"No," I said.
His smile was ironic. "I gave them a hundred pounds. What they wanted,
and expected, was ten thousand. So now you'll write something very nice
about me which they hope will flatter me so I'll give them more. Don't
bother, young man."
Blaine was a bachelor. My first impression of him was that he was doing
some woman a favor by keeping himself in that category.
So much for J. Walter Blaine.
It was the next night that the weird thing struck at me. I was walking
along the edge of the park, alone on my way to the mid-town office of
Amalgamated Newscasters. The street was fairly brightly lighted. I
recall that there chanced to be no pedestrians near me, just an empty
length of grey-white stone pavement in front of me, with the park on
one side. And quite suddenly it was as though I had stepped through
a black door into nothingness! I could have been stricken blind, yet
it was not that, for in another split-second I could see a dim, red
radiance and hear voices. Then I could see the shapes of people--three
men and a woman--stumbling like myself on a strange earthy ground here
in the red darkness.
"Look! Here comes another one of us!" It was a terrified man's voice,
vaguely familiar.
"My Gawd, it's the handsome astronomer! _I_ know him!" The voice of
Vivian La Marr.
And then there was Shorty's voice! "Bob! Bob Rance!" I could feel him
gripping me and there was the vague outline of his frightened white
face at my shoulder. "Bob! Tell us--what's happened to all of us?"
And Vivian cried: "Hang onto him! There he goes!" I was trying to speak
but my tongue was thick, my throat dry and congested.
Things were dim and hazy in my mind; and I could feel the cool
blankness stealing through my muscles. The touch of hands on my arms
faded, until at last there was no more sensation. I made one last great
effort to bring myself out of the fog.
Then I felt myself falling into a soundless blackness.