I had come to a blank wall in my memory. I couldn't remember going out.
I knew I had been here before I was in that room with the strange woman. I was sure of that. Then I had gone out on the porch and the man next door had called me Orville. Then I had been here, with no passage of time between the two. Just a fading out and fading in—like they do with some scene changes on television.
And in my hand was a wallet with identifications for Orville Snyder. One of them—I turned to it and studied it again—said he was an employee of Rexlo Research Corporation with the classification of scientist.
But I was an employee of Rexlo Research with the classification of scientist—and there were only two others with that classification. Thordsen and Mintner. We three worked in this lab. No one else. Certainly no one by the name of Orville Snyder. Unless—I smiled uneasily—unless I were Orville Snyder.
I went over to my bench and sat down, cupping my chin on my fists. I tried to reason it out. My memories were perfectly clear. I went over them again and again, trying to find something significant.
It was possible I had never left the lab. That scene with the strange and unlikeable woman could have been an illusion. Maybe I fell asleep and dreamed it, then woke up.
That didn't explain the "proof" in my wallet that I was a man named Orville whom I had never heard of before, but the only other explanation of the blanks was that I had blanked out on leaving the lab, and once again while standing on the porch of that house.
I searched the wallet, hoping to find something. There were two one dollar bills. There was a folded slip of paper with some names on it, with figures denoting money after them. At the top were two capital letters. I.O. The meaning was obvious. Orville Snyder owed these men those sums of money.
I thumbed through the identifications for the nth time. On some of them was a telephone number. I got up and went over by the door to the desk with the telephone, and dialed the number.