THE FIVE LIVES OF ROBERT JORDAN

Time past and time future

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

AT THE moment he laid eyes upon the watch, Robert Jordan experienced a strange and most disquieting sensation: that of having somewhere, sometime, seen it before.

—Which was, of course, a whimsical conceit, because the timepiece lay in the window of a dingy antique shop on a back street he had never previously explored. It was an odd watch, odd and very beautiful. Challengingly beautiful. It not only invited but compelled closer inspection.

Mr. Jordan hesitated briefly, then opened the door and stepped into the shop …

The merchant was a lean and faded man, age-mellowed as the wares in which he dealt. He made no motion forward as the doorbell tinkled, but remained behind his counter deftly disposing on an inlaid board the most exquisite set of chessmen Robert Jordan had ever seen.

The set was French and old … how old would tax the judgment of an expert. Jordan stared in mute admiration as the merchant adjusted ivory warriors less fragile than the fingers that caressed them. The pieces were no mere conventionalized carvings. They had depth and warmth and meaning. The pawns, staunch pikemen, crouched bent-kneed as to repulse the onslaught of a hated foe. Flanked by impetuous consorts, the two embattled kings, immobile and austere, glowered defiance across the chequered battlefield. Instead of mitered bishops, pied jesters, doubled with mirthless laughter, peered slyly up over their shoulders at mounted knights who, lances atilt, stood watch before gay-pennoned citadels.

The merchant’s voice was soft and gray with sorrow.

“They were wise, those ancient craftsmen,” he said. “Very wise. They sent their kings to battle advised by fools… not heartened by creatures of oblique piety.” His fingers touched a mocking jester’s cap, and for an instant the hushed air trembled with the far and muted tinkling of a myriad tiny bells. Then, “You would like to help me arrange the pieces?” he asked.

Robert Jordan shook his head. It. was nonsensical, of course, but he had a sudden, horrible feeling that were he to touch one of those chessmen he would feel it warm and quicken into life beneath his fingers.

“No!” he said a shade too loudly. Then, embarrassed by the query in the merchant’s eyes, “No, thank you. Looks ugly. I … There’s something else. That watch in the window—”

“Ah, yes. The watch.” The merchant nodded, glided away. A moment later, gold-gleaming against black velvet, it lay on the counter before Mr. Jordan.

It was a strange watch. Scarcely a desirable watch by modern, utilitarian standards. It was thick and heavy and awkwardly hinged at the base; against its time-faded dial the tarnished numerals were barely discernible. Of course it was a key-winder. The key was secured to the set-stem by a small chain. The hands were cumbersome, the case worn. It was not at all a practical timepiece.

But there was something about it …

“It runs?” asked Mr. Jordan.

The merchant raised the watch to Mr. Jordan’s ear. Its soft ticking counted the dwindling sands of eternity. It did not now tell the correct hour, but that was a matter of mere adjustment. The watch ran.

“It’s … very expensive, I suppose?”

Robert Jordan knew quite well he was going too far. He should not even ask that question, no matter what the answer. With taxes high and living costs outrageous it was all he could do now, on a bookkeeper’s salary, to make ends meet. Only this morning Alicia had warned him to think twice before needlessly spending a penny of the money he withheld for himself from his pay envelope.

“There’s the insurance next month,” she complained, “and month after that the state income tax. And we must pay Dr. Hudson something on account pretty soon. If either of us should be taken sick—” she brooded. And, “I don’t see why you don’t stop smoking. It’s nothing but a filthy habit. And we need every penny,” said Alicia.

The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. The landlord, the grocer, the laundryman.

But there was something about this watch. .

“I suppose it’s very expensive?” Mr. Jordan asked again.

The merchant’s lips twisted in something that might—or might not—have been the shadow of a smile. He was no longer toying with the chessmen, but had taken from the shelf behind him an ancient dirk, elaborately jeweled of guard and grip. Its twisted blade shone silver clear … but the chamois with which he wiped its spotless steel was freshly wet with a dark, unsightly stain.

“What is, costs much,” he replied softly. “What might have been, costs all.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing,” said the merchant. “Nothing at all. I believe forty dollars would be a fair price?”

A fever until now restrained by common sense seized and shook Robert Jordan. Forty dollars! This antique dealer must be mad. At that price the watch was a downright steal. Even Alicia could not complain at his making so shrewd an investment. Should he tire of the watch he could sell it anywhere for twice—five times!—that sum.

Not that he would ever tire of it. There was something about this watch which made it his. The mere sight of it roused within him things he had not known—or had forgotten—existed: the daring of the carefree venturer: the ruthless cunning of the financier; the fierce, hot hunger of the moon-impassioned poet; the cold and piercing logic of the knowledge-questing savant …

Mr. Jordan wet his lips, fumbled in his pocket for his as yet unopened pay envelope.

“I’ll take it,” he said hoarsely.

“Of course,” said the merchant, and took the crisp new bills Mr. Jordan thrust at him. “It will need setting,” he said.

“Yes.” said Mr. Jordan. “Yes, I know.” He stared at the watch—his watch—as a child at a fledgling bird; he cradled it in his hands with the same raw, breathless wonder. “Well … goodbye,” he said, and turned toward the doorway.

The merchant did not seem to hear him. He was putting the money in a small enameled box, and as he lifted the lid the box chimed forth a tune. Mr. Jordan was sure it was no tune he had ever heard before, yet the music was troublingly familiar, and for some strange reason the words of a half-forgotten song seemed to tremble at the fringes of his memory.

Only when he had reached the threshold did the merchant make reply, and it was not until later that the meaning of his words registered on Mr. Jordan’s consciousness. “Goodbye,” he said, “and may you find the happiness you seek, Robert Jordan.”

The door opened, and behind him a tiny bell jangled softly as Mr. Jordan stepped out to the street. A clock in a nearby steeple struck the hour—one—and he turned the hands of the watch backward. There was a thin click! and for a frozen moment he feared something within his precious timepiece had snapped. Then the slow, even ticking resumed … the ageless hands pressed forward on their endless circuit …

Exactly one o’clock.

As he returned the watch to his vest pocket, a slim figure slipped from the shelter of the wall and to his side. “Get it, Aces?” asked Blacky.

“Aces” Jordan—gambler and gentleman, connoisseur and con man, rakehell and Robin Hood—fingered his pencil of mustache and smiled the lazy smile which won with equal ease the trust of men and women’s hearts.

“Of course,” he said languidly. “The old man was a damned fool. Forty bucks! I’d have given him four hundred. Or four thousand if I had to. This watch is worth millions, Blacky. It’s a good luck piece. I felt it the minute I laid eyes on it.”

“Yeah?” said Blacky. “Well, okay. If you say so.” His sharp, impatient eyes darted nervously up the long street and down again. “But it ain’t good luck for us to stand here like ducks on a rock, Aces. This is Malinetti’s territory … remember? It ain’t healthy for us here.”

“Malinetti?” Aces Jordan’s laughter dismissed the rival racketeer from existence. “You’re shying at bogey men, kid. That greaseball’s just a bag of wind on legs.”

“Don’t kid yourself, boss. Joe means business. He used to be small potatoes, but he’s got an organization now, and he’s singing big—”

“Skip it.”

“As for his being a bag of wind … sure! But even a bag of wind can be dangerous if—”

“Skip it, I said.”

Aces Jordan did not raise his voice. But he raised his eyebrows, and the effect was the same. The bodyguard’s urgings faltered into silence.

“Okay, Aces,” said Blacky.

“Where’s the heap?”

“Right over here, boss.”

“Let’s get going. We’ve got things to do.”

