It required four hours and forty-five minutes for that train to reach Chicago, which is a record the road may be proud of: Boone being only a hundred and sixty-odd miles south of it.
In the LaSalle Street station I sought out the Travelers’ Aid booth and told the girl the address I wanted to find. She dug out from racks beneath the counter a huge map of Chicago and turned it around to me. She read it upside down.
“Go right outside and take the elevated,” she rattled rapidly. “Out that door. Get a Loomis train and ask for a transfer. Ride all the way to the end of the line. A half-block north, get a 63rd streetcar going west. Watch for Sacramento, it’s just past the third traffic signal. Two or three miles, maybe four.”
And she folded up the map and put it away, mildly surprised to find me still standing there.
I said thanks and walked out “that door.”
I made my escape from the streetcar two blocks after passing Sacramento; she hadn’t told me they stop only every other block. It was colder in Chicago and so were the people. I walked back the two blocks.
On the corner of Sacramento and 63rd a sprinkling of citizens were loosely gathered around a drugstore window. Being somewhat the curious type I joined them.
In the window, stomping mechanically to and fro, meanwhile moving his hands and arms in small, jerking movements, was a zombie-like something in striped trousers and frock coat billed as
A thick and too obvious electric cable snaked across the floor from an electric outlet and vanished into the bottom opening of his trouser leg. It constantly got in his way as he moved. In one white-gloved hand Roboto carried an illuminated 25-watt bulb that had no visible socket.
The “Is He Human or Is He Monster” moved back and forth from one end of the long window to the other, putting across his commercials by suddenly stopping every so many steps to bend stiffly and mechanically from the middle and pick up a small sign from the floor. The upper half of the body would remain suspended at an unbalanced angle for long seconds, giving the impression counterweights hidden somewhere inside him prevented his toppling over.
Then he would continue the movement to the floor, or back upright, the sign clutched in his fingers.
I studied the faces around me. They were going for it, hook, line, sinker and pole. In a scientific age, anything went. They obediently read each sign he held up.
The sign usually implored the good citizens looking on to rush inside this minute and purchase large quantities of this and that, or anti-something, while the limited supply lasted. It was guaranteed of course on the money-back principle.
I watched the guy with open admiration. For all the human qualities Roboto displayed he might as well have been glass and gears inside instead of flesh and blood. No muscle twitched, no eye winked. Roboto reached over and picked up a card directly in front of me. As he or it straightened, he or it chose to pause at an extremely difficult angle and ogle me. I ogled back. After all, he could find something strange in me, too.
I formed a silent sentence with my lips, “Hot in there, eh bud?”
Roboto’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly and he held the stance some seconds longer before standing upright to dangle the card at me. The card informed me of a tremendous sale in hair oils now going on, and suggested I dash in.
One citizen dashed in, the others dashed for an east-bound streetcar, and I found myself alone with a good-humored young fellow in his early twenties. We looked at each other in silent, mutual agreement.
Finally he broke the silence, “People are suckers.”
“People are,” I agreed, because basically people are people. You can’t get around good, solid logic like that.
“Roboto is good,” the young man said.
“I can see that. He’s put a hell of a lot of practice into that act. I wonder if he sells any hair oil?”
“I imagine he does. I’ve stopped to watch him every day this week. There is always a crowd around.”
“And nine out of ten think he’s a robot?”
“Make it nine-and-a-half out of ten. That last man is only half sure he isn’t. They don’t stop to think. A real robot wouldn’t be wasted in a drugstore window selling hair oil.”
“Yeah. Say, maybe you can help me. I’m looking for 6636½ south Sacramento.”
He grinned at me. “Four blocks down, next to the last house in the block, this side of the street.”
“You sound as if you’d been there.”
“I live there.”
“The hell you say. Then you know Joquel Kennedy?”
“I’m Joquel Kennedy.”
I pretended I wasn’t surprised and introduced myself.
“I wrote you a card this afternoon, wanted to let you know I was coming to Chicago, but changed my mind and came up a day earlier. How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you. Are you a fap?”
“A... what?”
“Excuse me. I see by your answer that you aren’t. A fap. That’s a slang term to designate a member of the fantasy amateur press fans. I’m an amateur publisher.”
“So I found out. That’s why I’m here to see you.”
“Do you publish?”
“No.” I paused and then told him, “I’m a detective.”
He scratched the smooth underside of his chin but his face never changed.
“You don’t look like one.”
“That’s a compliment. Thanks. But I’m a private detective. I live in Boone.”
“I’ve been through there.” He nodded. “Well, you might as well tell me. I knew something like this was coming. I have flashes.”
“Flashes?”
“Prescience. The ability to see something that is going to happen before it happens. I dreamed of policemen last night.”
“Like that, eh? Well, I wanted some information on this amateur publishing. Particularly on a man in Croyden named Evans.”
He looked at me quickly. “Is Evans in trouble?”
“Not trouble.” The kid looked like he could take it. “Evans is dead.”
He could and did take it, but not without a reaction. He seemed instantly dazed, as if I had slapped his face.
“Dead?”
I nodded slowly. “Yesterday afternoon. Car hit him. The driver got away. I’m checking on his background. When you’re hunting for somebody or something you check the background. The clues can be found there.”
“A hit-and-run? Evans?” He couldn’t snap out of the daze. “Why... why, he was a good friend of mine.”
I said nothing.
Kennedy went on, “You mean he’s really dead?”
“He’s dead all right. I saw the body.”
“Harry dead...”
Absently he moved away from the drug store window. I followed him but not without one backward glance at Roboto. He was human all right. He stood staring after us, some what shocked. He had been reading our lips. I waved good-bye and he so far forgot himself as to wave back.
“Damn it to hell!” Kennedy exclaimed. “I liked the man.”
“You knew him well?”
“Yes, certainly. But not the way...” He stopped and looked around him. “I don’t want to talk here. Let’s go down home.”
“Wait a bit. I haven’t eaten. Is there a good restaurant in the neighborhood?”
Kennedy waved his hand vaguely. “A couple of blocks. Place where I eat. A good place.”
“Have dinner with me?”
“No, thank you. But I’d like a bottle of beer.”
“It’s on me. Lead on. You were saying—?”
“That I knew him well. But I’ve never met him in my life if that’s what you mean. We had an extensive correspondence, swapped a few books and things like that. Each of us always said we were going to run over and see the other, but we never got around to it.”