“Do that,” advised Wilson. “My autographs are going to be rare collectors’ items.” He passed over the check, took the money and proceeded to the bookstore in the same building. Most of the books on the list were for sale there. Ten minutes later he had acquired title to:
The Prince, by Niccolô Machiavelli.
Behind the Ballots, by James Farley.
Mein Kampf (unexpurgated), by Adolf Schicklgruber.
How to Make Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.
The other titles he wanted were not available in the bookstore; he went from there to the university library where he drew out Real Estate Broker ‘s Manual, History of Musical Instruments and a quarto titled Evolution of Dress Styles. The latter was a handsome volume with beautiful colored plates and was classified as reference. He had to argue a little to get a twenty-four hour permission for it.
He was fairly well-loaded down by then; he left the campus, went to a pawnshop and purchased two used, but sturdy, suitcases into one of which he packed the books. From there he went to the largest music store in the town and spent forty-five minutes in selecting and rejecting phonograph records, with emphasis on swing and torch—highly emotional stuff, all of it. He did not neglect classical and semi-classical, but he applied the same rule to those categories—a piece of music had to be sensuous and compelling, rather than cerebral. In consequence his collection included such strangely assorted items as the “Marseillaise,” Ravel’s “Bolero,” four Cole Porters and “L’Après-midi d’un Faune.”
He insisted on buying the best mechanical reproducer on the market in the face of the clerk’s insistence that what he needed was an electrical one. But he finally got his own way, wrote a check for the order, packed it all in his suitcases and had the clerk get a taxi for him.
He had a bad moment over the check. It was pure rubber, as the one he had cashed at the Students’ Co-op had cleaned out his balance. He had urged them to phone the bank, since that was what he wished them not to do. It had worked. He had established, he reflected, the all-time record for kiting checks—thirty thousand years.
When the taxi drew up opposite the court where he had located the Gate, he jumped out and hurried in.
The Gate was gone.
He stood there for several minutes, whistling softly and assessing— unfavorably—his own abilities, mental processes, et cetera. The consequences of writing bad checks no longer seemed quite so hypothetical.
He felt a touch at his sleeve. “See here, Bud, do you want my hack, or don’t you? The meter’s still clicking.”
“Huh? Oh, sure.” He followed the driver, climbed back in.
“Where to?”
That was a problem. He glanced at his watch, then realized that the usually reliable instrument had been through a process which rendered its reading irrelevant. “What time is it?”
“Two fifteen.” He reset his watch.
Two fifteen. There would be a jamboree going on in his room at that time of a particularly confusing sort. He did not want to go there—not yet. Not until his blood brothers got through playing happy fun games with the Gate.
The Gate!
It would be in his room until sometime after four fifteen. If he timed
it right—”Drive to the corner of Fourth and McKinley,” he directed, naming the intersection closest to his boardinghouse.
He paid off the taxi driver there, and lugged his bags into the filling station at that corner, where he obtained permission from the attendant to leave them and assurance that they would be safe. He had nearly two hours to kill. He was reluctant to go very far from the house for fear some hitch would upset his timing.
It occurred to him that there was one piece of unfinished business in the immediate neighborhood—and time enough to take care of it. He walked briskly to a point two streets away, whistling cheerfully and turned in at an apartment house.
In response to his knock the door of Apartment 211 was opened a crack, then wider. “Bob darling! I thought you were working today.”
“Hi, Genevieve. Not at all—I’ve got time to burn.”