"Oh but Mr.—Donus, is it?—-Nodus? I'm not—not...." Woodard saw Mrs. Jenson's lips curve in a hateful smile. He lost his nerve. Panicking, he fumbled for words. Fumbling, he was lost.
"Five minutes," Nodus repeated.
Mrs. Jenson sighed spitefully. "Mr. Woodard doesn't know what he has in store!"
Scarcely glancing to his right at the lake that lay calm in the hazy twilight, Woodard drove behind Nodus and company. Hi-fi indeed! Torturous device of a science-ridden culture—how had he let himself in for the evening ahead? Why had he permitted this trespass upon his privacy? But when, after some eight miles, the convertible ahead slowed and signalled for a left, he checked the impulse to keep going on around the lake and back to the hotel. Nodus would think him crazy. He would think it aloud in the dining room—ostensibly to the deferential genies, the man and woman who were vacationing with him; but he would think it in a voice that carried.
Woodard pulled up beside the other car in the fir-fringed clearing.
Nodus stood waiting with his two shadows. "Russ will take you to the studio," he said briskly. "The girl and I will be along in a minute." He chuckled, his eyes scanning Woodard's face. "No neighbors here to raise a fuss. No knocking—no kicks or squawks...."
Only from me, Woodard thought, following the leader to a two-car garage some distance from the cottage. Inside, Russ slid shut the door, then flipped a switch that lighted half a dozen table lamps of the beaded fringe variety. Woodard stared in amazement. Heavily carpeted with scatter rugs, the place was walled and ceilinged with fiber-board. On three walls, including the door side, were stuck triple rows of ornamental covers from long-playing records. Running the length of the fourth wall, left of the entrance, a counter rose waist-high, its side hung solid with more record covers. On the left end of this counter was an elaborate system of dialled boxes which Woodard summed up vaguely as player, amplifiers, filters, and so on; on the right, eight open wood boxes of records. On the center of that wall was a large clock with a sweep second hand. Directly beneath, an empty rack of record cover size, beside which a neatly printed sign read "NOW PLAYING".
"Quite amazing," Woodard remarked truthfully. "Well...." He dropped into the center of three chairs right-angling the dial boxes. "Might as well sit."
But Russ, who had been smiling dreamily, was suddenly agitated. He shook his head. He opened and shut his mouth like a fish. As Woodard felt his poise threatened, the door slid open. Nodus entered, preceding Miss—Miss—But her name hadn't ever been mentioned.