tenderness of that youthful miracle, the
tingle and excitement and the thankfulness. I sought the enchanted darkness
and the golden happiness, or at least the ghosts of them; all that I could
find was the intellectual knowledge of them, that they once had been and
were not any more.
     So I stood, with the edge worn off a tarnished memory, and a business
failure. I think I faced it squarely then, the first time that I'd faced it.
What would I do next?
     Perhaps, I thought, I should have stayed in the greenhouse business,
but it was a foolish thought and a piece of wishfulness, for after Dad had
died it had been, in every way, a losing proposition. When he had been
alive, we had done all right, but then there'd been the three of us to work,
and Dad had been the kind of man who had an understanding with all growing
things. They grew and flourished under his care and he seemed to know
exactly what to do to keep them green and healthy. Somehow or other, I
didn't have the knack. With me the plants were poor and puny at the best,
and there were always pests and parasites and all sorts of plant diseases.
     Suddenly, as I stood there, the river and the path and trees became
ancient, alien things. As if I were a stranger in this place, as if I had
wandered into an area of time and space where I had no business being. And
more terrifying than if it had been a place I'd never seen before because I
knew in a chill, far corner of my mind that here was a place that held a
part of me.
     I turned around and started up the path and back of me was a fear and
panic that made me want to run. But I didn't run. I went even slower than I
ordinarily would have, for this was a victory that I needed and was
determined I would have any sort of little futile victory, like walking very
slowly when there was the urge to run.
     Back on the street again, away from the deep shadow of the trees, the
warmth and brilliance of the sunlight set things right again. Not entirely
right, perhaps, but as they had been before. The street was the same as
ever. There were a few more cars and the dog had disappeared and Stiffy
Grant had changed his loafing place. Instead of propping up the Happy Hollow
tavern, he was propping up my office.
     Or at least what had been my office. For now I knew that there was no
point in waiting. I might as well go in right now and clean out my desk and
lock the door behind me and take the key down to the bank. Daniel Willoughby
would be fairly frosty, but I was beyond all caring about Daniel Willoughby.
Sure, I owed him rent that I couldn't pay and he probably would resent it,
but there were a lot of other people in the village who owed Daniel
Willoughby without much prospect of paying. That was the way he'd worked it
and that was the way he had it and that was why he resented everyone. I'd
rather be like myself, I thought, than like Dan Willoughby, who walked the
streets each day, chewed by contempt and hatred of everyone he met.
     Under other circumstances I would have been glad to have stopped and
talked a while with Stiffy Grant. He might be the village bum, but he was a
friend of mine. He was always ready to go fishing and he knew all the likely
places and his talk was far more interesting than you might imagine. But
right now I didn't care to talk with anyone.
     'Hi, there, Brad,' said Stiffy, as I came up to him. 'You wouldn't
happen, would you, to have a dollar on you?
     It had been a long time since Stiffy had put the bite on me and I was
surprised that he should do it now. For whatever else Stiffy Grant might be,
he was a gentleman and most considerate. He never tapped anyone for money
unless they could afford it. Stiffy had a ready genius for knowing exactly
when and how he could safely make a touch.
     I dipped into my pocket and there was a small wad of bills and a little
silver. I hauled out the little wad and peeled off a bill for him.
     'Thank you, Brad,' he said. 'I ain't had a drink all day.'
     He tucked the dollar into the pocket of a patched and flapping vest and
hobbled swiftly up the street, heading for the tavern.
     I opened the office door and stepped inside and as I shut the door
behind me, the phone began to ring.
     I stood there, like a fool, rooted to the floor, staring at the phone.
     It kept on ringing, so I went and answered it.
     'Mr Bradshaw Carter?' asked the sweetest voice I have ever heard.
     'This is he,' I said. 'What can I do for you?
     I knew that it was no one in the village, for they would have called me
Brad. And, besides, there was no one I knew who had that kind of voice. It
had the persuasive purr of a TV glamour girl selling soap or beauty aids,
and it had, as well, that dear, bright timbre one would expect when a fairy
princess spoke.
     'You, perhaps, are the Mr Bradshaw Carter whose father ran a
greenhouse?'
     'Yes, that's right,' I said.
     'You, yourself, no longer run the greenhouse?
     'No,' I said, 'I don't.'
     And then the voice changed. Up till now it had been sweet and very
feminine, but now it was male and businesslike. As if one person had been
talking, then had gotten up and gone and an entirely different person had
picked up the phone. And yet, for some crazy reason, I had the distinct
impression that there had been no change of person, but just a change of
voice.
