How did he know? The General decided he didn't. Yet how could any man with such a private power be permitted to exercise his rights of free citizenship? He damned MacReedy, the enemy, the world and himself, and got resettled in his corner of the soft rear seat.
They had left the sun behind them, setting in a dust-pink mist behind the soft-edged towers of Manhattan. By the time they reached Flushing it had begun to snow—big soft flakes whose crystalline dissimilarities were almost visible to the naked eye as they settled against the car windows into wet evanescence. Up ahead the twin windshield-wipers ground them silently and methodically into wet-rimmed circle segments.
"I hope it lasts," said Toby from his window. "I got a sled for Christmas. I haven't been able to use it."
"You'll get your chance," said the General. Damn it, he wondered, what kind of man was Angus MacReedy—if he was a man. Somehow the silent snow, the waning traffic, the oncoming twilight, combined into a sense of ominous portent. It was as if the car were standing still, while a perilous future rushed toward it.
"We turn left at the next traffic light, sir," said Toby.
They turned. They skirted a thinly-settled swampy area on a narrow road, against a background of scrubby pines. The sprawling metropolis might have been on some other continent, some other planet. They met only one car—a long black sedan, that slithered past them on the skiddy road-surface, missing them by inches.
The house where they pulled to a halt at Toby's direction was not large. It had been put up early in the century, and its motif was that of the high-gabled Swiss chalet. Mercifully the snow gave it a touch of quaintness, almost of rightness, despite the absence of lowering alps. Toby pointed to a similar structure about a hundred yards further down the road. "That's where I live," he said.
MacReedy answered the door. He was a tall, angular man with a long, angular face—from which small blue eyes peered alertly. He wore a grey glen-plaid reefer that was buttoned wrong, a dark blue-flannel shirt and covert slacks that needed a press. He said, "Hello, Toby—you've brought company, I see."
"This is General Wales," said the lad very politely. "General—Uncle Angus."