The World of Null-A Read Free Page A

man looked at him steadily, then his gaze went out to the faces beyond Gosseyn. He said, “When Gosseyn first came in, he nodded to me as if he knew me, and so I went over to the book to find out his name, thinking it might recall him to me. To my amazement I heard him give his address as Cress Village, Florida, which is where I come from. Cress Village, ladies and gentlemen, is a rather famous little place, but it has a population of only three hundred. I own one of the three stores, and I know everybody, absolutely everybody, in the village and in the surrounding countryside. There is no person residing in or near Cress Village by the name of Gilbert Gosseyn.”
    For Gosseyn, the first tremendous shock had come and gone while Nordegg was still speaking. The after-feeling that came was that he was being made ridiculous in some obscure way. The larger accusation seemed otherwise quite meaningless.
    He said, “This all seems very silly, Mr. Nordegg.” He paused. “That is your name, is it not?”
    “That’s right,” Nordegg nodded, “though I’m wondering how you found it out.”
    “Your store in Cress Village,” Gosseyn persisted, “stands at the end of a row of nine houses, where four roads come together.”
    “There is no doubt,” said Nordegg, “that you have been through Cress Village, either personally or by means of a photograph.”
    The man’s smugness irritated Gosseyn. He fought his anger as he said, “About a mile westward from your store is a rather curiously shaped house.”
    ” ‘House,’ he calls it!” said Nordegg. “The world-famous Florida home of the Hardie family.”
    “Hardie,” said Gosseyn, “was the maiden name of my late wife. She died about a month ago. Patricia Hardie. Does that strike any chord in your memory?”
    He saw that Nordegg was grinning gleefully at the intent faces surrounding them.
    “Well, ladies and gentlemen, you can judge for yourselves. He says that Patricia Hardie was his wife. That’s a marriage I think we would all have heard about if it had ever taken place. And as for her being the late Patricia Hardie, or Patricia Gosseyn, well”-he smiled-“all I can say is, I saw her yesterday morning, and she was very, very much alive, and looking extremely proud and beautiful on her favorite horse, a white Arabian.”
    It wasn’t ridiculous any more. None of this fitted. Patricia didn’t own a horse, white or colored. They had been poor, working their small fruit farm in the daytime, studying at night. Nor was Cress Village world-famous as the country home of the Hardies. The Hardies were nobodies. Who the devil were they supposed to be?
    The question flashed by. With a simple clarity he saw the means that would end the deadlock.
    “I can only suggest,” he said, “that the lie detector will readily verify my statement.”
    But the he detector said, “No, you are not Gilbert Gosseyn, nor have you ever been a resident of Cress Village. You are-” It stopped. The dozens of tiny electronic tubes in it flickered uncertainly.
    “Yes, yes,” urged the pudgy man. “Who is he?”
    There was a long pause, then: “No knowledge about that is available in his mind,” said the detector. “There is an aura of unique strength about him. But he himself seems to be unaware of his true identity. Under the circumstances, no identification is possible.”
    “And under the circumstances,” said the pudgy man with finality, “I can only suggest an early visit to a psychiatrist, Mr. Gosseyn. Certainly you cannot remain here.”
    A minute later, Gosseyn was out in the corridor. A thought, a purpose, lay on his brain like a cake of ice. He reached his room and put through a call on the videophone. It took two minutes to make the connection with Cress Village. A strange woman’s face came onto the plate. It was a rather severe face, but distinctive and young.
    “I’m Miss Treechers, Miss Patricia Hardie’s Florida secretary. What is it you wish to speak to Miss Hardie