Chapter II

Charles dined alone on a pickup meal and went to bed early. Undressed, in his third-floor bedroom, he scratched a naked stomach that, at forty-one, was beginning to show a faint bulge, noted a more marked bulge in a side pocket of the jacket he had just removed and hung up.

He dug out its source--an odd little gadget, nicknamed the "spider," which he had shown to Henri Dubois and Corinne Forrester that afternoon when they were in his office. It had happened to be on his desk. Supposed to spray a transparent waterproof film over any surface, its backers were seeking money to promote it as a substitute for raincoats and umbrellas.

There was a hitch, of course--it clung abominably to human hair and for this reason, since it was chiefly intended for women, its financing was still highly problematical. But it had certain other uses, according to the testing laboratories, which its inventor seemed to have missed. Justin must, he decided, have stuck it into his pocket instead of back on his desk. He wondered what it would be like to plaster himself with a form-fitting suit of invisible pajamas.

Then, regretfully, he laid it on the bedside table and got into orthodox nightwear. After settling himself with twin pillows, he reached for a well-worn copy of Esther Forbes' _Paul Revere and the World He Lived In_, began to browse through its vivid pages.

Again Old Boston came to life. Church bells pealed, small colored sweeps carried their brooms through the cobbled streets, fish vendors shouted the merits of their wares.

Contrary to the bowdlerizations of nineteenth century historians, there was little of the Puritan in Boston life two centuries ago. Chaperons were unheard of north of Spanish territory and the powerful rum of Medford and Newburyport was the staple festive drink of a generation which would have considered cola depraved.

According to a young rhymester of the period, describing a party "where kisses and drams set the virgins aflame"--

The chairs in wild order flew quite round the room,
Some threatened with fire brands, some with a broom,
While others, resolved to increase the uproar,
Lay tussling the girls in wide heaps on the floor.

Eighteenth century Boston, Justin decided, would hardly have been a happy home for inhibitions. He tried to conjure up a vision of one of the merry maids of the period, a girl as warm and charmingly devilish as his Marie was chill and repressed.

She would not, he decided, have been beautiful according to Hollywood standards. But her features would be the more intriguing for their very irregularity. Her simple grey or blue dress, no matter how modestly cut, would have failed utterly to hide the vibrant young figure beneath. Her lips and eyes and complexion....

The telephone rang on his bedside table. Justin came out of a wild dream in which Corinne Forrester, wearing a Navajo Indian blanket adorned with Puritan cap, collar and cuffs, was seated firmly on his lap and refusing to get up. It was odd, he thought fragmentarily, how Dubois' woman seemed to have moved into his subconscious. And with her vibrant, almost tangible allure....

Devereux Chandler's urbane tones greeted him. "Hope I didn't wake you up, Charles."

"Not at all," Justin croaked. By the banjo clock on the wall opposite the wardrobe he saw that it was still twenty minutes short of midnight.

"I hoped I'd run into you here at the Ivesons'," Chandler explained. "Marie tells me you were too tired to come."

"That's one word for it," Justin told him. Despite the fact that Chandler, as his wife's uncle and a member of the board of the Ninth National Corporation, held complete power not only over his job but, at least indirectly, over his domestic life, Justin had always been frank, even blunt with him. He had long nursed an idea that this outspokenness with a man used to subservience was one of the reasons he had been able to hold his favor.

But the Bostonian merely grunted and said, "I understand Henri Dubois has been after you for backing."

"That's right," Justin replied.

"Hmmm." Chandler sounded thoughtful. "I suppose a decision now might make or break the man. How do you feel about it, Charles?"

"I'm going to sleep on it," Justin told him.

"That's sound," said Chandler. "I must say I'm beginning to be interested myself. Marie's been talking to me."

"She's dead against him. Oddly enough, for quite different reasons, so is Dubois' own woman, the Forrester female."

"A point to consider, perhaps. I hope I haven't disturbed you, Charles, but I wanted some inkling of how you felt about this matter."

