Mooney cleared his throat. "Listen, I don't know what you want, but
this is my house and--"
"You will help me," the man said positively. "I will pay you. Very
well?"
He had a peculiar way of parting his sentences in the middle, but
Mooney didn't care about that. He suddenly cared about one thing and
that was the word "pay."
"What do you want me to do?"
The angry-eyed man ran his gloved hands across his head and sluiced
drops of water onto the scuffed linoleum and the bedding of the cot
Mooney had dragged into the kitchen. He said irritably: "I am a
wayfarer who needs a. Guide? I will pay you for your assistance."
The question that rose to Mooney's lips was "How much?" but he fought
it back. Instead, he asked, "Where do you want to go?"
"One moment." The stranger sat damply on the edge of Mooney's cot and,
click-snap, the shiny sort of briefcase opened itself in his hands.
He took out a flat round thing like a mirror and looked into it,
squeezing it by the edges, and holding it this way and that.
Finally he said: "I must go to Wednesday, the twenty-sixth of December,
at--" He tilted the little round thing again. "Brooklyn?" he finished
triumphantly.