"This will be hard to believe," Lima said, "and I will not try to
prove it to you, but it is true. The mind has many powers which cannot
even be imagined by anyone who has not lived with those powers as I
have. When you called me, your mind attuned itself with mine, and its
need and its demand were so powerful that together we turned time
backward. You are now back in my dressing room, and it is the exact
time at which you originally came out of your dream."
"That's impossible!" Bennett protested.
"Nevertheless, it happened. I only ask you to keep in mind one thing.
Someday, when your mind has been made more facile, you will understand
how I am able to do this. It will even appear logical to you. Now,
however, the only thing I can tell you is _believe it_!"
* * * * *
Bennett had no intention of muffing this second chance. After he had
collected the information about Tournay's criminal activities, he
also dug into his past for a man who had cause to hate the contractor.
He found the man he sought, a man as ruthless and unscrupulous as
Tournay himself, one who could fight him on his own ground.
Roger Clarkson had been the controller of a string of bookie joints,
before he had been framed by Tournay, and convicted, to serve ten
years in prison.
Clarkson had been released from prison six days before. He found that
Tournay had gained control of his former criminal empire. Everyone,
including Tournay, knew that the only thing preventing Clarkson from
taking revenge was the opportunity.
Bennett sent his information to Clarkson and sat back to await the
results. That evening, as he was about to leave his office building,
some inner caution warned him to take no chances. He stepped
cautiously out into the street, looked both ways for the gray sedan,
and saw that the street was empty, before he walked to the corner.
He arrived there just in time to meet the long gray sedan as it drove
up.
* * * * *
Once more he fought the awful exertion on the mystic's couch. This
time he came out of the blackness with his mind clear. "You've saved
me again," he said to Lima. "Have you turned time backward again?"
"Yes," she replied. "But I have given you all the help I can. The next
attempt you make, you will have nothing on which to lean except your
own strength."
"But why do I always arrive at the point where I'm being shot by
Tournay, regardless of what course I choose? Is there no way I can
beat him?"
"If you believe in fate as strongly as I do, you will accept that
conclusion as inevitable. The long gray sedan is the symbol of your
death. You cannot avoid it--at least not as long as you persist in
passive action."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Just this. You wish to see Tournay punished--your sense of justice
demands it. But each time you try to have someone else administer that
punishment. It appears to me that the only possibility of your
breaking this fateful progression of events is for you to administer
the punishment yourself. You probably realize the danger of trying
that. But I can't see where you have any other choice."
"In other words, you feel that the only chance I have of preventing
Tournay from killing me--is to kill him first?"
"Yes," Lima said. "Are you strong and hard enough to do it?"
Bennett thought for only a brief moment before he nodded. "I'm
desperate enough, at any rate."
This time he did not leave immediately. He had to find out something
first. He put his arms around Lima's shoulders and drew her toward
him. She put her face up and he kissed her waiting lips. They were
sweet and, if she did not return the ardor of his kiss, he did not
notice it.
* * * * *
"Mr. Tournay is not in," the girl at the desk told Bennett. "You might
try his home."
At a pay-booth in the lobby, Bennett called Tournay's home. The voice
that answered was that of a tired woman, one who has given up hope.
"Mr. Tournay called me a short time ago and said that he would be in
the office of a Mr. Leroy Bennett, in the Lowry building, if anyone
called," the tired voice said.
Bennett hung up and caught a cab. His quarry had walked into an ideal
place for their meeting. For better or for worse, he would soon bring
this conflict to an end.
In his office, Bennett found that Tournay had been there and gone. He
had left a message: "Tell Mr. Bennett that Lima sent me!"
So that was it--Lima had used Bennett as a dupe! He could not figure
out her purpose, but he knew that he could never trust her again. She
had been against him from the first. Perhaps even she, rather than
Tournay, was the prime menace. He decided that he must kill them both,
before they had the chance to kill him. Touching the small flat pistol
snuggling in its shoulder holster, he knew the pursuit must continue
immediately.
He rode the elevator to the ground floor, and he felt his mind working
with a clarity and a precision which he had seldom experienced before.
This time he knew he would win.
Shrewdly, before leaving the building, Bennett looked out through the
glass pane in the door first. He waited only a moment before he saw
the long gray sedan as he had expected. They would not trap him again.
Ducking back, he walked rapidly toward a side exit.
Night had fallen by the time he reached the carnival building. He did
not ring the bell. Instead, he walked to the rear, climbed the stairs
of a fire-escape, and softly opened the window of a bedroom.
He stepped inside just as softly and stood listening for breathing. He
heard none. This was probably too early for Lima to be in bed.
The bedroom door was open. Bennett could see a light coming from
another part of the apartment--probably the living room. He paused to
steel himself for what he must do. The time had come when he would
have to be savagely ruthless.
He found Lima sitting on a couch, reading a book. He suspected that
she still had some control over his mind and he had no intention of
letting her influence him. She must be killed before she could read
his intention.
"It didn't work." Bennett spoke just loudly enough to startle Lima
into raising her head.
As she looked up, he shot her squarely between the eyes.
In an agony of frustration, Bennett saw the flesh of her forehead
remain clear and undisturbed. He knew he could not miss at this range,
yet she was unhurt. He lowered his sights and shot at the white neck
beneath the fair head. She still sat there, returning his gaze,
unperturbed, unmarked by the bullets.
He pumped the four remaining bullets into her body. The only part of
her that moved was her lips.
"It's no use, Leroy," she said. "Haven't you guessed? You are still in
your dream. You can't kill me there."
Suddenly the implication struck him with its awful simplicity.
"Good God!" His voice rose. "Do you mean I've never been out of my
dream?" He hesitated while the thought sank in. "My remembrance of
coming out of it was only part of the dream itself," he murmured.
"That was why you were able to turn time backward at will."
A cold calmness returned to him.
"Tell me," he said, "am I still in the dream?"
"Yes," Lima replied.
"Then I demand that you free me now!"
"As you wish," Lima said sadly. "And may God help you."
Bennett wrenched his body from the couch on which it lay and struggled
to his feet. Though the dream had seemed real enough, he could look
back on it now and see it as any other dream.
He breathed easier, and then stopped abruptly when he heard a voice
behind him say, "You are still a dead man!"
Bennett whirled and found himself facing Tournay. And Tournay held a
pistol aimed at his heart.
Bennett turned desperately back to Lima. His lips formed her name, but
the sound died almost before it was uttered. This time, he saw, she
would not help him. Her features had hardened and no mercy or
compassion registered on them.
[Illustration]
"There is no escape," she said.
A fleeting thought went through his mind of springing at Tournay and
trying to reach him before the gun could be fired. But one glance at
Tournay's face made him realize how futile--and fatal--that would be.
Tournay's finger tightened on the trigger of his gun and Bennett
thought ahead in despair to what was to come. One thing he knew: He
did not want to die! Was there no way out?
The answer came like a cry of relief. There was a way--Thone! The city
of his enigma. Tournay and Lima could not harm him there.
* * * * *
For just an instant, Bennett's vision blurred. Time paused, and the
next moment he knew he had returned to Thone. The sounds of the alien
city floated up to him and he stirred.
He grasped the sides of his coffinlike bed with fingers that had lost
their sense of touch. He pulled himself up to a sitting position and
looked about him. On one side stood Lima, though now her features were
not those of the implacable, merciless mystic, but rather those of a
woman in love.