She was right about the first part--I hadn't dared let myself do anything except hate and fear her--but she was wrong about the second. I remembered thinking how Lou Pape would have felt if I had died of starvation with over $15,000, after borrowing from him all the time between jobs. Not knowing how I got it, he'd have been sore, thinking I'd played him for a patsy. What I'm trying to say is that Lou wouldn't have had enough information to judge me. I didn't have enough information yet, either, to judge her. "What do you want me to do?" I asked warily. "Everybody but one person was sent into the past on specific errands--to save art treasures and relics that would otherwise have been lost to humanity." "Not because the things might be worth a lot of dough?" I said nastily. "You've already seen that I can get all the money I want. There were upheavals in the past--great fires, wars, revolutions, vandalism--and I had my associates save things that would have been destroyed. Oh, beautiful things, Mr. Weldon! The world would have been so much poorer without them!" "El Greco, for instance?" I asked, remembering the raving old man who had been found wandering with $17,000 in his coat lining. "El Greco, too. Several paintings that had been lost for centuries." She became more brisk and efficient-seeming. "Except for the one man I mentioned, I concentrated on the past--the future is too completely unknown to us. And there's an additional reason why I tentatively explored it only once. But the one person who went there discovered something that would be of immense value to the world." "What happened to _him_?" She looked regretful. "He was too old. He survived just long enough to tell me that the future has something we need. It's a metal box, small enough to carry, that could supply this whole city with power to run its industries and light its homes and streets!" "Sounds good. Who'd you say benefits if I get it?" "We share the profits equally, of course. But it must be understood that we sell the power so cheaply that everybody can afford it." "I'm not arguing. What's the other reason you didn't bother with the future?" "You can't bring anything from the future to the present that doesn't exist right now. I won't go into the theory, but it should be obvious that nothing can exist before it exists. You can't bring the box I want, only the technical data to build one." "Technical data? I'm an actor, not a scientist." "You'll have pens and weatherproof notebooks to copy it down in." * * * * *