Charles dined alone on a pickup meal and went to bed early. Undressed,
in his third-floor bedroom, he scratched a naked stomach that, at
forty-one, was beginning to show a faint bulge, noted a more marked
bulge in a side pocket of the jacket he had just removed and hung up.
He dug out its source--an odd little gadget, nicknamed the "spider,"
which he had shown to Henri Dubois and Corinne Forrester that afternoon
when they were in his office. It had happened to be on his desk.
Supposed to spray a transparent waterproof film over any surface, its
backers were seeking money to promote it as a substitute for raincoats
and umbrellas.
There was a hitch, of course--it clung abominably to human hair
and for this reason, since it was chiefly intended for women, its
financing was still highly problematical. But it had certain other
uses, according to the testing laboratories, which its inventor seemed
to have missed. Justin must, he decided, have stuck it into his pocket
instead of back on his desk. He wondered what it would be like to
plaster himself with a form-fitting suit of invisible pajamas.
Then, regretfully, he laid it on the bedside table and got into
orthodox nightwear. After settling himself with twin pillows, he
reached for a well-worn copy of Esther Forbes' _Paul Revere and the
World He Lived In_, began to browse through its vivid pages.
Again Old Boston came to life. Church bells pealed, small colored
sweeps carried their brooms through the cobbled streets, fish vendors
shouted the merits of their wares.
Contrary to the bowdlerizations of nineteenth century historians, there
was little of the Puritan in Boston life two centuries ago. Chaperons
were unheard of north of Spanish territory and the powerful rum of
Medford and Newburyport was the staple festive drink of a generation
which would have considered cola depraved.
According to a young rhymester of the period, describing a party "where
kisses and drams set the virgins aflame"--
The chairs in wild order flew quite round the room,
Some threatened with fire brands, some with a broom,
While others, resolved to increase the uproar,
Lay tussling the girls in wide heaps on the floor.
Eighteenth century Boston, Justin decided, would hardly have been a
happy home for inhibitions. He tried to conjure up a vision of one of
the merry maids of the period, a girl as warm and charmingly devilish
as his Marie was chill and repressed.
She would not, he decided, have been beautiful according to Hollywood
standards. But her features would be the more intriguing for their very
irregularity. Her simple grey or blue dress, no matter how modestly
cut, would have failed utterly to hide the vibrant young figure
beneath. Her lips and eyes and complexion....
The telephone rang on his bedside table. Justin came out of a wild
dream in which Corinne Forrester, wearing a Navajo Indian blanket
adorned with Puritan cap, collar and cuffs, was seated firmly on his
lap and refusing to get up. It was odd, he thought fragmentarily, how
Dubois' woman seemed to have moved into his subconscious. And with her
vibrant, almost tangible allure....
Devereux Chandler's urbane tones greeted him. "Hope I didn't wake you
up, Charles."
"Not at all," Justin croaked. By the banjo clock on the wall opposite
the wardrobe he saw that it was still twenty minutes short of midnight.
"I hoped I'd run into you here at the Ivesons'," Chandler explained.
"Marie tells me you were too tired to come."
"That's one word for it," Justin told him. Despite the fact that
Chandler, as his wife's uncle and a member of the board of the Ninth
National Corporation, held complete power not only over his job but, at
least indirectly, over his domestic life, Justin had always been frank,
even blunt with him. He had long nursed an idea that this outspokenness
with a man used to subservience was one of the reasons he had been able
to hold his favor.
But the Bostonian merely grunted and said, "I understand Henri Dubois
has been after you for backing."
"That's right," Justin replied.
"Hmmm." Chandler sounded thoughtful. "I suppose a decision now might
make or break the man. How do you feel about it, Charles?"
"I'm going to sleep on it," Justin told him.
"That's sound," said Chandler. "I must say I'm beginning to be
interested myself. Marie's been talking to me."
"She's dead against him. Oddly enough, for quite different reasons, so
is Dubois' own woman, the Forrester female."
"A point to consider, perhaps. I hope I haven't disturbed you, Charles,
but I wanted some inkling of how you felt about this matter."