Justin put the phone back on its cradle, picked up the spider half unconsciously. Devereux Chandler, cheerfully sardonic, polite, urbane, was the most difficult human being to interpret correctly the younger man had encountered in his not inconsiderable experience. Why was Chandler seeking preliminary knowledge of the decision?

Until then Justin had thought of it as no more than another job to be handled to the best of his ability, one of a long series of decisions that had brought him to his present position.

Now other considerations began to crowd this basis for judgment. It occurred to him that quite literally the fate of a goodly portion of the world might well depend upon his answer. There seemed little question but that Henri Dubois could not get the money he wanted elsewhere.

Or, if the evangelist should obtain such financing, it might not come in time--or in sufficient quantity. And if Dubois were forced to use the contributions sent by his followers to promote his own cause he might be laying himself open to sordid subsequent court actions that, however unjustified, would inevitably soil his character and reputation in the public mind.

Justin became aware of an ominous physical sensitivity that caused him to feel every thread of the nylon pajamas which encompassed his body, every bit of linen in the fine sheet that covered his bare feet.

Twice before he had felt such heightened awareness--once on the eve of his marriage to Marie, again on the night before he had made his first important decision at the bank. On each occasion it had been the prelude to an event that had shaped inexorably the life that followed.

Now it was sharper than ever before--and he wondered if perhaps it meant that the decision he would have to make on the morrow might shape not only his own life but that of the world. He discovered that he was sweating lightly and that the sweat was cold.

This, he told himself, was nonsense. No matter how far-reaching its results a decision was a decision, to be decided one way or the other, according to the best available facts, thereafter to be abided by whatever happened.

He tossed the whole mess out of his mind, turned off the light, pushed one of the two pillows from beneath his head and rolled over on his right side. He had just remembered how to lick it.

The device dated back to his childhood and adolescence in the Midwest, to his years at college, to the early years of his job. It involved a mixture of all three elements--the small town within commuting distance of a medium-sized city, Harvard and Boston--connected by an odd Toonerville-ish single-track railroad on which ran just two passenger trains a day.

The railroad had been real enough during his childhood--it was, he had recently learned, long extinct, its rusted rails torn up for sorely-needed scrap metal during World War Two. Yet, fifteen years and almost fifteen hundred miles away, Justin could still hear distinctly the asthmatic beep of its steam whistle as it pounded along behind its stubby black engine across the cornfield.

Even in his boyhood the railroad had been dying, its three cars never more than half-full. It had run miraculously through a deep cut in the one hill the countryside boasted, then through woodland clumps and across the river on a wooden trestle, into the larger woods.

Thereafter it had run straight and true to the city--but it no longer ran there in his visualization. Instead, by some strange twist of Justin's geography, it deviated from its straight path to become briefly a part of the subway running beneath Harvard Square.

Thereafter it crossed under the Charles to plunge beneath Boston's Back Bay, never quite becoming a part of the city's subway system. Finally it wound up in a maze of circles between Washington and Devonshire Streets, whence it turned easily for the return journey.

Now, faced with the most important decision of his career, Justin summoned the odd little train to his rescue. To his relief he was easily able to take it through the cornfield to the cut.

But thereafter, it traveled a different path. Midway through the cut Justin realised two things. One, he was the only passenger on the entire train. Two, he was able to see over the sides of the cut, down the fallaway of the hill to the flat countryside beyond.

His range of vision grew and, as he peered through the soot-grimed panes of the windows, he felt a sudden jolt of fear. The train was no longer following the familiar track of his barbiturant fantasy. It was, instead, flying through the air.

Fear became panic as clouds became woolly lambs, far below, then mere streaks and patches of white. He had sudden memory of a movie, taken from a V-2 rocket above White Sands, in which the world twisted and grew small and curved in a matter of seconds.

Then, with a rush of sound never heard on that one-track spur, the train rumbled into a tunnel of darkness, its wheels clacking a samba-beat on rails that could not possibly exist. Coal smoke from the funnel invaded the car and Justin found himself blinking his eyes and coughing. He had to breathe now and the gas was invading his lungs.

His last thought was that it had not been such a happy way to go to sleep after all....