“Perhaps he’ll come yet,” answered Josaphat.
Freder shook his head.
“He should have been here hours ago. If he had been caught when leaving the New Tower of Babel, then someone would have come to me when I was standing before the machine. It is strange, but there it is; he has not come.”
“Was there much money in the suit which you exchanged with Georgi?” asked Josaphat tentatively, as one who bares a wounded spot.
Freder nodded.
“Then you must not be surprised that Georgi has not come,” said Josaphat. But the expression of shame and pain on Freder’s face prevented him from continuing.
“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Freder,” he begged. “Or lie down? You look so tired that it is painful to look at you.”
“I have no time to sit down and not time to lie down, either,” answered Freder. He walked through the rooms, aimlessly, senselessly, stopping wherever a chair, a table, offered him a hold. “The fact, is this, Josaphat: I told Georgi to come here and to wait here for me—or for a message from me.... It is a thousand to one that Slim, in searching for me, is already on Georgi’s track, and it’s a thousand to one he gets out of him where I sent him....”
“And you do not want Slim to find you?”
“He must not find me, Josaphat—not for anything on earth....”