* * * * *
Suddenly he felt a surge of relief. He had noticed that the paper was
yellow and brittle-edged.
"Why are you so interested in old newspapers?" he asked.
"I wouldn't call day-before-yesterday's paper old," the girl objected,
pointing at the dateline: July 20, 1933.
"You're trying to joke," Jack told her.
"No, I'm not."
"But it's 1953."
"Now it's you who are joking."
"But the paper's yellow."
"The paper's always yellow."
He laughed uneasily. "Well, if you actually think it's 1933, perhaps
you're to be envied," he said, with a sardonic humor he didn't quite
feel. "Then you can't know anything about the Second World War, or
television, or the V-2s, or Bikini bathing suits, or the atomic bomb,
or--"
"Stop!" She had sprung up and retreated around her chair, white-faced.
"I don't like what you're saying."
"But--"
"No, please! Jokes that may be quite harmless on the mainland sound
different here."
"I'm really not joking," he said after a moment.
She grew quite frantic at that. "I can show you all last week's papers!
I can show you magazines and other things. I can prove it!"
She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to
pound.
At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack
thought he could hear the faint _chug_ of a motorboat. She pushed open
the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark
after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a
fireplace with brass andirons.
"Flash!" croaked a gritty voice. "After their disastrous break day
before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues...."
Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm
around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice
was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio
loudspeaker.
The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her
gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.
"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that
you're here."
"All right they won't like it."