“But he’s invisible to all eyes but yours?”
“Yes. He doesn’t want to be visible, just now. Besides—” Lyman paused
cunningly. He gave the brown man a furtive glance and then looked
quickly down at his drink. “Besides, you know, I rather think you can
see him—a little, anyway.”
* * * * *
The brown man was perfectly silent for about thirty seconds. He sat
quite motionless, not even the ice in the drink he held clinking. One
might have thought he did not even breathe. Certainly he did not blink.
“What makes you think that?” he asked in a normal voice, after the
thirty seconds had run out.
“I—did I say 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.”
“Wait for what?”
The brown man looked toward the back booth and looked away again
quickly.
“I have something to show you. I don’t want anyone else to see.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account