He tried it and looked at the series of positions indicated upon the chart. No.
Try one o’clock in the morning. It looked almost like — sense!
Try midnight.
That did it. At any rate, it was close enough. The calculation could be only a few minutes off one way or the other and there was no point now in working out the exact time. Now that he knew the incredible fact.
He took another drink and stared at the chart grimly.
A trip to the library gave Dr. Hale the further information he needed. The address!
Thus began the saga of Dr. Hale’s journey. A useless journey, it is true, but one that should rank with the trip of the messenger to Garcia.
He started it with a drink. Then, knowing the combination, he rifled the safe in the office of the president of the university. The note he left in the safe was a masterpiece of brevity. It read:
Taking money. Explain later.
Then he took another drink and put the bottle in his pocket. He went outside and hailed a taxicab. He got in.
«Where to, sir?» asked the cabby.
Dr. Hale gave an address.
«Fremont Street?» said the cabby. «Sorry, sir, but I don’t know where that is.»
«In Boston,» said Dr. Hale. «I should have told you, in Boston.»
«Boston? You mean Boston, Massachusetts? That’s a long way from here.»
«Therefore we better start right away,» said Dr. Hale, reasonably. A brief financial discussion and the passing of money, borrowed from the university safe, set the driver’s mind at rest, and they started.
It was a bitter cold night, for March, and the heater in the taxi didn’t work any too well. But the Tartan Plaid worked superlatively for both Dr. Hale and the cabby, and by the time they reached New Haven, they were singing old-time songs lustily.
«Off we go, into the wide, wild yonder …» their voices roared.
It is regrettably reported, but possibly untrue, that in Hartford Dr. Hale leered out of the window at a young woman waiting for a late street-car and asked her if she wanted to go to Boston. Apparently, however, she didn’t, for at five o’clock in the morning when the cab drew up in front of 614 Fremont Street, Boston, only Dr. Hale and the driver were in the cab.
Dr. Hale got out and looked at the house. It was a millionaire’s mansion, and it was surrounded by a high iron fence with barbed wire on top of it. The gate in the fence was locked and there was no bell button to push.
But the house was only a stone’s throw from the sidewalk, and Dr. Hale was not to be deterred. He threw a stone. Then another. Finally he succeeded in smashing a window.
After a brief interval, a man appeared in the window. A butler, Dr. Hale decided.
«I’m Dr. Milton Hale,» he called out. «I want to see Rutherford R. Sniveley, right away. It’s important.»
«Mr. Sniveley is not at home, sir,» said the butler. «And about that window —»
«The devil with the window,» shouted Dr. Hale. «Where is Sniveley?»
«On a fishing trip.»
«Where?»
«I have orders not to give out that information.»
Dr. Hale was just a little drunk, perhaps. «You’ll give it out just the same,» he roared. «By orders of the President of the United States.»
The butler laughed. «I don’t see him.»
«You will,» said Hale.
He got back in the cab. The driver had fallen asleep, but Hale shook him awake.
«The White House,» said Dr. Hale.
«Huh?»
«The White House, in Washington,» said Dr. Hale. «And hurry!» He pulled a hundred dollar bill from his pocket. The cabby looked at it, and groaned. Then he put the bill into his pocket and started the cab.
A light snow was beginning to fall.
As the cab drove off, Rutherford R. Sniveley, grinning, stepped back from the window. Mr. Sniveley had no butler.
If Dr. Hale had been more familiar with the peculiarities of the eccentric Mr. Sniveley, he would have known Sniveley kept no servants in the place overnight, but lived alone in the big house at 614 Fremont Street. Each morning at ten o’clock, a small army of servants descended upon the house, did their work as rapidly as possible, and were required to depart before the witching hour of noon. Aside from these two hours of every day, Mr. Sniveley lived in solitary splendor. He had few, if any, social contacts.
Aside from the few hours a day he spent administering his vast interests as one of the country’s leading manufacturers, Mr. Sniveley’s time was his own and he spent practically all of it in his workshop, making gadgets.
Sniveley had an ash-tray which would hand him a lighted cigar any time he spoke sharply to it, and a radio receiver so delicately adjusted that it would cut in automatically Sniveley-sponsored programs and shut off again when they were finished. He had a bathtub that provided a full orchestra accompaniment to his singing therein, and he had a machine which would read aloud to him from any book which he placed in its hopper.
His life may have been a lonely one, but it was not without such material comforts. Eccentric, yes, but Mr. Sniveley could afford to be eccentric with a net income of four million dollars a year. Not bad for a man who’d started life as the son of a shipping clerk.
Mr. Sniveley chuckled as he watched the taxicab drive away, and then he went back to bed and to the sleep of the just.
«So somebody has things figured out nineteen hours ahead of time,» he thought. «Well, a lot of good it will do them!»
There wasn’t any law to punish him for what he’d done …
Bookstores did a landoffice business that day in books on astronomy. The public, apathetic at first, was deeply interested now. Even ancient and musty volumes of Newton’s Principia sold at premium prices.
The ether blared with comment upon the new wonder of the skies. Little of the comment was professional, or even intelligent, for most astronomers were asleep that day. They’d managed to stay awake the first forty-eight hours from the start of the phenomena, but the third day found them worn out mentally and physically, and inclined to let the stars take care of themselves while they — the astronomers, not the stars — caught up on sleep.
Staggering offers from telecast and broadcast studios enticed a few of them to attempt lectures, but their efforts were dreary things, better forgotten. Dr. Carver Blake, broadcasting from KNB, fell soundly asleep between a perigee and an apogee.
Physicists were also greatly in demand. The most eminent of them all, however, was sought in vain. The solitary clue to Dr. Milton Hale’s disappearance, the brief note «Taking money. Explain later,» wasn’t much of a help. His sister Agatha feared the worst.
For the first time in history, astronomical news made banner headlines in the newspapers.
Snow had started early that morning along the northern Atlantic seaboard and now it was growing steadily worse. Just outside Waterbury, Conn., the driver of Dr. Hale’s cab began to weaken.
It wasn’t human, he thought, for a man to be expected to drive to Boston and then, without stopping, from Boston to Washington. Not even for a hundred dollars.
Not in a storm like this. Why, he could see only a dozen yards ahead through the driving snow, even when he could manage to keep his eyes open. His fare was slumbering soundly in the back seat. Maybe he could get away with stopping here along the road, for an hour, to catch some sleep. Just an hour. His fare wouldn’t ever know the difference. The guy must be loony, he thought, or why hadn’t he taken a plane or a train?
Dr. Hale would have, of course, if he’d thought of it. But he wasn’t used to traveling and besides there’d been the Tartan Plaid. A taxi had seemed the easiest way to get anywhere — no worrying about tickets and connections and stations. Money was no object, and the plaid condition of his mind had caused him to overlook the human factor involved in an extended journey by taxi.