     'We understand,' this new voice said, 'that you might be free to do
some work for us.'
     Why, yes, I would,' I said. 'But what is going on? Why did your voice
change? Who am I talking with?'
     And it was a silly thing to ask, for no matter what my impression might
have been, no human voice could have changed so completely and abruptly. It
had to be two persons.
     But the question wasn't answered.
     We have hopes,' the voice said, 'that you can represent us. You have
been highly recommended.'
     'In what capacity?' I asked.
     'Diplomatically,' said the voice. 'I think that is the proper...'
     'But I'm no diplomat. I have no...'
     'You mistake us, Mr Carter. You do not understand. Perhaps I should
explain a little. We have contact with many of your people. They serve us in
many ways. For example, we have a group of readers...'
     'Readers?'
     'That is what I said. Ones who read to us. They read many different
things, you see. Things of many interests. The Encyclopaedia Britannica and
the Oxford dictionary and many different textbooks. Literature and history.
Philosophy and economics. And it's all so interesting.'
     'But you could read these things yourself. There is no need of readers.
All you need to do is to get some books...'
     The voice sighed resignedly. 'You do not understand. You are springing
at conclusions.'
     'All right, then,' I said, 'I do not understand. We'll let it go at
that. What do you want of me? Remembering that I'm a lousy reader.'
     'We want you to represent us. We would like first to talk with you, so
that you may give us your appraisal of the situation, and from there we
can...'
     There was more of it, but I didn't hear it. For now, suddenly, I knew
what had seemed so wrong. I had been looking at it all the while, of course,
but it was not until this moment that a full realization of it touched my
consciousness. There had been too many other things - the phone when there
should have been no phone, the sudden change of voices, the crazy trend of
the conversation. My mind had been too busy to grasp the many things in
their entirety.
     But now the wrongness of the phone punched through to me and what the
voice might be saying became a fuzzy sound.
     For this was not the phone that had been on the desk an hour before.
This phone had no dial and it had no cord connected to the wall outlet.
     'What's going on?' I shouted. 'Who am I talking to? Where are you
calling from?'
     And there was yet another voice, neither feminine nor male, neither
businesslike nor sweet, but an empty voice that was somehow jocular, but
without a trace of character in the fibre of it.
     'Mr Carter,' said the empty voice, 'you need not be alarmed. We take
care of our own. We have much gratitude. Believe us, Mr Carter, we are very
grateful to you.'
     'Grateful for what?' I shouted.
     'Go see Gerald Sherwood,' said the emptiness. 'We will speak to him of
you.'
     'Look here,' I yelled, 'I don't know what's going on, but...'
     'Just talk to Gerald Sherwood,' said the voice.
     Then the phone went dead. Dead, completely dead. There was no humming
on the wire. There was just an emptiness.
     'Hello, there,' I shouted. 'Hello, whoever you may be.'
     But there was no answer.
     I took the receiver from my ear and stood with it in my hand, trying to
reach back into my memory for something that I knew was there. That final
voice - I should know that voice. I had heard it somewhere. But my memory
felled me.
     I put the receiver back on the cradle and picked up the phone. It was,
to all appearance, an ordinary phone, except that it had no dial and was
entirely unconnected. I looked for a trademark or a manufacturer's
designation and there was no such thing.
     Ed Adler had come to take out the phone. He had disconnected it and had
been standing, with it dangling from his hand, when I'd gone out for my
walk.
     When I had returned and heard the ringing of the phone and seen it on
the desk, the thing that had run through my mind (illogical, but the only
ready explanation), had been that for some reason Ed had reconnected the
phone and had not taken it. Perhaps because of his friendship for me;
willing, perhaps, to disregard an order so that I could keep the phone. Or,
perhaps, that Tom Preston might have reconsidered and decided to give me a
little extra time. Or even that some unknown benefactor had come forward to
pay the bill and save the phone for me.
     But I knew now that it had been none of these things. For this phone
was not the phone that Ed had disconnected.
     I reached out and took the receiver from the cradle and put it to my
ear.
     The businesslike voice spoke to me. It didn't say hello, it did not ask
who called. It said: 'It is clear, Mr Carter, that you are suspicious of us.
We can understand quite well your confusion and your lack of confidence in
us. We do not blame you for it, but feeling as you do, there is no use of
further conversation. Talk first to Mr Sherwood and then come back and talk
with us.'
