"Winnie!" Jimmie interrupted me as though descending from a fiery cloud. "_Now_ I see why you've been acting so strangely. You're in _intelligence_. Of course you couldn't tell _anybody_. Darling!" Even the General looked embarrassed. Dorothy did not relax. "I am going to leave this room and this building," she announced. "And if anybody interferes with me, you are all witnesses that I am being detained illegally. Just call the O.S.S. and tell them that Army agents under General Wakely's orders broke into my bedroom at six this morning and kidnapped me." She turned and left the room. Nobody stopped her. Wakely pressed the buzzer again. "Sergeant!" he commanded, "see that Mrs. Jacklin is escorted out of the building and that our people keep an eye on her." "Now, Tompkins," the General resumed, "what's this word about Von Bieberstein being dead?" "If you'll have the ladies leave the room, General," I told him, "I'll give you my report." Jimmie and Virginia withdrew, with visible reluctance. "Jacklin is dead," I told him. "I think that your agents are mistaken in linking him to Von Bieberstein. In fact, I know it, because I think I know who Von Bieberstein really is. But I can't tell you without direct verbal authority from the President. I can tell you how Jacklin died." Major-General Wakely became once more the man of action. "Good, let's have it!" "The Navy Department," I began, "has been trying to beat the Army with the development of an atomic bomb--" "The dastards!" Wakely all but screamed. "The dirty, treacherous, sneaking dastards! You can't trust the Navy as far as you could throw a battleship. By Gad! Tompkins, _this_ is going straight to the White House." "They had a man named Chalmis who did something with thorium, General," I continued. "I'm not a scientist so I can't tell you about the process. It was simpler and less expensive than what General Groves is trying to do with uranium." "Groves!" Wakely spoke with soldierly pride. "Now there's a West Pointer for you! Four years and two billion dollars and he hasn't got it yet, but by Gad! the old West Point spirit never accepts defeat. He'll get a bomb if it takes fifty years and a hundred billion dollars. The Navy can't match that kind of guts, Tompkins. They're all yellow, the Annapolis crowd!" "Of course this thing wasn't anything like so good as the Army's bomb, General," I assured him. "It was something whipped up in eighteen months and cost less than fifty millions." "Pikers!" "Well, the Navy rushed through this sneak-bomb of theirs and sent Chalmis with it on a surprise raid against the Kuriles, on the latest light carrier, the Alaska." Wakely took a few portentous notes on a memo pad. "Jacklin was assigned to the Alaska and our information is that he was with Chalmis in the ship's magazine when the bomb--er--accidentally--er--went off. The ship was a total loss and everyone aboard died in the explosion." Wakely got to his feet and stood rigid for a moment.