The Chronocide Mission

17. ROSZT AND KAYNOR; EGARN

Everywhere Roszt and Kaynor went, they found themselves confronted by telephones. A motel pretending to any status at all had one of these contrivances in every room. From the beginning, they regarded them with deep suspicion. Their very shape defied logic; and though Egarn had explained telephones thoroughly, they hadn’t fully believed what he said. Certainly no telephone they encountered spoke to them, and for a long time they had no inclination whatsoever to speak to a telephone.

What Egarn said also seemed to imply that telephones were able to listen, which at first made them reticent about talking to each other in the presence of one.

Then they began to overhear people discussing all manner of things on public telephones, and eventually they discovered that one could ask anonymous questions by telephone and obtain information that otherwise would have required hours of investigation and kilometers of travel. The telephone became a valuable adjunct to their breaking and entering activities. All they had to do was telephone one of the Johnsons, pretend to have dialed a wrong number—something bafflingly easy to do—and thus find out whether anyone was at home in the house. Or one could telephone a business enterprise and discover, simply by asking, the times that it opened and closed.

This use of the telephone produced such excellent results that they became more venturesome. Factories intrigued them because they were so effectively sealed off from outsiders. A retail concern went out of its way to make strangers feel welcome. Factories, with tall fences topped with barbed-wire, guards on the gates to inspect the identification of anyone wanting to enter, and, remote behind vast parking lots, buildings whose functions were not only indiscernible but unimaginable, seemed specifically designed for a sinister object like making Honsun Lens.

One factory could have hundreds, even thousands, of employees. They knew from their research in city directories that many of them had employees named Johnson. They began to wonder whether all of them did.

Once the name of a factory was known—and usually it was painted on the building or displayed on a prominent sign—it was a simple matter to look up its telephone number in the directory. As an experiment, Kaynor called one and asked for Mr. Johnson. The switchboard operator handled the call cautiously; when Kaynor couldn’t identify the Johnson or the department he wanted, she transferred him to personnel. The personnel operator was less diplomatic.

“We’ve got five Johnsons,” she said exasperatedly. “Don’t you know which one you want?”

Kaynor preserved his anonymity by hanging up. After that, whenever he and Roszt chanced to pass that factory, they wondered again what was transpiring in those remote buildings, what roles the various Johnsons were performing, and whether any of them were on their lists.

They discovered an entirely new reference source in the student directory of the University of Rochester. This gave them an assortment of Johnsons who weren’t mentioned in the telephone directory or the city directory. It also introduced them to the university’s world of laboratories, classrooms, and dormitories. Several times they sauntered through its lovely campus along the Genesee River, but these incursions gained them nothing. Dormitories were even more risky than apartment buildings to prowl in, and they could make no sense at all of the multitude of things that seemed to be going on in the laboratories.

Before they had quite decided what to do about the university, they were befuddled by another discovery. Far to the south, but also on the bank of the Genesee River, was the Rochester Institute of Technology, whose directory doubtless would give them a new list of Johnsons if they could find a copy. Probably there were other such institutions. Each additional discovery complicated their task further.

They returned to the University of Rochester Campus, strolling along perplexedly and not knowing what they were looking for or whether they would recognize it if they found it, and quite by chance they overheard one student call to another, “I’ll meet you at Wilt Johnson’s restaurant.”

There was no Wilt Johnson on any of their lists. This mystery occupied them off and on for a tenite before they finally discovered Wilt’s Snack Shack, a little diner located in a run-down section of busy West Henrietta Avenue just south of Mt. Holly Cemetery. The place did look dismally like a shack on the outside. The interior was scrupulously clean, but there was a makeshift air about it. The lunch counter and the booths were of rough plywood; tables and chairs were rickety; nothing matched. The elaborate white hat the proprietor wore while he worked over the grill was the diner’s one ornate feature. Most of the patrons seemed to be students.

Wilt Johnson was a young man, and he had admirable rapport with his youthful customers. He seemed to know most of them personally. The young waitress who flitted gracefully about the crowded room was his wife.

There was nothing to suggest that this Johnson had the remotest connection with any kind of len; nevertheless, he exemplified the problem they faced. They began to eat breakfast regularly at his Snack Shack. They sat in the most remote corner, enjoyed the largest meal the establishment offered at that time of day, and listened to the other patrons’ conversation while they gave the proprietor their puzzled scrutiny and reflected on the fact that all of their laborious research had missed him completely. They wondered how many more anonymous Johnsons this enormous city contained.