     The line went dead again. This time I didn't shout to try to bring the
voice back. I knew it was no use. I put the receiver back on the cradle and
shoved the phone away.
     See Gerald Sherwood, the voice had said, and then come back and talk.
And what in the world could Gerald Sherwood have to do with it?
     I considered Gerald Sherwood and he seemed a most unlikely person to be
mixed up in any business such as this.
     He was Nancy Sherwood's father and an industrialist of sorts who was a
native of the village and lived in the old ancestral home on top of the bill
at the village edge. Unlike the rest of us, he was not entirely of the
village. He owned and ran a factory at Elmore, a city of some thirty or
forty thousand about fifty miles away. It was not his factory, really; it
had been his father's factory, and at one time it had been engaged in making
farm machinery. But some years ago the bottom had fallen out of the farm
machinery business and Sherwood had changed over to the manufacturing of a
wide variety of gadgets. Just what kind of gadgets, I had no idea, for I had
paid but small attention to the Sherwood family, except for a time, in the
closing days of high school, when I had held a somewhat more than casual
interest in Gerald Sherwood's daughter.
     He was a solid and substantial citizen and he was well accepted. But
because he, and his father before him, had not made their living in the
village, because the Sherwood family had always been well-off, if not
exactly rich, while the rest of us were poor, they had always been
considered just a step this side of strangers. Their interests were not
entirely the interests of the village; they were not tied as tightly to the
community as the rest of us. So they stood apart, perhaps not so much that
they wanted to as that we forced them to.
     So what was I to do? Drive out to Sherwood's place and play the village
fool? Go barging in and ask him what he knew of a screwy telephone?
     I looked at my watch and it was only four o'clock. Even if I decided to
go out and talk with Sherwood, I couldn't do it until early evening. More
than likely, I told myself he didn't return from Elmore until six o'clock or
so.
     I pulled out the desk drawer and began taking out my stuff. Then I put
it back again and closed the drawer. I'd have to keep the office until
sometime tonight because I'd have to come to it to talk with the person (or
the persons?) on that nightmare phone. After it was dark, if I wanted to, I
could walk out with the phone and take it home with me. But I couldn't walk
the streets in broad daylight with a phone tucked beneath my arm.
     I went out and closed the door behind me and started down the street. I
didn't know what to do and stood at the first street corner for a moment to
make up my mind. I could go home, of course, but I shrank from doing it. It
seemed a bit too much like hunting out a hole to hide in. I could go down to
the village hall and there might be someone there to talk with.
     Although there was a chance, as well, that Hiram Martin, the village
constable, would be the only one around. Hiram would want me to play a game
of checkers with him and I wasn't in the mood for playing any checkers.
Hiram was a rotten loser, too, and you had to let him win to prevent him
from getting nasty.
     Hiram and I had never got along too well together. He had been a bully
on the schoolground and he and I had fought a dozen times a year. He always
licked me, but he never made me say that I was licked, and he never liked
me. You had to let Hiram lick you once or twice a year and then admit that
you were licked and he'd let you be his friend. And there was a chance, as
well, that Higman Morris would be there, and on a day like this, I couldn't
stomach Higgy. Higgy was the mayor, a pillar of the church, a member of the
school board, a director of the bank, and a big stuffed shirt. Even on my
better days, Higgy was a chore; I ducked him when I could.
     Or I could go up to the Tribune office and spend an hour or so with the
editor, Joe Evans, who wouldn't be too busy, because the paper had been put
out this morning. But Joe would be full of county politics and the proposal
to build a swimming pool and a lot of other things of lively public interest
and somehow or other I couldn't stir up too much interest in any one of
them.
     I would go down to the Happy Hollow tavern, I decided, and take one of
the booths in back and nurse a beer or two while I killed some time and
tried to do some thinking. My finances didn't run to drinking, but a beer or
two wouldn't make me much worse off than I was already, and there is, at
times, an awful lot of comfort in a glass of beer. It was too early for many
people to be in the place and I could be alone.
     Stiffy Grant, more than likely, would be there, spending the dollar
that I had given him. But Stiffy was a gentleman and a most perceptive
person. If he saw I wanted to be by myself, he wouldn't bother me.
     The tavern was dark and cool and I had to feel my way along, after
coming in from the brilliance of the street. I reached the back booth and
saw that it was empty, so I sat down in it. There were some people in one of
the booths up front, but that was all there were.
