at the
wheel and run into something. As I say, I am harder to convince
than my patients. But it may have been coincidence."

"I hope so. But you also seem to have another reservation."

"After quite a few years in practice, I seldom see or hear
anything new. Twice before I have been told a happening or a
dream on the line of what you experienced."

"Did you convince your patients that it was only a dream?"

"I did. Both of them. That is, I convinced them the first few
times it happened to them."

"Were they satisfied?"

"At first. Later, not entirely. But they both died within a year
of their first coming to me."

"Nothing violent, I hope."

"Both had the gentlest deaths. That of senility extreme."

"Oh. Well, I'm too young for that."

"I would like you to come back in a month or so."

"I will, if the delusion or the dream returns. Or if I do not
feel well."

After this Charles Vincent began to forget about the incident. He
only recalled it with humor sometimes when again he was behind in
his work.

"Well, if it gets bad enough I may do another sleepwalking act
and catch up. But if there is another aspect of time and I could
enter it at will, it might often be handy."

Charles Vincent never saw his face at all. It is very dark in
some of those clubs and the Coq Bleu is like the inside of a
tomb. He went to the clubs only about once a month, sometimes
after a show when he did not want to go home to bed, sometimes
when he was just plain restless.

Citizens of the more fortunate states may not know of the
mysteries of the clubs. In Vincent's the only bars are beer bars,
and only in the clubs can a person get a drink, and only members
are admitted. It is true that even such a small club as the Coq
Bleu had thirty thousand members, and at a dollar a year that is
a nice sideline. The little numbered membership cards cost a
penny each for the printing, and the member wrote in his own
name. But he had to have a card--or a dollar for a card--to gain
admittance.

But there could be no entertainments in the clubs. There was
nothing there but the little bar room in the near darkness.

The man was there, and then he was not, and then he was there
again. And always where he sat it was too dark to see his face.

"I wonder," he said to Vincent (or to the bar at large, though
there were no other customers and the bartender was asleep), "I
wonder if you have ever read Zurbarin on the Relationship of
Extradigi