There was a clue somewhere in this very day, he thought. Somewhere there was a clue, if he could recognize it. Something happened today that made the agency behind the watcher decide it was time to let him know.
He ticked off the day's events, marshalling them in his mind as they might be written in a notebook:
_The little girl who had come to breakfast._
_ The remembrance of a walk that he had taken twenty years before._
_ The story in the paper about more worlds than one._
_The Forever car._
_The women who had talked in the seat behind him on the bus, and Mrs. Leslie and the club she was organizing._
_Crawford and his story of a world with its back against the wall._
_The houses at five hundred dollars a room._
_ Mr. Flanders sitting on the porch and saying that there was a new-found factor which kept the world from war._
_The mouse that was not a mouse._
But that wasn't all, of course; somewhere there was something else that he had forgotten. Without knowing how he knew it, he knew that he had forgotten something, some other tabulated fact that should be inserted somewhere in the list of things that had happened in the day.
There was Flanders saying that he was interested in the setup of the gadget shops and that he was intrigued by the riddle of the carbohydrates and that he was convinced there was something going on.
And later in the day he had sat on the porch and talked of reservoirs of knowledge in the stars and of a factor which kept the world from war and of another factor which had whipped Man out of his rut almost a hundred years ago and had kept him at the gallop ever since. He had speculated about these matters in an idle way, he had said.
But was his speculation idle?
Or did Flanders know more than he was telling?
And if he knew, what then?
Vickers shoved back the chair and got to his feet.
He looked at the time. It was almost two o'clock.
No matter, he thought. It's time that I find out. Even if I have to break into his house and jerk him out of bed, screaming in his nightshirt (for he was sure that Flanders would not wear pajamas), it's time that I find out.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LONG before he reached Flanders' house, Vickers saw that there was something wrong. The house was lighted up from basement to garret. Men with lanterns were walking about the yards and there were other knots of men who stood around and talked, while all along the street women and children stood on the porches in hastily snatched-up robes. As if, Vickers thought, they were waiting for a strange three o'clock parade that might at any moment come winding down the street.
A group of men was standing by the gate and as he turned in, he saw there were some he knew. There was Eb, the garage man, and Joe, the exterminator, and Vic, who ran the drugstore.
"Hello, Jay," said Eb, "we're glad that you are here."
"Hello, Jay," said Joe.
"What's going on?" asked Vickers.
"Old Man Flanders," said Vic, "has up and disappeared."
"His housekeeper got up in the night to give him some medicine," said Eb, "and found he wasn't there. She looked around for him for a while and then she went to get some help."
"You've searched for him?" asked Vickers.
"Around the place," said Eb. "But we're going to start branching out now. We'll have to organize and get some system in it."
The drugstore owner said: "We thought at first maybe he'd been up during the night wandering around the house or out into the yard and might have had a seizure, of one sort or another. So we looked near at hand at first."
"We've gone over the house," said Joe, "from top to bottom and we've combed the yard and there ain't hide nor hair of him."
"Maybe he went for a walk," Vickers offered.
"No man in his right mind," declared Joe, "goes walking after midnight."
"He wasn't in his right mind, if you ask me," said Eb. "Not that I didn't like him, 'cause I did. Never saw a more mannerly old codger in all my born days, but he had funny ways about him."
Someone with a lantern came down the brick paved walk. "You men ready to get organized?" asked the man with the lantern.
"Sure, sheriff," said Eb. "Sure, we're ready, any time you are. We just been waiting for you to get it figured out."
"Well," said the sheriff, "there ain't much that we can do until it gets light, although that's only a couple hours away. But I thought maybe until it got light enough to see we might take some quick scouts out around. Some of the other boys are going to fan out and cover the town, go up and down all the streets and alleys and I thought maybe some of you might like to have a look along the river."
"That's all right with us," said Eb. "You tell us what you want us to do and we sure will do it."
The sheriff lifted his lantern to shoulder height and looked at them. "Jay Vickers, ain't it? Glad you joined us, Jay. We need all the men there are."
Vickers lied, without knowing why he lied: "I heard some commotion going on."
"Guess you knew the old gent pretty well. Better than the most of us."
"He used to come over and talk to me almost every day," said Vickers.
"I know. We remarked about it. He never talked to no one else."
"We had some common interests," Vickers said, "and I think that he was lonely."
"The housekeeper said he went over to see you last night."
"Yes, he did," said Vickers. "He left shortly after midnight." "Notice anything unusual about him? Any difference in the way he talked?"
"Now, look here, sheriff," said Eb. "You don't think that Jay had anything to do with this?"
"No," the sheriff said. "No, I guess I don't." He lowered the lantern and said, "If you fellows would go down to the river. Split up when you get there. Some of you go up-stream and some of you go down. I don't expect you to find anything, but we might as well look. Be back by daylight and we'll really start combing for him."
The sheriff turned away, walking back up the brick pavement, with his lantern swinging.
"I guess," said Eb, "we might as well get started. I'll take one bunch down the river and Joe will take the others up. That all right with the rest of you?"
"It's all right with me," said Joe.
They walked out the gate and down the street until they hit the cross street, then went down to the bridge. They halted there.
"We split up here," said Eb. "Who wants to go with Joe?"
Several men said they would.
"All right," said Eb. "The rest of you come with me." They separated and plunged down from the street to the river bank. Cold river mist lay close along the bank and in the darkness they could hear the swift, smooth tonguing of the river. A night bird cried across the water and looking out to the other bank, one could see the splintered starlight that had shattered itself against the running current.
Eb asked, "You think we'll find him, Jay?"
Vickers spoke slowly. "No, I don't. I can't tell you why, but somehow I am pretty sure we won't."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IT WAS early evening before Vickers returned home.
The phone was ringing when he stepped inside the door and he strode across the room and picked it up.
It was Ann Carter. "I've been trying to get you all day. I'm terribly upset. Where have you been?"
"Out looking for a man," said Vickers.
"Jay, don't be funny," she said. "Please don't be funny."
"I'm not being funny. An old man, a neighbor of mine, disappeared. I've been out helping look for him."