"This Hedges," said Collingwood impressively, "is a dastardly scoundrel. He threatens not merely the foundations of our government and the fabric of our society, but our very existence."
"Yeah," said Mendez de Witt.
"He must be stopped! Our glorious land cannot tolerate such a viper in her bosom."
"Yeah."
"You have been selected for this—" Collingwood's 'phone rang, and he listened to Bloss. Bloss told him that under no circumstances must R. F. R. Hedges be assaulted, assassinated, kidnapped, or otherwise molested.
Collingwood continued: "You have been selected for the perilous task of unmasking this sinister force. But in the accomplishment of your aim, Hedges must on no account be assaulted, assassinated, kidnapped, or otherwise molested. You understand?"
"Yeah," said de Witt. "Whatcha wamme to do, stick out my tongue at him?"
"Hah! You're as funny as a wheel-chair, de Witt. No, you will first go to work in the Bureau of Standards, where you can keep an eye on him. You will learn whence he derives his time-traveling power, and whether he can be deprived of it without much risk."
"That ail?"
"That's all. Good luck, my boy."
"Some day," said de Witt, "a guy is gonna call another guy 'my boy' once too often. Be seem' ya."
Mendez S. D. de Witt had several artificial eyes, none of which was quite what it seemed. He occupied a section of laboratory desk in the B. of S. building, and, with soldering-iron and tweezers, deftly assembled the mechanism for yet another spurious optic. This one was to be a paralyzing-ray machine. The mechanism would be installed in the methyl-methacrylate shell at another time; he didn't want the other Bureau of Standards technicians to learn about his eyes.
One of these technicians sneezed. He ran a finger around the base of his faucet and held it up with a faint smudge of yellow powder on it. He crumbled this trace of powder over his burner, and sniffed.
"Now who," he said, "has been scattering powdered sulphur around the lab?"
De Witt could have told him. He could also have told him that the sulphur was radioactive.
Russell F. R. Hedges marched through the laboratory on the way to his office. He nodded and smiled at the technicians, saying: "Ah, my dear Hutchinson. Ah, my dear Jones."
When he passed de Witt, giving his laboratory's most recent recruit a look of suspicion, de Witt stared at Hedges' wrist. He shut his good eye—the right one—tight, then blinked it several times.
Then he went back to his artificial eye.
When he got home, he at once took out his fake eye. The shell unscrewed into two parts, and inside it was a neat little X-ray camera, full of exposed one millimeter film. He developed this and printed a series of enlargements. They showed X-rays of Hedges' wrist, and of the remarkable wrist-watch worn thereupon. The photographs were mere black-and-gray silhouettes, made by the emanations from the radio-active sulphur that de Witt had scattered around. Each showed the inside of the watch as a jumble of coils and cogwheels, and would have been useless by itself. But de Witt, by comparing a number of pictures taken at different angles, formed a good idea of the workings of the gadget. It was Hedges' time-travel machine all right. On its face were number-disks like those on the odometer of an automobile, reading years and days of the year. All Hedges had to do was set the thing forward or back.
De Witt promptly set about duplicating the machine. It took him three weeks. Collingwood got pretty impatient by the end of that time.
De Witt explained: "You see, chief, all I wanna do is chase this guy out of his own time. Then I'll fix him so he won't do nothing."
"But, de Witt, don't you remember what His Efficiency said about not molesting—"
"Yeah, I know. But that only has to do with what T do to him now. His Efficiency couldn't kick about what I did to Hedges five hundred years ago, now could he?"
"Hmmm. Yes. I see your point. Of course I believe in following His Efficiency's orders, but in combatting a sinister force like this ..."
De Witt finished his duplicate time-watch. He strapped it on his wrist and spun the setter.
Nothing happened, though the dial showed 2360— five years before. The C. B. I. man cursed softly and spun the disks some more, and still some more. Nothing happened until he reached 2298. Then, whoosh, the room blurred into frantic motion.
De Witt found himself sitting in empty air twelve feet above the ground of a vacant lot, to whose surface he dropped, thump.
He picked himself up. The explanation dawned upon him. He'd gone back to a date before the boarding-house where he lived was built. Thank God he hadn't tried the stunt in a skyscraper—or on the former site of another building. He wondered what it would feel like to find yourself occupying the same bit of space as a steel I-beam. Probably there'd be a hell of an explosion.
Then he wondered why the gadget had not worked until he had gone back thirty-seven years. He was thirty-six years old—that must be it: you couldn't occupy your own stretch of time more than once. It wouldn't do to have two Mendez S. D. de Witts running around simultaneously.
To check, he reversed the direction of the control and advanced the setter slowly. Nothing happened until it registered 2365 again; then whoosh, his boarding-house scrambled into existence, like a movie of a blowing-up in reverse.
Then he finished his paralyzer. It proved something of a disappointment. It worked, but only at a range of a meter or less. And you had to aim carefully at the victim's neck-vertebrae.
But he inclosed the paralyzer in its eye-shaped case, put the case in his left eye-socket, and walked in on Hedges unannounced.
"Ah, my dear de Witt—" said Hedges, smiling.
"Okay, skip it. I guess you know who I am, buddy."
"A C. B. I. man? I suspected it. What do you want?"
"You're coming with me, get me?"
"Yes?" Hedges raised his eyebrows, and touched his wrist-watch. He vanished.
But so did Mendez de Witt.
It was damn funny, sitting there and spinning the setter, and looking at the shadowy form of Hedges on the other side of the desk. As de Witt was only a second or two behind Hedges in his pursuit, he could keep him in sight. When Hedges speeded up his time-travel, de Witt's strong and agile fingers spun the setter faster; when Hedges vanished for a second, de Witt quickly reversed motion of the setter and picked up Hedges going the other way. When Hedges stopped, de Witt stopped too.
The C. B. I. man grinned at Hedges. "Gotcha, huh?"
"Not quite," said Hedges. He fished a hand-grenade from his pocket, and started to pull the pin. Dc Witt just sat there, holding the setter. Hedges put the bomb back in his pocket.
De Witt laughed. "Thought you'd turn that thing loose and skip, huh? I can skip just as fast as you can."
Hedges went back to his time-watch. Forward and backward he spun the disks. De Witt followed him. The next time Hedges stopped, there was a third man in the room; a startled-looking old man.
Hedges looked at him, and jerked a thumb. "One of my predecessors. I recognize his picture."
"You damn fool," said de Witt. "If he'd been sitting in that chair too it'd have been blooey for both of you."
"I suppose so, de Witt. It's a bit crowded here, don't you think?" And he began spinning the setter again.