The revelation seemed to add an entirely new dimension to their investigation, and they weren’t quite sure what they should do about it. Puzzle reposed within puzzle in this baffling civilization. If a “restaurant” could be called a “snack shack,” was it possible that Johnsons, too, were sometimes called something else? Roszt and Kaynor had learned—again entirely by accident—that women often changed their names when they married. It was also true that they often didn’t. The two men from the future could think of no reason why the Honsun Len couldn’t have been invented by a woman—but what if she no longer called herself Johnson?

One morning at the Snack Shack, the conversation took a totally unexpected twist: Roszt and Kaynor suddenly heard themselves talked about. In a booth near the front, four students—two couples—were having their morning coffee. Roszt and Kaynor watched them surreptitiously when they weren’t watching the proprietor. The manners of students, particularly their overtly sexual behavior, confounded them.

One male student was reading a newspaper. The others were studying. The couples had arms draped about each other affectionately, but all of them kept their attention on their reading.

The student with the newspaper called to the proprietor, “Hey Wilt—those Johnson burglars get around to you yet?”

“Why would they bother me?” Wilt demanded. “I got nothing worth stealing.”

“What are they stealing?”

“How would I know? Ask Fred—he’s working on it.”

The student with the paper called, “Hey, Fred—you the detective on those Johnson burglaries?”

A man of about thirty, wearing an ordinary suit but every inch a policeman, turned and grinned. “Some of them.”

“What is being stolen?”

“As far as we can make out, nothing.”

The student said incredulously, “Nothing? All those burglaries and nothing taken?”

His girlfriend nudged him. “Wilt’s got a problem.”

“How do you figure that?” the student with the paper asked.

“He says he’s got nothing worth stealing, and that’s what’s being stolen. Nothing. He’s in danger of losing his nothing.”

Her boyfriend glared at her. Then he got up and dropped some change on the table. “I’ve got a class,” he said and hurried away.

A student across the room remarked, “Whoever’s doing it must be looking for something. Do you suppose it’s connected with those characters who’ve been pretending to trace Johnson heirs?”

The detective grinned but said nothing.

“You’ve got descriptions, haven’t you?” the student persisted. “Even the papers have descriptions.”

“Descriptions—” the detective shrugged. “We have as many descriptions as there are witnesses. All we know for certain is that there were always two of them.”

“How are you going to catch them? Stake out every Johnson residence in Monroe County?”

The detective grinned again and shook his head, and the conversation turned to a subject Roszt and Kaynor found totally bewildering—baseball.

They were shocked and alarmed. They ordered more food and kept themselves as inconspicuous as possible until the students and the detective had left. Then they carefully calculated the tip—giving the waitress too much or too little would fix themselves in her memory, Egarn had said—and left with what they hoped was calm nonchalance.

Not only had they been the subject of casual conversation in a restaurant; they also were the object of a strenuous police search, and that staggered them. They didn’t know what “stake out” meant, but it sounded sinister.

Further, someone had connected their innocent queries about Johnson heirs with the burglaries. They would have to stop everything until the clamor died down. While they were waiting, perhaps they could think of an entirely different approach. It was obvious that the one they were using had become dangerous. Also, it hadn’t worked.

* * * * Egarn had watched their fumbling search with increasing distress. In the complications of getting them to the right place, and preparing them to live in 20th century America, he hadn’t given enough thought to the problem of finding the right Johnson. Their intense activity when they first arrived in Rochester elated him. As time passed, they began to resemble the man who mounted his horse and rode off in all directions. If only he could have talked with them for a couple of minutes—asked them what they thought they were doing and pointed them in the right direction.

Suddenly they dropped everything and did nothing at all. They kept to their motel room except to exercise Val, and they began buying and reading newspapers. He had no idea what had happened, and he was plunged into despair.

He kept trying unsuccessfully to send them messages and to pick up the messages they faithfully left for him on their table each night. The code messages they signaled with a flashlight had long since degenerated into a routine, “Search continuing, no results,” and the date. They continued to go through the motions of communicating, but because they had heard nothing from Egarn, they probably thought he was no longer watching. Now their search was at a standstill. Egarn’s workroom was shrouded more deeply in gloom each dae.

