The brown man finished paying for his fresh drink before he answered. “See who?” he asked, with a fine mixture of boredom, distaste and reluctant interest. “Who went out?”
“What have I been telling you for the last ten minutes? Weren’t you listening?”
“Certainly I was listening. That is—certainly. You were talking about—bathtubs. Radios. Orson—”
“Not Orson. H. G. Herbert George. With Orson it was just a gag. H. G. knew—or suspected. I wonder if it was simply intuition with him? He couldn’t have had any proof—but he did stop writing science-fiction rather suddenly, didn’t he? I’ll bet he knew once, though.”
“Knew what?”
“About the Martians. All this won’t do us a bit of good if you don’t listen. It may not anyway. The trick is to jump the gun—with proof. Convincing evidence. Nobody’s ever been allowed to produce the evidence before. You are a reporter, aren’t you?”
Holding his glass, the man in the brown suit nodded reluctantly.
“Then you ought to be taking it all down on a piece of folded paper. I want everybody to know. The whole world. It’s important. Terribly important. It explains everything. My life won’t be safe unless I can pass along the information and make people believe it.”
“Why won’t your life be safe?”