The clerk nodded toward the writing room. "In there, sir. A gentleman
who says he knows you."
Mooney pursed his lips.
In the writing room? Well, that was an advantage. The writing room was
off the main lobby; it would give Mooney a chance to peek in before
whoever it was could see him. He approached the entrance cautiously....
"Howard!" cried an accusing familiar voice behind him.
Mooney turned. A small man with curly red hair was coming out of a
door, marked "Men."
"Why--why, Uncle Lester!" said Mooney. "What a p-pleasant surprise!"
Lester, all of five feet tall, wispy red hair surrounding his red plump
face, looked up at him belligerently.
"No doubt!" he snapped. "I've been waiting all day, Howard. Took the
afternoon off from work to come here. And I wouldn't have been here at
all if I hadn't seen _this_."
He was holding a copy of the paper with Mooney's picture, behind
the pillar of black fog. "Your aunt wrapped my lunch in it, Howard.
Otherwise I might have missed it. Went right to the hotel. You weren't
there. The doorman helped, though. Found a cab driver. Told me where
he'd taken you. Here I am."
"That's nice," lied Mooney.
"No, it isn't. Howard, what in the world are you up to? Do you know the
Monmouth County police are looking for you? Said there was somebody
missing. Want to talk to you." The little man shook his head angrily.
"Knew I shouldn't let you stay at my place. Your aunt warned me, too.
Why do you make trouble for me?"
"Police?" Mooney asked faintly.
"At my age! Police coming to the house. Who was that fella who's
missing, Howard? Where did he go? Why doesn't he go home? His wife's
half crazy. He shouldn't worry her like that."
* * * * *
Mooney clutched his uncle's shoulder. "Do the police know where I am?
You didn't tell them?"
"Tell them? How could I tell them? Only I saw your picture while I was
eating my sandwich, so I went to the hotel and--"
"Uncle Lester, listen. What did they come to see you for?"
"Because I was stupid enough to let you stay in my house, that's what
for," Lester said bitterly. "Two days ago. Knocking on my door, hardly
eight o'clock in the morning. They said there's a man missing, driving
a truck, found the truck empty. Man from the Coast Guard station knows
him, saw him picking up a couple of hitchhikers at a bridge someplace,
recognized one of the hitchhikers. Said the hitchhiker'd been staying
at my house. That's you, Howard. Don't lie; he described you. Pudgy,
kind of a squinty look in the eyes, dressed like a bum--oh, it was you,
all right."
"Wait a minute. Nobody knows you've come here, right? Not even Auntie?"
"No, course not. She didn't see the picture, so how would she know?
Would've said something if she had. Now come on, Howard, we've got to
go to the police and--"
"Uncle Lester!"
The little man paused and looked at him suspiciously. But that was all
right; Mooney began to feel confidence flow back into him. It wasn't
all over yet, not by a long shot.
"Uncle Lester," he said, his voice low-pitched and persuasive, "I
have to ask you a very important question. Think before you answer,
please. This is the question: Have you ever belonged to any Communist
organization?"
The old man blinked. After a moment, he exploded. "Now what are you up
to, Howard? _You_ know I never--"
"Think, Uncle Lester! Please. Way back when you were a boy--anything
like that?"
"Of course not!"
"You're sure? Because I'm warning you, Uncle Lester, you're going to
have to take the strictest security check anybody ever took. You've
stumbled onto something important. You'll have to prove you can be
trusted or--well, I can't answer for the consequences. You see, this
involves--" he looked around him furtively--"Schenectady Project."
"Schenec--"
"Schenectady Project." Mooney nodded. "You've heard of the atom bomb?
Uncle Lester, this is bigger!"
"Bigger than the at--"
"Bigger. It's the _molecule_ bomb. There aren't seventy-five men in the
country that know what that so-called driver in the truck was up to,
and now you're one of them."
Mooney nodded soberly, feeling his power. The old man was hooked, tied
and delivered. He could tell by the look in the eyes, by the quivering
of the lips. Now was the time to slip the contract in his hand; or, in
the present instance, to--
"I'll tell you what to do," whispered Mooney. "Here's my key. You go up
to my room. Don't knock--we don't want to attract attention. Walk right
in. You'll see a man there and he'll explain everything. Understand?"
"Why--why, sure, Howard. But why don't you come with me?"
Mooney raised a hand warningly. "You might be followed. I'll have to
keep a lookout."
Five minutes later, when Mooney tapped on the door of the room--three
taps, pause, three taps--and cautiously pushed it open, the pale blue
mist was just disappearing. Harse was standing angrily in the center of
the room with the jointed metal thing thrust out ominously before him.
And of Uncle Lester, there was no trace at all.
