Bethelman sat down heavily on the barstool. The fifteenth! Somewhere, he had lost two weeks! He searched his memory for some clue, but found nothing. His memory was a perfect blank for those two weeks. Automatically, his hand went to his shirt pocket for cigarettes. He pulled out the pack and started to shake one out. It wouldn't shake, so he stuck his finger in the half empty pack to dislodge a cigarette. There was a roll of paper stuck in it. He took it out and unrolled it. It was a note. _You're doing fine. You know something's wrong, but you don't know what. Go ahead and investigate; I guarantee you'll get the answers. But be careful not to get anyone too suspicious; you don't want to get locked up in the booby bin. I suggest you try Marco's first._ The note was unsigned, but Bethelman didn't need a signature. The handwriting was his own. * * * * * He looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar. He was clean shaven--which he hadn't been when he was drinking with Dr. Kamiroff in Boston. Also, he was wearing his tweed topcoat, which he had left in New York. A search of his pockets revealed the usual keys and change. In his billfold was three hundred dollars in cash--more than he'd ever carried around in his life--and a receipt for a new twenty-dollar hat. The receipt was dated the tenth. He took off his hat and looked at it. Brand new, with his initials on the sweatband. Evidently, he'd been doing something the past two weeks--but what? He remembered talking to Kamiroff about the variability of time--something about a man named Dunne. And he remembered the biochemist saying that time travel was physically impossible. For a second or two, Bethelman wondered whether he'd been projected into the future somehow. But if he had, he reasoned, he'd still be wearing the same clothes he'd had on in Boston. _No_, he decided, _it's something else. I've gone off my rocker. I'm daffy as a dung beetle. What I need is a good psychiatrist._ But that didn't explain the note. He took it out and looked at it again. It still said the same thing. He decided that before he went to a psychiatrist, he'd do what the note said. He'd go to Marco's. After all, if he couldn't trust himself, who could he trust? Marco's was a little place down on Second Avenue. It wasn't the most elite bar in New York, but it wasn't the worst dive, either. Marco was standing near the door when Bethelman entered. "Ah! Mr. Bethelman! The package you were expecting is here. The--ah--_gentleman_ left it." The beaming smile on his face was a marvel to behold. "Thanks," Bethelman said. Marco dived behind the bar and came up with a package wrapped in brown paper and an envelope addressed to Bethelman. The package was about three inches wide, a little less than six inches long, and nearly an inch thick. He slid it into his topcoat pocket and tore open the envelope.