Apparently the word was spreading. The house-seekers drifted in all afternoon. He leased four more houses before it was time to close.
It was funny, he thought, very, very funny how the word had got around. He hadn't advertised in the last three weeks and they still were coming in.
Just as he was getting ready to lock up, Morgan strode in breezily. He had a package underneath his arm.
"Here you are, pal," he said. "I told you I'd bring you something. Caught them just an hour or two ago."
The package was beginning to get soggy. Homer took it gingerly. "Thanks very much," he said in a doubtful voice.
"Think nothing of it. I'll bring you more in a week or two."
As soon as Morgan left, Homer closed the blinds and unwrapped the package warily.
Inside were brook trouttrout fresh-caught, with the ferns in which they had been wrapped not even wilting yet.
And there was no trout stream closer than a couple of hundred miles!
Homer stood and shivered. For there was no point in pretending ignorance, no point in repeating smugly to himself that it was all right. Even at five thousand a deal, there still was something wrongvery badly wrong.
He had to face it. They were beginning to close in on him. Fowler had sounded as if he might mean business and the Real Estate Association undoubtedly was lying in ambush, waiting for him to make one little slip. And when he made that slip, they'd snap the trap shut.
To protect himself, he had to know what was going on. He could no longer go at it blind. Knowing, he might be able to go on. He might know when to quit. And that time, he told himself, might have been as early as this afternoon.
He stood there, with the fish and ferns lying in the wet wrapping paper on the desk, and envisioned a long street of houses, and behind that long street of houses, another identical street of houses, and behind the second street, anotherstreet after street, each behind the other, each exactly like the other, fading out of sight on a flat and level plain.
And that was the way it must beexcept there was no second street of houses. There was just the one, standing lone and empty, and yet, somehow, with people living in them.
Lease them a second time, Steen had said, and a third time and a fourth. Don't you worry about a thing. Let me handle it. Leave the worry all to me. You just keep on leasing houses.
And Homer leased one house and the people moved, not into the house he'd leased them, but into the second identical house immediately behind it, and he leased the first house yet again and the people moved into the third, also identical, also directly behind the first and second house, and that was how it was.
Except it was just a childish thing he had dreamed up to offer an explanationany explanationfor a thing he couldn't understand. A fairy tale.
He tried to get the idea back on the track again, tried to rationalize it, but it was too weird.
A man could trust his sense, couldn't he? He could believe what he could see. And there were only fifty housesempty houses, despite the fact that people lived in them. He could trust his ears and he had talked to people who were enthusiastic about living in those empty houses.
It was crazy, Homer argued with himself. All those other folks were crazySteen and all the people living in the houses.
He wrapped up the fish and retied the package clumsily. No matter where they came from, no matter what lunacy might prevail, those trout surely would taste good. And that, the taste of fresh-caught trout, was one of the few true, solid things left in the entire world.
There was a creaking sound and Homer jumped in panic, whirling swiftly from the desk.
The door was being opened! He'd forgotten to lock the door!
The man who came in wore no uniform, but there was no doubt that he was a cop or detective. "My name is Hankins," he said. He showed his badge to Homer.
Homer shut his mouth tight to keep his teeth from chattering.
"I think you may be able to do something for me," Hankins said.
"Surely," Homer chattered. "Anything you say."
"You know a man named Dahl?"
"I don't think I do."
"Would you search your records?"
"My records?" Homer echoed wildly.
"Mr. Jackson, you're a businessman. Surely you keep recordsthe names of persons to whom you sell property and other things like that."
"Yes," said Homer, all in a rush. "Yes, I keep that sort of record. Of course. Sure."
With shaking hands, he pulled out a desk drawer and brought out the folder he'd set up on Happy Acres. He looked through it, fumbling at the papers.
"I think I may have it," he said. "Dahl, did you say the name was?"
"John H. Dahl," said Hankins.
"Three weeks ago, I leased a house in Happy Acres to a John H. Dahl. Do you think he might be the one?"
"Tall, dark man. Forty-three years old. Acts nervous."
Homer shook his head. "I don't remember him. There have been so many people."
"Have you one there for Benny August?"
Homer searched again. "B. J. August. The day after Mr. Dahl."
"And perhaps a man named Drake? More than likely signs himself Hanson Drake." Drake was also there.
Hankins seemed well pleased. "Now how do I get to this Happy Acres place?"
With a sinking feeling, Homer told him how.
He gathered up his fish and walked outside with Hankins. He stood and watched the officer drive away. He wouldn't want to be around, he suspected, when Hankins returned from Happy Acres. He hoped with all his heart that Hankins wouldn't look him up.
He locked up the office and went down to the drugstore to buy a paper before going home. He unfolded it and the headlines leaped at him:
THREE HUNTED IN STOCK SWINDLE
Three photographs on column cuts were ranged underneath the headline. He read the names in turn. Dahl. August. Drake.
He folded the paper tightly and thrust it beneath his arm and he felt the sweat begin to trickle.
Hankins would never find his men, he knew. No one would ever find them. In Happy Acres, they'd be safe. It was, he began to see, a ready-made hideout for all kinds of hunted men.
