Pstalemate

by Lester Del Rey

  Harry grinned to himself. He hadn't the faintest notion of exactly what he'd managed to do back there or whether he had gone the wrong way on a one-way street. It had simply felt right, and it had worked. Maybe his study of the map had helped—or maybe...

  He let that thought die. He'd made his test and drawn a blank. No more psychic nonsense for him now!

  He was too busy remembering the way the car had behaved in escaping pursuit to notice the Forty-Second Street exit. He shrugged. It didn't matter. Maybe he'd take the bridge across the river; it was a longer route, but one surer to defeat any follower, in case the tan car was still casting about in hopes of finding him.

  As usual, there was a pileup of cars on the highway, and he was forced to sit while the police finally came and managed to clear it up. He began thinking about Ellen again, and his thoughts were not too pleasant. He'd always assumed that Grimes had legally adopted her. The idea of her being on her own with little more background for supporting herself than he had wasn't a happy one.

  He could put a notice in the Personal section, but he was reasonably sure that she'd never see it. Grimes would find out about it, however. So that was no solution. There must be some way to trace a young woman who had to find employment, even in a city as large as New York. But he hadn't the faintest idea of how to go about it.

  It was quite a bit later that he suddenly thought of Galloway. Of course! The columnist might not know how to find her, but he could surely locate someone who would know.

  He'd seemed genuinely friendly and would probably be glad to help.

  With that solved for the moment, Harry put it out of his mind and began to wonder where he was. He'd obviously not taken the bridge, though he couldn't quite understand how he'd missed it.

  The toll booth identified the route. He was on the New England Thruway, already in Connecticut!

  For a moment he was annoyed. Then he grinned at himself. He had only been driving to get out of the apartment, after all. He might as well go on along this route as any other. He remembered a rather pleasant restaurant in Wallingford. He could stop there to eat before heading back; by the time the dinner was finished the traffic should be tolerable again. It wasn't exactly a scenic drive, but the worst was already behind him.

  It obviously wasn't his day, however, or something strange had happened to the road signs. He had meant to turn to get onto Route 15, but he wound up on 91. He could probably find some dirt road across—and promptly get lost, judging by what had been happening—or go on to Meriden and then backtrack. But by the time he considered that, he was beginning to realize he had somehow overlooked lunch.

  "Okay, Suzy," he told the Citroën. "Potluck. We're stopping at the next eating place I see."

  It didn't look bad when he drew up to the parking lot. There were a fair number of cars, many of them expensive, and the restaurant had been adapted from what must have been an old mansion—as was true of a number of quite good inns in this area.

  It wasn't until he was inside and being seated by a quaint and carefully charming hostess that he recognized what he'd gotten into. It was one of those places that used a lot of excess letters to make it seem old-timey, with a menu in imitation Old English—carefully filled in with a nice modern type so no mistakes could be made. With not too much experience, he guessed that it must do a fine business in ladies' luncheons and similar cultural events. It called itself a Tea Roome and specialized in elaborate cocktails.

  Surprisingly, however, the soup was good and honest. And the rolls were fresh and warm. Harry decided that perhaps serendipity had struck again and began to relax.

  Behind him, there was a hustle and sliding of chairs as another group was seated. He shuddered mildly at the cocktails that were being ordered and hastily motioned to the waitress to refill his own scotch and water.

  "Wait till you try this one," the nasal voice of the woman who had done most of the ordering was ranting on. "I mean, don't judge by all those others. I know how simply dreadful they usually are. All full of such silly things. But she's—oh, I mean she must be psychic! She just has to be a real gypsy. I mean, how else could she tell Wilbur about his brother? And my ring. I hunted everywhere for it. And when the plumber found it, even Wilbur admitted ..."

  The rather pretty young waitress arrived then with Harry's club steak, but he'd heard enough. "Do I gather you have some kind of fortune-teller working here?" he asked.

  "Yes, sir." She smiled in rather pleasant amusement and pointed to a sign he hadn't noticed. "Only we call her a tea-leaf reader. She's at the other end, the big table at the left."

