"You," said Hastings, "should write a book, yourself." "I may," said Cartwright, contentedly. "By God, I really may. Take the hide off them and their penny-pinching lives. They'd eat it up. They'd like it. Give them stuff to talk about for months."
"You think, then, that my book…"
"That's one," said Cartwright, "that some of them might actually have believed in. You have it all annotated and documented within an inch of its very life. Impressive sort of stuff. I don't see how you did it."
"You still don't believe it," said the author, bitterly. "You have a sneaking hunch I faked it."
"Well, now," said Cartwright, "you can't say I said that. I never asked you, did I?"
He stared off into space, with a lost look on his face.
"Too bad," he said. "Too bad. We could have made a billion. I tell you, boy, no kidding, we could have made a billion."
22
Crouched in the alley, behind a pile of weather-beaten boxes that had been thrown there long ago by some small establishment which fronted on the narrow, dingy street—thrown and forgotten and never removed—Frost waited until the man came out of the back door of the hole-in-the-wall eating place and put the garbage into the cans that stood against the wall.
And when he finally came, he carried, as well as the basket full of garbage, a bundle, wrapped in newspaper, which he placed on the ground beside the cans. Then he took the lids off the cans and lifted the bundles of garbage from the heavy basket in which he carried them and put them in the cans. Having done this, he picked up the bundle he had placed beside the cans and balanced it on the lid of one of the cans. For a moment he stood, looking up and down the alley, a white-smudged figure in the darkness, outlined by the feeble glow that invaded the alley from the street. Then he picked up the basket and went back into the restaurant.
Frost rose and, moving swiftly, picked up the bundle off the can. He tucked it underneath his arm and retreated down the alley, stopping at the alley's mouth. There were a few people on the street and he waited until they had moved a bit away, then darted quickly across the street into the opposite alley.
Five blocks away, following the successive alleys, he came to the rear of a dilapidated building, small and with half the roof torn off it, as if someone at one time had started to raze it and then had figured it wasn't worth the trouble. Now it stood, sad and sagging and abandoned, fust a little farther along the road to ruin than its fellows on either side of it.
A stairs built of stone, with a bent and rusted guardrail leading from its top, ran down into the basement.
Ducking swiftly from the alley, Frost went down the stairs. At the bottom a door, still held upright by one rusted hinge, stood propped against the jamb. By some tugging and hauling, Frost got it open, went through it into the basement, then shoved it shut again.
Having done that, he was home—a home that he had found ten days before, after a long succession of other hiding places that had been worse by far than this. For the basement was cool and dry and it had no rats or no other vermin in too noticeable a number and it seemed to be safe and forgotten, perhaps safe because it was forgotten. No one ever came around.
"Hello there," said someone from the dark.
Frost spun on his heels, crouching as he spun, dropping the bundle to the floor.
"Don't worry," said the voice. "I know who you are and I won't cause you any trouble."
Frost did not move. He held his crouch. Hope and fear wrestled his brain. One of the Holies who had sought him out again? Someone from Forever Center? Perhaps a man sent by Marcus Appleton?
"How did you track me down?" he whispered.
"I've been looking for you. I have been asking around. Someone saw you in the alley. You are Frost, aren't you?"
"Yes, I'm Frost."
The man came out of the gloom in which he'd stood. The half-light from a basement window showed the human shape of him, but little else.
"I am glad I found you, Frost," he said. "My name is Franklin Chapman."
"Chapman? Wait a minute! Franklin Chapman is the man…"
"Right," the other said. "Ann Harrison talked with you about me."
Frost felt the wild laughter rising in him and sought to choke it down, but it rose in spite of him and sputtered through his lips. He sat down limply on the floor and let his hands hang helplessly, while he shook with the bitter laughter that came flooding up in him.
"My God," he said, gasping, "you are the man—you are the one I promised I would help!"
"Yes," said Chapman. "At times, events turn out to be rather strange."
Slowly the laughter died away, but Frost still sat limp and weak.
"I'm glad you came," he finally said, "although I can't imagine why you did."
"Ann sent me. She asked if I'd try to find you. She found out what happened to you."
"Found out? It should have been in the papers. All a reporter had to do was look up the record."
"That's what she did, of course. And it was there, all right, but no word in the papers. Not a single line. But all sorts of rumors. The town is full of rumors."
"What kind of rumors?"
"A scandal of some sort at Center. You've disappeared and Center is trying to hush it up."
Frost nodded. "It figures. Papers tipped off to shut their eyes and rumors started to make it seem that I ran away. Do you think Center knows where I am?"
"I don't know," said Chapman. "I picked up a lot of talk while I looked for you. I'm not the only one who has been asking questions."
It didn't work the way they thought it would. They thought that after a day or two I'd go and apply for death."
"Most men would have."
"Not me," said Frost. "I've had a lot of time to do my thinking. I always can go down to the vaults. As a last desperate measure, when I can't stand it any longer, that is always left But not yet. Not for a while." He hesitated, then spoke again. "I'm sorry, Chapman.
I didn't think. I shouldn't talk this way."
"It doesn't bother me," said Chapman. "Not any more. Not now that the shock is over. After all, I'm no worse off than many men before me. I've gotten sort of used to it. I try not to think about it too much."
"You've spent a lot of time hunting me. How about your job?"
"They fired me. I knew they would;"
"I'm sorry."
"Oh, it worked out all right. I've got a TV contract and a publisher is paying someone else to write a book. Wanted me to write it myself, but I told him I couldn't get the words down."
"The dirty creeps," said Frost. "Anything to sell the suckers."
"I know," said Chapman, "but I don't mind. I know what they are doing and it's all right with me. I have a family that has to be raised and a wife who should have something laid away before she dies. It's the least I can do for her. I made them pay. I turned them down to start with and then when they kept after me I named a figure I thought they wouldn't touch, but they did, and I am satisfied. The old lady will have plenty laid away." Frost got up from the floor, searched for his bundle and found it.
"Man up the street, fellow at a restaurant, puts it out for me each night. I don't know who he is."
"I talked with him," said Chapman. "Little scrawny man, old, all wizened up. Said he saw you going through the garbage cans. Didn't think anyone should have to get his eats that way."
"Let's go over here and sit down," suggested Frost. "There's an old davenport that someone left down here. I sleep on it. Springs busted and pretty badly beaten up, but it's better than the floor."