These three parts lay on the counter in Grossman's laboratory like three key pieces to a jigsaw puzzle. All he had to do was fit them together and come up with a brilliant solution. He was feeling particularly brilliant this Sunday morning because his son had brought home a 92 on a high-school chemistry exam only two days ago; it always made Grossman feel brilliant when his son achieved anything. Well, let's see, he thought brilliantly. I've got three parts of a time bomb, or rather
He'd have had to run a positive lead to the battery and a negative lead to any metal part of the automobile, since the car itself would have served as a ground, right? So now we've got a power source to the clock, and the clock is running. Okay, right, the rest is simple, he'd have had to use an electric balsting cap, sure, there'd have been enough power to set one off, most commercial electric detonators can be fired by passing a continuous current of 0.3 to 0.4 amperes through the bridge wire. Okay, let's see, hold it it now, let's look at it.
The battery provides our source of power…. which is in turn set for a specific time, about eight, wasn't it? He'd have had to monkey around with the clock so that instead of the alarm ringing, a switch would close. That would complete the circuit, let's see, he'd have needed a lead running back to the battery, another lead running to the blasting cap, and a lead from the blasting cap to any metal part of the car. So that would look like …
And that's it.
He could have assembled the entire package at home, taken it with him in a tool box, and wired it to the car in a very short time - making certain, of course, that all his wires were properly insulated, to guard against a stray current touching off a premature explosion. The only remaining question is how he managed to get access to the car, but happily that's not my problem.
Whistling brilliantly, Sam Grossman picked up the telephone and called Detective Meyer Meyer at the 87th.
The municipal garage was downtown on Dock Street, some seven blocks from City Hall. Meyer Meyer picked up Bert Kling at ten-thirty. The drive down along the River Dix took perhaps twenty minutes. They parked on a meter across the street from the big concrete and tile structure, and Meyer automatically threw the visor sign, even though this was Sunday and parking regulations were not in force.
The foreman of the garage was a man named Spencer Coyle.
He was reading Dick Tracy and seemed less impressed by the two detectives in his midst than by the fictional exploits of his favorite comic strip sleuth. It was only with a great effort of will that he managed to tear himself away from the newspaper at all. He did not rise from his chair, though. The chair was tilted back against the tiled wall of the garage. The tiles, a vomitous shade of yellow, decorated too many government buildings all over the city, and it was Meyer's guess that a hefty hunk of graft had influenced some purchasing agent back in the Thirties, either that or the poor bastard had been color-blind. Spencer Coyle leaned back in his chair against the tiles, his face long and gray and grizzled, his long legs stretched out in front of him, the comic section still dangling from his right hand, as though he were reluctant to let go of it completely even though he had stopped lip-reading it. He was wearing the greenish-brown coveralls of a Transportation Division employee, his peaked hat sitting on his head with all the rakish authority of a major in the Air Force. His attitude clearly told the detectives that he did not wish to be disturbed at
The detectives found him challenging.
"Mr. Coyle," Meyer said, "I've just had a telephone call from the police laboratory to the effect that the bomb …"
"What bomb?" Coyle asked, and spat on the floor, narrowly missing Meyer's polished shoe.
