She went on, her voice cool and strong in the silence that settled around her. ‘As you see, it’s a folding drinking cup without a handle. First, you open it. Then you turn the top strip clockwise. At a certain point, water comes. But now - watch. I’m turning it further. The liquid turns red and becomes a sweet-sourish drink that is very refreshing in hot weather.’

  She handed the cup around. While it was being passed from fingers to clutching fingers, Caxton managed to wrench his gaze from the gadget and really look at the girl. She was tall, about five feet six, and she had dark brown hair. Her face was unmistakably of a fine intelligence. It was thin and good-looking, and there was an odd proud tilt to it that gave her a startling appearance of aloofness in spite of the way she was taking the dollar bills that were being thrust at her.

  Once again, her voice rose, ‘I’m sorry, only one to a person. They’ll be on the general market one of these days. These are only souvenirs.’

  The crowd dissolved, each person returning to his or her seat. The girl came along the aisle, and stopped in front of Caxton. Caxton said quickly, ‘My friend here showed me a photoprint you were selling. I wonder -’

  ‘I still have a few.’ She nodded gravely. ‘Would you like a cup, also?’

  Caxton nodded toward Kellie. ‘My friend here would like another print, too. His tore.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t sell him a second print.’ She paused. Her eyes widened. She said with a weighty slowness, ‘Did you say his tore?’

  Astoundingly, she swayed. She said wildly, ‘Let me see that? Where is it?’

  She took the pieces of the photoprint from Kellie’s fingers and stared at them. Her mouth began to tremble. Her hands shook. Her face took on a gray, drawn look. Her voice, when she spoke, was a whisper. ‘Tell me … how did it happen? Exactly how?’

  ‘Why’ - Kellie drew back in surprise - ‘I was handing it to the old gentleman over there when -’

  He stopped, because he had lost his audience. The girl spun on her heel. It was like a signal. The old man lowered his paper and looked at her. She stared back at him with the fascinated expression of a bird cornered by a snake. Then, for the second time within two minutes, she swayed. The basket nearly dropped from her hand as she ran, but somehow she hung on to it as she careened along the aisle.

  A moment later, Caxton saw her racing across the platform. She became a distant, running form on Piffer’s Road.

  ‘What the hell!’ Kellie exploded.

  He whirled on the old man. ‘What did you do to her?’ he demanded fiercely. ‘You -’

  His voice sank into silence, and Caxton, who had been about to add his hard words to the demand, remained quiet also.

  VI

  The salesman’s voice there under the bright sun on the platform at Warwick Junction faded. It required a moment for Caxton to grasp that the story had ended.

  ‘You mean that’s all?’ he demanded. ‘We just sat there like a couple of dummies, outfaced by an old man? And that was the end of the business? You still don’t know what scared the girl?’

  He saw on Kellie’s face the strange look of a man who was searching mentally for a word or phrase to describe the indescribable. Kellie said finally:

  ‘There was something about him like … like all the tough sales managers in the world rolled into one, and feeling their orneriest. We just shut up.’

  Caxton nodded grimly, said slowly, ‘He didn’t get off?’

  ‘No, you were the only one who got off.’

  ‘Eh?’

  Kellie looked at him. ‘You know, this is the damnedest, funniest thing. But that’s the way it was. You asked the trainman to check your bags at Inchney. The last thing I saw of you before the train pulled out, you were walking up Piffer’s Road in the direction the girl had gone and - Ah, here comes the Kissling local now.’

  The combination freight and passenger train edged in noisily…. Later, as it was winding in and out along the edge of a valley, Caxton sat staring at the terrain, only vaguely conscious of Kellie’s chattering beside him. He decided finally on the course he would take: this afternoon he’d get off at Inchney, make his rounds until the stores closed, then get a ride in some way to Piffer’s Road and spend the long summer evening making inquiries. If he recollected correctly from his map the distance between the large town and the tiny community was given as seven miles. At worst, he could walk back to Inchney in a couple of hours.

  The first part proved even simpler than that. There was a bus, the clerk at the Inchney Hotel told him, that left at six-o’clock.

