Hawkes crushed out the cigarette and began climbing the wide stairs
slowly. It was probably an ambush into which he was heading--but
without this place, he had no chance of resting. He stared at the
numbers painted on the dirty red doors, and went on up a second flight
of stairs. The number he wanted was at the end of the hall, dimly
lighted. He dropped to the keyhole, but found it had been filled long
ago, probably when the Yale lock was installed.
He put his ear against the door and listened. There was no sound from
inside except a monotonous noise that must be water dripping from a
leaky faucet. Finally, he climbed to his feet and reached for his
keys. The third one he tried fitted, and the door swung open.
He fumbled about, looking for a light switch, and finally struck a
match. The switch was a string hanging down from a bare bulb. He
pulled it, to find he stood inside one of the old monstrosities with
which New York is filled--a combination kitchen and bathroom, with a
tiny closet for the toilet in one corner. There was an ice-box, a
dirty stove, a Franklin heater connected to the chimney, a small sink,
and a rickety table with four folding chairs. In a closet, cheap china
showed.
He went through that, into the seven-by-twelve living room. There was
a cheap radio, a worn sofa, two more folding chairs and a big typing
table. The rug on the floor had been patched together. Then he
breathed more easily. Over the back of one of the chairs was a sports
jacket which he recognized as his own. He jerked it up suddenly and
began going through the pockets, but they had already been emptied.
It didn't matter--he no longer cared why he should be in a place so
totally unlike any his usually neat habits would have led him to. It
was his.
Then, as he came into the bedroom, he hesitated. It was smaller than
the living room, with a bed that took up half of one wall, and two
dressers jammed into the remaining space. One corner held a cardboard
closet--and hanging on the hook was a man's raincoat and hat, both at
least five sizes too big for him. His eyes darted about, to find a
strange mixture of things he remembered as his and possessions which
he would never have owned. On one of the dressers was a small
traveling case, filled with the cosmetics and appliances which only a
woman would use.
He jerked open the closet, and his nose told him before his eyes that
it held only female clothing! Yet on the shelf his old hat rested
happily.
He could make no sense of it--the place looked as if several people
lived in it, and yet it wasn't really fitted for anyone to spend his
whole time there. There was none of the accumulation of property that
would fit any permanent residence. He went out of the bedroom, passing
the typewriter desk. The typewriter was an old, standard Olympia--a
German machine he'd refitted with the Dvorak keyboard which he had
learned for greater efficiency. He was sure nobody else would want it.
The dishes were dusty, and there was no food in the ice-box.
* * * * *
Now, though, it began to fit--a place where it was convenient to stop
in, but not a place to live. And perhaps he had been in the habit of
lending it to others. Though why he shouldn't have used his own
apartment was something he still couldn't understand.
But it was possible there was no record of this place.
He began shucking off his shirt as he went back through the living
room--until the marks on the rug caught his eyes. Something heavy had
rested there recently--there had been other desks about, or heavily
laden tables. And a bit of paper under the sofa could only have come
from one of the complicated computing machines used in high-power
mathematics. He scanned the fragment, making no sense of it, except
that it was esoteric enough to belong to any new branch of theory. For
a second, the heat-rays and levitations entered his head--but none of
the symbols fitted such a branch of physical development.
What had been going on here--and why had the machines been removed so
recently that their traces still looked fresh?
He shook his head--and froze, as a key turned in the lock.
There was no time for flight. She stood in the doorway, blinking at
the light before he could turn. She, of course, was the girl whom he'd
barely noticed when he knocked the couple down as he charged out of
his apartment.
Of course? He puzzled over that. He'd almost expected it--and yet, now
that he looked more closely, he couldn't even be sure that she was the
same. She wore the same green jacket, but nothing else he could be
sure of, because he had no other memory of that girl. This one was two
inches shorter than he was, with dark red hair and the deepest blue
eyes he had seen. She looked like an artist's conception of an Irish
colleen, except that her mouth was open half an inch, and she was
studying him with the look of being about ready to scream.
"Who are you?" He forced the words out at her.
She shook her head, and then smiled doubtfully. "Ellen Ibanez,
naturally. You startled me! But you must be Wilbur Hawkes, of course.
Didn't you get my wire?"
He watched her, but there had been no stumbling over his name, and no
effort to make it sound too casual. Apparently, the name meant nothing
to her. He shook his head. "What wire?" Then he plunged ahead,
quickly. "You've heard of amnesia? Good. Well, I've got it--partially.