  Harry stared and finally located the woman, obviously dressed in some costumer's idea of what gypsies wore, with a heavy shawl and a dark veil over her head. Her back was toward him, but she must have been shaking a cup, from the motions of her arms.

  "Would you like her to stop at your table, sir?" the waitress asked.

  He nodded, wondering for the hundredth time why New York restaurants couldn't find girls like the ones often serving in such backwater places as this. "How much?"

  "Nothing." The girl laughed softly. "We're not al'owed to charge for that, though it's customary to leave something on the saucer for her. And you'll have to order the special tea with the leaves. That's a dollar extra."

  It figured. Maybe this wasn't such a backwater place, after all. The steak proved to be excellent, and the vegetables were crisp, with no sign of overcooking. Harry enjoyed the meal, including the special desert of the evening that turned out to be apple pie à la mode. Even the coffee was good. He forgot about the so-called gypsy until the waitress came with the pot of tea.

  "She's with the party behind you," she told him. "But she won't be much longer, she says."

  He nodded. "Is she really supposed to be good?"

  "Well. . ." The girl gave a faint shrug. "I guess so. Even if Mrs. Weintraub—she's the owner—complains that she should say nicer things. She's really a very nice girl, though. Not like the last one we had. She drank." She totaled her check and put it beside him. "If that's all, sir ... I go off now."

  He took the hint and paid the stiff total of the bill, together with a rather generous tip. Then he had nothing to do but wait. For want of anything better to kill time, he tasted the tea; he'd expected it to be vile, but the cook must have been English or Irish. It was excellent tea, though a little strong.

  And that, he thought, for Grimes! In another few minutes, he'd be consorting over a table with a fortuneteller. It wasn't much defiance, perhaps, but the gesture was supposed to be what counted. The day wasn't entirely wasted.

  Once he heard a shriek, quickly suppressed, from the table behind him. The words were too low now for him to understand, but the fortune-teller seemed to be making quite an impression. Even the nasal woman had lowered her voice to something like a whisper.

  Then they were breaking up, to the sound of nervous giggles.

  Harry was suddenly self-conscious. The room was reasonably full of people now, and he began to realize that having his fortune told here wasn't going to seem a normal masculine thing, somehow. Why it wasn't, he didn't quite know, but he was sure that such would be the reaction. When the girl sat down with him, there'd be a lot of attention focused on his table.

  He poured another cup of tea and buried his face in it just as a rustle of cloth told him the girl was taking the seat opposite him.

  "You aren't really supposed to drink it, you know," she said. "Not that it matters... Harry!"

  Ellen Palermo was so heavily made up that he might not have recognized her under the veil, but her voice had given her away and forced him to look up.

  She gave him no chance to speak. "Get out of here, Harry! Now! And don't come back!"

  "But ..."

  "No! I can't explain, not here. I'll get in touch with you as soon as I can. But now go. Please!"

  He nodded and rose, dropping the bill he had ready onto the saucer. But getting out wasn't quite that simple. A large and effortfull
y smiling woman accosted him to ask if everything was all right.

  "Perfect," he assured her. "An excellent dinner."

  "And the gypsy? You left so quickly."

  He forced himself to smile back at her. "A charming young lady. I only wanted one question answered."

  She let him go, her porcelain smile somehow doubtful.

  Harry was glad to drop into the seat of his car, but it was several minutes before he started the motor. Well, he hadn't lied to Mrs. Weintraub, or whoever she was. He'd had one question—and it had been answered.

  He'd proposed a test of whether he had precognition, based on his ability to locate Ellen. In the most unlikely way and with no intention of coming within miles of this place, he had found her.

  He wondered why he now fell like a frightened boy, wanting to hide from the bogeyman under the sheets. And why had he rushed off so quickly at her orders?

  He swung the car out of the parking lot and gunned it back toward Manhattan.