     Mae Hutton came from behind the bar.
     'Hello, Brad,' she said. 'We don't see much of you.'
     'You holding down the place for Charley?' I asked her. Charley was her
father and the owner of the tavern.
     'He's catching a nap,' she said. 'It's not too busy this time of day. I
can handle it.'
     'How about a beer?' I asked.
     'Sure thing. Large or small?'
     'Make it large,' I told her.
     She brought the beer and went back behind the bar. The place was quiet
and restful not elegant, and perhaps a little dirty, but restful. Up front
the brightness of the street made a splash of light, but it faded out before
it got too far, as if it were soaked up by the quiet dusk that lurked within
the building.
     A man got up from the booth just ahead of me. I had not seen him as I
came in. Probably he'd been sitting in the corner, against the wall. He held
a half-filled glass and he turned and stared at me. Then he took a step or
two and stood beside my booth. I looked up and I didn't recognize him. My
eyes had not as yet become adjusted to the place.
     'Brad Carter?' he asked. 'Could you be Brad Carter?'
     'Yes, I could,' I said.
     He put his glass down on the table and sat down across from me. And as
he did, those fox-like features fell into shape for me and I knew who he
was.
     'Alf Peterson!' I said, surprised. 'Ed Adler and I were talking about
you just an hour or so ago.'
     He thrust his hand across the table and I grabbed it, glad to see him,
glad for some strange reason for this man out of the past. His handclasp was
firm and strong and I knew he was glad to see me, too.
     'Good Lord,' I said, 'how long has it been?'
     'Six years,' he told me. 'Maybe more than that.'
     We sat there, looking at one another, in that awkward pause that falls
between old friends after years of not seeing one another, neither one quite
sure of what should be said, searching for some safe and common ground to
begin a conversation.
     'Back for a visit?' I inquired.
     'Yeah,' he said. 'Vacation.'
     'You should have looked me up at once.'
     'Just got in three or four hours ago.'
     It was strange, I thought, that he should have come back to Millville,
for there was no one for him here. His folks had moved away, somewhere east,
several years ago. They'd not been Millville people. They'd been in the
village for only four or five years, while his father worked as an engineer
on a highway project.
     'You're going to stay with me,' I said. 'There's a lot of room. I am
all alone.'
     'I'm at a motel west of town. Johnny's Motor Court, they call it.'
     'You should have come straight to my place.'
     'I would have,' he said, 'but I didn't know. I didn't know that you
were in town. Even if you were, I thought you might be married. I didn't
want to just come barging in.'
     I shook my head. 'None of those things,' I said.
     We each had a drink of beer.
     He put down his glass. 'How are things going, Brad?'
     My mouth got set to tell a lie, and then I stopped. What the hell, I
thought. This man across from me was old Alf Peterson, one of my best
friends. There was no point in telling him a lie. There was no pride
involved. He was too good a friend for pride to be involved.
     'Not so good,' I told him.
     'I'm sorry, Brad.'
     'I made a big mistake,' I said. 'I should have gotten out of here.
There's nothing here in Millville, not for anyone.'
     'You used to want to be an artist. You used to fool around with drawing
and there were those pictures that you painted.'
     I made a motion to sweep it all away.
     'Don't tell me,' said Alf Peterson, 'that you didn't even try. You were
planning to go on to school that year we graduated.'
     'I did,' I said. 'I got in a year of it. An art school in Chicago. Then
Dad passed away and Mother needed me. And there wasn't any money. I've often
wondered how Dad got enough together to send me that one year.'
     'And your mother? You said you are alone.'
     'She died two years ago.'
     He nodded. 'And you still run the greenhouse.'
     I shook my head. 'I couldn't make a go of it. There wasn't much to go
on; I've been selling insurance and trying to handle real estate. But it's
no good, Alf. Tomorrow morning I'll close up the office.'
     'What then?' he asked.
     'I don't know. I haven't thought about it.'
     Alf signalled to Mae to bring another round of beers.
     'You don't feel,' he said, 'there's anything to stay for.'
     I shook my head. 'There's the house, of course. I would hate to sell
it. If I left, I'd just lock it up. But there's no place I want to go, Alf,
that's the hell of it. I don't know if I can quite explain. I've stayed here
a year or two too long; I have Millville in my blood.'
