"Have you got any money that agrees with you?" a local sportsman
demanded pugnaciously. "If you have, put it up and let somebody cover
it!"
Sam wanted to draw back, but he had roused the civic pride of
Bradensburg. He tried to temporize and he was jeered at. In the end,
philosophically, he dragged out all the money he had with him and bet
it--eleven dollars. It was covered instantly, amid raucous laughter. And
on the way back to Batesville, he reflected unhappily that he was going
to make eleven dollars out of knowing what was going to happen in the
ninth inning of that ball game, but probably at the cost of losing
Rosie.
* * * * *
He tried to call his other self that night again. There was no more
answer than before. He unhooked the gadget and restored normal service
to himself. He rang Rosie's house. She answered the phone.
"Rosie," Sam asked yearningly, "are you still mad at me?"
"I never was mad at you," said Rose, gulping. "I'm mad at whoever was
talking to you on the phone and knows all our private secrets. And I'm
mad at you if you told him."
"But I didn't have to tell him! He's me! All he has to do is just
remember! I tried to call him last night and again this morning," he
added bitterly, "and he don't answer. Maybe he's gone off somewheres.
I'm thinking it might be a--a kind of illusion, maybe."
"You told me there'd be an elopement last night," retorted Rosie, her
voice wobbling, "and there was. Joe Hunt and the Widow Backus. Just like
you said!"
"It--it could've been a coincidence," suggested Sam, not too hopefully.
"I'm--w-waiting to see if Dunnsville beats Bradensburg seven to five
tomorrow, tied to the ninth, with George Peeby hitting a homer then with
Fred Holmes on second base. If--if that happens, I'll--I'll die!"
"Why?" asked Sam.
"Because it'll mean that I can't m-marry you ever, because somebody
else'd be looking over your shoulder--and we wouldn't ever be by
ourselves all our lives--night or day!"
She hung up, weeping, and Sam swore slowly and steadily and with venom
while he worked to hook up his device again--which did not make a
private conversation on a party line, but allowed a man to talk to
himself ten days away from where he was. And then Sam rang, and rang,
and rang. But he got no answer.
The following day, in the big fourth of July game, Dunnsville beat
Bradensburg seven to five. It was tied to the ninth. Then George Peeby
hit a homer, with Fred Holmes on second base. Sam collected his
winnings, but grimly, without joy.
He stayed home that night, worrying, and every so often trying to call
himself up on the device he had invented and been told--by himself--to
modify. It was a nice gadget, but Sam did not enjoy it. It was a nice
night, too. There was moonlight. But Sam did not enjoy that, either.
Moonlight wouldn't do Sam any good so long as there was another him in
the middle of the week after next, refusing to talk to him so he could
get out of the fix he was in.
* * * * *
Next morning, though, the phone woke him. He swore at it out of habit
until he got out of bed, and then he realized that his gadget was hooked
in and Central was cut off. He made it in one jump to the instrument.
"Hello!"
"Don't fret," said his own voice patronizingly. "Rosie's going to make
up with you."
"How in blazes d'you know what she's going to do?" raged Sam. "She won't
marry me with you hanging around! I've been trying to figure out a way
to get rid of you--"
"Quiet!" commanded the voice on the telephone irritably. "I'm busy. I've
got to go collect the money you've made for us."
"_You_ collect money? _I_ get in trouble and _you_ collect money?"
"I have to," his voice said with the impatient patience of one speaking
to a small idiot child, "before you can have it. Listen here. Where you
are, it's Wednesday. You're going over to Dunnsville today to fix some
phones. You'll be in Mr. Broaddus' law office about half-past ten. You
look out the window and notice a fella setting in a car in front of the
bank. Notice him good!"
"I won't do it," said Sam defiantly. "I ain't taking any orders from
you! Maybe you're me, but _I_ make money and _you_ collect it. For all I
know you spend it before I get to it! I'm quitting this business right
now. It's cost me my own true love and all _my_ life's happiness and to
hell with you!"
"You won't do it?" his own voice asked nastily. "Wait and see!"