  V. PARIS

  Sid Greenwald had been delighted to leave Germany and try bis luck in France. He knew it was prejudice, of course, but he couldn't help thinking of wailing sirens and Dachau the moment he was inside the German borders. Sure, it had been more than a generation ago, and these friendly people had not even been born when the Jews were being sent through the gas ovens. But Sid had grown up to a mounting crisis of horror, and the idea died hard. He couldn't help feeling like a bar of soap when he heard too much German being spoken.

  Okay, so they were one of the best friends Israel now had, while the French wouldn't even fulfill prepaid business contracts. But that had been the French government, while the French people were...

  Now Sid wasn't sure what they were. At least in England and Germany, Sid had received some kind of sensible treatment. They'd looked at his engine, discussed his lab reports, and talked engineering. Here ...

  M. Guerdin raked a rather long fingernail across the picture of the motor. "But not—ah, esthetic, that bulge. You admit that?"

  Sid grunted unhappily. The English wasn't bad, though the accent made it hard to follow. "That expansion chamber around the free-piston cylinder is what gives us a higher Carnot efficiency than any other internal-combustion engine," he started to explain. He'd learned enough engineering around Harry to be sure of himself on such matters.

  "Ah," M. Guerdin said soulfully. "Carnot. There was a Frenchman. A genius, not? And those injectors. We have fuel injection. To be sure, not on the models for America—your mechanics do not retain it in your adjustment. Hein?"

  Sid sighed and started again to explain that this injection was so simple and automatic that nothing could go wrong, that the precombustion chamber bored into the piston head was what permitted the use of both low octane gas and a twenty-to-one lean mixture for complete combustion. Now these independent laboratory analyses showed that the pollutant level was far below the minimum of any planned specifications for the future...

  "Pollution, bah! France has no pollution problem. It's the vines. You should plant grapes—French vines—all over America. Then—no smog!" Guerdin blew out smoke from a vile-smelling French cigarette and smiled with manifest French destiny. "Besides, let us—ah, talk the turkey. To change to your engine, that would cost much money, not?"

  "And save a lot more. That's why these plans call for piston drive instead of a turbine. Double-acting pistons, just like those on a steam engine. Used on your front-drive model, you could cut out your differential; one piston would connect directly to each drive shaft. No transmission—the torque holds from staffing right up to full speed, so you don't need to shift, and you can reverse by moving your valves—"

  "French drivers," M. Guerdin said in profound admiration of them, "like to shift. It is too bad."

  "But all I'm asking is an appointment at your factory with your head engineer. You don't have to approve anything now—"

  "Precisely," asserted M. Guerdin, whose auto experience had been gained on camel-back in the former French Army. "It is too bad. But keep up the—ah, stiff lower lip."

  Sid gathered up his papers and figures under the tolerant eye and went out to the reception room, where he could mop his brow in comfort. He was beginning to feel too much what his mirror showed—a man somewhat overweight, tired, and fortyish. Somehow, here in France, he couldn't pretend any longer.

  The receptionist grinned frankly at him. "Your lower lip is drooping," she told him, with only the faintest of accents to her English. "Would you like a pin for it, Mr. Greenwald?"

  He chuckled as he detected the twinkle in her eyes, and his glance moved from her face—a darned pretty face, he decided—to the intercom on her desk. "You didn't?"

  "I heard every word," she assured him. "You never had a chance, you know. I could have told you that, but you haven't been here long enough to believe me."

  "When you get off here, try me over a drink," he suggested, but he couldn't get the old spirit into it. Girls had never really gone for him. Of course, he'd heard about French girls, but...

  "I'm off duty now. I was just waiting to be asked," she told him. "Hello, Sidney. I'm Marie."

  "Make it Sid—everyone does," he said automatically. Then her acceptance hit him. "Hey, it's nice to know you, Marie."

  It was amazing what could be told over a couple of drinks. All the things he'd meant to tell Guerdin came pouring out; only now they made sense. And she seemed to understand.

