Chapter V

It was growing dark as he walked down Sixty-sixth, eyeing every man suspiciously, and knowing his suspicion would do no good. He was still trying to think, though he knew his thoughts were as useless as his suspicions.

If he could remember! His mind came up sharply against leaving Irma and taking out the mail; then it went abruptly blank. What had been in the letter? It had been from a professor--it might have been from Professor Meinzer. That would tie in neatly. But Meinzer was dead, and he couldn’t remember. They’d stripped him of his memory. How? Why? Were they trying to prevent his giving information to others--or were they trying to get something from him? And what could he know?

He’d dabbled with ESP mathematically, but now he found himself wondering if it could exist. Could they be tracking him by some natural or mechanical ability to read his mind? He strained his own mind to find a whisper of foreign thought, outside his brain. He drew a blank, of course, as he’d expected.

There were no answers. They could play with him, like a cat juggling a mouse, letting him almost learn something--and then, always, they arrived just in time to prevent his success!

Put a rat in a maze where it can’t learn the path, and it goes insane. But what good would he be to anyone if they drove him insane? And why bother with all that when they could silence him as well by killing him?

He’d forgotten to watch, and was surprised to find his feet on the steps of the apartment building. He jerked back, and bumped into someone.

“Sorry.” The words came from behind him, automatically, and he turned to see the slim young man stepping aside. For a second, their eyes met squarely. A row of teeth flashed in a brief smile as the man started around him. “Guess I was thinking. Should have watched where I was going.”

The man went on down the street, and turned in at the restaurant entrance.

Hawkes lifted a foot that weighed a ton and slowly closed his mouth. He’d been facing away from the street light--and his face might have been hard to see. Yet...

It didn’t fit. The young man must have known him!

He blanked it from his mind. He couldn’t believe that it was anything but lack of recognition. It was hard to see here, where the other was facing the light, and he was in the shadow.

But it still meant that they were waiting, nearby.

He dashed up the stairs, expecting a rush at both landings. The normal sounds of the apartment house went on. He listened at his door, but he could hear nothing except the same drip he had heard before. Slowly, he inserted the key and went in. The small bulb was still on. He crept along, trying to move silently on floors that insisted on creaking. The living room was as he had left it, and he caught sight of Ellen on the bed.

He spotted a mirror over one of the dressers, and used that to study more of the bedroom. It seemed as empty as before.

Finally, he stepped inside. There was no one there but Ellen, and she seemed to be asleep, doubled up in a position that might have made the unkind cords easier to stand. She moaned slightly as he untied her gently, but didn’t awaken. Her breathing was regular, and her breath had the odd muskiness of someone who has slept for several hours.

He found a bottle of liquor on the shelf where she had put it, and rinsed out a couple of glasses. It was good liquor--good enough to take without mixers, as they’d have to do.

She came awake when he called her, rubbing her eyes and then her wrists, where the cords had left a mark. But she was smiling. “Hi, Will. I knew you’d come back. Hey, not on an empty stomach.”

“You need it--and so do I,” he told her. “Bottoms up!”

They were big glasses. She gasped over it, but she downed it, then reached for the water he had brought as a chaser. She swallowed, and blinked tears out of her eyes. “I don’t usually drink.”

He made no comment, but refilled the glass. The liquor had less effect on him than he’d expected, though he’d always had a good head for it. It took some of the edge off his worrying, though.

She giggled suddenly, and he frowned. She couldn’t take much on an empty stomach, it seemed. Then he shrugged. Let her drink--maybe if he could get her drunk, he could find something out; at least he might learn whether the slim young man had been there during the day.

“Like when you found your dad’s cider,” she said, and giggled again. “You got awful--hp!--awful drunk, Willy, din’t you? You were--so--funny!”

She was trying to be careful with her words already. She slid around, doing things that brought more honestly beautiful thigh into the light than Will had seen in ten years. He reached to adjust her dress, and she giggled again, sliding against him.

“You kissed me then, Willy. Remember? Bet you don’ remember!”

He began it coldly, deliberately. If he could work on her emotions enough, he’d crack the wall of evasion and lies, somehow. He reached for her, calculating what would arouse her without causing any shock to bring her back to her senses.

He hadn’t counted on the quickness of her reponse, nor the complete acceptance of his right with which she took it. The liquor had reduced her to the stage of a little girl who competely trusted her companion. She seemed as unconscious of her body as a child might be.

Instead of protesting, she reached down and began unfastening the buttons on her dress. “‘Syour turn now, Willy. Put you to bed last night, you put me to bed t’-night. Then you gotta kiss me good-night. Nighty-night, nighty-night.”

He felt like a heel at first. And then he began to feel like a man--any man around a beautiful girl half-undressed, and getting more so.

She slipped under the sheets, tossing out the last of her clothing, and crooning happily. “Gotta kiss me good-night, Willy. Nighty-night!”

He yanked the pull-cord savagely, cutting off the light, and fumbling in the darkness. After what seemed hours of awkwardness, he slid in beside her, feeling her arms go around him in complete acceptance. To hell with them! They could chase him some other time!

He pulled her to him, while his blood beat in his neck, and he began to lose any conscious volition of what he was doing. He drew her tighter, while a great clot of emotion set fire to his brain. He--

Cold beyond anything he had known bit at him. A tremendous pressure within him seemed about to force him to explode outwards, and the shock jerked him into full awareness.

In a split second, he swung his eyes from the great, jagged landscape on which he stood, up an impossible range of mountains that were all harsh blacks and cold whites, to a cold black sky in which the stars were blazing specks without a flicker. He saw the Earth above him, bigger than the moon had ever been, and with the dim outlines of continents showing through the soft stuff that must be clouds.