“Not the parade, the spectators.”
He saw it immediately: along the curb between the thick trunks of old trees stood a lineup of men, women, children, dogs. Among them a tall man wearing a flat, black-ribboned straw hat. And under its stiff brim, smiling at the camera—sharp, clear, unmistakable—the face of the man beside him.
Who nodded, reaching for his folder. “Yep. Me. Right here in Winfield. On this very street. Watching the Memorial Day parade in the spring of 1923. There’s no Project now, Major; it doesn’t exist. But there was. It did.”
“Fine. Then why don’t I remember it? You do, you say.”
“Something happened, Major. Something happened back in the past that altered the present.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Anything. When it happened, I was back in the past where it didn’t touch me. I took my memories with me, and brought them back. But they didn’t match the present anymore. I came back, but not to the restored Winfield. I came back to this untouched garbage dump. And went crazy. Got myself to New York, and ran the last block to the Project. And found Beekey’s Moving and Storage, nothing else. And worst of all”—he leaned toward Rube, lowering his voice—“worst of all, Danziger didn’t exist. Wasn’t in the phone book. And at the library I looked through their old phone book file back to 1939. No E. E. Danziger. Ever. No record of his birth at City Hall. And no one ever heard of him at Harvard. He didn’t exist!”
“He did it . . .” Rube was slowly standing, his face turning red. “Oh, that son of a bitch. He did it!”
“Who?”
“Why . . . Marley? Morley! Simon Morley! We sent him back, didn’t we? Into the nineteenth century on a . . . mission. And he did this!”
“Did what?”
“Why . . . I don’t know.” He stood looking helplessly at McNaughton. “Something. Did something, back in the past, so that . . . Danziger was never born. No Project now. And never was.” He sat down, and the two men stared at the deserted street ahead. Then Rube said, “John, what keeps you here in this nothing place?”
“My job. Part-time mechanic. At subscale pay. And the cheapest room this side of Calcutta.”
“You ever do any fighting? Boxing, I mean?”
“Some. In the Army.”
“Heavyweight?”
“Mostly. I pared down to light-heavy once, but I was young and could do it. Won easy. A supply sergeant, and soft. We showed the same on the scales but I outweighed him in the bones.”
“Pretty good, were you?”
“Not bad. Won more than I lost, but I lost some too. Knocked out twice, and I quit. Wanted to keep what brains I got.”
“You ever kill anybody?
“Never actually did. I was going to once but the situation changed. I would have done it, though. I had it all thought out.”
“This in the Army?”
“Yeah. But he got promoted, and transferred. Lucky for him. And me too, no doubt.”
“Is there anything you wouldn’t do, John, to get back? To the other Winfield?”
“Nothing. There is nothing I wouldn’t do.”
“Do you know how Simon Morley got back to the nineteenth century?”
“He was tutored. Learned all about it, got the feel of it. Then used the Dakota as his Gateway.”
“The Dakota?”
“A New York apartment building. It was there in the nineteenth century, and it’s there today. The Project furnished an apartment in the Dakota, got him the right wardrobe, made it a Gateway—”
“Could you do it? Get back there where Morley is?”
“Sure.” He grinned. “If you can do the thing, you can do it, Major. That your car up the street, the Toyota?” Rube nodded. “Looks a little snug for me.”
“They fit the Japanese, John.”
“I’ll manage.” He stood up, inches taller than Rube. “Run me over to my place. Give me five minutes to pack my stuff. Three, if I hurry. And I’ll hurry. Believe me, I’ll hurry.”
5
ALTHOUGH THIS WAS WINTER and well after dark, the air wetly cold, a man sat on a Central Park bench near Fifth Avenue, watching the path to his left. The light from a streetlamp just touched him, a dark motionless lump. The turned-up collar of his overcoat covered his chin, his cap pulled low over his forehead. Hands pushed into the overcoat pockets, he watched the path, and when he saw the man he was waiting for walking quickly toward him—“Right on time,” he said to himself—he lowered his face, and sat staring down at the path apparently in thought.
The man walked by; he was wearing an ankle-length dark overcoat and a brown fur cap, and when he’d walked on a dozen steps, the seated man stood up—tall now—and followed Simon Morley.
. . . I walked out onto Fifth Avenue, a light delivery wagon rattled slowly by, the horse tired, his neck slumped, a kerosene lantern swaying under the rear axle. On the walk a woman in a feathered black hat, a fur cape over her shoulders, walked by, holding her long dark skirt an inch above the wet paving stones.
I turned south, down narrow, quiet residential Fifth Avenue (the tall man, twenty yards behind him, turned too), glancing into yellow-lighted windows as I walked, catching glimpses: of a bald bearded man reading a newspaper, the light from a fireplace I couldn’t see reflected redly on the windowpane; of a white-aproned, white-capped maid passing through a room; of a month-old Christmas tree, a woman touching a lighted taper to its candles for the pleasure of the five-year-old boy beside her.
. . . north on Broadway from Madison Square, I walked along the Rialto, the theatrical section of New York when Broadway was Broadway. The street was jammed with newly washed and polished carriages. The sidewalks were alive with people, at least half of them in evening dress, the night filled with the sound of them, and the feel of excitement and imminent pleasure hung in the air.
Following only a few steps behind now, the tall man looked at the passing faces, and glanced into carriages, sometimes stooping momentarily to do so, smiling with the pleasure of being here.
. . . I hurried past the lighted theaters, restaurants, and great hotels, until I reached the Gilsey House between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth. There, at the lobby cigar counter, I bought a cigar, a long thin cheroot, and tucked it carefully into the breast pocket of my inner coat. Outside—
Outside on the crowded evening sidewalk the tall man sauntered now, taking his time, toward the Gilsey House . . . until Simon Morley walked out again and down the steps, tucking his cigar into an inside coat pocket, and went on. The tall man walked faster until he’d nearly caught up. Then, hanging only a step or two behind, he kept pace, one or two pedestrians between them.
Waiting for an opportunity to present itself, he saw it presently, twenty-odd yards ahead. A short brass-railed flight of stone stairs led up from the sidewalk to the first-floor double doors; Wellman & Co., Insurance Brokers, said the gold-leaf letters on the dark windows. Directly beside those stairs another, steeper flight led down to a below-street-level barbershop: its striped pole stood at the curb.
In the moment, in the half-step before Simon Morley reached that second staircase, the tall man just behind stepped up beside him, walked the half-step with him, then slammed the full weight of his big body sideways into Morley, thrusting his hip hard into him for good measure. He literally lifted the smaller man from his feet, shooting him into the staircase, and Morley dropped to strike the sharp stone edges of the stairs, tumbling hard down the flight until his body slammed into the locked door of the barbershop. The tall man walked on, not hurrying, and at Thirtieth Street turned the corner. Several men looked at him, and he looked back, meeting their eyes, and no one stopped him.