Silently they climbed into the long blue limousine and purred uptown with Blacky at the wheel. Aces Jordan let his head fall hack upon the rich, soothing upholstery. There was something troubling him.

But it was not fear of Malinetti or any such picayune problem. It was something disturbingly strange and, to a man of Aces Jordan’s iron will and granite self possession, incomprehensibly foreign. A moment ago, as Blacky warned him of Malinetti, there had suddenly flooded upon Aces Jordan an outré sense of dread and insecurity. For a fleeting instant it had seemed to him that he was not Aces Jordan at all, but a weaker, paler version of himself. Such a person as—under a different set of circumstances, and under the compulsion of more inhibiting morals—he might have been.

In that brief confidence-sapping moment his memory had recalled the wide-eyed and innocent kid he had been years ago. In the old days … the cheap and sordid poverty-stricken days before young Bob Jordan, underpaid clerk in a bank, had discovered a neat and foolproof way of doctoring the balances, and had parlayed his cleverness into the position of power and influence now held by Aces Jordan.

Even now it was as if he shared the dark confusion of his mind with that feebler, more fearful, Bob Jordan. He had a weird obsession that he was suddenly become somehow two persons … and that even as he was troubled by this sense of a second presence, somewhere deep within him that other Jordan looked with equal horror on the grotesque situation.

It was a queer feeling, a damned queer feeling. He didn’t like it a bit.

He was glad when Blacky braked the car before the Shamrock Club, his hideout, home and headquarters. The moment they passed through those paneled doors he sensed the bewildered shrinking of that ubiquitous pseudo-self, lost in unfamiliar surroundings.

Aces Jordan smiled, once more at ease and sanguine master of the world wherein he reigned.

He passed briskly through the track room, loud with the rasp of direct wire returns from the nation’s horse-racing centers—(“Fourth at Floral … Stagehand, paying $9.80, $6.20 and $3.60; Miser, paying $7.40”) —louder with the moans and self-recriminations of the losers. Outside the bar he paused briefly to accept the maudlin backpaddlings of an exuberant refugee from the dice room.

“Look, Aces, ol’ boy!” Breathing triumph and whisky, the client waggled a fistful of green before the gambler’s eyes. “Three grand! Nine straight passes. How do you like that? Nine straight passes against the house and I walk off with thirty yards! This is my lucky day, huh, Aces, ol’ boy, ol’ boy?”

“Must be,” said Aces Jordan pleasantly. “Must be, Harry. Congratulations.”

“Ain’t sore, are you, Aces, ol’ boy? Wouldn’t want you to be sore, ol’ pal.”

“Not a bit, Harry. Glad to see you win. Only—”

“Mmm?” The victorious one squinted owlishly at the figure wavering before him. “Hey, Aces, ol’ boy, ol’ boy … stan’ still, won’t you? Only what?”

Aces Jordan shrugged.

“Oh, nothing. Except that … if this is your lucky day, aren’t you foolish to quit while you’re hot?”

“Three grand ahead, Aces, ol’ boy! That’s the time to quit. When you’re ahead.”

“Sure, Harry. But if you could make that ten grand … or thirty … and then quit—”

“We-e-ell—”

Aces Jordan patted his client’s shoulder. “Got to play your streaks, Harry. And this is your lucky day. Well, see you later. Good luck!”

He turned away, smiling. Then, to Blacky languidly as the befogged Harry set uncertain course for the dice table. “Okay, kid. Hang the clip on him.”

Blacky’s lifted brows formed dollar signs.

“All he’s got,” said Aces. “He can afford it. And I don’t like guys to get stiff in my place.”

“Okay, boss.” Blacky disappeared after the weaving figure as his employer moved on up a wide, carpeted staircase to the more exclusive gaming rooms upstairs.

The croupier’s passionless drone—”Messieurs, mesdames, faites vos jeux“—breathed through the febrile hush which swayed in tempo to the dry chitter of the dancing ball. All eyes lifted briefly as Aces stopped beside the wheel, and lips smiled mechanical greeting even as the eyes turned again to the table. The croupier offered his rake; Aces refused it with a tiny shake of the head.

“Rien ne va plus,” said the croupier. The white ball hissed backward against the motion of the wheel, slowed, caught in a number, clung for breathless instants, then flung itself to another and more tenacious groove.

“Dix-sept, noir, manque, impair,” read the croupier quietly, already raking in the lost hazards while with his other hand he deposited neat stacks of chips beside the bets of the winners. “Messieurs, mesdames, faites yes jeux.”

Aces Jordan turned to go. There was a movement at his side and a soft hand on his arm, blue eyes searching his own with frightened intensity.

“Aces—”

The swift appraising glance of Aces Jordan found youth and beauty, warmth and allure, snared in the virgin form of a trapped Diana. His pulses quickened, but his voice was firm.

“Yes?”

“I … I’m Crystal Andrews. I … I’ve done a dreadful thing. That money I just lost … five thousand dollars—”

Her voice was like the singing of violins, deep and vibrant. Aces Jordan waited.

“It wasn’t mine. I cashed a … a forged check.”

Aces said, “You shouldn’t have done that, Miss Andrews. The money I staked against yours was good.”

“I know that, Aces. But I was desperate. I needed money … a lot of money … badly.”

“Andrews? Your father is the banker, isn’t he? He’ll make the check good, I suppose?”

“No, please!” Panic in eyes smoke-blue, surprising strength in the fingers that clutched his arm. “He mustn’t know, Aces. He mustn’t know a thing about it … not ever. It would kill him. It … it was his name I signed to the check.”

“I see,” said Aces Jordan slowly. “I see.”

“I’ve got to have it back, Aces. I’ll pay you back somehow. I’ll do anything you say. Anything.”

“Excuse me, Miss Andrews.” Aces moved to the wheel and spoke to the croupier quietly. Paper changed hands. Aces returned to the girl. “This is the check?”

“Yes.” The violins sang a note of hope. “Yes, that’s it. Aces, please—”

Aces Jordan smiled. His slim, strong fingers tore the check into halves, then quarters. “Is that better?” he asked. The girl’s hands on his own burned like a flame. “Aces, thank you! I’ll never forget this … never.” Aces Jordan, still smiling, released his hands and slipped the torn fragments into his breast pocket.

“The check will not be cashed,” he promised.

“But the … the pieces?”

“Are safe. You may get them tonight. My apartment … at midnight.”

“Your apartment? Tonight … at midnight?”

“You’ll be there?” asked Aces Jordan pleasantly.

“You … you weasel!” Flame in the girl’s eyes, the tension of her recoil. For an instant that occult other self helplessly watching from within Aces Jordan’s brain thought she would strike her tormentor. Somehow he also knew that if she did so she would win at once respect and freedom. “I … come to you? Like a common mill? I’ll see you in hell first. I—”

Then suddenly she crumpled; the flame died and the defiance flowed from her. Her lips trembled.

“I’ll be there,” she said.

“Good!” smiled Aces Jordan. “Until later, then?” He lifted a passive hand to his lips in gesture of mock gallantry, then turned away. The girl stood staring after him, her eyes dull and lifeless. The voice of the croupier droned its interminable warning.

“C’est fini. Rien ne va plus!”

In the pine-paneled room beyond the roulette salon were seven men: six seated around a baize-topped table, the seventh watching the poker game with tense preoccupation. As Aces entered the players glanced up, nodded, then returned to their world of chance. The watching man stirred eagerly.

“Aces, if you’ve got a minute—?”

“Hello, Tom. Come into my office.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

Together the two passed into the ultima Thule of Aces’ private world, the immaculately professional throne room from which he ruled his empire. Aces waved his guest to a chair.

“Drink?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Bubble or branch water?”

“Straight.”

