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hat's when I started seeing Yvonne again, now darkly beautiful as a Tanagra figurine. I was doing pretty well and was piling up a surplus against the day when Yvonne and I ...
At least that was the situation in August, 1929. In October of the same year I was as clean as a gnawed bone and old de Neant had but little more meat. I was young and could afford to laugh--he was old and he turned bitter. Indeed, Yvonne and I did little enough laughing when we thought of our own future--but we didn't brood like the professor.
I remember the evening he broached the subject of the Circle of Zero. It was a rainy, blustering fall night and his beard waggled in the dim lamplight like a wisp of grey mist. Yvonne and I had been staying in evenings of late. Shows cost money and I felt that she appreciated my talking to her father, and--after all--he retired early.
She was sitting on the davenport at his side when he suddenly stabbed a gnarled finger at me and snapped, 'Happiness depends on money!'
I was startled. 'Well, it helps,' I agreed.
His pale blue eyes glittered. 'We must recover ours!' he rasped.
'How?'
'I know how. Yes, I know how,' he grinned thinly. 'They think I'm mad. You think I'm mad. Even Yvonne thinks so.'
The girl said softly, reproachfully, 'Father!'
'But I'm not,' he continued. 'You and Yvonne and all the fools holding chairs at universities--yes! But not I.'
'I will be all right, if conditions don't get better soon,' I murmured. I was used to the old man's outbursts.
'They will be better for us,' he said, calming. 'Money! We will do anything for money, won't we, Anders?'
'Anything honest.'
'Yes, anything honest. Time is honest, isn't it? An honest cheat, because it takes everything human and turns it into dust.' He peered at my puzzled face. I will explain,' he said, 'how we can cheat time.'
'Cheat--'
'Yes. Listen, Jack. Have you ever stood in a strange place and felt a sense of having been there