The loyal team of helpers, most of whom never saw the workroom’s interior and had little notion of what went on there, sensed that things were going badly. They connected Egarn’s distress with the fact that supplies were running low. The food seemed to get worse with each succeeding meal, and Fornzt was in despair. Every time he used the last of something, he knew he was one step closer to the last of everything. Some of the outside sentries went on regular foraging missions—they thought they weren’t needed at the ruins because no outsider had been sighted anywhere in Midlow since the Lantiff left—but they rarely found anything. Old Marof, the one person who could have helped them, had died shortly after the destruction of Midd Village from illness and perhaps a broken heart.

Then Arne arrived, and everyone brightened. Egarn’s confidence in Arne was shared by all of them. Arne would take care of everything. First and foremost, he would refill their empty larder. If Egarn’s distress had to do with something else, Arne would repair that, too.

He knew where each village had kept its reserves of flour and tubers—or, if he didn’t, he knew how to find them. He had been ranging all across the Ten Peerdoms emptying these underground storage bins, many of which were buried under the villages’ charred remains, and he had sent a huge pack train east for the use of those still fighting the Lantiff. Now he plundered the reserves of Midlow for Egarn’s team and quickly restocked Fornzt’s shelves.

He did more than that. The Lantiff, on their murderous swoop through the Ten Peerdoms, appropriated the horses, drove off all the animals they could use for meat, and removed every scrap of food they could find. No-namers of the conquered peerdoms, with their lasher supervisors, were left to fend for themselves. Except for the lack of meat, this was no problem. No-namers were accustomed to producing their own vegetables and tubers and growing grain for the entire peerdom. Now they would have to thresh and grind the grain by hand, but they had plenty of time for it because they no longer had to perform the peerdom’s heavy labor.

Egarn’s team likewise had long been without meat, but Arne quickly corrected that. He knew where to look for stray animals, and the day after his arrival, beef and mutton returned to Fornzt’s menu, and a row of carcasses hung in a room in the depths of the ruins where the temperature was always cool. Arne also found a suitably remote place where meat could be dried and smoked.

With the food problem resolved, Arne next set about tightening the security system—the sentries thought they had the entire peerdom to themselves, and they had become inexcusably lax. Not until that had been taken care of did Arne turned his attention to the workroom—and discover that the Great Secret was a shambles.

“It is Roszt and Kaynor,” Egarn said. “They haven’t found the Johnson, and they have stopped looking.” Neither Egarn nor any of the others could understand why the Johnson had proved so elusive or why Roszt and Kaynor had given up. Arne, trained all of his life to apply logic and common sense to any problem that confronted him, inquired about the messages that should have been sent and received. Egarn never cared to dwell on his failures, and he waved the question aside disgustedly.

Later Arne pressed Inskel for the details. In theory, the system should have worked at least occasionally, but it had never worked at all. Even in tests, the instrument rarely sucked up the small objects it was aimed at. Much more frequently it snatched things they didn’t want. They had failed to retrieve any of Roszt and Kaynor’s messages. The messages they sent went somewhere, but they never arrived at Roszt and Kaynor’s motel room. Neither Egarn nor Inskel could understand this.

Arne sat for an entire day alternating his gaze between the non-activity of Roszt and Kaynor on the len and the mammoth contraption that sent or drew people and objects through time. Gevis, the former assistant schooler who was so valuable both as Egarn’s assistant on historical matters—he had made himself virtually an authority on life in the 20th century, Egarn said—and as Inskel’s assistant with the machines, sat beside Arne, answered his questions, and discussed what he had seen Roszt and Kaynor doing before they suddenly seemed to quit.

Finally Arne went to Egarn. Could it be possible, he asked, that Egarn’s machine didn’t work accurately with such a small thing as a message because of its enormous size? A smaller machine might be much more precise with small objects.

Egarn and Inskel stared at him. Then they stared at each other.

“The size of the machine shouldn’t make any difference,” Egarn said slowly. “None at all. On the other hand—”

“It wouldn’t be much trouble to build a smaller machine and find out,” Inskel said. “I’ve got nothing else to do.”

And so he did. It took several daez, after which the three of them, Inskel, Egarn, and Gevis, had a nightmarish problem in calibrating it and matching its settings to those of the large machine, but finally they succeeded, and when Roszt and Kaynor next left a report on their table, the small machine deftly plucked it out of the past.