He wondered how many of the others he had leased the houses to might be hunted, too. No wonder, he thought, the word had spread so quickly. No wonder his office had been filled all day with people who'd already bought the cars.
And what was it all about? How did it work? Who had figured it all out?
And why did he, Homer Jackson, have to be the one who'd get sucked into it?
Elaine took a searching look at him as he came in the door. "You've been worrying," she scolded.
Homer lied most nobly. "Not worrying. Just a little tired."
"Scared to death" would have been closer to the truth.
At 9 o'clock next morning, he drove to Happy Acres. He was inside the door before he saw that Steen was busy. The man who had been talking to Steen swung swiftly from the desk.
"Oh, it's you," he said.
Homer saw that the man was Hankins.
Steen smiled wearily. "Mr. Hankins seems to think that we're obstructing justice."
"I can't imagine," Homer said, "why he should think that."
Hankins was on the edge of rage. "Where are these people? What have you done with them?"
Steen said: "I've told you, Mr. Hankins, that we only lease the property. We cannot undertake to go surety for anybody who may lease from us."
"You've hidden them!"
"How could we hide them, Mr. Hankins? Where could we hide them? The entire development is open to you. You can search it to your heart's content."
"I don't know what is going on," said Hankins savagely, "but I'm going to find out. And once I do, both of you had better have your explanations ready."
"I think," Steen commented "that Mr. Hankins' determination and deep sense of duty are very splendid things. Don't you, Mr. Jackson?"
"I do, indeed," said Homer, at loss
as to what to say.
"You'll be saying that out of the other side of your mouth before I'm through with you," Hankins promised them. He went storming out the door.
"What a nasty man," Steen remarked, unconcerned.
"I'm getting out," said Homer. "I've got a pocket full of cheques and cash. As soon as I turn them over, I am pulling out. You can find someone else to do your dirty work."
"Now I am sorry to hear that. And just when you were doing well. There's a lot of money to be made."
"It's too risky."
"I grant you that it may appear a little risky, but actually it's not. Men like Hankins will raise a lot of dust but what can they really do? We are completely in the clear."
"We're leasing the same houses over and over again."
"Why, certainly," said Steen. "How else would you expect me to build up the kind of clientele I need to give me business volume in this shopping centre? You yourself have told me that fifty families were by no means enough. And you were right, of course. But you lease the houses ten times and you have five hundred families, which is not bad. Lease each one a hundred times and you have five thousand… And incidentally, Mr. Jackson, by the time you lease each of them a hundred times, you will have made yourself twenty-five million dollars, which is not a bad amount for a few years' work.
"Because," Steen concluded, "you see, despite what you may have thought of me, I'm squarely on the level. I gave you the straight goods. I told you I was not interested in money from the houses, but merely from the shopping centre."
Homer tried to pretend that he was unimpressed. He kept on emptying cheques and wads of money from his pockets. Steen reached out for the cheques and began endorsing them. He stacked the money neatly.
"I wish you would reconsider, Mr. Jackson," he urged. "I have need of a man like you. You've worked out so satisfactorily, I hate to see you go."
"Come clean with me," said Homer, "and I might stay. Tell me all there is to tellhow it all works and what all the angles are and what you plan to do."
Steen laid a cautionary finger across his lips. "Hush! You don't know what you're asking."
"You mean you see no trouble coming?"
"Some annoyance, perhaps. Not real trouble."
"They could throw the book at us if they could prove we were hiding people wanted by the law."
Steen sighed deeply. "Mr. Jackson, how many fugitives have you sheltered in the last six weeks?"
"Not a one," said Homer.
"Neither have I." Steen spread his arms wide. "So we have nothing to fear. We've done no wrong. At least," he amended, "none that they can prove."
He picked up the money and the cheques and handed them to Homer. "Here," he said. "You might as well take it to the bank. It's your money."
Homer took the money and the cheques and stood with them in his hand, thinking about what Steen had said about not doing any wrong. Maybe Steen was right. Maybe Homer was getting scared when there was no need to be. What could they be charged with?
Fraudulent advertising? There had been no specific claims that had not been performed.
For tying in the auto sales? Just possibly, although he had not made an auto sale a condition of transaction; he had merely mentioned that it would be very nice if they bought a car from Happy Acres Auto Sales.
For selling at less than cost? Probably not, for it would be a fine point of law to prove a lease a sale. And selling or leasing below cost in any case was no crime.
For leasing the same house more than once? Certainly not until it could be proved that someone had suffered damage and it was most unlikely that it could be proved.
For doing away with people? But those people could be reached by telephone, could drive out through the gate. And they were well and happy and enthusiastic.
"Perhaps", Steen said gently, "you have changed your mind. Perhaps you'll stay with us."
"Perhaps I will," said Homer.
He walked down the concourse to the bank. It was an impressive place. The foyer was resplendent in coppery metal and with brightly polished mirrors. There were birds in hanging cages and some of the birds were singing.
