was too much for him.
Instinctively, he turned and ran back toward the room he had left. If he got back to the place where he had appeared in this world, perhaps—somehow—some force would return him to where he belonged.
* * * *
The door was as he had left it, the porcelain dish still in place. He scooped up the dish in one big hand and ran on into the room, letting the door shut itself behind him. He ran on, through the large room with its many tables, into the brightly lighted room beyond.
He stopped. What could he do now? He tried to remember the things that the Italian had told him to do, and he could not for the life of him remember them. His memory still had gaps in it—gaps he did not know were there because he had not yet probed for them. He closed his eyes in concentration, trying to bring back a memory that would not come.
He did not hear the intruder until the man’s voice echoed in the room.
Broom’s eyes opened, and instantly every muscle and nerve in his hard-trained body tensed for action. There was a man standing in the doorway of the office.
He was not a particularly impressive man, in spite of the queer cut of his clothes. He was not as tall as Broom, and he looked soft and overfed. His paunch protruded roundly from the open front of the short coat, and there was a fleshiness about his face that betrayed too much good living.
And he looked even more frightened than Broom had been a few minutes before.
He was saying something in a language that Broom did not understand, and the tenseness in his voice betrayed his fear. Broom relaxed. He had nothing to fear from this little man.
“I won’t hurt you,” Broom said. “I had no intention of intruding on your property, but all I ask is help.”
The little man was blinking and backing away, as though he were going to turn and bolt at any moment.
Broom laughed. “You have nothing to fear from me, little man. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Richard Broom, known as—” He stopped, and his eyes widened. Total memory flooded over him as he realized fully who he was and where he belonged.
And the fear hit him again in a raging flood, sweeping over his mind and blotting it out. Again, the darkness came.
* * * *
This time, the blackness faded quickly. There was a face, a worried face, looking at him through an aperture in the stone wall. The surroundings were so familiar, that the bits of memory which had been scattered again during the passage through centuries of time came back more quickly and settled back into their accustomed pattern more easily.
The face was that of the Italian, Contarini. He was looking both worried and disappointed.
“You were not gone long, my lord king,” he said. “But you were gone. Of that there can be no doubt. Why did you return?”
Richard Broom sat up on his palette of straw. The scene in the strange building already seemed dreamlike, but the fear was still there. “I couldn’t remember,” he said softly. “I couldn’t remember who I was nor why I had gone to that…that place. And when I remembered, I came back.”
Contarini nodded sadly. “It is as I have heard. The memory ties one too strongly to the past—to one’s own time. One must return as soon as the mind had adjusted. I am sorry, my friend; I had hoped we could escape. But now it appears that we must wait until our ransoms are paid. And I much fear that mine will never be paid.”
“Nor mine,” said the big man dully. “My faithful Blondin found me, but he may not have returned to London. And even if he has, my brother John may be reluctant to raise the money.”
“What? Would England hesitate to ransom the brave king who has fought so gallantly in the Holy Crusades? Never! You will be free, my friend.”
But Richard Plantagenet just stared at the little dish that he still held in his hand, the fear still in his heart. Men would still call him “Lion-hearted,” but he knew that he would never again deserve the title.
* * * *
And, nearly eight centuries away in time and thousands of miles away in space, a Mr. Edward Jasperson was speaking hurriedly into the telephone that stood by the electric typewriter on his desk.
“That’s right, Officer; Suite 8601, Empire State Building. I was working late, and I left the lights on in my office when I went out to get a cup of coffee. When I came back, he was here—a big, bearded man, wearing a thing that looked like a monk’s robe made out of gunny sack. What? No, I locked the door when I left. What? Well, the only thing that’s missing as far as I can tell is a ceramic ash tray from one of the desks; he was holding that in his hand when I saw him. What? Oh. Where did he go?” Mr. Jasperson paused in his rush of words. “Well, I must have gotten a little dizzy—I was pretty shocked, you know. To be honest, I didn’t see where he went. I must have fainted.
“But I think you can pick him up if you hurry. With that getup on, he can’t get very far away. All right. Thank you, Officer.”
He cradled the phone, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and dabbed at his damp forehead. He was a very frightened little man, but he knew he’d get over it by morning.
WHAT THE LEFT HAND WAS DOING (1960)
The building itself was unprepossessive enough. It was an old-fashioned, six-floor, brick structure that had, over the years, served first as a private home, then as an apartment building, and finally as the headquarters for the organization it presently housed.
It stood among others of its kind in a lower-middle-class district of Arlington, Virginia, within howitzer range of the capitol of the United States, and even closer to the Pentagon. The main door was five steps up from the sidewalk, and the steps were flanked by curving balustrades of ornamental ironwork. The entrance itself was closed by a double door with glass panes, beyond which could be seen a small foyer. On both doors, an identical message was blocked out in neat gold letters: The Society For Mystical and Metaphysical Research, Inc.
It is possible that no more nearly perfect cover, no more misleading front for a secret organization ever existed in the history of man. It possessed two qualities which most other cover-up titles do not have. One, it was so obviously crackpot that no one paid any attention to it except crackpots, and, two, it was perfectly, literally true.
Spencer Candron had seen the building so often that the functional beauty of the whole setup no longer impressed him as it had several years before. Just as a professional actor is not impressed by being allowed backstage, or as a multimillionaire considers expensive luxuries as commonplace, so Spencer Candron thought of nothing more than his own personal work as he climbed the five steps and pushed open the glass-paned doors.
Perhaps, too, his matter-of-fact attitude was caused partially by the analogical resemblance between himself and the organization. Physically, Candron, too, was unprepossessing. He was a shade less than five eight, and his weight fluctuated between a hundred and forty and a hundred and forty-five, depending on the season and his state of mind. His face consisted of a well-formed snub nose, a pair of introspective gray eyes, a rather wide, thin-lipped mouth that tended to smile even when relaxed, a high, smooth forehead, and a firm cleft chin, plus the rest of the normal equipment that normally goes to make up a face. The skin was slightly tanned, but it was the tan of a man who goes to the beach on summer weekends, not that of an outdoorsman. His hands were strong and wide and rather large; the palms were uncalloused and the fingernails were clean and neatly trimmed. His hair was straight and light brown, with a pronounced widow’s peak, and he wore it combed back and rather long to conceal the fact that a thin spot had appeared on the top rear of his scalp. His clothing was conservative and a little out of style, having been bought in 1981, and thus three years past being up-to-date.
Physically, then, Spencer Candron, was a fine analog of the Society. He looked unimportant. On the outside, he was just another average man whom no one would bother to look twice at.
The analogy between himself and the S.M.M.R. was completed