and this is April 2nd, 1945."

"Winnie Tompkins!" I exclaimed. "Why I once knew him quite well. He and I were at St. Mark's together, then he went to Harvard and Wall Street while I went to Yale and broke, so we didn't see much of each other after the depression."

"It's a good gag, Winnie," Tolan laughed, "but now you've had your fun, how about another drink?"

I shook my head. "Listen, Ranty," I begged. "Tell me what happened. I can take it. Are you dead? Are we all dead? Is this supposed to be heaven? What's the word?"

"That joke's played out," said Tolan. "Here, Tammy, another Scotch and soda for Mr. Tompkins. A double one."

Tompkins! My head ached. I stood up and walked across the room to study my reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Instead of my painfully familiar freckled face and skinny frame, I saw a red, full jowled face with bags beneath the watery blue eyes, set on a distinctly portly body which was cleverly camouflaged as burliness by impeccable tweeds of the kind specially made up in London for the American broker's trade.

"I look like hell!" I muttered. "Well, tell me this, Ranty. What happened to Frank Jacklin? Or is that part of the gag?"

Tolan turned and stared at me with an official glitter in his Navy (Reserve) eye. "Jacklin? He was at Kwajalein with me, now that I think of it. A skinny sort of s.o.b., wasn't he?"

"I wouldn't say that," I hotly rejoined. "I thought he was a pretty decent sort of guy. Where is he?"

"Jacklin? Oh, he got another half-stripe last January and was given some screw-ball assignment which took him out of touch. He'll turn up sooner or later, without a scratch; those New Dealers always do."

"Say," Tolan added. "You always did have a Jacklin fixation but you never had a good word to say for the louse. What did he ever do to you, anyhow? Ever since I've known you, you've always been griping about him, specially since he got into uniform. Lay off, will you, and give us honest hard-drinking guys a chance to get a breath. Period."

I took my drink and sipped it attentively. Whatever had happened to me since the thorium bomb burst off Adak, this was Scotch and it was cold, so I doubted that this place was Hell. Probably it was all a dream in the last split-second of disintegration.

"Thanks, 

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