Deciding against going to his office, he got on the phone and set up further chains of business inquiries, spreading his net as far as Europe and the Far East. By midmorning the urge to see Angela again had become very strong. He ordered his car to be brought round to the main entrance of the building, and he drove south on the coast road to Asbury Park. It looked like another day of unrelieved sunshine, but a fresh breeze from the Atlantic was fluttering in the car windows and further elevating his spirits.
When he got to Angela's house there was an unfamiliar car in the U-shaped driveway. A middle-aged man wearing a tan suit and steel-rimmed glasses was on the steps, ostentatiously locking the front door. Connor parked close to the steps and got out.
The stranger turned to face him, jingling a set of keys. "Can I help you?"
"I don't think so," Connor said, resenting the unexpected presence. "I called to see Miss Lomond."
"Was it a business matter? I'm Millett of Millett and Fiesler."
"No—I'm a friend." Connor moved impatiently toward the doorbell.
"Then you should know Miss Lomond doesn't live here any more. The house is going up for sale."
Connor froze, remembering Angela had said she wouldn't be around, and shocked that she had not told him about selling out. "She did tell me, but I hadn't realized she was leaving so soon," he improvised. "When's her furniture being collected?"
"It isn't. The property is being sold fully furnished."
"She's taking nothing?"
"Not a stick. I guess Miss Lomond can afford new furniture without too much difficulty," Millett said drily, walking toward his car. "Good morning."
"Wait a minute." Connor ran down the steps. "Where can I get in touch with Angela?"
Millett ran a speculative eye over Connor's car and clothing before he answered. "Miss Lomond has bought Avalon—but I don't know if she has moved in yet."
"Avalon? You mean …?" Lost for words, Connor pointed south in the direction of Point Pleasant.
"That's right." Millett nodded and drove away. Connor got into his own car, lit his pipe, and tried to enjoy a smoke while he absorbed the impact of what he had heard. Angela and he had never discussed finance—she simply had no interest in the subject—and it was only through oblique references that he guesstimated the size of her inheritance as in the region of a million, perhaps two. But Avalon was a rich man's folly in the old Randolph Hearst tradition. Surrounded by a dozen square miles of the choicest land in Philadelphia, it was the nearest thing to a royal palace that existed outside Europe.
Real estate was not one of Connor's specialties, but he knew that anybody buying Avalon would have had to open the bidding at ten million or more. In other words, Angela was not merely rich—she had graduated into the millionaires' super-league, and it was hardly surprising that her emotional life had been affected.
Connor was puzzled, nevertheless, over the fact that she was selling all her furniture. There was, among several cherished pieces, a Gaudreau writing desk for which she had always shown an exaggerated possessiveness. Suddenly aware that he could neither taste nor smell the imported tobacco which had seemed so good in his pouch, Connor extinguished his pipe and drove out onto the highway.
He had traveled south for some five miles before admitting to himself that he was going to Avalon.
The house itself was invisible, screened from the road by a high redbrick wall. Age had mellowed the brickwork, but the coping stones on top had a fresh appearance and were surmounted by a climb-proof wire fence. Connor drove along beside the wall until it curved inwards to a set of massive gates which were closed. At the sound of his horn, a thickset man with a gun on his hip, wearing a uniform of café-au-lait gabardine, emerged from a lodge. He looked out through the gate without speaking.
Connor lowered a car window and put his head out. "Is Miss Lomond at home?"
"What's your name?" the guard said.
"I'm Philip Connor."
"Your name isn't on my list."
"Look, I only asked if Miss Lomond was at home."
"I don't give out information."
"But I'm a personal friend. You're obliged to tell me whether she's at home or not."
"Is that a fact?" The guard turned and sauntered back into the lodge, ignoring Connor's shouts and repeated blasts on the horn. Angered by the incident, Connor decided not to slink away. He began sounding the car horn in a steady bludgeoning rhythm—five seconds on, five seconds off. The guard did not reappear. Five minutes later, a police cruiser pulled alongside with two state troopers in it, and Connor was moved on with an injunction to calm down.
For lack of anything better to do, he went to his office.
A week went by, during which time Connor drew a complete blank on the cigarette lighter and was almost forced to the conclusion that it had been custom-built by a modern Faberge. He spent hours trying to get a telephone number for Angela, without success. Sleep began to elude him, and he felt himself nearing the boundary separating rationality from obsession. Finally, he saw a society column picture of Angela in a New York nightspot with Bobby Janke, playboy son of an oil billionaire. Apart from making Connor feel ill with jealousy, the newspaper item provided him with the information that Angela was taking up residence at her newly acquired home sometime the following weekend.
Who cares? he demanded of his shaving mirror. Who cares?
He began drinking vodka tonics at lunchtime on Saturday, veered onto white rum during the afternoon, and by nightfall was suffused with a kind of alcoholic dharma which told him that he was entitled to see Angela and to employ any means necessary to achieve that end. There was the problem of the high brick wall, but, with a flash of enlightenment, Connor realized that walls are mainly psychological barriers. To a person who understood their nature as well as he did, walls became doorways. Taking a mouthful of neat rum to strengthen his sense of purpose, Connor sent for his car.
