Blaine was looking over the ketch when Mr. Davis came over.
“Say Tom,” the owner said, “there was a fellow around here just a little while ago looking for you. Did you see him?”
“No,” Blaine said. “Who was it?”
“A mainlander,” Davis said, frowning. “Just off the steamer this morning. I told him you weren't here yet and he said he'd see you at your house.”
“What did he look like?” Blaine asked, feeling his stomach muscles tighten.
Davis frowned more deeply. “Well, that's the funny part of it. He was about your height, thin, and very tanned. Had a full beard and sideburns. You don't see that much any more. And he stank of shaving lotion.”
“Sounds peculiar,” Blaine said.
“Very peculiar. I'll swear his beard wasn't real.”
“No?”
“It looked like a fake. Everything about him looked fake. And he limped pretty bad.”
“Did he leave a name?”
“Said his name was Smith. Tom, where are you going?”
“I have to go home right now,” Blaine said. “I'll try to explain later.”
He hurried away. Smith must have found out who he was and what the connection was between them. And, exactly as he had promised, the zombie had come visiting.
33
When he told Marie, she went at once to a closet and took down their suitcases. She carried them into the bedroom and began flinging clothes into them.
“What are you doing?” Blaine asked.
“Packing.”
“So I see. But why?”
“Because we’re getting out of here.”
“What are you talking about? We live here!”
“Not any more,” she said. “Not with that damned Smith around. Tom, he means trouble.”
“I'm sure he does,” Blaine said. “But that's no reason to run. Stop packing a minute and listen! What do you think he can do to me?”
“We’re not going to stay and find out,” she said.
She continued to shove clothes into the suitcase until Blaine grabbed her wrists.
“Calm down,” he told her. “I'm not going to run from Smith.”
“But it's the only sensible thing to do,” Marie said. “He's trouble, but he can't live much longer. Just a few more months, weeks maybe, and he'll be dead. He should have died long before now, that horrible zombie! Tom, let's go!”
“Have you gone crazy or something?” Blaine asked. “Whatever he wants, I can handle it.”
“I've heard you say that before,” Marie said.
“Things were different then.”
“They’re different now! Tom, we could borrow the cutter again, Mr. Davis would understand, and we could go to —”
“No! I'm damned if I'll run from him! Maybe you've forgotten, Marie, Smith saved my life.”
“But what did he save it for?” she wailed. “Tom, I'm warning you! You mustn't see him, not if he remembers!”
“Wait a minute,” Blaine said slowly. “Is there something you know? Something I don't?”
She grew immediately calm. “Of course not.”
“Marie, are you telling me the truth?”
“Yes, darling. But I'm frightened of Smith. Please Tom, humor me this once, let's go away.”
“I won't run another step from anyone,” Blaine said. “I live here. And that's the end of it.”
Marie sat down, looking suddenly exhausted. “All right, dear. Do what you think is best.”
“That's better,” Blaine said. “It'll turn out all right.”
“Of course it will,” Marie said.
Blaine put the suitcases back and hung up the clothes. Then he sat down to wait. He was physically calm. But in memory he had returned to the underground, had passed again through the ornate door covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese ideograms, into the vast marble-pillared Palace of Death with its gold and bronze coffin. And heard again Reilly's screaming voice speak through a silvery mist:
“There are things you can't see, Blaine, but I see them. Your time on Earth will be short, very short, painfully short. Those you trust will betray you, those you hate will conquer you. You will die, Blaine, not in years but soon, sooner than you could believe. You'll be betrayed, and you'll die by your own hand.”
That mad old man! Blaine shivered slightly and looked at Marie. She sat with downcast eyes, waiting. So he waited, too.
After a while there was a soft knock at the door.
“Come in,” Blaine said to whoever was outside.
34
Blaine recognized Smith immediately, even with false beard, sideburns and tan stage makeup. The zombie came in, limping, bringing with him a faint odor of decay imperfectly masked by a powerful shaving lotion.
“Excuse the disguise,” Smith said. “It isn't intended to deceive you, or anyone. I wear it because my face is no longer presentable.”
“You've come a long way,” Blaine said.
“Yes, quite far,” Smith agreed, “and through difficulties I won't bore you by relating. But I got here, that's the important thing.”
“Why did you come?”
“Because I know who I am,” Smith said.
“And you think it concerns me?”
“Yes.”
“I can't imagine how,” Blaine said grimly. “But let's hear it.”
Marie said, “Wait a minute. Smith, you've been after him since he came into this world. He's never had a moment's peace. Can't you just accept things as they are? Can't you just go and die quietly somewhere?”
“Not without telling him first,” Smith said.
“Come on, let's hear it,” Blaine said.
Smith said, “My name is James Olin Robinson.”
“Never heard of you,” Blaine said after a moment's thought.
“Of course not.”
“Have we ever met before that time in the Rex building?”
“Not formally.”
“But we met?”
“Briefly.”
“All right, James Olin Robinson, tell me about it. When did we meet?”
“It was quite brief,” Robinson said. “We glimpsed each other for a fraction of a second, then saw no more. It happened late one night in 1958, on a lonely highway, you in your car and me in mine.”
“You were driving the car I had the accident with?”
“Yes. If you can call it an accident.”
“But is was! It was completely accidental!”
“If that's true, I have no further business here,” Robinson said. “But Blaine, I know it was not an accident. It was murder. Ask your wife.”
Blaine looked at his wife sitting in a corner of the couch. Her face was waxen. She seemed drained of vitality. Her gaze seemed to turn inward and not enjoy what it saw there. Blaine wondered if she was staring at the ghost of some ancient guilt, long buried, long quickening, now come to term with the appearance of the bearded Robinson.
Watching her, he slowly began piecing things together.
“Marie,” he said, “what about that night in 1958? How did you know I was going to smash up my car?”
She said, “There are statistical prediction methods we use, valence factors…” Her voice trailed away.
“Or did you make me smash up my car?” Blaine asked. “Did you produce the accident when you wanted it, in order to snatch me into the future for your advertising campaign?”
Marie didn't answer. And Blaine thought hard about the manner of his dying.
He had been driving over a straight, empty highway, his headlights probing ahead, the darkness receding endlessly before him … His car swerved freakishly, violently, toward the oncoming headlights…He twisted hard on the steering wheel. It wouldn't turn … The steering wheel came free and spun in his hands, and the engine wailed …