V
Time passed; and then time was all gone, and it was midnight, nearly
the Nexus Point.
In front of the hotel, a drowsy cab-driver gave them an argument. "The
Public Liberry? Listen, the Liberry ain't open this time of night. I
ought to--Oh, thanks. Hop in." He folded the five-dollar bill and put
the cab in gear.
Harse said ominously: "Liberry, Mooney? Why do you instruct him to take
us to the Liberry?"
Mooney whispered: "There's a law against being in the Park at night.
We'll have to sneak in. The Library's right across the street."
Harse stared, with his luminous pale eyes. But it was true; there was
such a law, for the parks of the city lately had become fields of honor
where rival gangs contended with bottle shards and zip guns, where a
passerby was odds-on to be mugged.
"High Command must know this," Harse grumbled. "Must proceed, they
say, to Nexus Point. But then one finds the aboriginals have made laws!
Oh, I shall make a report!"
"_Sure_ you will," Mooney soothed; but in his heart, he was prepared to
bet heavily against it.
Because he had a new strategy. Clearly he couldn't get the survival
kit from Harse. He had tried that and there was no luck; his arm still
tingled as the bellboy's had, from having seemingly absent-mindedly
taken the handle to help Harse. But there was a way.
Get rid of this clown from the future, he thought contentedly; meet
the Nexus Point instead of Harse and there was the future, ripe for
the taking! He knew where the rescuers would be--and, above all,
he knew how to talk. Every man has one talent and Mooney's was
salesmanship.
All the years wasted on peddling dime-store schemes like frozen-food
plans! But this was the big time at last, so maybe the years of
seasoning were not wasted, after all.
"That for you, Uncle Lester," he muttered. Harse looked up from his
viewer angrily and Mooney cleared his throat. "I said," he explained
hastily, "we're almost at the--the Nexus Point."
* * * * *
Snow was drifting down. The cab-driver glanced at the black, quiet
library, shook his head and pulled away, leaving black, wet tracks in
the thin snow.
The pale-eyed man looked about him irritably. "You!" he cried, waking
Mooney from a dream of possessing the next ten years of stock-market
reports. "You! Where is this Vale of Cashmere?"
"Right this way, Harse, right this way," said Mooney placatingly.
There was a wide sort of traffic circle--Grand Army Plaza was the name
of it--and there were a few cars going around it. But not many, and
none of them looked like police cars. Mooney looked up and down the
broad, quiet streets.
"Across here," he ordered, and led the time traveler toward the edge of
the park. "We can't go in the main entrance. There might be cops."
"Cops?"
"Policemen. Law-enforcement officers. We'll just walk down here a way
and then hop over the wall. Trust me," said Mooney, in the voice that
had put frozen-food lockers into so many suburban homes.
The look from those pale eyes was anything but a look of trust, but
Harse didn't say anything. He stared about with an expression of
detached horror, like an Alabama gentlewoman condemned to walk through
Harlem.
"Now!" whispered Mooney urgently.
And over the wall they went.
They were in a thicket of shrubs and brush, snow-laden, the snow
sifting down into Mooney's neck every time he touched a branch, which
was always; he couldn't avoid it. They crossed a path and then a
road--long, curving, broad, white, empty. Down a hill, onto another
path. Mooney paused, glancing around.
"You know where you are. Going?"
"I think so. I'm looking for cops." None in sight. Mooney frowned. What
the devil did the police think they were up to? They passed laws; why
weren't they around to enforce them?
Mooney had his landmarks well in mind. There was the Drive, and there
was the fork he was supposed to be looking for. It wouldn't be hard to
find the path to the Vale. The only thing was, it was kind of important
to Mooney's hope of future prosperity that he find a policeman first.
And time was running out.
He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch--self-winding, shockproof,
non-magnetic; the man in the hotel's jewelry shop had assured him only
yesterday that he could depend on its time-keeping as on the beating
of his heart. It was nearly a quarter of one.
"Come along, come along!" grumbled Harse.
Mooney stalled: "I--I think we'd better go along this way. It _ought_
to be down there--"
He cursed himself. Why hadn't he gone in the main entrance, where there
was sure to be a cop? Harse would never have known the difference. But
there was the artist in him that wanted the thing done perfectly, and
so he had held to the pretense of avoiding police, had skulked and
hidden. And now--
"Look!" he whispered, pointing.
Harse spat soundlessly and turned his eyes where Mooney was pointing.
Yes. Under a distant light, a moving figure, swinging a nightstick.
Mooney took a deep breath and planted a hand between Harse's shoulder
blades.
"Run!" he yelled at the top of his voice, and shoved. He sounded so
real, he almost convinced himself. "We'll have to split up--I'll meet
you there. Now _run_!"