n flipped my stomach over
and unhinged my knees.

Shaking badly, I stumbled through the big, empty house until I found a
phone.

* * * * *

Lou Pape got there so quickly that I still hadn't gotten over the
tremors, in spite of a bottle of brandy I dug out of a credenza, maybe
because the date on the label, 1763, gave me a new case of the
shivers.

I could see the worry on Lou's face vanish when he assured himself
that I was all right. It came back again, though, when I told him what
had happened. He didn't believe any of it, naturally. I guess I
hadn't really expected him to.

"If I didn't know you, Mark," he said, shaking his big, dark head
unhappily, "I'd send you over to Bellevue for observation. Even
knowing you, maybe that's what I ought to do."

"All right, let's see if there's any proof," I suggested tiredly.
"From what I was told, there ought to be plenty."

We searched the house clear down to the basement, where he stood with
his face slack.

"Christ!" he breathed. "The annex to the Metropolitan Museum!"

The basement ran the length and breadth of the house and was twice as
high as an average room, and the whole glittering place was crammed
with paintings in rich, heavy frames, statuettes, books, manuscripts,
goblets and ewers and jewelry made of gold and huge gems, and
tapestries in brilliant color ... and everything was as bright and
sparkling and new as the day it was made, which was almost true of a
lot of it.

"The dame was loaded and she was an art collector, that's all," Lou
said. "You can't sell me that screwy story of yours. She was a
collector and she knew where to find things."

"She certainly did," I agreed.

"What did you do with her?"

"I told you. I shot her through the arm before she could shoot me and
I sent her into the future."

He took me by the front of the jacket. "You killed her, Mark. You
wanted all this stuff for yourself, so you knocked her off and got rid
of her body somehow."

"Why don't you go back to acting, where you belong, Lou, and leave
sleuthing to people who know how?" I asked, too worn to pull his hands
loose. "Would I kill her and call you up to get right over here?
Wouldn't I have sneaked these things out first? Or more likely I'd
have sneaked them out, hidden them and nobody--including you--would
know I'd ever been here. Come on, use your head."

"That's easy. You lost your nerve."

"I'm not even losing my patience."