Aces Jordan laughed softly. “Must be worse than I thought, Tom. They’ve been getting to you?”

Tom Lafferty accepted the drink. “Then you heard?”

“A little. How bad is it?”

“The works, Aces. Everything. I’m clean.”

“No fooling?”

“They caught me out on a limb. I poured every cent I had into Domestic Aircraft common on a tip. A burn tip. The bears waddled in and—” Lafferty shrugged. “But I didn’t come here just to cry on your shoulder.”

“I didn’t think you did, Tom.”

“I’m on your books for a lot of money. Five or ten thousand, I think.”

“Eight and a half.”

“Okay. I’ll lose it; you keep the books. I wanted to ask you if … if you’d mind carrying me a while longer? Give me a chance to get back on my feet again?”

Frowning, Aces Jordan traced the curves of a tooled-leather desk pad with a paperknife.

“Got any prospects, Tom?” he asked.

Lafferty flushed. “Nothing worth mentioning. John Todd will take me in as junior partner, but—”

“What’s his offer?”

“Twelve thousand a year.”

Aces said softly, “And after you’ve bought the peanuts and cigarettes, what are you going to live on, Tom?” The speculator’s square hands folded and unfolded. “Look, Aces,” he said doggedly, “I didn’t come here for a lecture. I know it’s not what I’m used to making. But I’ve been taken, and now I’ve got to start over. All I’m asking you for is a few months to—”

“Shut up!” said Aces wearily. “I’m thinking.” His paperknife circled once, twice, dug sharply into the leather and stopped moving.

“Did you lose that aircraft stock?” he asked.

“No. I’ve still got it. But it’s not worth the eight and a half I owe you, Aces.”

“Never mind that. How much cold cash would you need to bull the market again?”

“Too much. A hundred thousand. Maybe more.”

“Okay.” Aces stepped to the far wall, pressed open a panel revealing a wall safe. A moment later he laid a neat stack of bills before the other man. “There’s the kitty. If you need more, holler. Now, go get ‘em.”

Lafferty stared.

“Aces!” he choked. “But listen, Aces . . I might be wrong. I might lose this, too. I—”

“I’ll risk that,” said Aces Jordan. “You’re into me for almost ten grand now. I’ve got to get my money back.”

“Aces, I’ll never forget this. You’re the swellest guy I’ve ever—”

“Get out of here, will you?” said Aces wearily. “The door’s behind you. Get out of here, and go earn a lot of dough so I can win it from you … sucker!”

Lafferty grinned. “Okay, Aces,” he said, and left.

Aces Jordan leaned back in his swivel chair, closed his eyes and pressed them with thumb and forefinger. Given a moment’s peace and quiet he might, he thought, shake off that strange feeling of a second presence within himself, watchful and righteously critical of every move he made.

But he found no peace. The interoffice buzzer rasped, and Blacky’s anxious voice spoke from downstairs. “Trouble, boss.”

“What’s the matter? Harry still running a streak?”

“No. It’s Malinetti. He’s down here with a couple of hoods.”

“Malinetti? In the Shamrock Club? Throw him out!”

Blacky’s voice was fretful. “No can do, boss. The law’s crusading right now. Pre-election stuff, you know. If we kick up a fuss, and there’s any shooting—”

Aces scowled. “Maybe you’re right. What does he want, anyway?”

“He wants to see you. On business, he says.”

“All right,” decided Aces Jordan. “Send him up.”

It was a queer feeling. A damned queer feeling, as if there were a portion of him, subservient to but still part of Aces Jordan, that feared Joe Malinetti and shrank from this meeting …

But it was Aces Jordan, smiling and confident, who rose to greet his unwelcome visitors.

“Hello, Joe. Long time no see. What are you doing around these parts?”

Malinetti’s black, beetling gaze probed the office, suspicious of every niche and panel. The exaggerated English drape of his coat was more the result of expediency than poor taste in clothing. He said, “I wanna talk to you, Aces.”

“Sure,” said Aces. “Alone, or with Tweedledee and Tweedledum, here, as witnesses?”

“Who?” Malinetti’s brow furrowed. “Never mind the doubletalk, Aces. You know Pete and Bummy. They go where I go. Especially when I come places like this.”

“Okay,” said Aces easily. “Stick around, Blacky. I seem to be a minority. Well, Joe … what’s on your mind?”

Malinetti said, “You and Blacky was in my territory an hour ago. What was you doing there?”

Aces Jordan fingered his pencil of mustache. The corners of his mouth curved gently.

“Your territory?” he said. “Aren’t you spreading out a little? I thought the city streets were still public thoroughfares.”

“Look, Aces,” growled Malinetti, “I don’t like you. And I don’t like you muscling in on my territory … see? It’s got to stop. This time I’m warning you. But the next time you step out of line—”

“Joe—” Aces Jordan reached a sudden decision—” Joe, are you a gambler?”

“Huh?”

“Are you all wind, or have you got guts in that potbelly of yours?”

Malinetti glowered.

“Look here, Aces! One more crack like that—”

“Skip it! Are you willing to take a chance to stop this warfare between us?”

Joe Malinetti frowned. “Whaddya mean?”

“I mean this: I don’t like the idea of a thug like you ordering me off certain streets in certain neighborhoods. You’re sore because I operate bigger and better and classier rackets in this town than you can ever hope to run.” Aces leaned forward. “In other words, this is a big city, but it’s too small for the two of us. I’ll make you a sporting proposition. We cut a deck of cards. High man takes the works … low man gets out. Are you game?”

Malinetti licked his lips. “You’re nuts!” he said.

Aces drummed his fingers on the desk.

“Sure! I’ve got half as much to gain, twice as much to lose, as you have. The Shamrock Club alone takes in more than your whole shabby string of clip joints … and I own three more like it. But I’m a gambler. Are you?”

Malinetti’s eyes flickered briefly toward the pair at the door, accurately reading the meaning of their expectancy. This was his opportunity to prove that he was a big operator, not just the over-ambitious small time punk he knew himself to be. If he failed to accept this challenge, never again could he compel respect. Someone else would move in, take over the leadership he had forfeited. It was a showdown that couldn’t be avoided, averted, or blustered into non-existence.

“Where’s the cards?” asked Malinetti hoarsely.

“Get them, Blacky,” said Aces Jordan.

Blacky chose a fresh unopened deck from the stacks in a cabinet. Aces tossed it to Malinetti.

“Open it yourself, Joe. Inspect them.”

Malinetti thumbed open the deck, fingered the cards with fumbling unease, passed them back.

“Pete? Bummy?” Aces offered the cards. “Will one of you please shuffle them?”

Pete shambled forward, riffled the deck vigorously and stacked it face down on the table.

Aces smiled thinly.

“Okay, Joe. Cut.”

Malinetti reached out, hesitated for a long moment, then severed the stack with a convulsive gesture. In the dry silence his sigh was explosive, and Bummy’s cry was ear-piercing.

“The queen o’ di’monds, boss!”

“Nice card, Joe,” said Aces Jordan. Delicately his fingers split the remaining stack, exposing his card. It was the king of spades. “But. I seem to have topped it.”

Malinetti, his swarthy face suddenly moist with sweat and panic, slashed the cards from the desk with a tempestuous sweep of his arm. His thick voice choked, “The hell with you and your card tricks, Aces! I’m still in business … see? If you think I’m gonna—”

“Throw him out, Blacky,” said Aces Jordan. “Throw the punk out. Pete … Bummy … you’re working for me now. Go get the rest of your mob. Tell them we’ll hold a little conference here at—” He drew his new watch from his pocket—“at nine o’clock tonight. Understand?”

