“You mean,” Walter demanded, “that if I brought you five kilograms of diamonds and gold you could duplicate it? And the originals wouldn’t be harmed? Let me see that tiling. Can I work it?”
Clurg passed over the “fountain pen”. Walter saw that within the case was a tangle of wires, tiny tubes, lenses—he passed it back hastily. Clurg said, “That is correct. You could buy or borrow jewelry and I could duplix it Then you could return the originals and retain the copies. You swear by your contemporary God that you would say nothing?”
Walter was thinking. He could scrape together a good thirty thousand dollars by pledging the house, the business, his own real estate, the bank account, the life insurance, the securities. Put it all into diamonds, of course and then—doubled! Overnight!
“ITl say nothing,” he told Clurg. “If you come through.” He took the sheet from the twenty-fifth-century newspaper from Clurg’s hands and put it securely in his own pocket. “When I get those-diamonds duplicated,” he said, “111 burn dm and forget the rest. Until then, I want you to stay close to home. Ill come around in a day or so with the stuff for you to duplicate.”
Qurg nervously promised.
The secrecy, of course, didn’t include Betty. He told her when he got home and she let out a yell of delight. She
demanded the newspaper, read it avidly, and then demanded to see Clurg.
“I don’t think hell talk,” Walter said doubtfully. “But if you really want to…”
She did, and they walked to the Curran bungalow. Clurg was gone, lock, stock and barrel, leaving not a trace behind. They waited for hours, nervously.
At last Betty said, “He’s gone back.”
Walter nodded. “He wouldn’t keep his bargain, but by God I’m going to keep mine. Come along. We’re going to the Enterprise.”
“Walter,” she said. “You wouldn’t—would you?”
Ke went alone, after a bitter quarrel.
At the Enterprise office he was wearily listened to by a reporter, who wearily looked over the twenty-fifth-century newspaper. “I don’t know what you’re peddling, Mr. Lachlan,” he said, “but we like people to buy their ads in the Enterprise. This is a pretty bare-faced publicity grab.”
“But—” Walter sputtered.
“Sam, would you please ask Mr. Morris to come up here if he can?” the reporter was saying into the phone. To Walter he explained, “Mr. Morris is our press-room foreman.”
The foreman was a huge, white-haired old fellow, partly deaf. The reporter showed him the newspaper from the twenty-fifth century and said, “How about this?”
Mr. Morris looked at it and smelled it and said, showing no interest in the reading matter: “American Type Foundry Futura number nine, discontinued about ten years ago. It’s been hand-set. The ink—hard to say. Expensive stuff, not a news ink. A book ink, a job-printing ink. The paper, now, I know. A nice linen rag that Benziger jobs in Philadelphia.”
“You see, Mr. Lachlan? It’s a fake.” The reporter shrugged.
Walter walked slowly from the city room. The press-room foreman knew. It was a fake. And Clurg was a faker. Suddenly Walter’s heels touched the ground after twenty-four hours and stayed there. Good God, the diamonds 1 Clurg was a conman! He would have worked a package switch! He would have had thirty thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds for .less than a month’s work!
He told Betty about it when he got home and she laughed unmercifully. “Time Policeman” was to become a family joke between the Lachlans.
Harry Twenty-Third Street stood, blinking, in a very peculiar place. Peculiarly, his feet were firmly encased, up to the ankles, in a block of dear plastic.
There were odd-looking people and a big voice was saying: “May it please the court. The People of the Twenty-Fifth Century versus Harold Parish, alias Harry Twenty-Third Street, alias Clurg, of the Twentieth Century. The charge is impersonating an officer of the Time Police. The Prosecutor’s Office will ask the death penalty in view of the heinous nature of the offense, which threatens the whole fabric—”