New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Science fiction; Time travel -- Fiction
We were back in the workshop. The television screen still glowed, but
it was empty of image. Nanette said gently: "Tell him, Alan, about Dr.
Turber, and me."
It gave me a start. Alan said: "He seems to have fallen head over heels
in love with Nanette. He had always liked her--"
"I was always afraid of him," she put in.
"And when Nanette grew up, even though then he was father's enemy,
Turber came to him--wanted to marry Nanette--"
I could well imagine it. Nanette was tall, slim, with long chestnut
hair incongruous in this day of short-haired girls. To me she was very
beautiful indeed.
Alan went on: "I won't go into details. His persistent attentions were
unwelcome. Father told him so, and Nanette told him."
"I was always afraid of him," she repeated.
* * * * *
Alan smiled wryly. "I threw him out once--a snaky sort of fellow. We
want none of him--do we, sister?"
"No," she said. "Tell Edward about Dr. Turber's life--father's theory."
"It wouldn't mean much to you, Ed. There were things--so father
thought--of mystery about this Turber. Things inexplicable. His
curious, unexplained absences from the hospital. Things about him which
father sensed. And the searchlight, that for no apparent reason for
years now has been occasionally flashing from the hospital roof. It
marks Turber's absence, I know that much."
"And Turber's assistant," said Nanette. "That Indian--whatever he
is--at the hospital."
"Yes. He, too. Father pieced it together into a very strange,
half-formed theory. I have always thought it must have been born of
father's dislike for the fellow. And father told it to me the morning
of his death. That, too, I felt, must have colored it. Father's mind,
there at the last, roaming a little--not quite clear. But this,
Ed--this morning--these visions of ours--we saw them, you know,
we can't deny that. They seem vaguely, to fit. Oh, there's no use
theorizing--not yet. That girl we saw--"
Upon the girl it hinged, of course. The vision was gone. And at best
it was only a vision. But the girl might be real--here in 1945.
We did not report what we had seen to the police. Perhaps we had
fancied that a girl came out of a phantom tower in Central Park this
morning. And, if we had seen it on the television, even so, it might
not actually have happened.
Had there actually been a policeman, there in the park, who had seen
it? And was there existing, here in New York today, this girl of the
shadows?
We waited, and the thing turned tangible indeed! Became a reality, for
presently we learned that it had touched others than ourselves.
The early afternoon papers carried a small item. Some of them put it
on the front page. But it was only a joke--a little thing to read, to
laugh at, and forget. There had been in actuality, a policeman at dawn
in Central Park; and he had been less reticent, more incautious than
ourselves. He had told what he saw. And the newspapers wrote it:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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