But the thought revolted him as an insult to his very humanness. He had a right to be himself, perhaps even an obligation to remain himself, and he felt a deep-banked anger at the arrogance that would make him someone else.
The issue was straightly drawn, he knew. Two facts were crystal clear: Whatever he did, he must do himself; he must expect no help. And he must do it now before he needed sleep.
He clambered to his feet, with the paper in his hand, squared his shoulders and turned toward the door. But at the door he halted, for a sudden, terrible truth had occurred to him.
Once he left the house and went out into the darkness, he would be without his shield. In the darkness the paper would be worthless since he would not be able to read the headline.
He glanced at his watch and it was just after three. There were still three hours of darkness and he couldn’t wait three hours.
He needed time, he thought. He must somehow buy some time. Within the next few hours he must in some way manage to smash or disable Harvey. And while that, he admitted to himself, might not be the whole answer, it would give him time.
He stood beside the door and the thought came to him that he might be wrong – that it might not be Harvey or Madison or White. He had put it all together in his mind and now he’d managed to convince himself. He might, he realized, have hypnotized himself almost as effectively as Harvey or someone else had hypnotized him thirty years ago.
Although probably it had not been hypnotism.
But whatever it might be, he realized, it was a bootless thing to try to thresh out now. There were more immediate problems that badly needed solving.
First of all he must devise some other sort of shield. Defenseless, he’d never reach the door of the _Situation_ lobby.
Association, he thought – some sort of association – some way of reminding himself of who and what he was. Like a string around his finger, like a jingle in his brain.
The study door came open and old Adams stood there, clutching his ragged robe together.
‘I heard someone talking, sir.’
‘It was I.’ said Harrington. ‘On the telephone.’
‘I thought, perhaps,’ said Adams, ‘someone had dropped in. Although it’s an unearthly time of night for anyone to call.’
Harrington stood silent, looking at old Adams, and he felt some of his grimness leave him – for Adams was the same. Adams had not changed. He was the only thing of truth in the entire pattern.
‘If you will pardon me,’ said Adams, ‘your shirt tail’s hanging out.’
‘Thanks,’ said Harrington. ‘I hadn’t noticed. Thanks for telling me.’
‘Perhaps you had better get on to bed, sir. It is rather late.’
‘I will,’ said Harrington, ‘in just another minute.’ He listened to the shuffling of old Adams’ slippers going down the hall and began tucking in his shirt tail.
And suddenly it struck him: Shirt tails – they’d be better than a string!
For anyone would wonder, even the final gentleman would wonder, why his shirt tails had a knot in them.
He stuffed the paper in his jacket pocket and tugged the shirt tails entirely free. He had to loosen several buttons before there was cloth enough to make a satisfactory knot.
He made it good and hard, a square knot so it wouldn’t slip, and tight enough so that it would have to be untied before he took off the shirt.
And he composed a silly line that went with the knotted shirt tails:
_I tie this knot because I’m not the final gentleman._
He went out of the house and down the steps and around the house to the shack where the garden tools were kept.
He lighted matches until he found the maul that he was looking for. With it in his hand, he went back to the car.
And all the time he kept repeating to himself the line:
_I tie this knot, because I’m not the final gentleman._
The _Situation_ lobby was as brilliant as he remembered it and as silent and deserted and he headed for the door that said HARVEY on it.
He had expected that it would be locked, but it wasn’t, and he went through it and closed it carefully behind him.
He was on a narrow catwalk that ran in a circle, with the wall behind him and the railing out in front. And down in the pit circled by the catwalk was something that could be only Harvey.
_Hello, son_, it said, or seemed to say, inside his brain.
_Hello, son. I’m glad that you’ve come home again._
He stepped forward to the railing eagerly and leaned the maul against it and gripped the railing with both hands to stare down into the pit, enveloped in the feel of father-love that welled up from the thing that squatted in the pit – the old pipe-tweed coat-grizzled whisker love he’d forgotten long ago.
A lump came in his throat and tears smarted in his eyes and he forgot the barren street outside and all the lonely years.
The love kept welling up – the love and understanding and the faint amusement that he should have expected anything but love from an entity to which he had been tied so intimately for all of thirty years.
_You did a good job, son.I am proud of you. I’m glad that you’ve come home to me again._
He leaned across the railing, yearning toward the father squatting in the pit, and one of the rails caught against the knotted shirt tail and shoved it hard against his belly.
Reflexes clicked within his brain and he said, almost automatically: _I tie this knot because I’m not_
And then he was saying it consciously and with fervor, like a single chant.
_I tie this knot because I’m not the final gentleman._
_I tie this knot because I’m not…_
He was shouting now and the sweat streamed down his face and he fought like a drunken man to push back from the railing, and still he was conscious of the father, not insistent, not demanding, but somewhat hurt and puzzled by this ingratitude.
Harrington’s hand slipped from the top rail and the fingers touched the handle of the maul and seized and closed upon it and lifted it from the floor to throw.
But even as he lifted it, the door catch snicked behind him and he swung around.
Cedric Madison stood just inside the door and his death-head face wore a look of utter calm.
‘Get him off my back!’ yelled Harrington. ‘Make him let loose of me or I will let you have it.’
And was surprised to find that he meant every word of it, that a man as mild as he could find it in his heart to kill another man without a second thought.
‘All right,’ said Madison, and the father-love was gone and the world stood cold and hard and empty, with just the two of them standing face to face.
‘I’m sorry that this happened, Harrington. You are the _first_…’
‘You took a chance,’ said Harrington. ‘You tried to turn me loose. What did you expect I would do – moon around and wonder what had happened to me?’
‘We’ll take you back again. It was a pleasant life. You can live it out,’
‘I have no doubt you would. You and White and all the rest of -‘
Madison sighed, a very patient sigh. ‘Leave White out of this,’ he said. ‘The poor fool thinks that Harvey…’
He stopped what he meant to say and chuckled.
‘Believe me, Harrington, it’s a slick and foolproof setup. It is even better than the oracle at Delphi.’
He was sure of himself, so sure that it sent a thrill of apprehension deep through Harrington, a sense of being trapped, of being backed into a corner from which he never could escape.
They had him cold, he thought, between the two of them – Madison in front and Harvey at his rear. Any second now Harvey would throw another punch at him and despite all that he had said, despite the maul he gripped, despite the knotted shirt tails and the silly rhyme, he had grave doubts that he could fight it off.
‘I am astonished that you are surprised,’ Madison was saying smoothly. ‘For Harvey has been in fact a father to you for all these many years, or the next thing to a father, maybe better than a father. You’ve been closer to him, day and night, than you’ve ever been to any other creature. He has watched over you and watched out for you and guided you at times and the relationship between the two of you has been more real than you can ever guess.’