anything? I wasn’t listening.” Lyman put down his drink abruptly. “I think I’ll go now.”

“No, you won’t,” the brown man said, closing his fingers around Lyman’s wrist. “Not yet you won’t. Come back here. Sit down. Now. What was the idea? Where were you going?”

Lyman nodded dumbly toward the back of the bar, indicating either a juke-box or a door marked MEN.

“I don’t feel so good. Maybe I’ve had too much to drink. I guess I’ll—”

“You’re all right. I don’t trust you back there with that—that invisible man of yours. You’ll stay right here until he leaves.”

“He’s going now,” Lyman said brightly. His eyes moved with great briskness along the line of an invisible but rapid progress toward the front door. “See, he’s gone. Now let me loose, will you?”

The brown man glanced toward the back booth.

“No,” he said, “He isn’t gone. Sit right where you are.”

It was Lyman’s turn to remain quite still, in a stricken sort of way, for a perceptible while. The ice in his drink, however, clinked audibly. Presently he spoke. His voice was soft, and rather soberer than before.

“You’re right. He’s still there. You can see him, can’t you?”

The brown man said, “Has he got his back to us?”

“You can see him, then. Better than I can maybe. Maybe there are more of them here than I thought. They could be anywhere. They could be sitting beside you anywhere you go, and you wouldn’t even guess, until—” He shook his head a little. “They’d want to be sure,” he said, mostly to himself. “They can give you orders and make you forget, but there must be limits to what they can force you to do. They can’t make a man betray himself. They’d have to lead him on—until they were sure.”

He lifted his drink and tipped it steeply above his face. The ice ran down the slope and bumped coldly against his lip, but he held it until the last of the pale, bubbling amber had drained into his mouth. He set the glass on the bar and faced the brown man.

“Well?” he said.

The brown man looked up and down the bar.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “Not many people left. We’ll wait.”

 Prev. P 9/13 next