t it. My father did--Dr. Anthony Roberts--using the
funds you and others helped me provide him with." Her face grew soft
and tender. "My father was a wonderful man, a great man, but he was
called a crackpot. He was kept from teaching or working anywhere. It
was just as well, I suppose, though he was too hurt to think so; he
had more leisure to develop the time machine. He could have used it to
extort repayment from mankind for his humiliation, but he didn't. He
used it to help mankind."

"Like how?" I goaded.

"It doesn't matter, Mr. Weldon. You're determined to hate me and
consider me a liar. Nothing I tell you can change that."

* * * * *

She was right about the first part--I hadn't dared let myself do
anything except hate and fear her--but she was wrong about the second.
I remembered thinking how Lou Pape would have felt if I had died of
starvation with over $15,000, after borrowing from him all the time
between jobs. Not knowing how I got it, he'd have been sore, thinking
I'd played him for a patsy. What I'm trying to say is that Lou
wouldn't have had enough information to judge me. I didn't have enough
information yet, either, to judge her.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked warily.

"Everybody but one person was sent into the past on specific
errands--to save art treasures and relics that would otherwise have
been lost to humanity."

"Not because the things might be worth a lot of dough?" I said
nastily.

"You've already seen that I can get all the money I want. There were
upheavals in the past--great fires, wars, revolutions, vandalism--and
I had my associates save things that would have been destroyed. Oh,
beautiful things, Mr. Weldon! The world would have been so much poorer
without them!"

"El Greco, for instance?" I asked, remembering the raving old man who
had been found wandering with $17,000 in his coat lining.

"El Greco, too. Several paintings that had been lost for centuries."
She became more brisk and efficient-seeming. "Except for the one man I
mentioned, I concentrated on the past--the future is too completely
unknown to us. And there's an additional reason why I tentatively
explored it only once. But the one person who went there discovered
something that would be of immense value to the world."

"What happened to _him_?"

She looked regretful. "He was too old. He survived just long enough to
tell me that the future has something we need. It's a met