     Alt nodded. 'I think I understand. It got into my blood as well. That's
why I came back. And now I wonder if I should have. Of course I'm glad to
see you, and maybe some other people, but even so I have a feeling that I
should not have come. The place seems sort of empty. Sucked dry, if you
follow me. It's the same as it always was, I guess, but it has that empty
feeling.'
     Mae brought the beers and took the empty glasses.
     'I have an idea,' Alf said, 'if you care to listen.'
     'Sure,' I said. 'Why not?'
     'I'll be going back,' he said, 'in another day or so. Why don't you
come with me? I'm working with a crazy sort of project. There would be room
for you. I know the supervisor pretty well and I could speak to him.'
     'Doing what?' I asked. 'Maybe it would be something that I couldn't
do.'
     'I don't know,' said All, 'if I can explain it very logically. It's a
research project - a thinking project. You sit in a booth and think.'
     'Think?'
     'Yeah. It sounds crazy, doesn't it? But it's not the way it sounds. You
sit down in a booth and you get a card that has a question or a problem
printed on it. Then you think about that problem and you're supposed to
think out loud, sort of talking to yourself, sometimes arguing with
yourself. You're self-conscious to start with, but you get over that. The
booth is soundproofed and no one can see or hear you. I suppose there is a
recorder of some sort to take down what you say, but if there is, it's not
in sight.'
     'And they pay you for this?'
     'Rather well,' said Alf. 'A man can get along.'
     'But what is it for?' I asked.
     'We don't know,' said Alf. 'Not that we haven't asked. But that's the
one condition of the job - that you don't know what it's all about. It's an
experiment of some sort, I'd guess. I imagine that it's financed by a
university or some research outfit. We are told that if we knew what was
going on it might influence the way we are thinking. A man might
unconsciously pattern his thinking to fit the purpose of the research.'
     'And the results?' I asked.
     'We aren't told results. Each thinker must have a certain kind of
pattern and if you knew that pattern it might influence you. You might try
to conform to your own personal pattern, to be consistent, or perhaps
there'd be a tendency to break out of it. If you don't know the results, you
can't guess at the pattern and there is then no danger.'
     A truck went by in the street outside and its rumble was loud in the quietness of the tavern. And
after it went past, there was a fly buzzing on the ceiling. The people up in
front apparently had left - at least, they weren't talking any more. I
looked around for Stiffy Grant and he wasn't there. I recalled now that I
had not seen him and that was funny, for I'd just given him the dollar.
     'Where is this place?' I asked.
     'Mississippi. Greenbriar, Mississippi. It's just a little place. Come
to think of it, it's a lot like Millville. Just a little village, quiet and
dusty and hot. My God, how hot it is. But the project centre is air
conditioned. It isn't bad in there.'
     'A little town,' I said. 'Funny that there'd be a place like that in a
little town.'
     'Camouflage,' said All. 'They want to keep it quiet. We're asked not to
talk about it. And how could you hide it better than in a little place like
that? No one would ever think there'd be a project of that sort in a
stuck-off village.'
     'But you were a stranger...'
     'Sure, and that's how I got the job. They didn't want too many local
people. All of them would have a tendency to think pretty much alike. They
were glad to get someone from out of town. There are quite a lot of
out-of-towners in the project.'
     'And before that?'
     'Before that? Oh, yes, I see. Before that there was everything. I
floated, bummed around. Never stayed too long in any spot. A job for a few
weeks here, then a job for a few weeks a little farther on. I guess you
could say I drifted. Worked on a concrete gang for a while, washed dishes
for a while when the cash ran out and there was nothing else to do. Was a
gardener on a big estate down in Louisville for a month or two. Picked
tomatoes for a while, but you can starve at that sort of work, so I moved
on. Did a lot of things. But I've been down in Greenbriar for eleven
months.'
     'The job can't last forever. After a while they'll have all the data
they need.'
     He nodded. 'I know. I'll hate to have it end. It's the best work I ever
found. How about it, Brad? Will you go back with me?'
     'I'll have to think about it,' I told him. 'Can't you stay a little
longer than that day or two?'
     'I suppose I could,' said All. 'I've got two weeks' vacation.'
     'Like to do some fishing?'
     'Nothing I'd like better.'
     'What do you say we leave tomorrow morning? Go up north for a week or
so? It should be cool up there. I have a tent and a camping outfit. We'll
try to find a place where we can get some wall-eyes.'
     'That sounds fine to me.'
     'We can use my car,' I said.
     'I'll buy the gas,' said All.