If you can tell me anything about myself before yesterday, Miss, I'll
never be anything but...."
He choked on that, unable to finish. And behind the surface emotions,
his mind was poised, sniffing for danger. There was no feeling of it,
though he kept telling himself alternately that she had been the girl
at the door and that she obviously had not been.
He'd seen her before. The tilt of her head, that unmatchable hair....
* * * * *
"You poor man!" Her voice was all sympathy, and the bag she was
carrying dropped to the floor as she came over. "You mean you _really_
can't remember--at all?"
"Not for the last seven months!"
She seemed surprised. "But that was when you answered my
advertisement. I never saw you--though you did call me, and your voice
sounds familiar. You sent me the check, and I mailed you the key. That
was all."
"But I must have given you references--told you something--"
Again, she shook her head. "Nothing. You said you were a teacher at
CCNY, but that you were quitting, and wanted a place to use as an
office. You didn't care what it was like. That's all."
Hawkes felt she was lying--but it could have been true. And in his
present state, he probably believed everyone was other than they
seemed. He remembered the gray sedan rising to the roof--and the cat
turning inside out--
Sickness hit at him. He groped back towards a chair, sinking into it.
He'd almost found a refuge, and even hoped that he could find some of
the missing past. Now....
He must have partially fainted. He heard vague sounds, and then she
was putting something against his lips. It was bitter and hot, though
it only remotely resembled coffee. He gulped it gratefully, not caring
that it was sweet and black. He saw the bottle of old coffee powder,
caked with age, and heard the water boiling on the stove. Idly, he
wondered whether he'd bought the jar originally or she had. Then his
senses snapped back.
"Thanks," he muttered thickly. He groped his way to his feet, his head
slowly clearing. "I guess I'd better go now."
She forced him back into the chair. "You're in no condition to leave
here, Will Hawkes. Ugh! Your shoes are filthy. Let me help you ...
there, isn't that better? Whatever you've been doing to yourself, you
should be ashamed. You're going straight to bed while I clean some of
this up!"
His head had sunk back on the table, and everything reached him
through a thick fog. It wasn't right--girls didn't act that way to
strange men who looked as if they'd come from a Bowery fight. Girls
didn't take a man's clothes off. Girls didn't....
He let her half carry him into the bedroom, and tried to protest as
she put him between clean sheets. He stared at the view of his
lavender shorts against the fresh whiteness, while things seemed far
away. He'd played with a girl named Ellen, once when he was eleven and
she was nine. She'd had bright copper hair, and her name had
been--what had it been? Not Ibanez. Bennett, that was it. Ellen
Bennett.
He must have said it aloud. She chuckled. "Of course, Will. Though I
never thought you'd be the same Will Hawkes. I knew it when I saw that
scar on your shoulder, where you cut yourself sliding down our cellar
door. Go to sleep."
Sliding down, sliding down into clouds of sleep. Sleep! She'd drugged
him! Something in the coffee!
* * * * *
He jerked up, reaching for her, but she ducked aside, drawing on the
tops to a pair of frilly pajamas. "Ellen, you--"
"Shh!" She pulled a robe over the pajamas and lay down, outside the
blankets. "Shh, Will. You have to sleep. You're _so_ tired, _so_
sleepy...."
Her voice was soothing, and the fingers along the base of his neck was
relaxing. He reached out a last inquiring finger of doubt for the
feeling of danger, and couldn't find it. This was as wrong as the
other things had been wrong--but his mind let go, and he was suddenly
asleep.
He awoke slowly, with a thick feeling in his mouth. Drugged! And the
sense of danger had failed him again! He swung over sharply, reaching
for her, but she was gone.
His clothes lay beside him, neatly pressed, and he grabbed for them.
There was a pair of socks, too large, but better than none. His
muscles felt wrong as he began dressing, but the feeling wore away.
The clock said that less than two hours had passed. If she'd put a
drug in the coffee, it must have been one to which he was less
sensitive than the average. She'd probably never suspected that he
would waken.
A trace of fear struck through him, but it was weaker than before, and
it seemed normal enough, under the circumstances. He fumbled over the
shoelaces, and then grabbed up his coat.
She'd bring _them_ back! Maybe they'd used her as a spy!
But he couldn't understand why she'd bothered to press his clothes.
And the apartment still puzzled him. Even if her story was true, it
simply wasn't the sort of a place where a girl like her would live.
Nor was it fixed as she might have arranged a place, even allowing for
what he might have done to it in seven months.
