William skipped along, splashing water up his pantlegs, singing foolish songs that he made up on the spot, filling in gaps in the meter with “ho-ho, ho-ho,” when words failed him. “Oh the bastards lay all smug in their beds, ho-ho, when William Hastings took flight, and beat the handyman senseless, ho-ho, with a whacking great flashlight!” he sang, swinging his weapon in a broad arc, the light surging wildly up and down the walls of the pipe.
But then, just as the last echoes died out, he became aware of the sound of the clattering of about a million footsteps behind him in the darkness, and the murmuring of pursuing voices. He doubled his pace, heaving for breath, a fire in the base of his lungs. “What a conceited Toad I am,” he gasped, giggling, and he shut off his light, angling away down a big tunnel that sloped wildly as if following the descent of a hill. He slowed, clicking on his light, and saw some fifty feet ahead another iron ladder, leading up to a shaft in the ceiling of the pipe. He shoved the flashlight into his belt, pulled himself up the ladder and through a crawlspace into what was either a natural cavern or a cavern hewn out of stone. His light stabbed out through the darkness, and he followed it, slumping along now toward a distant tunnel that led to yet another corridor, dropping at a slope of twenty or thirty degrees.
He tripped, rolled onto the seat of his trousers, and skidded along in an increasing rush, sliding to a stop finally against a pile of scree, his flashlight undamaged. From his coat pocket, torn in the fall, he yanked the page from the log of Pince Nez, following the trail of purple ink with which he’d marked his route a Week before, and popped immediately into a junction of pipe that led off to the east, foregoing another that angled away north. He paused after a hundred yards or so, far too tired to sing foolish songs, and listened over the shouting of his breath for the sounds of pursuit. There were none. He smiled and patted his map. After five minutes he was up and limping toward Glendale, bound for freedom.
There wasn’t a jury alive that would condemn him. They’d take a single look at Frosticos and another at the paper written in Frosticos’ hand ordering a full frontal lobotomy for the patient William Hastings — the paper he’d found atop Frosticos’ desk and which at the moment rode safely in his inside coat pocket along with his vital map. No one could fault a man for choosing freedom over permanent vegetablehood. He’d have the support of the scientific community. Fairfax would rally round; he’d have the data on the squid sensor by now. And Professor Ryan at Binghamton — she’d have read his proposal for a treatise on civilization theory and have recognized its affinity to her own brilliant work. It would be a court case to end all court cases. The Scopes monkey trials would pale. Frosticos would go down in a rattle of ice. All would be exposed — vivisection, the digging leviathan, the plot to shatter the Earth. William smiled to think of it — vindication and victory. He could taste it. They’d try to stop him but he’d outwit them, the slimy bunch of worms. He laughed aloud and tried to think of mote verses for his song, but what he came up with was mostly ho-ho-ho’s, so he left off in order to save his strength.
He paused, finally, to rest. He rummaged in his pants pocket, pulling out his bottle cap. It was a White Rock cream soda cap. He could picture the winged woman crouching on her rock on the label of the bottle. The cork washer was delicate, torn at one edge, but with the end of his thumb he managed to shove it firmly in behind the cap, pressing the two together. He flicked at the cap once or twice with his fingertip, and it stayed put on his shirt. Hugely satisfied with himself, he set out once again, limping along at an even pace down the concrete tunnel that narrowed in the distance, its concave walls spiraling downward into abrupt darkness.
Roycroft Squires read a collapsed copy of Doom for the sixth time. He was coming up to his favorite chapter, the one in which Lord Ottercove’s car sprouts wings and clears the roofs of Fleet Street houses, “flying Piccadillyward.” There was just enough science in the novel to satisfy him. He took a reflective sip at a cup of coffee, grown half cold from neglect, and jotted a note concerning mortality in the margin, shaking his head in contemplation. There was a knock at the door. Squires frowned. No one with any sense knocked at his door before noon. It was probably Jehovah’s Witnesses, come round to insist that he was all wet regarding Christmas. He’d be firm with them. Perhaps they’d take a dime for their magazine and leave him alone.
But it wasn’t Witnesses at the door, it was the eight-year-old neighbor boy, clutching a twisted paper in his hand. “Please, sir,” he said apologetically, frightened, no doubt, at Squires’ furrowed brow, “this is for you.”
“For me is it?” said Squires, nodding seriously. “What is it?”
“It came up out of the street, sir,” said the boy. “There were no end to them.” He emptied out a pocketful of notes, each one twisted into a little cylinder as if they had been shoved through a hole. Squires was puzzled, but was sure that the notes had something to do with Edward St. Ives and his strange affairs. He gave the boy a fifty-cent piece and sent him off overwhelmed, then spread the notes out over his coffee table. There were eight in all.
Written on each were the words, “Take this message to the home of Roycroft Squires, 210 East Rexroth.” One of them followed the request with the word “please,” another with “immediately,” another with “for the love of God!” as if having been written in states of increasing desperation. On the other side of each was the puzzling sentence, “Be on hand at six p.m. beneath the carob tree. Look sharp. W.H.”
“W.H.?” asked Squires aloud. He puzzled over it for a moment, wondering if he was the intended victim of some childhood prank, if a gang of neighborhood boys was setting him up. W.H.? William Hastings! Of course. Who else? But what did it mean, wondered Squires, that the notes had come out of the street? That didn’t sound entirely likely. He drew the blinds in the big arched window in the front wall of his house, looking out past the carob tree under which he’d been asked to stand. To his amazement a little cylinder of paper appeared through the manhole cover in the center of the street and blew merrily away in the breeze. The boy from next door charged after the wonderful missive.
It was puzzling. William Hastings — for it had to be he — was hiding in the sewer. There was no getting round it. Why he didn’t just shove his way out into daylight was worth speculating on, but Squires couldn’t think of a suitable answer. He took out a pen and paper and wrote, “I’m ready to look sharp at once, but if six o’clock is preferable, knock twice. You can count on me then. R.S.”
He rolled it up like a cigarette, wandered outside, and took a quick look up and down the street. There was no one in sight. Even the neighbor boy had disappeared. He strolled out to the manhole and poked his message through it. It was immediately pulled from his hand. A moment later there were two dull thuds on the cover. Squires shrugged and walked back into his house, Seven hours to go. It was vaguely irritating. He hated waiting. Reading was impossible: The thought of William in the sewer kept insinuating itself between him and the novel. He went into the study and began wrapping books for mailing. He’d sold his entire Manly Wade Wellman collection to a woman in New York for a small fortune. But concentrating even on such a task as that was maddening. He peered out the window, smoking countless pipes, watching the manhole cover which he’d ignored for the past twenty-five years.
The afternoon dragged on, the sun set, and six o’clock crept near, minute by minute. He walked out onto the dark lawn, and at six sharp the iron lid creaked up, pushed outward by a dark bulk that turned out to be the tweed-coated back of William Hastings. Squires hurried into the street, hauled the cover clear, and William, dead tired, his trousers splashed with sewer mud, his hair on end, pulled himself out without a word and hurried toward the house.