Chapter III

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 Ibañez, 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...