  "Why not?" she answered his surprised question. "I graduated with very high honors as an engineer. Even my teachers were pleased, though they didn't want me in their classes at first." Then she shrugged. "But as you see, I'm very pretty. So, after they hired me here, they told me I was a receptionist. And you? You know quite a lot, but you're no engineer, Sid. What were you in America?"

  "I drove a truck selling ice cream door to door," he admitted. "Until Harry Bronson came along. He's my partner."

  She managed to be interested in that. Sid's father had been a machinist, and Sid had inherited his shop. He'd listed it for sale, and Harry had come to look it over. Then somehow, in discussing what he needed, Harry had revealed the whole idea of the motor. Sid, who had grown up in a machine shop and still knew more practical possibilities than Harry, had pointed out changes. In the end, he'd put up for the shop for a half interest, with Harry to provide all other funding—including this trip.

  To himself, Sid winced a little at that. All right, so maybe he had padded his expenses a bit. But it wasn't coming from Harry's pocket, exactly. With old Scrooge Grimes holding the purse, a man had to squeeze out what he could get.

  "Now tell me why I never had a chance," he suggested, to change the subject.

  She laughed. "Your demonstration car when you drove here—it was English. It wasn't French! Guerdin saw it and had to avenge the honor of the Republic!" Hell, Sid thought, it would be that. They'd cut corners by shipping over just the motor and installing it in England. Maybe he'd better see about getting it switched to a Renault.

  "And I suppose you wouldn't get into an English car," he suggested, "Say to go somewhere for dinner."

  "You're so slow, you American men!" Marie reached promptly for her purse and was on her feet at once. "I've been dying to try your car. But you must let me drive, of course—after I look at your motor. And I know two nice places to eat. One is expensive and modish. You'd have to let me go to my apartment and wait there with no one to talk to while I change. And you'd be very bored, because I live all alone, and I'm afraid the water for my bath will have to be heated, and ... But the other place is quite simple and nice."

  "Hang the other place and hang the expense. Let's go." Sid did his best to offer her his arm gallantly and was rather surprised when she took it without making him feel uncomfortable.

  On the way to her apartment he discovered that she was really French, since she seemed to drive most of the time with her hands off the wheel, like all the other French drivers. He was beginning to understand why French cars had the sh
ortest average turning radius and the best average brakes of any cars in the world.

  He learned a lot about Paris that night And in some ways, the stories he'd read about French girls hadn't been exaggerated.

  VI. FREAK

  Harry's dreams were troubled, though not with the old nightmare. Something vaguely horrible seemed to be gnawing at his skull, trying to get in to possess his mind. He struggled against it, but his will was sapped by drugs or hypnotism. He tried to cry out—and then found himself sitting upright in bed, covered with sweat. He turned down the heat in the bedroom, and his later sleep was normal enough.

  When he woke again, it was morning and the phone was ringing. "All right, Uncle Charles," he answered. "What is it now?"

  There was a moment of silence. Then a long, harsh sigh came over the line. "So you've stopped pretending, Henry? All right, you saw Ellen, against my specific orders. I gave you my word, and I'm keeping it. So—your rent is paid for eight more months, and your last allowance check was already sent yesterday. But as of now, you're cut off—cut off completely!"

  "You're guessing," Harry told him. "I ditched your spy!"

  "Quite true, and I fired him. But I have other sources of information. Good-bye, Henry."

  Harry sat up groggily. letting the idea soak in. But it was too early. He couldn't cope, with things until he got some coffee and breakfast. Damn it, Grimes must have had a spy on Ellen. Maybe that was why she chased him off so suddenly. It would be like Grimes, if he hired the service of some agency, to demand complete coverage of all possibilities.

  He found that the mail had come and pulled out the envelope that held his check. His allowance had always been more than generous. With the rent paid to the end of his lease and with this money, he might be able to stretch his funds to cover living for a full year—long enough, perhaps, to find some kind of work or for the motor to pay back some of what it had cost. But not if he took care of the urgent request of Sid for more money.