"'No,' says Stanley. 'Oh, no.' He wouldn't hear of it. I got to stay here and wait for him, he tells me." "Well, sure," I told Jones. "How could you go with a man into his dream?" "Yeah--only Stanley did take old Mr. Bootnose Bailey with him." "_What?_" I exclaimed. "Uh-huh. Stanley said he was going to prove it to me. He said he would take somebody along with him to this place and then he would bring one of his friends back here to visit. He said that would show me, would show everybody. And you know, Ed, I don't believe I much liked the way poor Stanley looked when he said that. He looked kind of mean." "But they went? Both of them? And that's why old Bootnose isn't around?" Jones nodded. "Yeah. Stanley promised Mr. Bootnose something would give him a real boot. They went. Stanley, last thing he said before I watched the two of them just sort of fade out, he said he would be back tomorrow evening. He wanted me to be sure to wait for him in the Yard. And fact is, Ed, I'm kind of uneasy about it all," he added. There it was, Jonesy's story. A nonsense story? Sure. But it left me feeling a little uneasy too. We talked it back and forth a while longer, Jones and me, and the more we talked the more uneasy I got. Foolish or not, Jones himself believed it. He wasn't trying to con me into anything. There was no other point to it. And--well, maybe it was simply the fact that Jones was a good deal of man. What he said had a real conviction to it. Even if the story was hard to believe, still there was what I had seen--and not seen--of Stanley. And even if there was nothing that seemed particularly threatening about the business, it made the two of us uneasy. There was nothing for us to do about it, though. I went on home to my apartment after I promised Jones I would be around the next night when Stanley, alone or with company, was due back. I don't know what Jones expected. I don't know what I expected. But Stanley's friend, no; we didn't expect that. The next day I was filling in on the desk, but my mind must have been fumbling around with Stanley's other world. I fumbled all day and finished by crossing up a couple of headlines. So I left the office with the managing editor's curses ringing in my ears, even though he had to admit that the "Present Stench--Future Disaster" line from the sewer gas story did fit very nicely over the item on the mayoralty campaign.