Trolley to Yesterday Read Free

Then, as the boys watched, the statue rose slowly from the table. It turned bright pink, and then it began to spin rapidly, so rapidly that it looked like a rosy blur. Finally, when it had stopped spinning, the boys saw that the statue had turned upside down and was hovering a full six inches above the tabletop.
    "There!" said Brewster crankily. "And now, if you don't mind, I shall return to my normal shade and position. This is all very undignified, and it is making my head hurt."
    With a sudden flip the statue turned right side up and landed on the table with a thunk. Silence fell, and the boys looked at each other. Neither of them had ever seen a god of Egypt before, and they really did not know what to say to it. With a calm, self-satisfied smile, the professor sat down in the chair that was pulled up next to the table. He took a box of Balkan Sobranie cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one.
    "Now then," he said placidly as he puffed, "aren't you two going to ask me where I found this charming creature? You're not? Well, then, I'll tell you: I found him in the temple of Abu Simbel in Egypt. That is why there is sand on the floor of my study, by the way. Hrmph! To continue: I arranged it so I would be there one evening in fourteen B.C., before the drifting sand had blocked up the entrance to the temple. Otherwise—"
    "You whaaaat?" said both boys, speaking at once.
    The professor grinned toothily. "Got you with that one, didn't I? I'll bet you're both wondering how I got to a temple in Egypt in the year fourteen B.C. Come on, admit it. You're stumped!"
    Fergie gave the professor a dirty look. "Well, we were kind of wonderin', but we figured you'd cook up some flaky unbelievable explanation. Didn't we, John baby?"
    Johnny said nothing. He was always embarrassed when Fergie got smart-alecky with the professor, even though he knew the old man didn't mind.
    The professor sighed and ground out his cigarette in the ashtray. "I can see, Byron," he said wearily, "that you really won't be satisfied until you see my little secret with your own eyes. Very well, O ye of little faith! Come with me into the depths of the basement, and all things will be made clear." He shoved his chair back and got up, but as he was about to turn away, he paused and glanced at the statue. "Are you coming along, Brewster?" he asked.
    "No," said the statue in a bored tone. "I think I shall remain here. When you have been around for five thousand years, there's nothing that can really excite or surprise you anymore. Have a good time."
    "Thanks," said the professor curtly, and he motioned for the boys to follow him.
    Humming tunelessly the professor marched to the cellar door, and Fergie and Johnny followed him. The old man opened the door, flipped on the cellar light, and took a long-barreled flashlight from a shelf just inside the doorway.
    "I have always felt that there was something odd about this house," the professor said as he started down the cellar stairs, "but I could never quite put my finger on it. You see, the man who lived here before me was a history professor like myself, and he disappeared mysteriously in the summer of 1921. When I came here to live, I found that I was having very vivid dreams about places I had never been to, like Constantinople and Madrid and Rome. In my dreams I saw those cities as they were in the Middle Ages, which is not so strange, because my specialty in history is the Middle Ages. But the dreams always seemed so lifelike, and I saw so many things that I couldn't possibly have read about, that naturally I wondered what was causing the dreams. Well recently I took apart a set of shelves in a dark corner of my basement, and behind the shelves I found a blocked-up doorway."
    "A doorway?" asked Johnny wonderingly. "Where does it go?"
    The professor smiled. "That, children, is what you're going to find out."
    Silently Fergie and Johnny followed the professor across the uneven cement floor of the cellar. They passed