He picked up the two pictures and went out.
Haynes was the only one who knew about the affair, and he worried. But
it is not easy to denounce someone as insane, when there is no evidence
that he is apt to be dangerous. He did go to the trouble to find out
that Jimmy acted in a reasonably normal manner, working industriously
and talking quite sanely in the daytime. Only Haynes suspected that of
nights he went home and experienced the impossible. Sometimes, Haynes
suspected that the impossible might be the fact--that had been an
amazingly good bit of trick photography--but it was too preposterous!
Also, there was no reason for such a thing to happen to Jimmy.
* * * * *
For a week after Haynes' pseudo-scientific explanation, however, Jimmy
was almost light-hearted. He no longer had to remind himself that
Jane was dead. He had evidence that she wasn't. She wrote to him in
the diary which he found on her desk, and he read her messages and
wrote in return. For a full week the sheer joy of simply being able to
communicate with each other was enough.
The second week was not so good. To know that Jane was alive was good,
but to be separated from her without hope was not. There was no meaning
in a cosmos in which one could only write love-letters to one's wife or
husband in another now which only might have been. But for a while both
Jimmy and Jane tried to hide this new hopelessness from each other.
Jimmy explained this carefully to Haynes before it was all over. Their
letters were tender and very natural, and presently there was even time
for gossip and actual bits of choice scandal....
Haynes met Jimmy on the street one day, after about two weeks. Jimmy
looked better, but he was drawn very fine. Though he greeted Haynes
without constraint, Haynes felt awkward. After a little he said,
"Er--Jimmy. That matter we were talking about the other day--Those
photographs--"
"Yes. You were right," said Jimmy casually. "Jane agrees. There is more
than one now. In the now I'm in, Jane was killed. In the now she's in,
I was killed."
Haynes fidgeted. "Would you let me see that picture of the door again?"
he asked. "A trick film like that simply can't be perfect! I'd like to
enlarge that picture a little more. May I?"
"You can have the film," said Jimmy. "I don't need it any more."
Haynes hesitated. Jimmy, quite matter-of-factly, told him most of what
had happened to date. But he had no idea what had started it. Haynes
almost wrung his hands.
"The thing can't be!" he said desperately. "You _have_ to be crazy,
Jimmy!"
But he would not have said that to a man whose sanity he really
suspected.
Jimmy nodded. "Jane told me something, by the way. Did you have a
near-accident night before last? Somebody almost ran into you out on
the Saw Mill Road?"
Haynes started and went pale. "I went around a curve and a car plunged
out of nowhere on the wrong side of the road. We both swung hard. He
smashed my fender and almost went off the road himself. But he went
racing off without stopping to see if I'd gone in the ditch and killed
myself. If I'd been five feet nearer the curve when he came out of it--"
"Where Jane is," said Jimmy, "you were. Just about five feet nearer the
curve. It was a bad smash. Tony Shields was in the other car. It killed
him--where Jane is."