Because, naturally, I knew now what I was doing: I was making deposits and winning sure bets just as the "senile psychotics" had done. The ink on their bankbooks and bills was fresh because it _was_ fresh; it wasn't given a chance to oxidize--at the rate I was going, I'd be back to my own time in another few hours or so, with $15,000 or better in deposits, compound interest and cash. If I'd been around 70, you see, she could have sent me back to the beginning of the century with the same amount of money, which would have accumulated to something like $30,000. Get it now? I did. And I felt sick and frightened. The old people had died of starvation somehow with all that dough in cash or banks. I didn't give a hang if the time travel was responsible, or something else was. I wasn't going to be found dead in my hotel and have Lou Pape curse my corpse because I'd been borrowing from him when, since 1931, I'd had a little fortune put away. He'd call me a premature senile psychotic and he'd be right, from his point of view, not knowing the truth. * * * * * Rather than make the deposit in October, 1938, I grabbed a battered old cab and told the driver to step on it. When I showed him the $10 bill that was in it for him, he squashed down the gas pedal. In 1938, $10 was real money. We got a mile away from the bank and the driver looked at me in the rear-view mirror. "How far you want to go, mister?" My teeth were together so hard that I had to unclench them before I could answer, "As far away as we can get." "Cops after you?" "No, but somebody is. Don't be surprised at anything that happens, no matter what it is." "You mean like getting shot at?" he asked worriedly, slowing down. "You're not in any danger, friend. I am. Relax and step on it again." I wondered if she could still reach me, this far from the bank, and handed the guy the bill. No justice sticking him for the ride in case she should. He pushed the pedal down even harder than he had been doing before. We must have been close to three miles away when I blinked and was standing outside the first bank I'd seen in 1931. I don't know what the cab driver thought when I vanished out of his hack. He probably figured I'd opened the door and jumped while he wasn't looking. Maybe he even went back and searched for a body splashed all over the street. Well, it would have been a hopeless hunt. I was a week ahead. I gave up and drearily made my deposit. The one from early October that I'd missed I put in with this one. There was no way to escape the babe with the beautiful hard face, gorgeous warm body and plans for me that all seemed to add up to death. I didn't try any more. I went on making deposits, mailing orders to her stock brokers, and putting down bets that couldn't miss because they were all past history.