Nobody in all that crowd would believe that Harse could pull out a little jointed metal thing and push a button and make any one of them cease to exist. Nobody would believe it--not even a jury. Corpus delicti, body of evidence--why, there would _be_ no evidence! It was a simple, workable, foolproof way of getting any desired number of people out of the way without fuss, muss or bother--and couldn't a smart but misfortunate man like Mooney do wonders by selectively removing those persons who stood as obstacles in his path? And there would be more, much, much more. The thing to do, Mooney schemed, was to find out just what Harse had in that kit and how to work it; and then--who could know, perhaps Harse would himself find the diffident blue light reaching out for him before the intersection of Brooklyn and December twenty-sixth? Mooney probed. "Ah," laughed Harse. "Ho! I perceive what you want. You think perhaps there is something you can use in my survival kit." "All right, Harse," Mooney said submissively, but he did have reservations. First, it was important to find out just what was in the kit. After that-- Well, even a man from the future had to sleep. * * * * * Mooney was in a roaring rage. How dared the Government stick its bureaucratic nose into a simple transaction of citizens! But it turned out to be astonishingly hard to turn Harse's wampum into money. The first jeweler asked crudely threatening questions about an emerald the size of the ball of his thumb; the second quoted chapter and verse on the laws governing possession of gold. Finally they found a pawnbroker, who knowingly accepted a diamond that might have been worth a fortune; and when they took his first offer of a thousand dollars, the pawnbroker's suspicions were confirmed. Mooney dragged Harse away from there fast. But they did have a thousand dollars. As the cab took them across town, Mooney simmered down; and by the time they reached the other side, he was entirely content. What was a fortune more or less to a man who very nearly owned some of the secrets of the future? He sat up, lit a cigarette, waved an arm and said expansively to Harse: "Our new home." The pale-eyed man took a glowing little affair with eyepieces away from in front of his eyes. "Ah," he said. "So." It was quite an attractive hotel, Mooney thought judiciously. It did a lot to take away the sting of those sordidly avaricious jewelers. The lobby was an impressively close approximation of a cathedral and the bellboys looked smart and able. Harse made an asthmatic sound. "What is. That?" He was pointing at a group of men standing in jovial amusement around the entrance to the hotel's grand ballroom, just off the lobby. They wore purple harem pants and floppy green hats, and every one of them carried a silver-paper imitation of a scimitar.