Smoke

She stared at the gun. 'That's a gun!'

'Yes, ma'am. Which I don't intend to use unless you try to run away or Freddie makes an unauthorized move out of that chair.' Looking toward the chair in question, Geoff said, 'Freddie, would you ask your friend to come on in?'

Sounding resigned, Freddie's voice said, 'Come on in, Peg.'

'Freddie?' Clearly, she couldn't believe any of this. 'What's happening?'

'Well, I'm caught, Peg. That's the hell of it.'

Geoff stepped back from the doorway into the office, and Peg came forward. Entering the office, she looked around and made one last hopeless try. 'I don't see anybody.'

'Forget it, Peg,' Freddie said. 'He's got me pinned in this chair here.' And he made the chair squeak, just to prove it. Then, sounding aggrieved again, he said, 'You're such a goddam handyman, I can see it all over you, how come you don't oil this chair?'

'Never got around to it. Peg, maybe you could stand beside the desk over there, while Freddie tells me what's going on.'

As she moved over, they both started talking at once, then both stopped, then Peg said, 'Freddie, let me tell him.'

'Okay. You're better at it, I guess.'

'That's right.' Peg turned to Geoff, her expression as open and honest and clean as the day outside those windows. 'Besides,' she explained, 'you can see me, you can see my face and know I'm telling the truth.'

'Sure,' Geoff said, and looked at that dewy face, and thought, Now here we have a first-class grade-A liar. 'Go ahead,' he said.

'Freddie's a scientist.'

Well, that's good, Geoff thought. Start with a whopper. 'Uh-huh,' he said.

'He's working on a cure for cancer.'

'Uh-huh.'

'Skin cancer,' Freddie added.

'Uh-huh.'

Peg said, 'He's got this special medicine that takes the color out of your skin and your whole body, and that's why you can't see him.'

'That would explain it,' Geoff agreed.

Peg now looked more sincere than ever. 'But,' she said, 'there are some very bad guys trying to steal the formula.'

'Uh-huh.'

Simultaneously, Freddie said, 'A chemical company,' and Peg said, 'Foreign agents.'

'Uh-huh,' Geoff said.

'A foreign chemical company,' Freddie explained.

'Their agents,' Peg footnoted. 'They're Swiss, I think.' Turning desperately to the chair behind the desk, she said, 'Is that right, Freddie?'

'Yeah, I think so. Swiss, I think.'

'So Freddie had to get away and hide,' Peg explained, turning back to Geoff.

'Should be easy for him to do, considering,' Geoff agreed.

Sounding bitter, Peg said, 'You'd think so.'

'I experimented on myself,' Freddie said. 'To test my formula, because I didn't want to put anybody else at risk.'

'I've seen that in the movies,' Geoff said.

'Sure. Happens all the time. But now I got to hide out until my experiment's done, and these guys are after me. They're very powerful guys, with these like tentacles into the very highest level of government, and all that stuff.'

Peg explained, 'It's like a Robert Ludlum novel.'

'I was going to suggest that myself,' Geoff told her.

'So we ran away,' Peg went on, 'but Freddie wanted to know if maybe they had some of their powerful friends get the police to look for us—'

'Corrupt city police,' Freddie said, in a blatant appeal to Geoff's prejudices — dang!

'So we stopped here,' Peg said.

'Of all places,' Freddie said.

'And Freddie came in here to see if his name was on any wanted lists.'

Geoff lifted an interested eyebrow toward the chair. 'Was it?'

'I don't know yet. I mean, not so far.'

Geoff pointed the gun at the clipboard on the right side of the desk. 'Did you look on that clipboard?'

'No. What's that?'

'If they were looking for you, how long would it be?'

'Just a few days.'

'Then it'll be on that clipboard,' Geoff told him. 'Any wanted flyers they fax me, I put them on that clipboard. Anything in the last two, three weeks'll be there.'

'Okay if I look?'

Geoff couldn't help a sardonic chuckle. 'You break-and-enter my house, and then ask my permission to look at that clipboard?'

'I apologize for breaking and entering.'

'Go ahead and look,' Geoff said.

That was a strange moment, when the clipboard lifted up into the air all by itself, and then started riffling its own pages. While the clipboard animated itself like that, Geoff took time to consider the baloney sandwich they'd just fed him. He suspected that, here and there in the mix, like flecks of gold in a sandy streambed, there were particles of truth stirred into the baloney. Not a lot of particles, but some.

A sigh of relief from the desk. Peg turned, hopeful, ready to be happy. 'Is it okay?'

'We're not there!' Freddie sounded relieved, elated, even astonished. 'Peg, by golly, I'm not a wanted man!'

'Well, that isn't exactly true,' Geoff said. 'Here in Dudley you're wanted, in fact you're being arrested, for breaking and entering.'

'Aw, come on, Chief,' Freddie said. 'I didn't take anything, I wasn't gonna take anything, you know that's true. And I didn't hurt any of your locks or anything else, no damage at all. I'll even oil this damn chair before I go, if you want.'

'Go? You aren't going anywhere.'

'Chief?' Freddie asked. 'Won't you give us a break?'

'No.'

'Peg?'

All at once, Peg was slinking seductively toward him, smiling, blocking his view of the desk, saying, 'Chief? Am I arrested, too? I didn't break into anywhere.'

'Move over!' Geoff cried, but it was too late. Squeak! When Geoff jumped to his right, to see his chair, it was turning in a lazy circle, bobbing slightly, definitely empty.

'Damn it!' Geoff yelled, and pointed the gun at Peg. 'Don't you move!'

'I just don't believe you'll shoot me,' Peg said, and backed toward the open doorway.

'I'll shoot your leg!'

'This leg?' She leered at him. 'Chief, what kind of man are you?'

'Now, stop! Right there!' Geoff shouted, and his fire-chief helmet came flying out of the air and bounced off his wrist, so that he almost dropped the gun, but held on to it. Peg was now through the doorway, fleet of foot, and before he could get to the hall the front door slammed shut. Geoff spun around, trying to fill the doorway, to at least keep Freddie bottled up in here, and his police-chief hat took him square on the nose.