  At twenty after six, Caxton climbed off and, standing in the dirt that was Piffer’s Road, watched the bus throb off down the highway. The sound faded into remoteness as he trudged across the railway track. The evening was warm and quiet, and his coat made a weight on his arm. It would be cooler later on, he knew, but at the moment he almost regretted having brought it.

  There was a woman on her knees, working on the lawn at the first house. Caxton hesitated, then went over to the fence and stared at the woman for a moment. He wondered if he ought to remember her. He said finally, ‘I beg your pardon, madam.’

  She did not look up. She did not rise from the flower bed, where she was digging. She was a bony creature in a print dress, and she must have seen him coming to be so obstinately silent. ‘I wonder,’ Caxton persisted, ‘if you can tell me where a middle-aged man and his daughter live. The daughter is called Selanie, and she used to sell fountain pens and drinking cups and things to people on the train.’

  The woman was getting up. She came over. At close range she didn’t seem quite so large or ungainly. She had gray eyes that looked at him with a measure of hostility, then with curiosity. ‘Say,’ she said finally, ‘weren’t you along here about two weeks ago, asking about them? I told you then that they lived in that grove over there.’ She waved at some trees about a quarter of a mile along the road, but her eyes were narrowed as she stared at him. ‘I don’t get it,’ she said grimly.

  Caxton couldn’t see himself explaining about his amnesia to this crusty-voiced, suspicious creature.

  He said hastily, ‘Thank you very much. I -’

  ‘No use going up there again,’ said the woman. ‘They pulled out on the same day you were there last time … in their big trailer. And they haven’t come back.’

  ‘They’re gone!’ Caxton exclaimed.

  In the intensity of his disappointment he was about to say more. Then he saw that the woman was staring at him with a faint, satisfied smile on her face. She looked as if she had successfully delivered a knockout blow to an unpleasant individual. ‘I think,’ Caxton snapped, ‘I’ll go up and have a look around, anyway.’

  He spun on his heel, so angry that for a while he scarcely realised that he was walking in the ditch and not on the road. His fury slowly yielded to disappointment, and that in turn faded before the thought that, now that he was up here, he might as well have a look.

  After a moment he felt amazed that he could have let one woman get on his nerves to such an extent in so short a time. He shook his head. He’d better be careful. The process of tracking down the projector - and his memory - was wearing on him.

  A breeze sprang up from nowhere as he turned into the shadowed grove. It blew softly in his face, and its passage through the trees was the only sound that broke the silence of the evening. It didn’t take more than a moment to realise that his vague expectations, the sense of … something … that had been driving him on this journey, was not going to be satisfied, for there was nothing, not a sign that human beings had ever lived here; not a tin can, not a bundle of garbage, no ashes from a stove. Nothing. He wandered around disconsolately for a few minutes, poked gingerly with a stick among a pile of dead branches. And finally he walked back along the road. This time it was the woman who called to him. He hesitated, then went over. After all, she might know a lot more than she had told. He saw that she looked more friendly.

  ‘Find anything?’ she asked with ill-restrained eagerness.

  Caxton smiled grimly at the power of curiosity, then shrugged ruefully. ‘When a trailer leaves,’ he said, ‘it’s like smoke - it just vanishes.’

  The woman sniffed. ‘Any traces that were left sure went fast after the old man got through there.’

  Caxton fought to hold down his excitement. ‘The old man!’ he exclaimed.

  The woman nodded, then said bitterly, ‘A fine looking old fellow. Came around first inquiring from everybody what kind of stuff Selanie had sold us. Two days later, we woke up in the morning and every single piece was gone.’

  ‘Stolen!’

  The woman scowled. ‘Same thing as. There was a dollar bill for each item. But that’s stealing for those kind of goods. Do you know, she had a frying pan that -’

  ‘But what did he want?’ Caxton interrupted, bewildered. ‘Didn’t he explain anything when he was making his inquiries? Surely you didn’t just let him come around here asking questions?’

