“In the back door,” the driver said. “You don’t need to knock. Then straight down the hall past the curved staircase. The party’s up in front.”
Maxwell started to open the car door, then hesitated.
“You need not mind the dogs,” the driver told him. “They recognize the car. Anyone who steps out of it is OK with them.”
There was, in fact, no sign of the dogs, and Maxwell went swiftly up the three steps of the stoop, opened the back door, and stepped into the hall.
The hall was dark, A little light filtered down the winding staircase-someone apparently had left on a light on the second story. But that was all; there were no other lights. From somewhere in the front of the house came the muffled sound of revelry.
He stood for a moment without moving and as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he could see that the hall ran for some distance toward the center of the house, past the foot of the winding stairs and beyond. There was a door back there, or perhaps an abrupt turn in the hall, that would take him party-ward.
It was strange, he told himself. If Nancy had instructed the driver to bring him to the back, she would have had someone there to greet him, or at least she would have seen that there was a light so he could find his way.
Strange, and very awkward, to arrive this way, to grope his way along the hall in search of the others who were there. For a moment he considered turning about and leaving, making his way back to Oop’s place. Then he remembered the dogs. They would be out there and waiting and they looked like vicious brutes.
This whole business, he told himself, was not at all like Nancy. Nancy wouldn’t do a thing like this. There was something very wrong and he did not like it.
He moved cautiously down the hall, alert for chair or table that might be there to trip him up. He could see a little better now, but the hall was still a tunnel without any details.
He passed the stairs, skirting around their base, and now, with the light from the stairway partially cut off, the hall became darker than it was before.
A voice asked, “Professor Maxwell? Is that you, Professor?”
Maxwell stopped in mid-stride, balancing on one leg, then carefully put his lifted foot down against the floor and stood, not stirring, while goose bumps prickled on his skin.
“Professor Maxwell,” said the voice, “I know that you are out there.” It was not a voice, actually, or it didn’t seem to be. There had been no sound, Maxwell could have sworn, yet he had heard the words, not so much, perhaps, in his ear, as somewhere in his brain.
He felt the terror mounting in him and he tried to fight it off, but it didn’t go away. It stayed, crouched somewhere out there in the dark, ready to rush in.
He tried to speak and gulped instead. The voice said, “I’ve waited here for you, Professor. I want to communicate with you. It is to your interest as much as it is to mine.”
“Where are you?” Maxwell asked.
“Through the door just to your left.”
“I do not see a door.”
Good common sense hammered hard at Maxwell. Break and run, it said. Get out of here as fast as you can go.
But he couldn’t break and run. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. And if he ran, which way should he run? Not back to the door, for the dogs were waiting out there. Not clattering down the darkened hall, more than likely to bump into something and raise a terrible clatter, to alert the guests up there in front and to be found, when they investigated, disheveled and bruised and sweating with his fear. For if he ran, he knew, fear would pounce upon him and he’d give way to it.
It was bad enough sneaking in from the back door on a party without being found in a condition such as that.
If it had been just a voice, any kind of voice, it would not have been so frightening, but it was a strange kind of voice-there was no intonation to it and there was about it a certain raw, mechanical, almost rasping quality. It was not a. human voice, Maxwell told himself. There was an alien in that room.
“There is a door,” the flat, hard voice said. “Step slightly to your left and push against it.”
The whole thing was becoming ridiculous, Maxwell told himself. Either he went through the door or he broke and ran. He might try to simply walk away, but he knew that the minute he turned his back upon that hidden door, he would run-not because he wanted to, but because he had to, running from the fear he had turned his back upon.
He stepped to the left, found the door, and pushed. The room was dark, but from a lamp somewhere in the yard outside, some light filtered through the windows, falling on a roly-poly creature that stood in the center of the room, its pudgy belly gleaming with a writhing phosphorescence, as if a group of luminescent sea-dwellers had been imprisoned in a bowl.
“Yes,” the creature said, “you are quite right. I am one of those beings that you call a Wheeler. For my visit here I have given myself a designation that falls easy on your mind. You may call be Mr. Marmaduke. For convenience only, I suspect you understand, for it’s not my name. In fact, none of us have names. They are unnecessary. Our personal identity is achieved in another way.”
“I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Marmaduke,” said Maxwell, speaking slowly, the only way he could, since his lips had become, like the rest of him, slightly stiff and frozen.
“And I you, Professor.”
“How did you know who I was?” asked Maxwell. “You seemed to have no doubt at all. You knew, of course, I’d be coming down the hall.”
“Of course,” the Wheeler said.
Now Maxwell could see the creature a bit more clearly, the bloated body supported on two wheels, the lower part of the body gleaming and twisting like a pail of worms.
“You are Nancy ’s guest?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “certainly I am. The guest of honor, I believe, at this gathering she has.”
“Then, perhaps, you should be out with the other guests.”
“I pleaded tiredness,” said Mr. Marmaduke. “A slight prevarication, I must admit, since I am never tired. So I went to rest a while-”
“And to wait for me?”
“Precisely,” said Mr. Marmaduke.
Nancy, Maxwell thought. No, Nancy, he was sure, wasn’t in on it. She had a frothy brain and all she cared about were her everlasting parties and she’d be incapable of any kind of intrigue.
“There is a subject we can talk about,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “with some profit, I presume, to the both of us. You are looking for a buyer, I believe, for a large commodity. I might have some passing interest in that commodity.”
Maxwell moved back a step and tried to find an answer. But there was no ready answer. Although he should have known, he told himself, or at least have suspected.
“You say nothing,” said Mr. Marmaduke. “I cannot be mistaken. You are, without fail, the agent for the sale?”
“Yes,” said Maxwell. “Yes, I am the agent.”
There was no use denying it, he knew. Somehow or other, this creature in the room knew about the other planet and the hoard of knowledge. And he might know the price as well. Could it have been the Wheeler, he wondered, who had made the offer for the Artifact?
“Well, then,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “let us proceed immediately to business and a discussion of the terms. Not forgetting, in the course of it, to mention the commission that will be coming to you.”
“I am afraid,” said Maxwell, “that is impossible at the moment. I do not know the terms. You see, I was first to find a potential buyer and then-”
“No trouble whatsoever,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “for I have the knowledge that you lack. I am acquainted with the terms.”
“And you will pay the price?”
“Oh, without any question,” said the Wheeler. “It will take just a little time. There are certain negotiations