The jubilation of those in the workroom was tempered by the soberness with which Egarn read the message. “They couldn’t find the right Johnson,” he said. “They broke into all those Johnson homes and businesses, and they went everywhere making inquiries about Johnsons, and they failed to find a single clue. I never thought they would have to keep it up for so long. The police aren’t fools, and eventually all those Johnson burglaries stopped being a coincidence, and now everyone in Rochester is talking about them and speculating about what they are trying to find. Newspapers all over the state have picked up the story and published artists’ drawings of what the burglars are supposed to look like. The pictures aren’t much like Roszt and Kaynor, but the publicity has frightened them. They also are afraid that the next time they mention the name Johnson, someone will scream for the police. They are waiting for the uproar to die down and trying to disguise themselves. They have bought new clothes, and they are growing mustaches and combing their hair differently. They want to know if I can suggest anything else.”

“Why couldn’t they find the right Johnson?” Arne asked.

“They haven’t run across any trace at all of a Honsun Len or of a Johnson who has anything to do with lens.” Egarn added despairingly, “I must have sent them too far back in time. Of course they wouldn’t be able to connect a Johnson with the Honsun Len if no Johnson has thought of it yet. I might try to send them to a later time, but it would be risky. I would have to bring them here again and then send them back.”

Arne tenaciously held to the point he thought most important. “But what is the right time?”

“I don’t know,” Egarn said.

“Before you do anything else, perhaps you should find out,” Arne suggested.

“The only way to be certain would be to go there and do the kind of investigation they’ve been doing.”

In the end, it was Gevis who suggested a practical solution. While watching Roszt and Kaynor’s fruitless search, he had been wondering if there were anything in that place and time for them to find. The answer seemed simple enough to him. If the Honsun Len inventor hadn’t yet arrived in Rochester, Roszt and Kaynor ought to look for him elsewhere. As for identifying him, why couldn’t they use Inskel’s new machine to suck up a city directory or a telephone directory from some future time?

They first asked Roszt and Kaynor to prepare a list of their Johnsons with a summary of what they’d learned about each. It took the scouts three daes, and it filled an entire notebook. They left it on the table for Inskel to snatch.

The next step was to steal a directory that would give them a list of Johnsons living in Rochester at a future date. Telephone directories often were left lying about where they could be picked up easily. Unfortunately, a telephone directory provided only an unadorned list of names, and sucking up a city directory proved to be a complicated manipulation.

They carefully set their instruments to visit the Local History Room of the Rochester Public Library several sikes after Roszt and Kaynor had been there. The only result was that librarians unaccountably found the floor cluttered with books the next morning. The small machine lacked the power of the large one, and pulling a book from a crammed shelf of books proved difficult. They visited the library again three sikes later and managed to abstract a copy of the 1940 directory. Either the books were shelved out of order or they were searching the wrong stack. Again they leaped forward in time and finally scored a success. Egarn found himself opening—with trembling fingers—a Rochester City Directory ten sikes in Roszt and Kaynor’s future.

He hadn’t expected a Honsun Len boom to develop in that short time, but he did hope to find some indication that it existed. He found nothing.

After several more failures, they managed to snatch a directory that took them another five sikes into the future, and there they found an interesting reference to an H. H. Johnson. He was not on Roszt and Kaynor’s list, so he had arrived on the Rochester scene some time after they made their search. He was president of the Johnson Specialty Company, and the directory gave the addresses of both his home and his business. Egarn asked Roszt and Kaynor to include a map of Rochester with their next message. Gevis, operating the small machine, adroitly captured it, and with the map’s help they soon had the large len focused on the factory building, a small, neat, cement block structure. With the large instrument—the miniature one was much too small—they made a series of nighttime passes in the shipping room and finally succeeded in sucking up a case of the company’s product.

It was called the Permlight, and the blurb on the case proclaimed it a sensational new self-powered flashlight that worked without batteries. With trembling hands Egarn dissected one of them. Inside he found a tiny Honsun Len.

They had finally located the right Johnson, but they knew nothing about him except that long after the date of Roszt and Kaynor’s visit to Rochester he would establish a business called the Johnson Specialty Company and take up residence at 1 DuRosche Court.

Egarn passed the information to Roszt and Kaynor with instructions to find out who owned the 1 DuRosche Court property. He wanted to know whether there was any Johnson associated with the place and whether the Johnson Specialty Company existed yet.

* * * * The scouts from Slorn had ranged through the enemy territory of Lant without a qualm, but in this perplexing civilization of the past, they had begun to see traps everywhere. They proceeded with extreme caution, which no doubt was wise after their discovery that all of Rochester was looking for them. A check of the telephone directory, a return to the library to consult the city directory, and they could confidently assert that the Johnson Specialty Company did not yet exist. The investigation of 1 DuRosche Court proved far more complicated.