     'The shape I'm in,' I said, 'I'll let you.'

        3

     If it had not been for its pillared front and the gleaming white rail
of the widow walk atop its roof, the house would have been plain and stark.
There had been a time, I recalled, when I had thought of it as the most
beautiful house in the entire world. But it had been six or seven years
since I had been at the Sherwood house.
     I parked the car and got out and stood for a moment, looking at the
house. It was not fully dark as yet and the four great pillars gleamed
softly in the fading light of day. There were no lights in the front part of
the house, but I could see that they had been turned on somewhere in the
back.
     I went up the shallow steps and across the porch. I found the bell and
rang.
     Footsteps came down the hall, a hurrying woman's footsteps. More than
likely, I thought, it was Mrs Flaherty. She had been housekeeper for the
family since that time Mrs Sherwood had left the house, never to return.
     But it wasn't Mrs Flaherty.
     The door came open and she stood there, more mature than I remembered
her, more poised, more beautiful than ever.
     'Nancy!' I exclaimed. 'Why, you must be Nancy!'
     It was not what I would have said if I'd had time to think about it.
     'Yes,' she said, 'I'm Nancy. Why be so surprised?'
     'Because I thought you weren't here. When did you get home?'
     'Just yesterday,' she said.
     And, I thought, she doesn't know me. She knows that she should know me.
She's trying to remember.
     'Brad,' she said, proving I was wrong, 'it's silly just to stand there.
Why don't you come in.'
     I stepped inside and she dosed the door and we were facing one another
in the dimness of the hail.
     She reached out and laid her fingers on the lapel of my coat.
     'It's been a long time, Brad,' she said. 'How is everything with you?
     'Fine,' I said. 'Just fine.'
     'There are not many left, I hear. Not many of the gang.'
     I shook my head. 'You sound as if you're glad to be back home.'
     She laughed, just a flutter of a laugh. 'Why, of course I am,' she
said. And the laugh was the same as ever, that little burst of spontaneous
merriment that bad been a part of her.
     Someone stepped out into the hall.
     'Nancy,' a voice called, 'is that the Carter boy?
     Why,' Nancy said to me, 'I didn't know that you wanted to see Father.'
     'It won't take long,' I told her. 'Will I see you later?'
     'Yes, of course,' she said. 'We have a lot to talk about.'
     'Nancy!'
     'Yes, Father.'
     'I'm coming,' I said.
     I strode down the hall toward the figure there. He opened a door and
turned on the lights in the room beyond.
     I stepped in and he closed the door.
     He was a big man with great broad shoulders and an aristocratic head,
with a smart trim moustache.
     'Mr Sherwood,' I told him, angrily, 'I am not the Carter boy. I am
Bradshaw Carter. To my friends, I'm Brad.'
     It was an unreasonable anger, and probably uncalled for. But he had
burned me up, out there in the hall.
     'I'm sorry, Brad,' he said. 'It's so hard to remember that you all are
grown up - the kids that Nancy used to run around with.'
     He stepped from the door and went across the room to a desk that stood
against one wall. He opened a drawer and took out a bulky envelope and laid
it on the desk top.
     'That's for you,' he said.
     'For me?'
     'Yes, I thought you knew.'
     I shook my head and there was something in the room that was very close
to fear. It was a sombre room, two walls filled with books, and on the third
heavily draped windows flanking a marble fireplace.
     'Well,' he said, 'it's yours. Why don't you take it?'
     I walked to the desk and picked up the envelope. It was unsealed and I
flipped up the flap. Inside was a thick sheaf of currency.
     'Fifteen hundred dollars,' said Gerald Sherwood. 'I presume that is the
right amount.'
     'I don't know anything,' I told him, 'about fifteen hundred dollars. I
was simply told by phone that I should talk with you.'
     He puckered up his face, and looked at me intently, almost as if he
might not believe me.
     'On a phone like that,' I told him, pointing to the second phone that
stood on the desk.
     He nodded tiredly. 'Yes,' he said, 'and how long have you had the
phone?'
     'Just this afternoon. Ed Adler came and took out my other phone, the
regular phone, because I couldn't pay for it. I went for a walk, to sort of
think things over, and when I came back this other phone was ringing.'
     He waved a hand. 'Take the envelope,' he said. 'Put it in your pocket.
It is not my money. It belongs to you.'