Avalon's main entrance, scene of earlier defeat, was in darkness when he reached it, but lights were showing in the gate lodge. Connor drove on by, following the line of the wall, parked on a deserted stretch of second-class road. He switched off all lights, opened the trunk, took out a heavy hammer and chisel, crossed the verge and—without any preliminaries—attacked the wall. Ten minutes later, although the mortar was soft with age, he had not succeeded in removing one brick and was beginning to experience doubts. Then a brick came free and another virtually tumbled out after it. He enlarged the hole to an appropriate size and crawled through onto dry turf.
A dwarfish half-moon was perched near zenith, casting a wan radiance on the turrets and gables of a mansion which sat on the crest of a gentle rise. The building was dark and forbidding, and as he looked at it Connor felt the warm glow in his stomach fade away. He hesitated, swore at himself, and set off up the slope, leaving his hammer and chisel behind. By bearing to the left he brought the front elevation of the building into view and was encouraged to see one illuminated window on the first floor. He reached a paved approach road, followed it to the Gothic-style front entrance, and rang for admission. A full minute later the door was opened by an archetypal and startled-looking butler, and Connor sensed immediately that Angela was not at home.
He cleared his throat. "Miss Lomond …"
"Miss Lomond is not expected until mid …"
"Midnight," Connor put in, expertly taking his cue. "I know that—I was with her this afternoon in New York. We arranged that I would stop by for a late drink."
"I'm sorry, sir, but Miss Lomond didn't tell me to expect visitors."
Connor looked surprised. "She didn't? Well, the main thing is she remembered to let them know at the gate lodge." He squeezed the butler's arm democratically. "You know, you couldn't get through that gate in a Sherman tank if your name wasn't on the list."
The butler looked relieved. "One can't be too careful these days, sir."
"Quite right. I'm Mr. Connor, by the way—here's my card. Now show me where I can wait for Miss Lomond
. And, if it isn't imposing too much, I'd like a Daiquiri. Just one to toy with while I'm waiting."
"Of course, Mr. Connor."
Exhilarated by his success, Connor was installed in an enormous green-and-silver room and supplied with a frosty glass. He sat in a very comfortable armchair and sipped his Daiquiri. It was the best he had ever tasted.
The sense of relaxation prompted him to reach for his pipe, but he discovered it must have been left at home. He prowled around the room, found a box of cigars on a sideboard, and took one from it. He then glanced around for a lighter. His gaze fell on a transparent ruby-colored ovoid sitting upright on an occasional table. In no way did it resemble any table lighter he had ever seen, but he had become morbidly sensitive on the subject, and the ovoid was positioned where he would have expected a lighter to be.
Connor picked it up, held it to the light and found it was perfectly clear, without visible works. That meant it could not be a lighter. As he was setting it down, he allowed his thumb to slide into a seductively shaped depression on the side.
A pea-sized ball of radiance—like a bead fashioned from sunlight—appeared at the top of the egg. It shone with absolute steadiness until he removed his thumb from the dimple.
Fascinated by his find, he made the tiny globe of brilliance appear and disappear over and over again, proved its hotness with a fingertip. He took out the pocket magnifier he always carried for evaluating trinkets and examined the tip of the egg. The glass revealed a minute silver plug set flush with the surface, but nothing more. Following a hunch, Connor carefully guided one drop of liquid from his drink onto the egg and made sure it was covering the nearly invisible plug. When he operated the lighter it worked perfectly, the golden bead burning without wavering until the liquid had boiled off into the air.
He set the lighter down and noticed yet another strange property—the ruby egg was smoothly rounded at the bottom, yet it sat upright, with no tendency to topple over. His magnifier showed an ornate letter P engraved in the base, but provided no clue as to how the balancing act was achieved.
Connor gulped the remainder of his drink and, with eyes suddenly sober and watchful, took a fresh look around the room. He discovered a beautiful clock, apparently carved from solid onyx. As he had half-expected, there was no way to open it, and the same elaborate P was engraved on the underside.
There was also a television set which had a superficial resemblance to an expensive commercial model but which bore no maker's name plaque. He checked it over and found the now-familiar P inscribed on one side where it would never be noticed except by a person making a purposeful search. When he switched the set on, the image of a newscaster which appeared was so perfect that he might have been looking through a plate glass window into the man's face. Connor studied the picture from a distance of only a few inches and could not resolve it into lines or dots. His magnifier achieved no better results.
He switched the television off and returned to the armchair, filled with a strange and powerful emotion. Although it was in his nature to be sharp and acquisitive—those were attributes without which he could never had entered his chosen profession—it had always remained uppermost in his mind that the world's supply of money was unlimited, whereas his own allocation of years was hopelessly inadequate. He could have trebled his income by working longer and pushing harder but had always chosen another course simply because his desire for possessions had never taken control.
That, however, had been before he discovered the sort of possessions real money could buy. He knew he was particularly susceptible to gadgets and toys, but the knowledge did nothing to lessen the harsh raw hunger he now felt.