So, that morning, the manager told Sam, when he reported for work, to
drive over to Dunnsville and check on some lines there. Sam balked. He
said there were much more important lines needing repair elsewhere. The
manager explained politely to Sam that Mr. Broaddus over in Dunnsville
had been taken drunk at a Fourth of July party and fallen out of a
window. He'd broken his leg, so it was a Christian duty to make sure he
had a telephone in working order in his office, and Sam could get over
there right away or else.
On the way to Dunnsville, Sam morosely remembered that he'd known about
Mr. Broaddus' leg. He had told himself about it on the telephone.
At half-past ten, he was fixing Mr. Broaddus' telephone when he
remembered about the man he was supposed to get a good look at, sitting
in a car in front of the bank. He made an angry resolution not, under
any circumstances, to glance outside of the lawyer's office. He
meditated savagely that, by this resolution, the schemes of his other
self in the future were abolished.
Naturally, he presently went to the window and looked to see what he was
abolishing.
* * * * *
There was a car before the bank with a reddish-haired man sitting in it.
A haze came out of the exhaust, showing that the motor was running. None
of this impressed Sam as remarkable. But as he looked, two other men
came running out of the bank. One of them carried a bag and both of them
had revolvers out and they piled into the car and the reddish-haired man
gunned it and it was abruptly a dwindling speck in a cloud of dust,
getting out of town.
[Illustration]
Three seconds later, old Mr. Bluford, president of the bank, came out
yelling, and the cashier came after him, and it was a first-rate bank
robbery they were yelling about. The men in the get-away car had
departed with thirty-five thousand dollars.
All of it had taken place so fast that Sam hardly realized what had
happened when he went out to see what it was all about, and was
instantly seized upon to do some work. The bankrobbers had shot out the
telephone cable out of town with a shotgun, so word couldn't get ahead
of them. Sam was needed to re-establish communications with the outside
world.
He did, absorbedly reflecting on the details of the robbery as he'd
heard them. He was high up on a telephone pole and the sheriff and
enthusiastic citizens were streaking past in cars to make his labors
unnecessary, when the personal aspect of all this affair hit him.
[Illustration]
"Migawd!" gasped Sam, shocked. "That me in the middle of next week told
me to come over here and watch a bank robbery! But he didn't let on what
was going to happen so's I could stop it!" He felt an incredulous
indignation come over him. "I woulda been a hero!" he said resentfully.
"Rosie woulda admired me! _That other me is a born crook!_"
Then he realized the facts. The other him was himself, only a week and a
half distant. The other him was so far sunk in dastardliness that he
permitted a crime to take place, feeling no more than sardonic
amusement.
And there was nothing he himself could do about it! He couldn't even
tell the authorities about this depraved character! They wouldn't
believe him unless he could get his other self on the telephone to admit
his criminality. Even then, what could they do?
Sam felt what little zest had been left in living go trickling out of
his climbers. He looked into the future and saw nothing desirable in it.
He painstakingly finished the repair of the shot-out telephone line, but
then he went down to his truck and drove over to Rosie's house.
There was but one thing he could do.
* * * * *
Rosie came suspiciously to the the door.
"I come to tell you good-by, Rosie," said Sam. "I just found out I'm a
criminal, so I aim to go and commit my crimes far away from my home and
the friends who never thought I'd turn out this way. Good-by, Rosie."
"Sam!" said Rosie. "What's happened now?"
He told her about the bank robbery and how his own self--in the week
after next--had known it was going to happen, and told Sam to go watch
it without giving him information by which it could have been stopped.
"He knew it after it happened," said Sam bitterly, "and he could've told
me about it before! He didn't, so he's a accessory to the crime. And he
is me, which makes me a accessory, too. Good-by, Rosie, my own true
love! You'll never see me again!"
"You set right down here," Rosie ordered firmly. "You haven't done a
thing yet, so it's that other you who's a criminal. You haven't got a
thing to run away for!"
"But I'm going to have! I'm doomed to be a criminal! It's that me in the
week after next! There's nothing to be done!"
"Says who? _I'm_ going to do something!"
"Like what?" asked Sam.
"I'm going to reform you," said Rosie, "before you start!"
* * * * *
She was a determined girl, that Rosie. She marched inside and put on her
blue jeans, then went to her father's woodshed where he kept his tools
and got a monkey wrench and stuck it in her hip pocket.