Pete and Bummy mumbled agreement, their shifty eyes carefully avoiding contact with those of their deposed chief. Aces smiled again.

“Well, Joe?”

“I ain’t going! You can’t make me. I—”

“It is exactly one minute to two,” said Aces icily. “I’ll give you sixty seconds to get out of this room forever. I’m not fooling, Joe. Better get going.”

A tension tangible as substance gripped the room. In the strained silence the labored breathing of Malinetti was like a metronome counting the dwindling seconds of his rulership. Aces Jordan did not look at Blacky, at Pete, or at Bummy. He watched the long, twisted finger of the watch’s minute hand creep slowly toward the perpendicular.

A minute … a half minute … fifteen seconds… five.

“Okay, Joe,” sighed Aces. “I warned you. Now—

Then movement, bewildering-swift and violent. Even as the minute hand touched the hour, Aces was conscious of an angry cry, of Blacky’s outraged roar, “Aces, look out! He’s going for it!” And simultaneously a blurring motion before him, punctuated by the sharp, barking cough of an automatic.

He was aware only of an orange flower of flame that burgeoned before his eyes startlingly, incredibly … of a monstrous fist that struck and forced him backward, smashing and tearing its way into his heart … of a thin, cold wind blowing bleakly across the wasteland of his waning consciousness.

And then …

The door opened, and behind him a tiny bell jangled softly as Mr. Jordan stepped out to the street. A clock in a nearby steeple struck the hour—one—and he turned the hands of the watch backward. There was a thin click! and for a frozen moment he feared something within his precious timepiece had snapped. Then the slow, even ticking resumed … the ageless hands pressed forward on their endless circuit …

Exactly one o’clock.

As he returned the watch to his vest pocket, a slim figure slipped from the shelter of the wall and to his side. “Get it, R. J.?” asked Frazier.

R. J. Jordan—millionaire and martinet, financier and foumart, casuist and Crocsus—fingered his close-cropped mustache and smiled the icy smile that marked alike triumph in matters of person or purse.

“Of course,” he snapped. “The old man was a moron. Forty dollars, indeed! Why, I’d have given him four hundred. Or four thousand, if I had to. This watch is worth millions, Walter. It’s a good luck piece. I felt it the moment I laid eyes on it.”

“Really, sir?” said Frazier. “Yes, of course, sir. If you say so.” His pale, uncertain eyes darted nervously up at the steeple clock. “But it’s not good luck for us, R. J., to waste time like this. The market closes in an hour, sir, and Lafferty may be doing something right now—”

“Lafferty?” R. J. Jordan’s laughter dismissed the rival broker from existence. “You’re shying at shadows, Walter. Toni Lafferty’s whipped, finished, washed up.”

“I’m not so sure, sir. Lafferty is nobody’s fool. This isn’t the first time he’s been cornered—

“Forget it.”

“As for his being whipped … perhaps. But a beaten man can be dangerous if—”

“Forget it, I said.”

R. J. Jordan didn’t raise his voice, but he raised his eyebrows. The effect was the same. The slim secretary’s urgings faltered into confused silence.

“Very well, sir,” said Frazier.

“Where’s the car?”

“Right over here, sir.”

“Let’s get going. We’ve got things to do.”

Silently they climbed into the long black town car and purred downtown with Frazier at the wheel. R. J. Jordan let his head fall back upon the rich, soothing upholstery. A vague, indefinable something troubled him.

For some strange reason he did not feel alone. In his own mind, that is. To him it seemed as if his brain were shared by another weaker, more timorous Robert Jordan. Like … oh, almost like the asinine youth he had been before young Bob Jordan, underpaid clerk in a bank, had eavesdropped on a tremendously important conference between two bank executives, and had pyramided his furtive knowledge into the position of power and affluence now held by R. J. Jordan.

It was a queer feeling, a damned queer feeling. He didn’t like it a bit. He was glad when Walter braked the car before the massive structure which housed his brokerage. The moment they passed through those grilled doors R. J. Jordan smiled, once more at ease and master of his financial empire.

He passed briskly through the outer offices, hectic with the scurrying of briefcase-laden clerks and speculators— (“A thousand Big Copper at 93. That’s right … buy! Watch. Steel and Transport. And keep an eye on Aircraft—”) —louder with the lamentations of poor guessers. Before the board room he paused briefly to accept the vociferous hand pumping of a gleeful client.

“Look, Jordan.” The man waggled a scribbled voucher under his nose. “Three grand! That hunch I had on Union Preferred. It jumped three points and I’m in thirty hundred! This is my lucky day, eh, R. J.?”

R. J. Jordan smiled. “It must be, Hodges. Didn’t sell out, did you?”

“Sell? Sure I did! I’m ahead of the game—”

R. J. Jordan patted his client’s shoulder. “Ought to ride your streaks, Hodges. You may make a real killing. Well, see you later.”

He turned away, smiling. Then to Frazier dryly, as Hodges moved thoughtfully toward the bourse, “Go with him, Walter.”

Frazier coughed polite query.

“All he’s got,” said R. J. Jordan. “He can afford a lesson. And I don’t like braggarts.”

“Yes, sir.” Walter disappeared after the uncertain Hodges as his employer moved on up a wide marble staircase to the more exclusive offices upstairs.

The dry chatter of the ticker was the only sound in the hushed private board room. All eyes swiveled briefly from the illuminated tape as R. J. Jordan entered, and tight lips smiled mechanical greeting even as the eyes turned again to the tape. Jordan read the symbols swiftly and noted with approval that Domestic Aircraft was still dropping.

Then he turned to go. But there was a soft hand on his arm; troubled gray eyes sought his own anxiously. “Mr. Jordan—”

R. J. Jordan’s cool, appraising glance found youth and beauty, breeding and gentle grace at his side.

“Yes, Miss Van Dorsten?”

“Something extremely awkward—” she said. “This sudden drop in Domestic Aircraft. It caught me unawares—”

Elspeth Van Dorsten. Her family lived in a mansion on upper Park. So did R. J. Jordan. But he had bought from a realtor; they had lived there—belonged there—for generations.

“I … I was long. I wasn’t fully covered. Now I … I’m afraid I owe you more than I can possibly raise.”

R. J. Jordan said, “That was unwise, Miss Van Dorsten. The market is for investors, not speculators.”

“I know that. But I was desperate. I needed money—lots of money—immediately. My father is ill—”

“Yes, your father. He must be told, of course.”

She gripped his arm impetuously.

“Please, no! He mustn’t know, Mr. Jordan. Father has no money. Our family fortune is gone, but not our family pride. It would kill him to learn I gambled away what little we have left.”

“I see,” said R. J. Jordan slowly. “I see.”

“You’ve got to give me time, Mr. Jordan. I’ll pay you back somehow. I’ll do anything you say … anything!”

Family. The one thing wealth could not buy. Or … could it? A cold glint danced in R. J. Jordan’s eyes. This girl … and himself?

“Anything?” he repeated thoughtfully. “Do you mean that, Miss Van Dorsten? Anything?”

“Anything. If you’ll just give me a chance—”

“Very well. You shall have your chance. Your debt will be forgotten. I shall not sue or press you for payment, Miss Van Dorsten … on one condition.”

“One condition?”

“I am a bachelor, and a lonely man. Money and power are hollow things when a man has no wife to share them. Do I make my meaning clear?”

“A wife!” There was stark incredulity in the girl’s eyes. For an instant that other self merged in R. J. Jordan thought she would laugh. Somehow he knew that if she did so she would be free. “You … you can’t possibly—

Then suddenly she crumpled, her defenses shattered. “Yes. Quite clear,” she said.

