He stood back and looked at the cab. He got in and folded the meter down out of sight.

He opened up the garage and backed out.

At the house door, he said, "I'll be back and forth from time to time. I may be late or early."

"That's all right," said the old blind woman. "Just toot your horn twice so I'll know it's you. An' anybody else'll get drivv off with a shotgun!"

Off went a dark-brown Heller in a black car!

But he wasn't that smart. It still looked like a vintage New York cab, orange or black!

He seemed to know right where he was going. He drove into a town, looked at some street numbers and pulled up at an old house with a big sign:

Real Estate Cyrus Aig

Heller knocked, was sent by a woman around to an office in the back.

"Cyrus Aig?" said Heller. "Me—English no not native tongue—got appointment?"

Cyrus Aig was a very, very old man. He turned away from his roll-top desk and eyed the stranger. "Glad you could make it. But I dunno if anything I got will suit. All the old barns and proppity like that gits bawt up by rich folks to make homes out of, y'know."

Heller had a roll of maps. "Actual, me look for mines, old."

"Oh, yes," said the aged realtor. "You did hev somethin' to say about that on the phone. Now, I done some lookin' at records. Somebody buyin' a mine here in the east is kinda out of my line. I git holt of old barns for rich folks to make homes out of. Sit down."

Heller sat in a rickety rocking chair.

"Could be a hundred years ago," said Cyrus Aig, "there might hev been a mine. But jus' because the name of the creek is Goldmine Creek ain't no reason it ever had a gold mine on it."

"This place," said Heller, pushing out the Geological Survey maps, "it show buildings on Goldmine Creek."

"Oh, that," said Cyrus. "Nobody been up in that area for years. That's wilderness. Ain't even a road in there. Wonder them government surveyors even went there. That's a valley with rocks. Cain't grow nothin' on it. Just two, three little hills. Creek runs through it. Half a century back that was the bootlegger roadhouse."

The old agent took the maps. "Yes, that's a fact. I was in there once when I was a kid. There was a highway run past it in them days. Now, see here. This creek runs down and turns here and then goes into the sea."

He got a road map. "But you can make out on that that they put a reservoir way up that creek near the source and the water didn't flow much anymore. And then they put two turnpikes across it before it reached Long Island Sound. So she don't work for bootlegging anymore."

"Me not see how..."

"Why, you couldn't run a shallow draft boat up it no more. Y'see, the bootleggers used to run their stuff in from the Atlantic, up the creek and to this roadhouse. Then they'd water it down, rebottle it and either serve it on the spot or run it down to New York through the gauntlet of hijackers."

He handed back the maps. "Was a time nobody'd go near that old roadhouse. Bodies! Haunted. But I even forgot it existed."

"Me mebbe buy," said Heller.

Cyrus Aig wearily got an old fishing hat. Heller followed him out. Using Cyrus Aig's rattletrap Ford they went to the courthouse and Cyrus looked into the records.

"Listed here as owned by John Smith of New York in care of this attorney they note here. Hundred and twenty acres of prime rocks."

Heller was writing down all the particulars and addresses. "If me buy, me give commission."

"Well, that's fine but you don't catch me thrashing around up there off the roads. I cain't even get out fishing lately. You sure you don't want an old barn? I got a couple of those in driving distance."

Heller went back to the house with him, jumped in the cab and was off. Thank Heavens he was still very well within the activator-receiver range. He wasn't more than thirty miles or so from New York! Whatever he was up to, I would at least know and be able to handle it if it proved dangerous.

He headed north on U.S. 7. He was driving at a leisurely pace, looking about him at the hills and valleys and streams of Connecticut, apparently highly approving. A very rural scene, mostly picturesque like you see in paintings—I myself wouldn't like it at all. Too neat and serene.

Way ahead, although they probably didn't think it was visible, a police car was lying in wait for unwary speeders. Heller went by it at a crawl. It wasn't really a police car. It was a sheriff's car with a big star on the side of it. Two men were in the front seat, dressed in khaki. They had cowboy hats on. Deputy sheriffs, no doubt. They were taking it easy. From the litter on the ground around it, this was their favorite speed trap.

Heller went on. He was examining the left side of the road very carefully. Ahead, a difference showed in the embankment. I myself might have missed it.

He turned left and went on down the embankment! Right off the road into the brush! Just like that!

He must have been steering more by his sense of compass direction than whatever he thought he was driving on. He was going dead slow. Weeds were raking and whipping at the underside of the car.

A big bush was ahead. There seemed to be no way around it. He got out, took a machete from the car and cleared the bush away. Then he got back in and on he went.

It came to me that he must be following an old road not unlike the one to the ancient gas station but much more obscured. He even had to go around trees more than a third of a century old.

He went over a little rise. Ahead was what appeared to be a massive stand of maple trees and some evergreens. They were huge trees, fifty years old at least.

Just beyond them lay a streambed, only a trickle of water in it now, despite the high banks. The remains of a wooden bridge were collapsed into the stream.

Heller stopped the cab and got out. It really was a wilderness. Several knolls were visible. There was flat ground but it was covered with rocks.

He walked around the fields. There was a flat place not too far from the trees. This seemed of interest to him.

He went down to the stream. A ledge of white outcrop with a red rust stain seemed to interest him. The stream had eaten down through it over the eons.

A small, unnatural hill caught his attention. He got a shovel and dug into it. It was just very fine white dirt. He put the shovel back in the car and took out a pack.

Only then did he pay any attention to the grove of huge trees. He walked straight into it.

Canopied and shadowed by the growth which must have matured long after the original place was built, masked by climbing vines and shrubs, there lay the road-house!

It sprawled. It had a veranda and wings. It was apparently built of the same rocks which lay in such abundance roundabout.

Heller walked up the stone steps to the front door. It was a big door. It was padlocked. Still, I wondered how, after nearly half a century, this place would still be there without the usual traces of vandalism. America is like that.

Heller took out a picklock and an oilcan and in almost no time at all had the padlock off! It startled me. Apparatus people weren't that fast at locks. Then I realized he was, after all, an engineer. He knew levers and tumblers intimately.

With his oilcan, he got to work on the hinges. The door, although a bit sagged, was not too hard to open. He examined its edge and then I saw why the place wasn't vandalized. That door was cored with armor plate!

He tapped a window. Bulletproof glass!

This place was a FORT!

He went back to the car and got a bag. He entered the main front room. He turned on a lamp he carried and set it down on a table.

The faded, drooping remains of what must have been the last party in the place hung forlornly from thick rafter beams. The gutted remains of Japanese waxed paper lanterns cast strange shadows against the ceiling.