There was no way that anybody was going to stop him from joining the ranks of those who could afford future-technology artifacts. He would prefer to do it by marrying Angela, because he loved her and would enjoy sharing the experiences, but if she refused to have him back, he would do it by making the necessary millions himself.
A phrase which had been part of his train of thought isolated itself in his mind. Future technology. He weighed the implications for a moment, then shrugged them off—he had lost enough mental equilibrium without entertaining fantasies about time travel.
The idea, though, was an intriguing one. And it answered certain questions. The lighters he coveted, partly for their perfection and partly because they could earn him a fortune, were technically far in advance of anything on the world's markets, yet it was within the realm of possibility that a furtive genius was producing them in a back room somewhere. But that impossibly good television set could not have been manufactured without the R&D facilities of a powerful electronics concern. The notion that they were being made in the future and shipped back in time was only slightly less ridiculous than the idea of a secret industry catering exclusively for the superrich …
Connor picked up the cigar and lit it, childishly pleased at having a reason to put the ruby egg to work. His first draw on the cool smoke gave him the feeling that he had been searching for something all his life and suddenly had found it. Cautiously at first and then with intense pleasure he filled his lungs with the unexpected fragrance.
He luxuriated. This was smoking as portrayed by tobacco company commercials—not the shallow, disappointing experience commonly known to smokers everywhere. He had often wondered why the leaf which smelled so beguiling before it was lit, or when someone nearby was smoking, promising sensual delights and heart's ease, never yielded anything more than virtually tasteless smoke.
They promise you "a long cool smoke to soothe a troubled world," Connor thought, and this is it. He took the cigar from his mouth and examined the band. It was of unembellished gold and bore a single ornate P.
"I might have known," he announced to the empty room. He looked around through a filigree of smoke, wondering if everything in the room was different from the norm, superior, better than the best. Perhaps the ultra-rich scorned to use anything that was available to the man in the street or advertised on television or …
"Philip!" Angela stood in the doorway, pale of face, shocked and angry. "What are you doing here?"
"Enjoying the best cigar I've ever had." Connor got to his feet, smiling. "I presume you keep them for the benefit of guests—I mean, a cigar is hardly your style."
"Where's Gilbert?" she snapped. "You're leaving right now."
"Not a chance."
"That's what you think." Angela turned with an angry flail of blonde hair and cerise skirts.
Connor realized he had to find inspiration and get in fast. "It's too late, Angela. I've smoked your cigar; I lit it with your lighter; I have checked the time with your clock; and I've watched your television."
He had been hoping for a noticeable reaction and was not disappointed—Angela burst into tears. "You bastard! You had no right!"
She ran to the table, picked up the lighter, and tried to make it work. Nothing happened. She went to the clock, which had stopped; and to the television set, which remained lifeless when she switched it on. Connor followed her circuit of the room, feeling guilty and baffled. Angela dropped into a chair and sat with her face in her hands, huddled and trembling like a sick bird. The sight of her distress produced a painful churning in his chest. He knelt in front of Angela.
"Listen, Angie," he said. "Don't cry like that. I only wanted to see you again—I haven't done anything."
"You touched my stuff and made it change. They told me it would change if anybody but a client used it … and it has."
"This doesn't make sense. Who said what would change?"
"The suppliers." She looked at him with tear-brimmed eyes, and all at once he became aware of a perfume so exquisite that he wanted to fall toward its source like a suffocating man striving toward air.
"What did you …? I don't …"
"They said it would all be spoiled."
Connor tried to fight off the effects of the witch-magic he had breathed. "Nothing has been spoiled, Angie. There's been a power failur
e … or something …" His words trailed away uncertainly. The clock and the television set were cordless. He took a nervous drag on the half-smoked cigar and almost gagged on the flat, acrid taste of it. The sharp sense of loss he experienced while stubbing it out seemed to obliterate all traces of his scepticism.
He returned to Angela's chair and knelt again. "They said this stuff would stop working if anybody but you touched it?"
"Yes."
"But how could that be arranged?"
She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. "How would I know? When Mr. Smith came over from Trenton, he said something about all his goods having an … essence field, and he said I had a molecular thumbprint. Does that make sense?"
"It almost does," Connor whispered. "A perfect security system. Even if you lost your lighter at the theatre, when somebody else picked it up it would cease to be what it was."
"Or when somebody breaks into your home."
"Believe me, it was only because I had to see you again, Angie. You know that I love you."
"Do you, Philip?"
"Yes, darling." He was thrilled to hear the special softness return to her voice. "Look, you have to let me pay for a new lighter and television and …"
Angela was shaking her head. "You couldn't do it, Philip."
"Why not?" He took her hand and was further encouraged when she allowed it to remain in his.
She gave him a tremulous smile. "You just couldn't. The installments are too high."
"Installments? For God's sake, Angie, you don't buy stuff on time."
"You can't buy these things—you pay for a service. I pay in installments of eight hundred and sixty-four thousand dollars."
"A year?"
"Once every forty-three days. I shouldn't be telling you all this, but …"
Connor gave an incredulous laugh. "That comes to about six million a year—nobody would pay that much!"
"Some people would. If you even have to think about the cost Mr. Smith doesn't do business with you."
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 3 Page 8