“Excellent,” purred R. J. Jordan. “Until tonight, then? I shall call to meet your family … Elspeth.” Swiftly, awkwardly, be took her two gloved hands between his fleshy ones, patted them in a wordless gesture of possession.

Then he turned away. The girl stood staring after him, her eyes dull and lifeless.

The moving tape spun on. R. J. Jordan stocks were steadily rising.

At the door of Jordan’s private office a waiting figure hailed him, “Oh, say, R. J.! Can you spare a minute?”

“Of course, George. Come in.”

Together they entered the pine-paneled inner sanctum. Jordan waved his guest to a chair.

“Brandy?” he suggested.

“Thanks. Make it a double.”

R. J. Jordan smiled thinly. “Bad, then, George?”

George Dawson nodded, sipping his drink with gloomy introspection. “It’s that damned play, R. J. Seen it?”

“No. But I’ve heard people talking. Satire, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. Political satire—political poison—directed against me. I haven’t got a Chinaman’s chance of being elected Mayor with that dramatic caricature of my first administration playing to packed houses nine times a week! I look like an utter fool. Everybody in town is laughing at me … or at the actor who plays me in ‘To the Victor.’ “

Dawson sighed and laid down his empty goblet. “But I didn’t come here to wring out the crying towel, R. J. I just wanted to let you know how things stand, that’s all. If my party loses the election, the new brooms will start sweeping. They may kick up quite a bit of dust.”

“The municipal funds you’ve dropped on the market?”

“That … and other things. I just wanted you to know that you wouldn’t be involved. I got myself into this. I’ll see it through alone.”

R. J. Jordan frowned. He said tightly, “I dislike scandal, George.”

The incumbent Mayor shrugged wearily.

“I’ve already told you that you won’t be implicated in any way.”

“That’s not the point. You say this play’s hurting your campaign? How much would it cost to close it?”

Dawson laughed curtly, mirthlessly. “Don’t make me laugh, R. J. The thing’s a smash hit. Every film company in Hollywood is after the motion picture rights, and the show is a solid sellout for a month. It would cost a fortune to buy it out. A half million, at least.”

“Very well.” R. J. Jordan pressed a button, spoke into his interoffice phone. “Jenkins? A cashier’s check for Mayor Dawson—$500,000. He’ll stop by for it in a couple of minutes.” Then, to Dawson, “If you need more, say so.”

Dawson stammered, “Good God! But listen, R. J., I might be wrong. I might lose the election anyway.”

“Run along,” said R. J. Jordan brusquely. “I know what I’m doing, George. I want a friend in City Hall. And I don’t like poets who write lampooning satires.”

Dawson smiled. “You’re the boss, R. J.” He nodded and left.

R. J. Jordan leaned back in his swivel chair. Why, he wondered, should he have this strange feeling that someone or something within him was watching every move he made? And why should he somehow feel as if he were running a treadmill? Repeating a once-woven pattern? Why? Certainly he had never in his life done these things before. And yet …

He found no answer. The intercom phone buzzed, and Frazier’s anxious voice spoke from downstairs.

“This is awkward, R. J. Lafferty’s here. He wants to see you. On business, he says.”

Jordan smiled coldly. “Very well. Send him up.”

It was a queer feeling. A damned queer feeling. As if there were a part of him that dreaded this meeting, shrank from it …

But it was R. J. Jordan, urbane and confident, who rose to greet his uninvited visitor.

“Hello, Tom. Glad to see you. Sit down.”

Torn Lafferty glared at him through hag-ridden eyes. His clothes were rumpled, his hair disheveled. His big hands plucked nervously at his coat pockets. He had been drinking. His voice was thick and furry.

“No, thanks. I prefer to stand.”

Jordan shrugged. “As you wish. What do you want? I’m rather busy just now.”

“You know damned well what I want. I want you to lay off Domestic Aircraft. What are you trying to do, Jordan … break me?”

R. J. Jordan said softly, “I’m not trying to break you, Lafferty … I’ve clone it. Domestic Aircraft will hit the bottom tomorrow, and so will you.”

“You skunk! Why did you do it? Why?”

“Because,” said R. J. Jordan, “this town isn’t big enough for both of us, Lafferty. I don’t like the way you do business, and I don’t like your reputation. You consort with cheap crooks and gamblers … you drink too much … you talk too much. In short, you’re a thoroughgoing heel. Anything else you want to know?”

“No,” said Lafferty thickly. “You’ve said enough.”

“Good. Then you will do me the very great favor of leaving. I don’t enjoy your company.”

“No? Perhaps you’d like to try to throw me out?”

“Not I,” said R. J. Jordan quietly. “But since it amuses you to be difficult—” He slipped his new watch from his vest pocket, glanced at it—“It is exactly one minute to two. If you’re not out of this office in sixty seconds, I’ll have you thrown out. I’m not fooling, Tom.”

A tension gripped the room. In the thick, strained silence the labored breathing of Lafferty was like the ebbing of rebellious waters. Jordan watched the long finger of the minute hand creep slowly toward the perpendicular.

A minute … a half minute … fifteen seconds … five.

“Very well, Tom,” sighed R. J. Jordan. “If—“

Then movement, bewildering-swift and violent. Even as the minute hand touched the hour, there was a roar. A sea of flame toppled toward him. He was aware only of a gigantic ram driving him backward, blasting the breath from his lungs, the life from his body.

And then …

Mr. Jordan stepped out to the street. A clock in a nearby steeple struck the hour—one—and he turned the hands of the watch backward. There was a thin click! and for a frozen moment he feared something within his precious timepiece had snapped. Then the slow, even ticking resumed … the hands pressed forward on their endless circuit…

Exactly one o’clock.

As he returned the watch to his pocket., a slim figure slipped from the shelter of the wall and to his side. “Get it, Robin?” asked Linda.

Robin Jordan—lyricist and libertine, rogue and romantic, Don Juan and dramatist—fingered his silky fringe of beard and smiled the scornful smile that mocked alike the deeds and dreams of his fellow mortals.

“Of course,” he jeered. “The old man was an idiot. Forty paltry dollars! Why, I’d have given him four hundred. Or four thousand, if I had to. This watch is worth millions, darling. It’s a good luck piece. I felt it the moment I laid eyes on it.”

“Yes?” said Linda. “Yes, of course, Robin.” Her warm, adoring eyes studied him anxiously. “But it’s not good luck for us to be seen in a shady neighborhood like this. If Dawson’s really out to get you—”

“Dawson?” Robin Jordan’s mirth dismissed the Mayor from existence. “You’re tasting the lotus, ma belle! Dawson is an empty barrel, a sered corse, a tale told by an idiot … full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Linda’s voice was troubled.

“I wonder, Robin? He’s a powerful man. He has the political machine behind him—”

“I shake, ma petite.”

“As for his being an empty barrel … maybe so. But even an empty barrel can do damage if—”

“I tremble.”

Robin Jordan didn’t raise his voice, but he raised his eyebrows. The effect was the same. The girl’s disquiet vanished in amusement.

“All right, Robin,” said Linda.

“Where’s our miserable gas-devouring palanquin?”

“Right over here.”

“Bien. Ainsi, avant! We have things to do.”

Silently they climbed into the long, cream roadster and purred downtown with Linda at the wheel. Robin Jordan let his head fall back upon the rich, soothing leather. Despite his air of bravado he was not at ease. For some occult reason he could not shake off the feeling that he shared his brain, his innermost being, with another more timid, less talented Jordan. Such a supine being as … well, as he had been long years ago, before young Bob Jordan, underpaid clerk in a bank, had taken the bit of ambition in his teeth, daringly courted the shy Muse of his yearnings, and won his way to the position of fame and power now held by Robin Jordan.

