the closet wall and stuffed it into her pocket, jumped down from the chair and spoke to the patient. 'Now, now, Mrs. Fritschlie - I was just looking to see if there were any mouse holes in that closet. There aren't.'
'You're sure?'
'Quite sure. Now let's rub the back, shall we? Easy over.'
Jill decided she could not plant the bug in that room again and concluded that she would risk attempting to place it in the empty room which was part of K-12, the Suite of the Man from Mars. But it was almost time for her relief before she was free again. She got the pass key.
Only to find that she did not need it; the door was unlocked and held two more marines; the guard had been doubled. One of them glanced up as she opened the door. 'Looking for someone?'
'No. Don't sit on the bed, boys,' she said crisply. 'If you need more chairs, we'll send for them.' She kept her eye on the guard while he got reluctantly up; then she left, trying to conceal her trembling.
The bug was still burning a hole in her pocket when she went off duty; she decided to return it to Caxton at once. She changed clothes, shifted it to her bag, and went to the roof. Once in the air and headed toward Ben's apartment she began to breathe easier. She phoned him in flight.
'Caxton speaking.'
'Jill, Ben. I want to see you. Are you alone?'
He answered slowly, 'I don't think it's smart, kid. Not now.'
'Ben, I've got to see you. I'm on my way over.'
'Well, okay, if that's how it's got to be.'
'Such enthusiasm!'
'Now look, hon, it isn't that I-'
''Bye!' She switched off calmed down and decided not to take it out on poor Ben - fact was they both were playing out of their league. At least she was - she should have stuck to nursing and left politics alone.
She felt better when she saw Ben and better yet when she kissed him and snuggled into his arms. Ben was such a dear - maybe she really should marry him. But when she tried to speak he put a hand over her mouth, then whispered close against her ear, 'Don't talk. No names and nothing but trivialities. I may be wired by now.'
She nodded and he led her into the living room. Without speaking she got out the wire recorder and handed it to him. His eyebrows went up when he saw that she was returning not just a spool but the whole works but he made no comment. Instead he handed her a copy of the afternoon Post.
'Seen the paper?' he said in a natural voice. 'You might like to glance at it while I wash up.'
'Thanks.' As she took it he pointed to a column; he then left, taking with him the recorder. Jill saw that the column was Ben's own syndicated outlet.
THE CROW'S NEST by Ben Caxton
Everyone knows that jails and hospitals have one thing in common: they both can be very hard to get out of. In some ways a prisoner is less cut off than a patient; a prisoner can send for his lawyer, can demand a Fair Witness, he can invoke habeas corpus and require the jailor to show cause in open court.
But it takes only a simple NO VISITORS sign, ordered by one of the medicine men of our peculiar tribe, to consign a hospital patient to oblivion more thoroughly than ever was the Man in the Iron Mask.
To be sure, the patient's next of kin cannot be kept out by this device - but the Man from Mars seems to have no next of kin. The crew of the ill-fated Envoy had few ties on Earth; if the Man in the Iron Mask - pardon me I mean the 'Man from Mars' - has any relative who is guarding his interests, a few thousand inquisitive reporters (such as your present scrivener) have been unable to verify it.
Who speaks for the Man from Mars? Who ordered an armed guard placed around him? What is his dread disease that no one may catch a glimpse of him, nor ask him a question? I address you, Mr. Secretary General; the explanation about 'physical weakness' and 'gee-fatigue' won't wash; if that were the answer, a ninety-pound nurse