Justin put the phone back on its cradle, picked up the spider half
unconsciously. Devereux Chandler, cheerfully sardonic, polite, urbane,
was the most difficult human being to interpret correctly the younger
man had encountered in his not inconsiderable experience. Why was
Chandler seeking preliminary knowledge of the decision?
Until then Justin had thought of it as no more than another job to be
handled to the best of his ability, one of a long series of decisions
that had brought him to his present position.
Now other considerations began to crowd this basis for judgment. It
occurred to him that quite literally the fate of a goodly portion
of the world might well depend upon his answer. There seemed little
question but that Henri Dubois could not get the money he wanted
elsewhere.
Or, if the evangelist should obtain such financing, it might not come
in time--or in sufficient quantity. And if Dubois were forced to use
the contributions sent by his followers to promote his own cause he
might be laying himself open to sordid subsequent court actions that,
however unjustified, would inevitably soil his character and reputation
in the public mind.
Justin became aware of an ominous physical sensitivity that caused him
to feel every thread of the nylon pajamas which encompassed his body,
every bit of linen in the fine sheet that covered his bare feet.
Twice before he had felt such heightened awareness--once on the eve
of his marriage to Marie, again on the night before he had made his
first important decision at the bank. On each occasion it had been the
prelude to an event that had shaped inexorably the life that followed.
Now it was sharper than ever before--and he wondered if perhaps it
meant that the decision he would have to make on the morrow might shape
not only his own life but that of the world. He discovered that he was
sweating lightly and that the sweat was cold.
This, he told himself, was nonsense. No matter how far-reaching its
results a decision was a decision, to be decided one way or the other,
according to the best available facts, thereafter to be abided by
whatever happened.
He tossed the whole mess out of his mind, turned off the light, pushed
one of the two pillows from beneath his head and rolled over on his
right side. He had just remembered how to lick it.
The device dated back to his childhood and adolescence in the Midwest,
to his years at college, to the early years of his job. It involved a
mixture of all three elements--the small town within commuting distance
of a medium-sized city, Harvard and Boston--connected by an odd
Toonerville-ish single-track railroad on which ran just two passenger
trains a day.
The railroad had been real enough during his childhood--it was, he
had recently learned, long extinct, its rusted rails torn up for
sorely-needed scrap metal during World War Two. Yet, fifteen years and
almost fifteen hundred miles away, Justin could still hear distinctly
the asthmatic beep of its steam whistle as it pounded along behind its
stubby black engine across the cornfield.
Even in his boyhood the railroad had been dying, its three cars never
more than half-full. It had run miraculously through a deep cut in the
one hill the countryside boasted, then through woodland clumps and
across the river on a wooden trestle, into the larger woods.
Thereafter it had run straight and true to the city--but it no longer
ran there in his visualization. Instead, by some strange twist of
Justin's geography, it deviated from its straight path to become
briefly a part of the subway running beneath Harvard Square.
Thereafter it crossed under the Charles to plunge beneath Boston's Back
Bay, never quite becoming a part of the city's subway system. Finally
it wound up in a maze of circles between Washington and Devonshire
Streets, whence it turned easily for the return journey.
Now, faced with the most important decision of his career, Justin
summoned the odd little train to his rescue. To his relief he was
easily able to take it through the cornfield to the cut.
But thereafter, it traveled a different path. Midway through the cut
Justin realised two things. One, he was the only passenger on the
entire train. Two, he was able to see over the sides of the cut, down
the fallaway of the hill to the flat countryside beyond.
His range of vision grew and, as he peered through the soot-grimed
panes of the windows, he felt a sudden jolt of fear. The train was no
longer following the familiar track of his barbiturant fantasy. It was,
instead, flying through the air.
Fear became panic as clouds became woolly lambs, far below, then mere
streaks and patches of white. He had sudden memory of a movie, taken
from a V-2 rocket above White Sands, in which the world twisted and
grew small and curved in a matter of seconds.
Then, with a rush of sound never heard on that one-track spur, the
train rumbled into a tunnel of darkness, its wheels clacking a
samba-beat on rails that could not possibly exist. Coal smoke from the
funnel invaded the car and Justin found himself blinking his eyes and
coughing. He had to breathe now and the gas was invading his lungs.
His last thought was that it had not been such a happy way to go to
sleep after all....