It was a queer feeling. A damned queer feeling. He didn’t like it a bit. He was glad when Linda braked the car before the theater where his current success, “To the Victor,” was playing nightly to packed houses. The moment they passed through those gilded doors Robin Jordan smiled, once more at ease and master in his world of mime and metre.

He passed briskly through the foyer, strident with the pleadings of box-office blusterers and stagestruck schoolmarms— (“Sold out? What do you mean, sold out? See here, my good man, I … But, please! I simply must have two in the orchestra, center, for tomorrow night”) — louder with the outrage of disappointed out-of-town visitors. In the lobby he paused briefly to accept the fulsome congratulations of one of the show’s backers.

“Look, Robin!” The angel waggled a copy of Variety at him. “Three grand! My first week’s cut on the box-office receipts … three thousand dollars! This is my lucky day, eh?”

Robin Jordan smiled. “Undoubtedly, Sefton. Going to reinvest, of course, aren’t you?”

“Reinvest? Well, I hadn’t thought of—”

Robin Jordan slapped the theatrical newspaper a bit disdainfully. “A mere bagatelle compared to what you’ll earn if you back my new show, Sefton. Better climb on the bandwagon. This is your lucky day, you know. Well… au ‘voir!”

He turned away. Then, to Linda wryly, as the excited Sefton turned toward the offices, “Go pluck yon goose, light o’ my life.”

Linda laughed. “You’re going to let him angel ‘Demon in Disguise’? It will fold in a week, Robin.”

“You overestimate the public’s appetite for poetry,” said Robin. “It will close in three days. But Sefton needs a lesson. I dislike mercenary upstarts.”

“All right.” Linda disappeared after the investor as her consort passed through the lobby to the theater beyond.

A brush-up rehearsal was in progress, and all eyes glanced up briefly as Robin Jordan entered; lips smiled even as the actors’ thoughts returned to their mumming. Robin noted with approval that the ingenue had caught the spirit of her characterization, then turned to go. But there was a hand on his shoulder, anxious eyes searched his.

“Robin, old chap—”

Robin Jordan’s cool amused glance found disturbed dignity, ruffled assurance, at his side.

“Yes, Conrad?”

“Something a bit … awkward. That party at your place the other night. I … I’m afraid I wasn’t myself—”

“Weren’t you?” Robin Jordan smiled. “I found you delightful company, Conrad. And I’m sure Dolores did, too.”

Conrad Harkness III bit his lip. “That’s just it, Robin. I’m afraid I made myself a bit too agreeable to Miss Mendoza. She … she seems to want to continue our … our little acquaintanceship.”

Robin Jordan shrugged. “These Latins, you know.”

“Yes, I know. But I’d been drinking. I had no idea Miss Mendoza would prove so … persistent. I can’t get rid of her. She’s been calling my office … my home. My wife is beginning to wonder—”

“I see,” said Robin Jordan. “I see.”

“You’ve got to call her off, Robin. I’ll make it up to you somehow, do anything you say. Anything!”

“Very well, Conrad. Dolores will bother you no more.”

“You mean it? You’re a great chap, Robin! A true friend—”

“By the way,” said Robin Jordan casually, “I’m redecorating my apartment soon, and I’m in rather a spot. Need something vivid and modern for over the fireplace. I think you’ve just the thing. That ballet girl of yours … you know the one I mean? I wish you’d sell it to me.”

“Ballet girl. You mean my Degas?”

“That’s the one.” Robin Jordan smiled. “I don’t imagine you’d want anything around to remind you of Dolores, would you, Conrad? Particularly if Mrs. Harkness were to hear about the affair?”

“But—” There was startled wonderment in the errant playboy’s eyes, wonderment that turned abruptly into understanding. For an instant Jordan’s alter ego thought Harkness would stiffen and reject the covert blackmail. Then abruptly the playboy crumpled.

“Why … why, yes, of course, Robin,” he said. “I’ll send you the Degas in the morning.”

“Fine,” smiled Robin Jordan. “Until later, then?” He turned away. Harkness stood staring after him, biting his lip in impotent chagrin. On the stage the actors rehearsed. A voice spoke the philosophy of Robin Jordan.

“Beauty? There is nothing in life so important as beauty and the love of beauty … though we wallow through muck and filth to win it.”

At the door of his tiny office within the theater a figure awaited Jordan. “Oh, Robin. Got a moment?”

“Certainly, mon vieux! Come in. Drink?”

“Thanks. Make it wormwood and gall.”

Robin Jordan smiled. “With or without hemlock? It is true, then?”

Kit Graham nodded, gulping. “You’ve heard, eh?”

“Merely that the strong arm of orthodox science is lifted to crush you between the anvil of virtue and the hammer of propriety. What have you been doing?”

“Playing with fire.” confessed the artist gloomily. Then as his strong hands whitened on the glass, his eyes gleamed. “But a vital fire, Robin! The fire of truth, the flame of a magnificent creation. It had to be done!”

“Something about dope, wasn’t it?” asked Robin reflectively.

“Something about … good God, man! Would you call the pictures of Ilogarth ‘something about sex’? Or the music of ‘Wagner ‘something about legend’? What I’m doing is giving this world an eternal symbol of the other world that dwells beside it in the dreams, the thoughts, the expressions of the damned and hopeless drug addict.

“When my series of paintings is finished—and it is almost finished, Robin—a whole facet of human existence will have been forever immortalized on canvas. The textbooks can prate all they want to about the ‘evils of drug addiction’ … I will have shown the naked face of truth in all its fierce, hot glory … and in its degradation. There will be nothing more to say on the subject. Never. Not ever.”

“You took a girl,” said Robin Jordan, “who had never known life. You painted her in all her youth and innocence. Then you deliberately introduced her to the dubious delights of Our Lady of the Poppies … and indulged her every desire as induced by the drugs you fed her. And you painted her over a period of several years in every phase of her addiction?”

“Every phase but the last. That will conic soon.”

Robin Jordan sighed. “It was murder, Kit. Surely you realize that you killed not only her body, but her soul as well?”

Graham scowled. “Damn it, Robin, I didn’t expect you to turn penny lecturer, too. I thought you’d understand. But since you’re as hidebound and lily-white as the rest—”

“Sit down,” said Robin Jordan wearily. “Sit down and shut up. You’re mad, of course … but I like madmen. Is there no way out of this mess?”

“I’m afraid not. The medical hounds are baying at my heels. I’ve hidden Manette. But if they find her—”

“If you could get out of the country,” mused Jordan. “If you could get to the Islands, you could finish your painting there.”

“If!”

“I think it can be arranged. Kit, go home and get ready to leave on an hour’s notice. I have friends. I’ll find a ship to take you where you can finish your work.”

Graham stared.

“What? Robin, you can’t mean it! Don’t be a fool, man. You’ll be aiding and abetting a criminal. You’re rich and famous. If you get mixed up in. this it may put an end to your career … ruin your reputation—”

“Go home,” repeated Robin Jordan, “and wait. I’m no infant, Kit. I know what I’m doing. You’re a damned fool and so am I, but truth is greater than either of us. And I don’t like drum-beating witch-doctors who prey on art.”

Graham rose. “Thanks, Robin,” he said. “I … Oh, the hell with it! Goodbye.” And he left.

Robin Jordan leaned back in his chair. It was still with him, that outré feeling of a second presence. A presence that looked with horror on his every action. Why, he wondered? Was he ill? Or …

The telephone rang, and Linda’s anxious voice spoke.

“Robin? The Mayor wants to see you. On business.”

Jordan smiled. “Send him in, Linda.”