  To his astonishment, the woman grew flustered. ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ she confessed finally, sullenly. ‘There was something about him. He looked kind of commanding-like and important, as if he were a big executive or something.’ She stopped angrily. ‘The scoundrel!’

  Her eyes narrowed with abrupt hostility. She peered at Caxton. ‘You’re a fine one for saying did we ask any questions. What about you? Standing there pumping me when all the time - Say, let me get this straight: are you the fellow who called here two weeks ago? Just how do you fit into the picture?’

  Caxton hesitated. The prospect of having to tell his story to people like this seemed full of difficulties. And yet, she must know more. There must be a great deal of information about the month that the girl Selanie and her father spent in the district. One thing seemed certain. If any more facts were available, the woman would have them.

  His hesitation ended. He made his explanation, but finished a little uncertainly: ‘So you see, I’m a man who is - well in search of his memory. Maybe I was knocked over the head, although there’s no lump. Then, again, maybe I was doped. Something happened to me. You say I went up there. Did I come back? Or what did I do?’

  He stopped with a jump for, without warning, the woman parted her lips and let out a bellow. ‘Jimmy!’ she yelled in an ear-splitting voice. ‘Jimmy! C’m’ere!’

  ‘Yeah, Mom!’ came a boy’s voice from inside the house.

  Caxton stared blankly as an uncombed twelve-year-old with a sharp, eager face catapulted out of the house. The screen door banged behind him. Caxton listened, still with only partial comprehension, as the mother explained to the boy that ‘this man was hit over the head by those people in the trailer, and he lost his memory, and he’d like you to tell him what you saw.’

  The woman turned to Caxton. ‘Jimmy,’ she said proudly ‘never trusted those folk. He was sure they were foreigners or something, and so he kept a sharp eye on them. He saw you go up there, and most everything that happened right up to the time the trailer left. ‘Course, it wasn’t easy to know what went on inside, ‘cause that whole big machine didn’t have a single window in it. But,’ she finished, ‘he went inside once when they weren’t around and looked the whole place over, just to make sure of course that they weren’t pulling something.’

  Caxton nodded, suppressing his cynicism. It was probably as good a reason as any for snooping. In this case, it was lucky for him.

  The thought ended, as Jimmy’s shrill voice projected into the gathering twilight….

  The afternoon was hot, and Caxton, after pausing to inquire of the woman in the first house as to where the father and daughter lived, walked slowly toward the grove of trees that she had indicated.

  Behind him, the train tooted twice, and then began to chuff. Caxton suppressed a startled impulse to run back and get on it. He realised he couldn’t have made it anyway. Besides, a man didn’t give up the hope of fortune as easily as that. His pace quickened as he thought of the print and the drinking cup, and the photo projector.

  He couldn’t see the trailer in the grove until he turned into the initial shady patch of trees. When he saw it, he stopped short. It was much bigger than he had pictured it even from Jimmy’s mother’s description. It was as long as a small freight car, and streamlined in that it actually tapered down a little at the rear.

  No one answered his knock.

  He thought the girl had run this way… . Uncertain, he walked around the monster on wheels. As Jimmy had reported, there were no windows; so it was impossible to see anywhere but up front where the driver’s windshield and side windows showed a small view of two seats. Behind the second one there was a door leading into the main section of the trailer. The door was closed.

  As far as he could discover, there were only two entrances, one on either side - a forward door on the far side, and a slightly rearward door where he had first approached the trailer.

  Caxton returned to the door at which he had knocked and listened intently for sounds. But again there was nothing. Nothing, that is, except a thin wind that blew gently through the upper reaches of the trees. Far away the train whistled plaintively. He tried the latch, and the door opened so easily that his hesitation ended. Deliberately, he pushed it ajar and stood there staring into one of the rooms.

  The first thing Caxton saw, as he climbed in, was the girl’s basket standing against the wall just to the left of the door.

