Chapter 3

So there was Mooney, driving a stolen panel truck, Mooney the bankrupt, Mooney the ne’er-do-well, and now Mooney the accomplice murderer. Or so he thought, though the pale-eyed man had laughed like a panther when he’d asked.

He rehearsed little speeches all the day down U.S. One, Mooney did, and they all began: “Your Honor, I didn’t know--”

Well, he hadn’t. How could a man like Mooney know that Harse was so bereft of human compassion as to snuff out a life for the sake of finishing his lunch in peace? And what could Mooney have done about it, without drawing the diffident blue glow to himself? No, Your Honor, really, Your Honor, he took me by surprise...

But by the time they ditched the stolen car, nearly dry of gas, at the Hoboken ferry, Mooney had begun to get his nerve back. In fact, he was beginning to perceive that in that glittering silvery dispatch case that Harse hugged to him were treasures that might do wonders for a smart man unjustly dogged by hard times. The wampum alone! But beyond the wampum, the other good things that might in time be worth more than any amount of mere money.

There was that weapon. Mooney cast a glance at Harse, blank-eyed and relaxed, very much disinterested in the crowds of commuters on the ferry.

Nobody in all that crowd would believe that Harse could pull out a little jointed metal thing and push a button and make any one of them cease to exist. Nobody would believe it--not even a jury. Corpus delicti, body of evidence--why, there would be no evidence! It was a simple, workable, foolproof way of getting any desired number of people out of the way without fuss, muss or bother--and couldn’t a smart but misfortunate man like Mooney do wonders by selectively removing those persons who stood as obstacles in his path?

And there would be more, much, much more. The thing to do, Mooney schemed, was to find out just what Harse had in that kit and how to work it; and then--who could know, perhaps Harse would himself find the diffident blue light reaching out for him before the intersection of Brooklyn and December twenty-sixth?

Mooney probed.

“Ah,” laughed Harse. “Ho! I perceive what you want. You think perhaps there is something you can use in my survival kit.”

“All right, Harse,” Mooney said submissively, but he did have reservations.

First, it was important to find out just what was in the kit. After that--

Well, even a man from the future had to sleep.

Mooney was in a roaring rage. How dared the Government stick its bureaucratic nose into a simple transaction of citizens! But it turned out to be astonishingly hard to turn Harse’s wampum into money. The first jeweler asked crudely threatening questions about an emerald the size of the ball of his thumb; the second quoted chapter and verse on the laws governing possession of gold. Finally they found a pawnbroker, who knowingly accepted a diamond that might have been worth a fortune; and when they took his first offer of a thousand dollars, the pawnbroker’s suspicions were confirmed. Mooney dragged Harse away from there fast.

But they did have a thousand dollars.

As the cab took them across town, Mooney simmered down; and by the time they reached the other side, he was entirely content. What was a fortune more or less to a man who very nearly owned some of the secrets of the future?

He sat up, lit a cigarette, waved an arm and said expansively to Harse: “Our new home.”

The pale-eyed man took a glowing little affair with eyepieces away from in front of his eyes.

“Ah,” he said. “So.”

It was quite an attractive hotel, Mooney thought judiciously. It did a lot to take away the sting of those sordidly avaricious jewelers. The lobby was an impressively close approximation of a cathedral and the bellboys looked smart and able.

Harse made an asthmatic sound. “What is. That?” He was pointing at a group of men standing in jovial amusement around the entrance to the hotel’s grand ballroom, just off the lobby. They wore purple harem pants and floppy green hats, and every one of them carried a silver-paper imitation of a scimitar.

Mooney chuckled in a superior way. “You aren’t up on our local customs, are you? That’s a convention, Harse. They dress up that way because they belong to a lodge. A lodge is a kind of fraternal organization. A fraternal organization is--”

Harse said abruptly: “I want.”

Mooney began to feel alarm. “What?”

“I want one for a. Specimen? Wait, I think I take the big one there.”

“Harse! Wait a minute!” Mooney clutched at him. “Hold everything, man! You can’t do that.”

Harse stared at him. “Why?”

“Because it would upset everything, that’s why! You want to get to your rendezvous, don’t you? Well, if you do anything like that, we’ll never get there!”

“Why not?”

“Please,” Mooney said, “please take my word for it. You hear me? I’ll explain later!”

Harse looked by no means convinced, but he stopped opening the silvery metal case. Mooney kept an eye on him while registering. Harse continued to watch the conventioneers, but he went no further. Mooney began to breathe again.

“Thank you, sir,” said the desk clerk--not every guest, even in this hotel, went for a corner suite with two baths. “Front!”

A smart-looking bellboy stepped forward, briskly took the key from the clerk, briskly nodded at Mooney and Harse. With the automatic reflex of any hotel bellhop, he reached for Harse’s silvery case. Baggage was baggage, however funny it looked.

But Harse was not just any old guest. The bellboy got the bag away from him, all right, but his victory was purely transitory. He yelled, dropped the bag, grabbed his fist with the other hand.

“Hey! It shocked me! What kind of tricks are you trying to do with electric suitcases?”

Mooney moaned softly. The whole lobby was looking at them--even the conventioneers at the entrance to the ballroom; even the men in mufti mingling with the conventioneers, carrying cameras and flash guns; even the very doorman, the whole lobby away. That was bad. What was worse was that Harse was obviously getting angry.

“Wait, wait!” Mooney stepped between them in a hurry. “I can explain everything. My friend is, uh, an inventor. There’s some very important material in that briefcase, believe me!”

He winked, patted the bellhop on the shoulder, took his hand with friendly concern and left in it a folded bill.

“Now,” he said confidentially, “we don’t want any disturbance. I’m sure you understand how it is, son. Don’t you? My friend can’t take any chances with his, uh, confidential material, you see? Right. Well, let’s say no more about it. Now if you’ll show us to our room--”

The bellhop, still stiff-backed, glanced down at the bill and the stiffness disappeared as fast as any truck-driver bathed in Harse’s pale blue haze. He looked up again and grinned.