“Your clothes were wet and beyond repair. We disposed of them. I hope that you don’t mind. The contents of the pockets are on the dressing table. There is other clothing in the closet that I am sure will fit you.”
“Why,” said Frederick Gray, “that was very thoughtful of you. But would you mind telling me—”
“Not at all,” the caller said, “but perhaps you’d better hurry out and get your breakfast. It will be getting cold.”
The phone went dead.
“Just a minute,” Gray yelled at it. “Just hold on a minute—”
But the buzz of an empty line kept sounding in his ear.
He hung up and went into the bedroom, where he found a pair of slippers tucked beneath the bed.
We hope you had a restful night. Your clothes were wet, so we disposed of them. We put the contents of the pockets on the dressing table.
And who in the world were we?
Where was everyone?
And what happened, when he slept, to repair the ankle?
He had been right the night before, he thought. It was an empty house. There was no one here. But in some manner which he could not fathom, it still was tenanted.
He washed his hands and face, but did not bother with a shave, although when he looked into the medicine cabinet, it was no longer empty. It now held shaving tackle, a toothbrush and a tube of paste, a hairbrush and a comb.
Breakfast was on the table in the dining room and there was only one place set. There were bacon and eggs, hash brown potatoes, tomato juice, toast and a pot of coffee.
But there was no sign of anyone who might have prepared the food or placed it on the table.
Could there be, he wondered, a staff of invisible servants in the house who took care of guests?
And the electricity, he wondered. Was there a private power plant? Perhaps one that was powered by the waterfall? And what about the phone? Could it be a radiophone? He wondered if a radiophone would look different from just an ordinary phone. He could not recall that he had ever seen one.
And who had been the caller?
He stood and looked at the waiting breakfast.
“Whoever you are,” he said, aloud, “I thank you. I wish that I could see you. That you would speak to me.”
No one spoke to him.
He sat down and ate the breakfast, not realizing until he put the food into his mouth how hungry he had been.
After breakfast he went into the bedroom and found the clothes hanging in the closet. Not fancy clothes, but the kind of outfit a fisherman would wear.
Coming out of the bedroom, he saw that the breakfast things had been cleared off the table.
He stepped outside into the sunshine and the day was beautiful. The storm had blown itself out sometime in the night.
Now that he was all right, he told himself, perhaps he’d better go upstream and bring down the rod and the other stuff he’d left. The rest of it didn’t amount to much, but the rod was much too good to leave.
It all was there, piled where he had left it, neatly on the shore. He bent down and picked up the rod and stood facing the river, with it in his hand.
Why not? he asked himself. There was no hurry to get back. As long as he was here he might as well get in a bit of fishing. He’d not have another chance. He’d not come back again.
He laid the rod aside and sat down to pull on the waders. He emptied the fish he’d caught the day before out of the creel and strapped it on his shoulder.
And why just this morning? he asked himself. Why just another day? There was no reason to get back and he had a house to stay in. There was no reason he shouldn’t stay a while and make a real vacation of it.
He stood aghast at how easily he accepted the situation, how ready he found himself to take advantage of it. The house was a thing of mystery, and yet not terrifying. There was nothing in the house, strange as it might be, that a man need be afraid of.
He picked up the rod and stepped into the stream and whipped out the line. On the fifth cast a trout struck. The day had started fine.
He fished to the first break of the rapids just above the falls, then clambered out on shore. He had five fish in the creel and two of them were large.
He could fish the rapids from the shore, he thought, but perhaps he shouldn’t. He should be getting back for a good look at the house. He had to settle in his mind the truth about the power source and the telephone and there might be a lot of other things that needed looking into.
He glanced down at his watch and it was later than he thought. He untied the fly and reeled in the line and disjointed the rod, then set off down the trail.
By the middle of the afternoon, he had finished his inspection of the house.
There were no power and no telephone lines coming to the house and there was no private power plant. The house was conventionally wired for electricity, but there was no source that he could find. The telephone plugged into a jack in the hall and there were other jacks in the bedroom and the study.
But there was another item: The night before, as he sat in the living room, he could see into the study. He had seen the painting and the desk and the empty book shelves. But now the shelves were no longer empty. They fairly bulged with books and the kind of books that he would have chosen if he had put them there himself—a law library that would have been the envy of any practicing attorney, and with a special section that he first took to be a joke.
But when he looked at the phone directory, it had seemed somewhat less a joke.
For it was no such directory as any man had ever seen before. It listed names and numbers, but the addresses ranged the galaxy!
Besur, Yar, Mekbuda V–FE 6-8731
Beten, Varmo, Polaris III–GR 7-3214
Beto, Elm, Rasalgethi IX–ST 1-9186
Star names, he thought, and the planet numbers. They could be nothing else.
And if it were a joke, it was pointless and expensive.
Star names listed in the pages of the directory and those other star names upon the books in that special section in the study!
The obvious conclusion, he told himself, rather plaintively, was too outrageous to be given even slight consideration. It was outrageous and ridiculous and it made no sense and he would not entertain it. There must be other answers and the one he did not like to think about was that he’d gone insane.
There might be a way, he thought, that it could be settled.
He flipped the directory closed and then opened the front cover and there it was: TELEPHONE SERVICE CALLS. He lifted the receiver and dialed for INFORMATION.
There were two ringing sounds and then a voice said:
“Good evening, Dr. Gray. We are glad you called. We hope everything’s all right. There isn’t any trouble?”
“You know my name,” said Gray. “How do you know my name?”
“Sir,” said Information, “it is a point of pride with us that we know the name of each of our subscribers.”
“But I’m not a subscriber. I’m only—”
“Oh, but you are,” insisted Information. “As soon as you took possession of the house—”
“Possession! I did not—”
“But, Dr. Gray, we thought you knew. We should have told you at the start. We are very sorry. The house, you see, is yours.”
“No,” Gray said, weakly, “I did not understand.”
“Yours,” said Information, “so long as you may need it, so long as you may want to keep it. The house and everything that’s in it. Plus all the services, naturally, that you may require.”
“But it can’t be mine,” said Gray. “I have done nothing that would make it mine. How can I own a house for which I’ve given nothing?”