  The sight stopped him short. He sat in the doorway, then, his legs dangling toward the ground. His nervousness yielded to the continuing silence and he began with a developing curiosity to examine the contents of the basket. There were about a dozen of the magic prints, at least three dozen of the folding, self-filling cups, a dozen roundish black objects that refused to respond to his handling, and three pair of pince-nez glasses. Each pair had a tiny transparent wheel attached to the side of the right lens. They seemed to have no cases; there seemed to be no fear that they would break. The pair he tried on fitted snugly over his nose, and for a moment he actually thought they fitted his eyes. Then he noticed the difference. Everything was nearer -the room, his hand - not magnified or blurred, but it was as if he were gazing through mildly powered field glasses. There was no strain on his eyes. After a moment, he grew conscious again of the little wheel. It turned quite easily.

  Instantly, things were nearer, the field-glass effect twice as strong. Trembling a little, he began to turn the wheel, first one way, then the other. A few seconds only were needed to verify the remarkable reality. He had on a pair of pince-nez with adjustable lens, an incredible combination of telescope-microscope: super-glasses.

  Almost blankly, Caxton put the marvelous things back in the basket. Then, with abrupt decision, he climbed into the trailer. He walked along a narrow corridor, first up front, and then to the rear, trying each door that he came to. There were eleven, and only two were unlocked. The first opened into a woman’s small bedroom. A half-closed bureau showed women’s things. Caxton gave the gleaming walls and ceiling of the interior one quick glance, noted the neatly-made fold-down bed, a shelf of books, and a chair; then guiltily he drew the door shut.

  The remaining door that was unlocked led to the rear room. His first look into that showed the entire wall on one side fitted with shelves, each neatly loaded with a variety of small goods. Caxton picked up what looked like a camera. It was a finely made little instrument. He studied the lens; his fingers pressed something that gave. There was a click. Instantly a glistening card came out of a slit in the back. A picture.

  It was of the upper part of a man’s face. It had remarkable depth and an amazingly natural color effect. It was the intent expression in the brown eyes that momentarily made the features unfamiliar. Then he realised that he was looking at himself. He had taken his picture, and it had been developed instantly.

  Astounded, Caxton stuffed the picture in his pocket, set the instrument down and, trembling, climbed out of the trailer and walked off down the road toward the village.

  ‘And then,’ said Jimmy, ‘a minute later you came back and climbed in and shut the door and went toward the rear. You came back so fast that you nearly saw me; I thought you’d gone. And then …’

  The trailer door opened. A girl’s voice said something urgent that Caxton didn’t catch. The next instant, a man answered with a grunt. The door closed and there was a movement and the sound of breathing.

  ‘And that’s all, mister,’ Jimmy finished. ‘I thought there was going to be trouble then. And I hiked for home to tell Mom.’

  ‘You mean,’ Caxton protested, ‘I was unlucky enough to come back just in time to get myself caught, and I didn’t dare show myself?’

  The boy said, ‘What I’ve told you is all I saw.’

  ‘That’s all you know?’

  Jimmy hesitated. ‘Well,’ he began finally in a defensive tone, ‘What happened then was queer. You see, I looked back when I got to the road, and the trailer wasn’t there no more.’

  ‘Wasn’t there?’ Caxton spoke slowly. Mentally, he looked over the area as he had seen it, trying to visualise the action. ‘You mean, they started up the engine and drove to Piffer’s Road, and so on down to the highway?’

  The boy shook his head stubbornly. ‘Folks is always trying to trip me up on that. But I know what I saw and heard. I was on Piffer’s Road. There weren’t no sound of an engine. They were just gone suddenly, that’s all.’

  Caxton felt an eerie chill along his spine. ‘And I was aboard?’ he asked.

  ‘You was aboard,’ said Jimmy.

  The silence that followed was broken by the woman saying loudly, ‘All right, Jimmy, you can go and play now.’

  She turned to Caxton. ‘Do you know what I think?’ she said.

  With an effort, Caxton roused himself. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘They’re working a racket, the whole bunch of them together. The story about her father making the stuff. I can’t understand how we fell for that. He just spent his time going around the district buying up old metal. Mind you’ - the admission came almost reluctantly - ‘they’ve got some wonderful things. But there’s the rub. So far, these people have only got hold of a few hundred pieces altogether. What they do is sell them in one district, then steal them back and resell them in another.’