     I laid the envelope back on top the desk. I needed fifteen hundred
dollars. I needed any kind of money, no matter where it came from. But I
couldn't take that envelope. I don't know why I couldn't.
     'All right,' he said, 'sit down.'
     A chair stood angled in front of the desk and I sat down in it.
     He lifted the lid of a box on the desk. 'A cigar?' he asked.
     'I don't smoke,' I told him.
     'A drink, perhaps?'
     'Yes. I would like a drink.'
     'Bourbon?'
     'Bourbon would be fine.'
     He went to a cellaret that stood in a corner and put ice into two
glasses.
     'How do you drink it, Brad?'
     'Just ice, if you don't mind.'
     He chuckled. 'It's the only civilized way to drink the stuff' he said.
     I sat, looking at the rows of books that ran from floor to ceiling.
Many of them were in sets and, from the looks of them, in expensive
bindings.
     It must be wonderful, I thought, to be, not exactly rich, but to have
enough so you didn't have to worry when there was some little thing you
wanted, not to have to wonder if it would be all right if you spent the
money for it. To be able to live in a house like this, to line the walls
with books and have rich draperies and to have more than just one bottle of
booze and a place to keep it other than a kitchen shelf.
     He handed me the glass of whisky and walked around the desk. He sat
down in the chair behind it. Raising his glass, he took a couple of thirsty
gulps, then set the glass down on the desk top.
     'Brad,' he asked, 'how much do you know?'
     'Not a thing,' I said. 'Only what I told you. I talked with someone on
the phone. They offered me a job.'
     'And you took the job?'
     'No,' I said, 'I didn't, but I may. I could use a job. But what they
whoever it was had to say didn't make much sense.'
     'They?'
     Well, either there were three of them - or one who used three different
voices. Strange as it may sound to you, it seemed to me as if it were one
person who used different voices.'
     He picked up the glass and gulped at it again. He held it up to the
light and saw in what seemed to be astonishment that it was nearly empty. He
hoisted himself out of the chair and went to get the bottle. He slopped
liquor in his glass and held the bottle out to me.
     'I haven't started yet,' I told him.
     He put the bottle on the desk and sat down again.
     'OK,' he said, 'you've come and talked with me. It's all right to take
the job. Pick up your money and get out of here. More than likely Nancy's
out there waiting. Take her to a show or something.'
     'And that's all?' I asked. 'That is all,' he said.
     'You changed your mind,' I told him. 'Changed my mind?'
     'You were about to tell me something. Then you decided not to.'
     He looked at me levelly and hard. 'I suppose you're right,' he said.
'It really makes no difference.'
     'It does to me,' I told him. 'Because I can see you're scared.'
     I thought he might get sore. Most men do when you tell them they are
scared.
     He didn't. He just sat there, his face unchanging.
     Then he said: 'Start on that drink, for Christ's sake. You make me
nervous, just roosting there and hanging onto it.'
     I had forgotten all about the drink. I had a slug.
     'Probably,' he said, 'you are thinking a lot of things that aren't
true. You more than likely think that I'm mixed up in some dirty kind of
business. I wonder, would you believe me If I told you I don't really know
what kind of business I'm mixed up in.'
     'I think I would,' I said. 'That is, if you say so.'
     'I've had a lot of trouble in life,' he said, 'but that's not unusual.
Most people do have a lot of trouble, one way or the other. Mine came in a
bunch. Trouble has a way of doing that.'
     I nodded, agreeing with him.
     'First,' he said, 'my wife left me. You probably know all about that.
There must have been a lot of talk about it.'
     'It was before my time,' I said. 'I was pretty young.'
     'Yes, I suppose it was. Say this much for the two of us, we were
civilized about it. There wasn't any shouting and no nastiness in court.
That was something neither of us wanted. And, then, on top of that I was
facing business failure. The bottom went out of the farm machinery business
and I feared that I might have to shut down the plant. There were a lot of
other small farm machinery firms that simply locked their doors. After fifty
or sixty or more years as going, profitable concerns, they were forced out
of business.'
     He paused, as if he wanted me to say something. There wasn't anything
to say.
     He took another drink, then began to talk again. 'I'm a fairly stupid
man in a lot of ways. I can handle a business. I can keep it going if
there's any chance to keep it going and I can wring a profit from it. I
suppose that you could say I'm rather astute when it comes to business
matters. But that's the end of it. In the course of my lifetime I have never
really had a big idea or a new idea.'
     He leaned forward, clasping his hands together and putting them on the
desk.
