That was Freddie's theory, anyway, and he liked it. What he didn't like was that, as he moved into the dip in the land, he saw that just ahead the cornfield gave way to pasture with cows in it, surrounded by barbed-wire fence.
There was nothing for it but to turn left and go back out to County Route 14. He was in the dip now, and the state-police car was out of sight. May it stay out of sight. Freddie coasted to the bottom of the dip, switched to the climbing-out-of-a-dip gear, and sped on.
There was no rearview mirror on this thing, unfortunately. Freddie had to keep looking back over his shoulder. Up to the top of the dip, and he saw way behind himself to the police car still stopped beside the cornfield. Around the curve he went, shifted into the good-level-road gear, and hit forty-five without working up a sweat.
Robert said, "Peter, if I didn't know you have no sense of humor—"
"Well, thank you very much."
"You're welcome. And if I hadn't seen those two ghostly cats of yours with my very own eyes, I would think, when you tell me an invisible man is on his way here to this house from the city, that you were pulling my leg."
David said, "Robert, I would give my leg for this not to be true."
One of the four who had just heard the whole story for the first time, a talent agent named Gerald, said, "Peter, what I still don't understand is, if you never considered using these potions togeth—"
"Formulae."
Gerald smirked a bit, but nodded. "Whatever you say, dear. If you never put these things together on purpose, in your lab, how can you be so sure what their combined effect might be?"
"Computer models," David answered.
"Also, I'm afraid, empirically," Peter said, and looked mournful. "On the phone just now, Freddie asked me when the invisibility would fade off and he'd get to be visible again."
David made a low moaning sound. "Lunch," said the canapй waiter.
Martin got to his feet. "We have an hour and a half, at the very least, before this fellow gets here. We'll have our lunch, and then we'll decide what to do."
"I know what to do, Peter said, also standing. "Once we've got our hands on Freddie, I want to keep him. Not lose him stupidly, the way we did last time."
"And not," David added, "turn him over to those awful tobacco people."
"Nor," Peter said, "that even worse policeman."
"Oh!" David cried, at the very memory of Barney Beuler. "Certainly not!"
"We'll capture him," Robert decided. "Thirteen of us, one of him. I don't care how invisible he is, or how clever, we can surround him and capture him and tie him to a piece of furniture if we have to."
"A large piece of furniture," Peter advised.
"First," Martin said, "lunch."
The car that squealed to a stop in the middle of the road was full of drunken teenage boys. It came down Route 14 from the north, weaving back and forth in the road ahead of Freddie, polluting the air with terrible rap noises, and then it stopped so suddenly its front bumper kissed the blacktop, and five teenagers piled out of it, leaving the doors open and the rap snarling as they ran with drunken intensity straight at Freddie. That is, at the bicycle rolling along all by itself at the edge of the road.
Damn, damn, double damn. By Freddie's calculations, Quarantine Road would be just a little beyond that next curve up there; he was almost to it. But these drunken clowns were too close and coming too fast for Freddie to take any evasive action, even if he'd had a friendly cornfield beside him instead of these hilly, rocky, underbrush-clogged woods. No time to swing around and head the other way, and no profit in it, either, since they could always catch up with him in their car, and probably run him down with it, too.
Freddie jumped off the bike and gave it a shove toward the woods. It was still rolling, though with a distinct wobble, when the first of the drunken louts reached it, and launched himself through the air and tackled it, which must have hurt.
Freddie was already through them, running toward their car, the blacktop hot beneath his bare feet. The car was an old Ford LTD that had apparently been used as a stable for several years. The driver had not only left the rap crap blasting and the key in its ignition, he'd left the engine running as well, merely shifting into "park" before he'd leaped out in pursuit of the bike. Sliding behind the fuzzy-cloth-covered wheel with its eight-ball speed-turner mounted on it, feeling his body immediately stick to the vinyl fake-zebra seat cover, Freddie grabbed the eight-ball-topped gearshift with one hand while slamming the driver's door with the other, shifted into "drive," and drove.
The assembled meatheads looked up from dismembering the bicycle to see their former chariot execute a fast hard K-turn, its other doors slamming as the LTD shot forward, its wheels smoking as it reversed, and the whole car bouncing like something in a demolition derby when it slashed away, northbound.
How they yowled! Like hyenas disturbed over carrion. Freddie couldn't hear them, because he was leaving so fast and also because he couldn't figure out at first how to stop that strident yawp out of the LTD's oversize speakers. Then he was around the far curve, the throwbacks were out of sight, and he slowed down long enough to discover the racket didn't come from a radio station but a tape. He ejected the tape from the player, and then from the car.
Quarantine Road. Freddie made the turn, and on this narrow dirt road there was no other traffic at all. If he'd only made it this far on the bike, he'd have been absolutely safe.
On the other hand, this LTD was faster, if grubbier. Freddie drove along, and in no time at all he passed the archway with the double S's. A blacktop road went in under it, but no structures could be seen from here in those woods.
Freddie kept going, and a quarter mile later he found a weedy dirt track that wandered away to the right. He drove in there, went far enough to be invisible from Quarantine Road, turned off into the scrubby woods, and kept going until the bottom was torn out by a rock. That seemed far enough.
Most people wanted to talk about the invisible man during lunch, but Martin would have none of it. "Our digestions come first," he said. "We can wait, and take our time, and have a nice lunch, and then, over coffee afterward, we can discuss exactly what to do about Peter and David's invisible man."
Of course Nurse Martin was, as usual, right. So everybody thought about the invisible man, but spoke, if they spoke at all, disjointedly about other things that didn't matter a bit.
At last lunch was finished, coffee was served, and the plates and staff were removed to the kitchen. Robert said, "Now, does anyone have anything they've been dying to say?"
A clamor of voices arose, but through them drove the Kissingeresque basso of Edmond, a corporate attorney in his other life, who said, "I would like to say a word about kidnapping."
That shut everybody up. They all stared at Edmond, a bearlike man famous in his group for having more hair on his shoulders than on his head. At last, William, an antiques dealer, said, "Edmond, this isn't kidnapping. This is an invisible man!"
Edmond spread his meaty hands. "Hath an invisible man no rights? Hath he not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, even if you can't see them? If you prick him, doth he not bleed?"
"Not so's you'd notice," said Peter.
Edmond said, "I just think you should consider the ramifications, from a legal point of view, before you proceed."