It was a queer feeling. A damned queer feeling. Almost a presentiment. He shouldn’t grant this interview. Some warning call within him cried that to do so was folly …

But it was Robin Jordan, mocking and gay, who rose to greet his unexpected visitor.

“Hello, Mayor. This is a surprise.”

George Dawson said heavily, “I’ll say what I have to say quickly, Jordan, and get out. I want you to close this play of yours.”

Robin Jordan lifted an amazed eyebrow.

“You’re jesting, Your Honor,” he jeered. “Surely even you must know successful plays don’t close at one man’s edict?”

“Stop grinning, you impudent blackguard! What are you trying to do, anyway? Ruin my career?”

“You,” said Robin Jordan, “did that yourself, Dawson. You did that years ago when you became a cheap money-grubbing politician instead of a spokesman for the public you pretend to serve. ‘To the Victor’ hurts you and will kill your chances for re-election because it truthfully depicts a cross-section of the intrigue your administration has spawned.”

Dawson scowled.

“What’s all this to you? You’re a poet and a playwright, not a politician.”

“I love truth,” said Robin Jordan, “in all its many guises. And I don’t like you, Dawson. I don’t like your filthy political machine, or the crooked investment brokers who stand behind you, or the way you part your hair. I’m also tired of talking to you. So will you be good enough to leave now?”

“You dare order me out of your rathole?”

“I do,” said Robin Jordan quietly. He slipped his new watch from his pocket, glanced at it. “It is now one minute to two. If you’re not out of this office in exactly sixty seconds, I’ll have you thrown out. I’m not fooling.”

In the thick, strained silence Dawson’s breathing was labored. Jordan watched the long minute hand creep slowly toward the perpendicular.

A minute … a half minute … fifteen seconds … five.

“Very well,” sighed Robin Jordan. “Since you—”

Then movement, bewildering-swift and violent. Even as the minute hand touched the hour, sound battered and raged at Robin Jordan’s eardrums. The thrust of a searing lance doubled him, then the flame of rending pain was chilled by keening gales.

And then …

A clock struck the hour—one—and he turned the hands of the watch backward. There was a thin click!—then the slow, even ticking resumed. The hands pressed on …

Exactly one o’clock.

As he returned the watch to his vest pocket, a slim figure slipped from the shelter of the wall and to his side. “Get it, Doctor?” asked Sorrel.

Dr. Robert Jordan—savant and surgeon, physician and Pharisee, Lycurgan and logician—fingered his long, close—shaven upper lip and smiled the tight smile that marked alike his moments of fortune and failure.

“Of course,” he said crisply. “The old man was mad. Forty dollars, indeed! I would have given him four hundred. Or four thousand if I had it. This watch is worth—” Only his ingrained repugnance to exaggeration restrained the impulse to say “millions”—“is worth a considerable sum of money, Douglas. It’s a … a good luck piece. I felt it the moment I laid eyes on it.”

“Really, Doctor?” said Sorrel. “Yes, I dare say.” His bright, querulous eyes studied his superior thoughtfully. “But it’s not … uh … good luck for us to be seen around here. Graham’s studio is somewhere in this part of town.”

“Graham?” Dr. Jordan’s laugh dismissed the artist from existence. “Graham can’t harm me. He’ll be behind bars soon, the scoundrel.”

“I wonder, sir? He has influential friends.”

“I too have influence.”

“As for his not harming you … even a trapped rat is dangerous when—”

“That will do, Douglas.”

Dr. Jordan didn’t raise his voice, but he raised his eyebrows. The younger man’s urgings subsided.

“Very well, Dr. Jordan.”

“Where is the car?”

“Right over here.”

“Good. Let’s go. We have things to do.”

Silently they climbed into the small black sedan and drove downtown with Sorrel at the wheel. Dr. Jordan let his head fall back upon the upholstery. He was curiously ill at ease. There was a strange feeling upon him. A feeling of … of what? Duplication? It was hard to say. But for some reason he seemed to share himself with another meeker, less confident personage. A second self, much like … well, like the person he had been years ago, before young Bob Jordan, underpaid clerk in a bank, had discovered his precise logical talents, studied for the medical profession, and won to the position of eminence and respect now held by Dr. Jordan.

It was a queer feeling, a deuced queer feeling. He didn’t like it a bit. He was glad when Douglas braked the car before the Medical Arts Building. The moment they passed through its revolving doors Dr. Jordan smiled, once more at ease and master of a world where reason reigned.

He passed briskly through the lobby, faintly astir with the hushed queries of patients— (“Dr. Thompson, please? About some X-rays”) —and paused briefly to accept the glowing gratitude of a man waiting there.

“Dr. Jordan, I can’t thank you enough for curing my little boy. I’m terribly grateful. If there were some way in which I could show my appreciation—”

“There is,” said Robert Jordan crisply. “The Memorial Hospital needs a new children’s ward. You can endow one, Mr. Phillips. Douglas!”

“Yes, Dr. Jordan?”

“Go with Mr. Phillips. He wants to write a check.”

“Yes, sir.” Sorrel disappeared with the grateful but somewhat dazed philanthropist-to-be as his senior took the elevator to the offices upstairs.

In the corridor a group of internes waited for a descending elevator. All eyes turned to Dr. Jordan briefly, and lips smiled even as the students’ eyes returned to the dial. Dr. Jordan noted with approval that they were a clean, fresh-looking group of young men, then turned to move on. But there was a hand on his arm; worried eyes sought his.

“Dr. Jordan?”

Dr. Jordan’s dispassionate glance found youth and vigor but raw discomfiture in the figure at his side.

“Langdon, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. I … There’s something I must tell you, sir. Something terribly awkward. That exam last week—”

“Yes?”

Herbert Langdon flushed. “I … I cribbed on it, sir. I had to tell you. I didn’t deserve the high grade I got.”

“I see,” said Dr. Jordan. “I see.”

Langdon’s voice was husky.

“I’m terribly sorry, sir. I guess I … I don’t belong in this profession. But if you’ll give me a chance I’ll make it up to you, somehow. I’ll do anything you say. Anything.”

“The grades have been recorded, Langdon. They need not be changed now.”

“You … you mean it, sir? Then you won’t tell?”

“I see no reason,” said Dr. Jordan calmly, “for advising the hospital authorities that one of our recent graduates committed the folly of cribbing a final examination. You have a good medical education, Langdon. You will make an excellent specialist in contagious diseases. An interneship is open.”

“A specialist in contagious—”

“Quite. You are volunteering in the morning … aren’t you?”

His eyes met those of the younger man firmly, challengingly, uncompromisingly. Herbert Langdon colored. Then his eyes fell. “Yes, Doctor,” he said. “In the morning.”

“Fine!” smiled Dr. Jordan. “Good luck … Doctor.” He turned away. Langdon stood staring after him, stunned and uprooted by this sudden change in his every plan …

In the anteroom of his private offices a patient awaited Dr. Jordan. She rose nervously as he entered. “Robert! May I … may I see you a minute?”

“Alicia! Of course. Come in. You’re trembling, my dear, Here … let me mix you a sedative.”

The woman tried to smile. The effort was a failure. “Haven’t you anything more … permanently quieting?”

Dr. Jordan said gently, “Then it’s that bad?”

“You know? You’ve heard?”

Robert Jordan nodded. “Dr. Warren told me.”

“It’s incurable,” she said dully. “A year, perhaps, of reasonable comfort. Then the bad part. For another three or four months until … until—”

Her eyes clouded, and she faltered to a stop.

“But you know all that as well as I, Robert. I didn’t come here to play the coward.”

“I know that, my dear.”

“It’s the life I’ve led these past ten years, Robert. I can see that now. Oh, it was fun for a while; the nights of dancing and drinking, the parties; all that. I should have known it couldn’t go on forever.”

