Keith licked his lips again. For a moment, a desperate moment, he couldn’t remember any of the places he’d submitted those stories to when he’d first written them. Then he remembered.
He said, «There’s only one possibility I can think of. Did you ever submit those stories to the Gebhart chain of pulps in Chicago?»
«Yes—one of them anyway. Both, I guess. I’ve got a record of it.»
«About five years ago?» Keith pressed.
«About that.»
Keith took a deep breath. He said, «Five years ago I was a reader for Gebhart. I must have read your stories when they came in. I must have liked them and passed them, even if the editors over me didn’t buy them. My subconscious mind must have remembered them.» He frowned.
«If that’s true I’d better quit writing—fiction, anyway. When I wrote those stories recently I thought they were original. If it was my subconscious memory of stories I’d read five years ago—»
He saw with relief that Slade’s grip on the pistol wasn’t quite so tight. Slade said, «Or you could have taken notes on those stories, intending to swipe them sometime later.»
Keith shook his head. «If it had been deliberate plagiarism, wouldn’t I have changed at least the names of the characters? And—» He started to say «the titles,» but realized in time that he wouldn’t be supposed to know whether the titles were the same or not. He turned to Winton and asked, «Did I use the same titles?»
«On one of them. On the other you had a better one.» Winton leaned back against the table behind him and looked at Slade. He said, «That sounds reasonable to me, Slade. I’m inclined to believe him. And, as he says, if he were deliberately plagiarizing, he’d have changed them more than he did. They were well written—the actual writing is better than mine was, I’ll admit.» He took a deep breath. «It could be true and you almost shot the guy.»
«I still should,» Slade said. «You know as well as I do we aren’t supposed to take chances with possible Arcs. In any case, I’m not taking this gun off him till we check forty ways for Sunday. For a start, you can put through a long distance call to this Chicago publisher and—wait, they’d be closed now, even if it’s an hour earlier there,»
Winton said, «Just a minute, Slade. I’ve got an idea. When I frisked him, I was looking for a gun and he hasn’t got one. But I did feel a billfold.»
Slade’s eyes got even harder as he stared at Keith. «And no identification in it?»
There was, Keith thought bitterly, plenty of identification—but not as Karl Winston. All too clearly now he saw all the mistakes he had made. And it was too late now to try to correct any of them. Maybe he had only seconds to live.
The W.B.I. man didn’t wait for him to answer. Obviously he wasn’t going to believe him anyway. He said to Winton, without taking his eyes off Keith, «Get the wallet. And see if he’s got anything else in his pockets. That’s the last chance we’ll give him.»
The other Keith Winton circled to approach him from the back. Keith took a deep breath. This was going to be it. Besides the identification in that wallet he still had the incriminating coins, wrapped—so they wouldn’t clink together—in money that was in dollars instead of credits. He hadn’t dared leave the stuff in his hotel room. Well, it didn’t matter. The wallet alone would be enough.
This was it. Either he was going to die here and now or else—Heroes in the stories he had bought back in a sane universe where he’d been a Borden editor instead of an Arcturian spy always managed to jump a gun. Was there a chance in a thousand that it could really be done?
CHAPTER XI
The Blanker Dark
THE MAN WHO was searching him was behind him now. Keith stood very still with the muzzle of the pistol aiming right at him. His mind was going like a millrace but it wasn’t thinking of anything that would save him from being shot within the next minute or two. As soon as the other Keith Winton opened that wallet and read the identification in it …
All Keith’s attention was on the automatic. A gun like that, he knew, shot steel-jacketed bullets that would go right through a man. If Slade fired now he’d probably kill both of them, both Keith Wintons.
And then what? Would he wake up back on Borden’s farm in Greeneville in a sensible world? No, not according to what Mekky, the mechanical brain, had said—«This is real … Your danger here is real, If you are killed here…
And, wildly improbable as Mekky himself was, he knew somehow that Mekky was dead right. Somehow there were two universes and two Keith Wintons but this one was just as real as the one he’d grown up in. The other Keith Winton was just as real as he was. And would the fact that one shot might kill them both delay the W.B.I. man’s finger a second on the trigger? It might or it might not.
A hand was reaching into his hip pocket. It came out, holding the billfold. Keith found he was holding his breath. A hand went into his side trouser pocket—apparently his host was going to finish the search before opening the billfold.
Keith quit thinking and moved.
His hand closed on Winton’s wrist, and he pivoted and swung Winton around in front of him, between himself and Slade. His trouser pocket ripped. Over Winton’s shoulder he saw the W.B.I. man moving to the side to get a clear shot. He moved, keeping Winton between them.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a fist coming for his face and he jerked aside, letting it pass over his shoulder and then stepped in low, butting his head against Winton’s chest. Then, with both hands and with all the weight of his body and the momentum of his forward rush, he shoved Winton backward against Slade, following close.
Slade stumbled backward into the bookcase and glass crashed. The automatic went off, making a noise like a blockbuster in the confined space of the room.
Keith clung to Winton’s lapels with both hands while his foot kicked up alongside Winton at the automatic. The toe of his shoe hit Slade’s wrist and the automatic went out of Slade’s hand. It clunked against the carpeted floor and Keith gave a final shove against Winton’s chest and then dived for the gun. He got it.
He backed off, holding it to cover both of them. He was breathing hard and—now that the immediate action was over—his hand was trembling.
There was a knock on the door, and a sudden hush inside the apartment. Then a voice called, «Are you alf right, Mr. Winton?» and Keith recognized the voice—that of Mrs. Flanders, who had the adjoining apartment. He made his voice sound as much like that of the other Winton as he could.
He called, «Everything’s okay, Mrs. Flanders. Gun went off while I was cleaning it. The recoil knocked me over.»
He stood still, waiting, knowing she’d be wondering why he didn’t open the door. But all his attention had to be on the two men in front of him and he didn’t take his eyes off them a second. He saw the puzzlement in Winton’s eyes. Winton was wondering how he knew Mrs. Flanders’ name and had recognized her voice.
After a few seconds he heard Mrs. Flanders’ voice again. «All right, Mr. Winton. I just wondered.» And her steps going back along the hall to her own apartment. She was still wondering, of course, why he hadn’t opened the door—and there’d been a lot more noise than his falling over from a recoil could have made. But she wouldn’t call copper right away. She’d keep on wondering awhile first.
But some other tenant might not. He had to do something quickly about Winton and the W.B.I. man. He couldn’t just shoot them but he couldn’t just walk out and leave them to start a chase after him. He needed at least a few minutes’ grace to start his getaway. Getaway to where? he wondered, then shoved that thought out of his mind. Right now he couldn’t figure more than minutes ahead.