They separated for it. There had been entirely too much discussion in the papers about the two tall, ungainly men who always worked together. Roszt went first and walked quickly through the neighborhood at dusk. Kaynor did the same on the following night. Then, because neither of them noticed anything of interest, they went together the third night but followed different routes, after which they reported that they had nothing to report.

DuRosche Court was a very short and virtually private street. Number 1 was its only address. It was located south of East Avenue and a few blocks east of Eastman House. The neighborhood was one of lavish homes, each reposing in its own wooded setting. The houses were venerable but in splendid condition, the lawns neatly manicured, the shrubbery trimmed. Urban decay was no more than a future rumor for that haven of wealth.

The area was quiet; despite the nearness of bustling East Avenue, there was very little traffic or even foot traffic, and the mansion at 1 DuRosche Court was set far back in its own extensive, park-like grounds. It seemed invulnerable to snoopers. Little could be seen beyond the tall hedge that enclosed the entire estate except the upper story of a huge brick building that loomed impressively through the trees. In that exclusive neighborhood, Roszt and Kaynor couldn’t even walk past DuRosche Court without feeling unduly conspicuous. Venturing into the grounds would be risky during daylight; at night they should be able to get close enough to look into windows, but breaking and entering was out of the question with a house of this size—the owner would be certain to have servants.

The mail box, placed at the foot of the drive, had a name on it: DuRosche. The telephone directory informed them that Calvin DuRosche lived at 1 DuRosche Court. A few tenites earlier, they would have boldly called at the house and asked whether any Johnsons lived there. Now they feared to mention the name Johnson.

Egarn had no suggestions beyond advising caution, but he asked them to find out everything they could about the house and its occupants.

Roszt went before dawn the next morning, hid himself in a thick clump of bushes, and spent the entire dae watching the comings and goings at DuRosche Court. By late afternoon, when a newsboy pedaled his bicycle up the long drive to the mansion, he had several things to think about but very little understanding of what he had seen.

The newsboy, red-headed and chunkily built and whistling shrilly, dismounted, rang the doorbell, and waited politely until someone came to accept the newspaper. Roszt watched this maneuver perplexedly. He had seen newsboys in action before— had marveled, in fact, at their accuracy or sometimes inaccuracy with thrown papers. At the DuRosche mansion, the newspaper was hand delivered. Roszt had acquired some slight understanding of motivation in this society, and he rejected the possibility that this particular newsboy was unduly conscientious. He thought it more likely that the residents at 1 DuRosche Court tipped lavishly.

If a newsboy was willing to alter his natural habits for the sake of a tip, perhaps there were other things he would do for money. As the boy rode back down the drive, Roszt intercepted him.

He had a five-dollar bill in his hand, and he flashed it impressively. “Detective,” he said, talking out of the side of his mouth like a detective he had seen on TV. “Can you keep your mouth shut?”

The boy nodded, his eyes on the money.

“What do you know about the people who live here?” Roszt asked.

“Everything,” the boy said with a confident grin.

He proved to be an extremely well-informed newsboy. They walked slowly along the sidewalk together, the boy wheeling his bike and halting frequently for Roszt to make notes. When Roszt finished his questions, he substituted a ten-dollar bill for the promised five and considered it a bargain. He now knew who the house’s occupants were and what they were. It would have required a tedious, prolonged, and probably risky investigation, with numerous questions asked of strangers, to acquire a fraction of this information elsewhere. He thanked the boy and wrote down his name and phone number in case he needed him again. Then he went back to the motel and drew up a report for Egarn.

One thing was certain. There was no Johnson living at 1 DuRosche Court. The owner and occupant, Calvin DuRosche, was an elderly invalid. He’d had a stroke, and for years he hadn’t been able to walk, or talk, or even feed himself. Because he was wealthy, he could afford a private nurse to look after him and servants to look after the house and grounds and fix his meals. The newsboy thought it a shame—all that money being spent to keep an old man in luxury and comfort when he didn’t even know what was happening.

The only other permanent residents in that huge house were Mr. and Mrs. Kernley, who had been working for DuRosche for sikes. Mr. Kernley was the caretaker; Mrs. Kernley was the housekeeper. There were two maids—Mrs. Calding, who cleaned and helped the nurse; and Mrs. Jefferson, who cleaned and did the cooking. The house needed a lot of cleaning. There was a handyman whose last name was Hyatt and who mostly answered to the name “Hy.” He did a little of this and that when he wasn’t off on a drunk. Mrs. Halmer, DuRosche’s nurse, came five days a week, and a special nurse, Mrs. Raymond, came weekends. The two maids worked alternate weekends, but they went home evenings, as did the nurses. Mrs. Kernley looked after DuRosche at night, which meant he didn’t need much looking after.