“Yes, Alicia. The human body is a delicate organism. It will stand only so much abuse before it breaks down.”

“I should have married you, Robert, instead of him. Ten years ago, when you asked me. Do you remember?”

Robert Jordan said, “I remember, Alicia.”

“You were always sane and healthy, clean in your outlook on life. If I’d married you, this never would have happened. We’d still have years before us. Years of happiness—

Dr. Jordan said, “You chose wisely, Alicia. I had nothing to offer you. I was only a poor bank clerk. I had no future. Nothing but ambitions and desires.”

“You’ve made your future. You’ve won your desires, fulfilled your ambitions. We could have done it together.”

“Could we?” Robert Jordan smiled a trifle sadly. “I wonder? Those first years were hard. With a wife to care for—perhaps children, too—I might never have had the courage to carry on. I might still be poor Bob Jordan, the bank clerk.”

“No! Never! Success is a part of you, Robert … success in anything you set your heart on.”

“Let’s try to forget that old dream, Alicia. You came here today to ask me … what?”

“A favor, Robert. One small favor for old times’ sake.” “Yes?”

“Just this. Not today—not this year, even—but later, when the going gets too hard for me, will you … will you help me?”

There was silence for a long and painful moment. “You know what you’re asking, Alicia?”

“Yes.”

“The code of the medical profession—”

“I’m asking this because of … yesterday, Robert.”

Robert Jordan rose abruptly, walked to a cabinet at the far end of the room and selected a vial from its contents. Alicia’s bag lay on the desk. He slipped the bottle inside. He spoke very quietly.

“Life is highly uncertain, Alicia. They have told you that you have a year and a half. I have, apparently, twenty years before me … perhaps more. But who knows? There are automobile accidents, plagues, a thousand and one things. Therefore you should have this now.

“Only … keep hoping, my dear. Use it only as a last resort. You will do that?”

“Yes, Robert. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart—”

“I don’t understand, Alicia,” said Dr. Robert Jordan evenly. “I merely gave you some sleeping tablets. Remember to use them with caution. More than three at a draft might be fatal. And now, if you’ll excuse me?”

“Yes.” Alicia Adams—who under other circumstances might have been Alicia Jordan—rose. For an instant she hesitated. Then, “Goodbye, Robert,” she said. And she left.

Dr. Jordan leaned back in his chair. He was filled with a sense of dread, of foreboding. Not because of what he had just done… or allowed to become possible. That, as a scientist, he could condone despite the ethical code under which his profession labored. No, it was something else. Something …

The telephone rang, and it was young Sorrel again. “Dr. Jordan? Graham. He’s here to see you.”

“Really? Send him up.”

It was a queer feeling. A devilish queer feeling. That sense of a second presence was deeper now. It had strengthened. It was a puzzle that needed, demanded, solving.

Dr. Jordan was a logical man. Above all things, his life was based on the firm, immobile tenets of pure thought. This was a problem which must be faced and coped with. He plunged himself into it, no longer striving to thrust from his confused mind that other personage, but welcoming its presence. Permitting it, inviting it, to permeate his every fiber of being … to take control of his brain and body …

It was cloudy at first, dim as a wraith in gray night mists, tenuous and uncertain. Dr. Robert Jordan … Bob Jordan. Dr. Jordan … Bob Jordan. Doctorjordanbobjordan … doctorjordanbob …

And suddenly, frighteningly, it was there! The whole of it … all of them were there. Doctor Jordan … Bob Jordan … Robin and Aces Jordan … their diverse yet weirdly similar personalities weaving and twisting, spiraling and merging one with another, becoming many-angled facets of a single whole. And the floodgates of unlocked memory flung wide open, showing him snatches of those other Jordan lives as clearcut figures captured in the opalescence of eternity.

The watch! “Goodbye … and may you find the happiness you seek, Robert Jordan.” May you rise from your miserable pit of anonymity, bank-clerk Jordan, and see the man you might have been under other circumstances. May you see what came of those traits repressed within your servile self: the daring of the carefree venturer you had not known or had forgotten existed; the ruthless cunning of the financier; the fierce, hot hunger of the moon-impassioned poet; the cold and piercing logic of the knowledge-questing savant …

The watch! The watch whose antique hands, forever pressing on an endless circuit, evermore started at the hour of one when it became his own, evermore faltered at the fateful hour of two to hurl its owner back, back, through ageless and unfathomable time to another pathway of the lives that might have been.

And yet … and yet how strangely intermingled were those lives. In one the hated foe became the friend; in one the cherished friend became the instrument of death. Faces and names swirled giddily before him as phantasms dancing in a fevered dream. Malinetti … Dawson … Lafferty … Graham … Alicia . .

Alicia. In this life Dr. Jordan had helped her, as in another the tycoon Jordan had helped Dawson. But Dawson had slain Robin Jordan. On yet another pathway might not Alicia even now be waiting patiently, grimly, coldly, to rid herself forever of the poor bank clerk Jordan who by marrying her had robbed her of every chance for happiness, the fun and laughter she so ardently desired?

Dr. Robert Jordan did not know. But this he did know: that there were footsteps outside his door, and that soon would enter his office the violent Kit Graham whose dastard degradation of an innocent girl Dr. Jordan had exposed to the authorities, And that Graham would be armed, Dr. Jordan was positive. It was inevitable. It was a part of the taut and inescapable pattern …

Inescapable? With a cry Dr. Jordan leaped from his scat, hope suddenly burning hot within him. Perhaps not. For the hands of the watch—he drew it from his pocket and scanned its face eagerly—lacked still ten minutes of two o’clock.

Then there might still be a way out, an escape from the intermeshed gears into which he had been cast. The watch was the cause of his turmoil. If he could find the shop from which it came … return it before the fateful hour …

He thrust a startled Graham from his path in his headlong flight from the office. The elevator, then the street. No time to search for Sorrel. But a wild, careening drive through midday traffic, oblivious to the enraged cries of scampering pedestrians, the belligerent honkings of other cars. Thrice whistles signaled him to stop, and thrice Dr. Robert Jordan, stanch exponent of law and order, ignored them. A dozen times traffic lights flamed crimson with embarrassment as he plunged through them recklessly.

He slammed the brakes to a screaming stop before the tiny shop, literally hurled himself from the car. He snatched the watch from his pocket, found with horror that but one minute remained. He had raced with Fate and lost. Somehow, one minute hence, death would find Dr. Robert Jordan. And phoenix-like, another Jordan would rise to pursue the endless quest.

No time, now, to return the watch to the shop. But there was one last chance …

A minute.

One last and slender chance of getting himself out from under the crushing weight of an eternal reincarnation … A half minute.

One way to cancel out the spiraled past, bring an end to the multifold future …

Fifteen seconds.

He lifted the watch high. Even in his passion it was a painful thing to do. But it had to be done. He dashed it to the pavement precisely as the clock in a nearby steeple groaned to strike the hour. There were golden shards gleaming in the sunlight, and the tinkle of breaking glass. A hot and dazzling vertigo danced before his eyes, and a wind from beyond the world chilled him to the bone.

Then… peace. Quiet. The even tenor of a sane and nominal existence. Himself walking along a street … pausing before a shop window …

At the moment he laid eyes upon the watch, Robert Jordan experienced a strange and most disquieting sensation: that of having somewhere, sometime, seen it before.

—Which was, of course, a whimsical conceit, because the timepiece lay in the window of a dingy antique shop on a back street he had never previously explored. It was an odd watch, odd and very beautiful. Challengingly beautiful. It not only invited but compelled closer inspection.

Mr. Jordan hesitated briefly, then opened the door and stepped into the shop …

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