“Fifty dollars,” Tina said hastily.
“Most right,” Carl agreed. “Fifty American dollars. I can say as a fact that we would be healthy and happy beyond our utmost dreams three years ago, except for the danger. The danger is that we did not follow your rules. I will not deny that they are good rules, but for us they were impossible. We cannot expect ourselves to be happy when we don’t know what minute someone may come and ask us how we got here. The minute that just went by, that was all right, no one asked, but here is the next minute. Every day is full of those minutes, so many. We have found a way to learn what would happen, and we know where we would be sent back to. We know exactly what would happen to us. I would not be surprised if you felt a deep contempt when you saw me trembling the way I do, but to understand a situation like this I believe you have to be somewhat close to it. As I am. As Tina is. I am not saying you would tremble like me — after all, Tina never does — but I think you might have your own way of showing that you were not really happy.”
“Yeah, I might,” I agreed. I glanced at Tina, but the expression on her face could have made me uncomfortable, so I looked back at Carl. “But if I tried to figure a way out I doubt if I would pick on spilling it to a guy named Archie Goodwin just because he came to the barber shop where I worked. He might be crazy about the rules you couldn’t follow, and anyhow there are just as many minutes in Ohio as there are in New York.”
“There is that fifty dollars.” Carl extended his hands, not trembling, toward me.
Tina gestured impatiently. “That’s nothing to you,” she said, letting bitterness into it for the first time; “We know that, it’s nothing. But the danger has come, and we had to have someone tell us where to go. This morning a man came to the barber shop and asked us questions. An official! A policeman!”
“Oh.” I glanced from one to the other. “That’s different. A policeman in uniform?”
“No, in regular clothes, but he showed us a card in a case, New York Police Department. His name was on it, Jacob Wallen.”
“What time this morning?”
“A little after nine o’clock, soon after the shop was open. He talked first with Mr. Fickler, the owner, and Mr. Fickler brought him around behind the partition to my booth, where I do customers when they’re through in the chair or when they only want a manicure, and I was there, getting things together, and he sat down and took out a notebook and asked me questions. Then he—”
“What kind of questions?”