Finally they agreed to try it. There was a slight bit of trepidation on Jones's part, for he explained to Mr. Harbinger that it would be necessary to draw mightily on the power supply of the area surrounding his workshop. But that the exchange would be effected instantly by the Time Mechanism, as he always called it, and that, by the time anyone arrived at the workshop from Master Power to investigate, Mr. Harbinger—or Darwin, as he would be in his new Life and Time, he having taken great pleasure in the illustrious history of that appellation, and insisted on it—would be long gone in the streets and away, safe in his new identity.
They shook hands on it, and a queer gesture it must have been....
At last the appointed day arrived. Then the appointed hour, and at long last, the appointed minute and second. Jones had assured Mr. Harbinger—or Darwin, if you prefer—that he had taken extraordinary pains to make sure the Time Mechanism would be in perfect working order. But unfortunately the devil-may-care attitude of the technicians over at Master Power, was beyond his ability to rectify; indeed, had not occurred to him at all.
As a regrettable consequence, at the instant he threw the switch, at the precise second the Time Mechanism seemed to swell itself for the momentous event it was about to initiate, a cat-napping n'er-do-well of a technician over at Master Power, a recognized incompetent among his fellows and a braggart to boot, shifted his up-propped feet from one instrument bank to another more comfortable.
And in doing so, tripped a switch with a careless toe; robbed the great Time Mechanism of the last ounce of energy necessary for the task it was attempting, and so stranded poor Mr. Harbinger—or Darwin, if you prefer—and poor Mr. Jones in the constantly shifting anomalies and vicissitudes of Variable Time....
Perhaps you have seen them occasionally for an instant: an eye peering at you in pitiable entreaty from under a leaf of a tree as you pass. Of course, when you look closely, they—or whichever of them it was; poor Mr. Harbinger, or Darwin, if you prefer, or perhaps it was poor Mr. Jones—are gone on to other Times, and other crannies to peer out of for a moment.
Perhaps you have heard a voice call out to you on some unlikely occasion, or in some improbable place. I remember once hearing a voice distinctly cry out, "You there...."
But when I turned about I could catch only a fleeting glimpse of a mouth and one eye as they vanished from the side of a near-by church steeple, thirty feet or so in the air.
I suppose it was only the merest chance that I happened to glance directly at that spot as I turned, or else I should never have known who it was who called.