He reached automatically for the lock in the dim hall, and realized
his hands knew the door, whatever else was true. Then he went out and
down the stairs. He heard a babble of kids' voices, part in English
and part in a sort of Spanish. That meant that things were normal, to
the casual observer along the street. But he knew it was poor evidence
that things really were as they should be. He stood in the comparative
darkness of the hall, staring out. Nothing was wrong, so far as he
could see. He had to risk it.
Hawkes shoved past the women on the steps and headed down West End,
trying not to seem in a hurry. His eyes turned up to the roof of the
garage, but he could see nothing there; he'd half-expected that the
slim young man would be parked up on the roof, waiting.
* * * * *
Then the fear began, mounting slowly. He jerked around quickly,
scanning the street. For a second, he thought he saw the slim figure,
but it was only a back turned to him, and it disappeared into a
barber-shop. Probably someone else.
The fear mounted a little, and he found his steps quickening. He cut
around the corner, where men were crowded into a little restaurant. He
was heading into a dead-end street, but there was an alley leading
from it. He had to keep off the main streets.
Footsteps sounded behind him.
He moved faster, and the footsteps also speeded up. He slowed, and
they kept on. Then they were nearly behind him, just as he reached the
alley and jerked back into it, grabbing for a broken bottle he had
spotted.
"Will!" It was a gasping wheeze. "Will! For God's sake, it's only me.
I know everything--your amnesia. But let me explain!"
It stopped him. He held the bottle carefully, as the fat figure of an
old man stepped softly around the corner, fear written on every aged
wrinkle. It was the man he'd stumbled into when he dashed out of his
apartment.
But the fear there matched his own so completely that he dropped the
bottle. The other man stood trembling, gasping for breath. Then he
gathered himself together, though his pudgy hands still clenched
tightly, showing white knuckles.
"Will," he repeated. "You must believe me. I know about you. I want to
help you--if there's any help for you, God forgive us both. And God
have mercy on Earth. It's worse than you can believe--and different.
It's...."
Horror washed over the old man's face. He stood, fighting within
himself. Hawkes felt his own back hairs lift, and he drew back. For a
second, the fat man seemed to waver before him, as if his body was
only a projection. Then it quieted.
"It--it almost had me for a second."
He turned back to Hawkes, trying to control the quivering muscles in
his face. But his victory was still incomplete when he suddenly leaped
up.
"Get back, Will. Oh, God, O God!"
He leaped outwards, his fat old legs pumping savagely. Then the air
seemed to quiver.
[Illustration]
Where he had been, there was only a dark cloud of smoke, spreading
outwards in a rough equivalent of his shape. A spurt of steam leaped
upwards savagely, and the smoke seemed darker. It began to drift on
the air, touched a building, and left a spot of smudginess, before it
drifted on, getting thinner with each gust of wind. It was as if every
atom of his body had suddenly disassociated itself from every other
atom.
* * * * *
Hawkes found his fingernails cutting his palms, and there was blood
flowing from his bitten tongue. He heard a hacking moan in his throat.
He struggled against something that seemed to be holding him down, and
then leaped at least ten feet, to land running.
The alley was twisted and narrow. He shot down it and around a corner.
An ice-house stood there, and he barely avoided the loading trucks. He
was back near the apartment building where he'd found the girl, and he
doubled to a door that showed. It seemed to be locked, but somehow, he
got through it. He seemed to melt through the door, though he wasn't
sure whether his lunge smashed it or whether his fingers had found
the latch in time.
He ducked around loose-hanging electric wires, under twisted pipes,
and across a pile of coal around a hot-water heater. He twisted and
turned, to come into complete darkness, and halt short, listening.
The fear was going--and there were again no sounds of pursuit. But he
couldn't be sure. He'd heard no sounds when the fat man had leaped
out, but they had been there.
Silently and thickly, he cursed. To find a man who seemed to be his
friend, and who knew about him--and then to have them kill that man
with such horrible efficiency before he could learn what it was all
about!
He gagged in the darkness, almost fainting again.
Then, slowly, it was too much. For the moment, he could run no more,
and nothing seemed to matter. He understood his sudden bravado no
better than the unnatural cowardice that had been riding his
shoulders, but he shrugged, and moved forward.
The dark passage led out to steps, that carried him up to the
sidewalk, in front of the building. Ellen Ibanez--or Bennett--was less
than five feet from him, and her eyes were fixed firmly on his face.