     'I've thought about it a lot,' he said, 'this thing that happened to
me. I've tried to see some reason in it and there is no reason. It's a thing
that should not have happened, not to a man like me. There I was, on the
verge of failure, and not a thing that I could do about it. The problem was
quite simple, really. For a number of good economic reasons, less farm
machinery was being sold. Some of the big concerns, with big sales
departments and good advertising budgets, could ride out a thing like that.
They had some elbow room to plan, there were steps that they could take to
lessen the effects of the situation. But a small concern like mine didn't
have the room or the capital reserve. My firm, and others, faced disaster.
And in my case, you understand, I didn't have a chance. I had run the
business according to old and established practices and time-tested rules,
the same sort of good, sound business practices that had been followed by my
grandfather and my father. And these practices said that when your sales
dwindled down to nothing you were finished. There were other men who might
have been able to figure out a way to meet the situation, but not me. I was
a good businessman, but I had no imagination. I had no ideas. Ad then,
suddenly, I began to get ideas.
     But they were not my own ideas. It was as if the ideas of some other
person were being transplanted to my brain.
     'You understand,' he said, 'that an idea sometimes comes to you in the
matter of a second. It just pops from nowhere. It has no apparent point of
origin. Try as you may, you cannot trace it back to anything you did or
heard or read. Somehow, I suppose, if you dug deep enough, you'd find its
genesis, but there are few of us who are trained to do that sort of digging.
But the point is that most ideas are no more than a germ, a tiny starting
point. An idea may be good and valid, but it will take some nursing. It has
to be developed. You must think about it and turn it around and around and
look at it from every angle and weigh it and consider it before you can
mould it into something useful.
     'But this wasn't the way with these ideas that I got. They sprang forth
full and round and completely developed. I didn't have to do any thinking
about them. They just popped into my mind and I didn't need to do another
thing about them. There they were, all ready for one's use. I'd wake up in
the morning and I'd have a new idea, a new mass of knowledge in my brain.
I'd go for a walk and come back with another. They came in bunches, as if
someone had sown a crop of them inside my brain and they had lain there for
a while and then begun to sprout.'
     'The gadgets?' I said.
     He looked at me curiously. 'Yes, 'the gadgets. What do you know about
them?'
     'Nothing,' I told him. 'I just knew that when the bottom fell out of
the farm machinery business you started making gadgets. I don't know what
kind of gadgets.'
     He didn't tell me what kind of gadgets. He went on talking about those
strange ideas. 'I didn't realize at first what was happening. Then, as the
ideas came piling in on me, I knew there was something strange about it. I
knew that it was unlikely that I'd think of any one of them, let alone the
many that I had. More than likely I'd never have thought of them at all, for
I have no imagination and I am not inventive. I tried to tell myself that it
was just barely possible I might have thought of two or three of them, but
even that would have been most unlikely. But of more than two or three of
them I knew I was not capable. I was forced, finally, to admit that I had
been the recipient of some sort of outside help.'
     'What kind of outside help?'
     'I don't know,' he said. 'Even now I don't.'
     'But it didn't stop you from using these ideas.'
     'I am a practical man,' he said. 'Intensely practical. I suppose some
people might even say hard-headed. But consider this: the business was gone.
Not my business, mind you, but the family business, the business my
grandfather had started and my father had handed on to me. It wasn't my
business; it was a business I held in trust. There is a great distinction.
You could see a business you had built yourself go gurgling down the drain
and still stand the blow of it, telling yourself that you had been
successful once and you could start over and be successful once again. But
it's different with a family business.
     In the first place, there is the shame. And in the second place, you
can't be sure that you can recoup. You were no success to start with.
Success had been handed to you and you'd merely carried on. You never could
be sure that you could start over and build the business back. In fact,
you're so conditioned that you're pretty sure you couldn't.'
     He quit speaking and in the silence I could hear the ticking of a
clock, faint and far off, but I couldn't see the clock and I resisted the
temptation to turn my head to see if I could find it. For I had the feeling
that if I turned my head, if I stirred at all, I'd break something that lay
within the room. As if I stood in a crowded china shop, where all the pieces
were precarious and tilted, fearing to move, for if one piece were
dislodged, all of them would come crashing down.
     'What would you have done?' asked Sherwood.
     'I'd have used anything I had,' I said.
     'That's what I did,' said Sherwood. 'I was desperate. There was the
business, this house, Nancy, the family name - all of i