It seemed like a huge staff to care for one elderly invalid, but of course it was a big house, and he could afford it. It was a happy household, the newsboy thought—the servants and nurses had worked there for a long time. They got along well, and everyone helped out with anything that needed doing.

It now seemed certain that Roszt and Kaynor had traveled too far back in time. The only thing for them to do was to wait quietly until the right Johnson appeared. If this mansion was where he was going to live, their task was vastly simplified. All they had to do was keep a close watch on it so they could deal with him the moment he showed up.

The information was a cruel disappointment to Egarn, but he agreed that the mansion of an elderly millionaire stroke victim was an unlikely place for the Honsun Len to be invented. No doubt DuRosche would die in a few sikes, the mansion would have a new owner, and eventually the Honsun Len Johnson would acquire it.

It was the notion that Roszt and Kaynor might have to wait an unknown number of sikes for the right Johnson that frightened Egarn. While they were waiting, so many things could happen to make their mission impossible. He wanted to be absolutely certain there was no Johnson connected with the mansion’s present residents, so he asked them to make one more try. Perhaps DuRosche had a relative named Johnson who would inherit the house.

Roszt and Kaynor were still trying to avoid being seen together, so when they next visited DuRosche Court, Roszt took his former place in the bushes while Kaynor walked aimlessly around the block, around two blocks, around four blocks. Then he returned to his starting point. They had no idea of how to discover a Johnson connection when they didn’t dare mention the name, and Egarn hadn’t been able to suggest anything. Even on the flickering len they seemed uneasy. Egarn reluctantly decided they should get out of Rochester for a time and give themselves a vacation. Then, when the uproar about the breaking and entering cases had quieted somewhat, they could resume their watch on the DuRosche mansion.

The afternoon faded; Roszt remained hidden in the bushes while Kaynor continued his uneasy circuits of the neighborhood. The nurse, Mrs. Halmer, who walked with the slow, measured stride of a heavy, middle-aged woman, left for the day. There was a path through the grounds that could be used as a shortcut, thus avoiding the long walk down the drive and out through DuRosche Court. She followed it. Egarn adjusted the len and watched her move sedately through the wooded grounds, looking very trim and neat in her white dress. She turned when she reached the sidewalk and walked toward the bus stop on East Avenue.

Kaynor, returning from one more circuit of the neighborhood, met her at the corner. He didn’t speak to her. He hadn’t spoken to anyone all afternoon. Egarn reflected sadly that the two men were no longer conducting an investigation. They were simply watching the mansion and its grounds and hoping for a break of some kind.

The haze of dusk was spreading through the grounds; lights had been turned on in the house. Kaynor, starting one more circuit, suddenly turned aside, forced his way through the tall hedge, and moved stealthily toward the house. There was no one outside; probably the residents were at dinner. Kaynor disappeared.

Egarn spoke to Inskel, who tried to adjust the len so they could see what was happening. By the time he succeeded, several minutes had passed. Kaynor had been window peeping; he had already checked the first story windows, and now he was kneeling and looking into a basement window. Finally he got to his feet, reached the cover of shrubbery with long strides, and began a stealthy retreat.

As Kaynor regained the sidewalk, Roszt emerged from his bushes, looked about cautiously, and then joined him. The two men talked for several minutes. Then they followed the sidewalk toward East Avenue, walking along the high hedge.

At the same moment, a young woman left the mansion. She turned to wave at someone standing in the doorway before she strolled briskly along the same path the nurse had taken. Because of the hedge, she couldn’t see Roszt and Kaynor, nor they her, and the three of them halted in surprise when they met abruptly where the path intersected the sidewalk.

Perhaps one of them spoke to her. She obviously spoke to them. Then, suddenly disturbed about something, she gesticulated wildly and seized Kaynor’s arm. A brief struggle followed, a sort of “tug of war,” until Roszt stepped forward and gave the woman a firm push. She staggered backward and fell heavily.

Roszt and Kaynor fled—not toward busy East Avenue, but in the opposite direction, along the quiet sidestreet. When they turned a corner, they had the good sense to slow their pace and walk normally.

Behind them, the young woman lay motionless, her head at a grotesque angle, her body partially concealed by the thick hedge.