Page:Weird Tales Volume 44 Number 7 (1952-11).djvu/30

Mary was an exquisite woman of twenty-five; in her nightgown she was exquisite plus, even when, as now, her cheeks were deathly pale.

"They weren't here when we went to bed," she said flatly.

"No."

"And I wasn't out of bed."

"No."

Even the sales slip, showing a total of five dollars and twelve cents, was tucked in among the mysterious items. Only, there was nothing mysterious about the items. Theywere real. The Hale family would eat everything here except the cat- and dog-food.

"The doors were all locked?" said Mary dully.

"All locked!"

"Fred, let's sell out! Let's go far, far away from here! Unless you think, as I'm beginning to, that I'm going mad."

"We can't run away," said Fred Hale. "Nobody ever runs away from the feared, successfully. Besides, my business is here. . ."

"But for me, Fred! You love me, don't you? I'm more important to you than your business?"

"Darling, you are all my life, everything I want, am, hope to have or be, but don't you see that we have to fight this thing out, right here where it started?"

"But none of it is possible, no matter what outlandish stuff one might believe in!"

"No, it isn't possible, but take a gander at that box of stuff from the A & P! That's real, Baby, and if we find your calling card, this morning . . ."

"And when it began, the necklace was real," whispered Mary. "So were the three dozen stockings, the half dozen pairs of shoes that just fitted me. So were the dresses for each social occasion, the coats, jackets, ensembles . . ."

"For a total of eleven hundred forty-seven dollars, to date, and thirty-nine cents! And none of it came out of my pocketbook or bank account, nor out of yours."

They were back in bed, with the alarm clock wound and set to waken them in time to drive the ten miles to die big store and hunt for the calling card, when Mary remembered something and just did manage to forbear gasping. Just before she wakened, perspiring in terror, George Bannett had said, almost casually:

"I'm coming to wherever you spend your days, and take you away! I'm coming sometime today! You might as well get set. Will you come with me, Mary?"

"I'll come, of course, George, you know that. I'll follow you to the ends of the earth!"

"If you knew where the ends are," he had smiled at her, "you wouldn't wonder nearly so much, what all this nocturnal prowling means. If people just knew how active they are, in what they call dreams, if they had the remotest notion of what dreams are intended to hide, a vast lot of time in human life would be conserved. Well, it is conserved now, but the dreaming sleepers would know it!"

Of course she could never tell Fred any of that.

Just before they slept they checked on all the other stuff that had weirdly materialized after one of Mary's "dreams"—radier the total that all her scavenging dreams added up to. They still bore the price tags. Mary had been afraid to wear them, lest someone from wherever she had got each item—and George had paid for it!—should recognize it and start yelling "thief! thief!" She hadn't stolen anything, but surely she—and George Bannett—had broken and entered. But had they? While the strange facts of cash in cash registers had been reported to police, and eventually had got into the newspapers, so that a public avid for mysteries awaited each new, and brief report with eagerness, no "breaking and entering" report had been given to the police or the newspapers. It was presumed that the "prowler or prowlers" possessed keys. Mary Hale—and George—had returned at least three times to three scenes of their "crimes," while policemen stood guard at all locked entrances and exits, but no policeman, though each one had been tremendously chagrined, had seen anything unusual, or heard anybody, or anything!