by Bryce Walton
the naphtha Stoddard had piled near his boiler. Ididn't say anything, though, for I knew he was thinking of it also.
He dropped the guns and cartridge boxes, and in a tight, strained voice,while putting his arms comfortingly around his wife, said: "That's allright, Laura. It wasn't your fault. We'll have another house like this.So help me God, _just like this_!"
* * * * *
It has been six months now since Stoddard's architectural eyesightburned to the ground. He started rebuilding immediately after that. Iturned over all the drafts my company made from his first crude "plans,"and he handed them to the supervisor of the construction company hebought out. You see, he took every dime he owned, sold out his insurancebusiness, and has gone into the building game in dead earnest.
He explained it to me this way.
"I couldn't go on having house after house built and torn down on thesame spot, Kermit. It would break me in no time. This way, with my owncompany to construct the house every time, I'll save about half eachtime."
"Then you're going to build precisely the same house?" I demanded.
His jaw went hard, and he peered from behind his spectacles with theintense glare of a fanatic. For once he didn't look like Mr.Suburbanite.
"You know damned well I am," he said. "And until it is _precisely_ thesame as the first, I'll keep tearing 'em down and putting 'em up again.I don't care if I have to build a thousand to do it, right on thisspot!"
Of course I knew what he meant by precisely the same. And I wonderedwhat on earth the odds were he was bucking. Through chance and a madcombination of angles, that time and space door had appeared the firsttime. But it might have been hanging on the tiniest atom of a fractionaldifference.
Stoddard has already finished his second house, and although it _looks_exactly like the monstrosity I first built for him, it can't be_precisely_ like it. For he didn't get the gray shrouded door when hepoked a hole in the attic ceiling and looked up into the second crazybelfry. All he saw was the belfry.
Tomorrow he starts tearing down to build another, and pretty soon peopleare going to be certain he's crazy.
As a matter of fact, they'll soon be pretty sure I'm loony also. For ofcourse I can't help going over there now and then to sort of lend ahand....