ess Mary, did this Tugh in your Time ever consult doctors, trying
to have his crippled body made whole?"

"Why, of course he did. I have heard that many times. But his
crippled, deformed body cannot be cured."

Alten checked Larry and me when we would have broken in with
astonished questions. He said:

"Don't ask me what it means; I don't know. But I think that this
cripple--this Tugh--has lived both in 1777 and 1935, and is traveling
between them in this Time-traveling cage. And perhaps he is the human
master of that Robot."

Alten made a vehement gesture. "But we'd better not theorize; it's too
fantastic. Here is the story of Tugh in our Time. He came to me some
three years ago; in 1932, I think. He offered any price if I could
cure his crippled body. All the New York medical fraternity knew him.
He seemed sane, but obsessed with the idea that he must have a body
like other men. Like Faust, who, as an old man, paid the price of his
soul to become youthful, he wanted to have the beautiful body of a
young man."

Alten was speaking vehemently. My thoughts ran ahead of his words; I
could imagine with grewsome fancy so many things. A cripple, traveling
to different ages seeking to be cured. Desiring a different body....

* * * * *

Alten was saying, "This fellow Tugh lived alone in that house on
Patton Place. He was all you say of him, Mistress Mary. Hideously
repulsive. A sinister personality. About thirty years old.

"And, in 1932, he got mixed up with a girl who had a somewhat dubious
reputation herself. A dancer, a frequenter of night-clubs, as they
used to be called. Her name was Doris Johns--something like that. She
evidently thought she could get money out of Tugh. Whatever it was,
there was a big uproar. The girl had him arrested, saying that he had
assaulted her. The police had quite a time with the cripple."

Larry and I remembered a few of the details of it now, though neither
of us had been in New York at the time.

Alten went on: "Tugh fought with the police. Went berserk. I imagine
they handled him pretty roughly. In the Magistrate's Court he made
another scene, and fought with the court attendants. With ungovernable
rage he screamed vituperatives, and was carried kicking, biting and
snarling from the court-room. He threatened some wild weird revenge
upon all the city officials--even upon the city itself."

"Nice sort of chap," Larry commented.

But Alten did not