There were no customers, but the bank was spick and span. An alert vice-president sat behind his polished desk without a thing to do. An equally alert teller waited shiny-faced behind the wicket window.
Homer walked to the window and shoved through the money and the cheques. He took his passbook from his pocket and handed it across.
The teller looked at it and said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Jackson, but you have no account with us."
"No account!" cried Homer. "I have a quarter of a million!" His heart went plunk into his boots, and if he'd had Steen there, he'd have broken him to bits.
"No," said the teller calmly, "you've made an error. That is all."
"Error!" gasped Homer, hanging onto the window to keep from keeling over.
"An understandable error," the teller said sympathetically. "One that anyone could make. Your account is not with us, but with the Second Bank."
"Second Bank," wheezed Homer. "What are you talking about? This is the only bank there is."
"Look, it says Second Bank right here." He showed Homer the passbook. It did say Second Happy Acres State Bank.
"Well, now," said Homer, "that's better. Will you tell me how I get to this Second Bank?"
"Gladly, sir. Right over there. Just go through that door." He handed back the passbook and the money.
"That door, you say?" inquired Homer.
"Yes. The one beside the drinking fountain."
Homer clutched the passbook and the money tightly in his hand and headed for the door. He opened it and stepped inside and got it shut behind him before he realized that he was in a closet.
It was just a tiny place, not much bigger than a man, and it was as black as the inside of a cat.
Sweat started out on Homer and he searched frantically for the doorknob and finally found it. He pushed the door open and stumbled out. He strode wrathfully back across the foyer to the teller's window. He rapped angrily on the ledge and the teller turned around.
"What kind of trick is this?" yelled Homer. "What do you think you're pulling? What is going on here? That is nothing but a closet."
"I'm sorry, sir," the teller said. "My fault. I forgot to give you this." He reached into his cash drawer and handed Homer a small object. It looked for all the world like the replica of a bizarre radiator ornament.
Juggling the object in his hand, Homer asked, "What has this got to do with it?"
"Everything," the teller said. "It will get you to the Second Bank. Don't lose it. You'll need it to get back."
"You mean I just hold it in my hand?"
"That is all you do, sir," the teller assured him.
Homer went back to the door, still unconvinced. It was all a lot of mumbo-jumbo, he told himself. These guys were just the same as Gabby Wilsonfull of smart pranks. And if that teller was making a fool of him, he promised himself, he'd mop up the floor with him.
He opened the door and stepped into the closet, only it was no closet. It was another bank.
The metal still was coppery and the mirrors were a-glitter and the birds were singing, but there were customers. There were three tellers instead of the single one in the first bank and the bland, smooth vice-president at his shiny desk was industriously at work.
Homer stood quietly just outside the door through which he'd come from the other bank. The customers seemed not to have noticed him, but as he looked them over, he was startled to discover that there were many whose faces were familiar.
Here, then, were the people who had leased the houses, going about their business in the Second Bank. He put the miniature radiator ornament in his pocket and headed for the window that seemed to be least busy. He waited in line while the man ahead of him finished making a deposit.
Homer could only see the back of the man's head, but the head seemed to be familiar. He stood there raking through the memories of t
he people he had met in the last six weeks.
Then the man turned around and Homer saw that it was Dahl. It was the same face he had seen staring at him from the front page of the paper only the night before.
"Hello, Mr. Jackson," said Dahl. "Long time no see."
Homer gulped. "Good day, Mr. Dahl. How do you like the house?"
"Just great, Mr. Jackson. It's so quiet and peaceful here, I can't tear myself away from it."
I bet you can't, thought Homer.
"Glad to hear you say so," he said aloud, and stepped up to the window.
The teller glanced at the passbook. "Good to see you, Mr. Jackson. The president, I think, would like to see you, too. Would you care to step around after I finish your deposit?"
Homer left the teller's window, feeling a little chilly at the prospect of seeing the president, wondering what the president might want and what new trouble it portended.
A hearty voice told him to come in when he knocked on the door. The president was a beefy gentleman and extremely pleasant. "I've been hoping you'd come in," he said. "I don't know if you realize it or not, but you're our biggest depositor."
He shook Homer's hand most cordially and motioned him to a chair. He gave him a cigar and Homer, a good judge of tobacco, figured it for at least a fifty-center. The president, puffing a little, sat down behind his desk.
"This is a good set-up here," said Homer, to get the conversation started.
"Oh, yes," the president said. "Most splendid. It's just a test, though, you know."
"No, I hadn't known that."
"Yes, surely. To see if it will work. If it does, we will embark on much bigger projectsones that will prove even more economically feasible. One never knows, of course, how an idea will catch on. You can run all the preliminary observations and make innumerable surveys and still never know until you try it out."
"That's true," said Homer, wondering what in the world the president was talking about.
"Once we get it all worked out," the president said, "we can turn it over to the natives."
"I see. You're not a native here?"
"Of course not. I am from the city."
And that, thought Homer, was a funny thing to say. He watched the man closely, but there was nothing in his face to indicate that he had misspokenno flush of embarrassment, no sign of flurry.
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