Trolley to Yesterday (2 page)

The professor made strangled sounds in his throat. He opened and closed his mouth and spluttered a bit. Finally, however, he found his voice.
"You two!"
he roared. "I should have known! I should have
known!
You're going to ruin everything!"

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

 

Fergie and Johnny pulled themselves to their feet. Their faces got red, and they both tried to talk at once, but the professor cut them off.

"Be quiet!" he barked. "I don't want any flimsy cooked-up explanations from you two!" He paused, and the boys braced themselves for a scolding. But it didn't come. The professor was trying very hard to look crabby and fierce, but the corners of his mouth began to twitch, and then he started to laugh. After a while he heaved a deep shuddering sigh and pulled himself together. He took off his glasses and dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief. Meanwhile the boys glared at him. This was worse than being bawled out—they felt silly and stupid.

"I'm sorry that I laughed," said the professor as he put his glasses back on, "but the two of you looked so idiotic crouching under my windowsill that— Oh well, I'll save my insults for some other time. You may as well come in and meet my new friend. Come on, come on! It's quite safe, and I'm not insane, in spite of what you may have thought. So for heaven's sake, come in! It's a chilly night, and I'm freezing out here!"

With bowed heads the boys followed the professor into the kitchen. The room was in its usual state of messiness. Dirty saucepans stood on the stove, and the sink was full of dishes, glasses, and cups. However, the table where the professor had been sitting was clean. On it were three things: a potted geranium, an ashtray full of cigarette butts, and a strange-looking statue about a foot and a half high. The statue was made of polished black stone, and it was shaped like a falcon. Its wings were folded at its sides, and its hooked beak and beetle-browed glare made it look crabby. On the statue's head was an odd sort of double crown with an ornamental cobra wrapped around it.

Fergie and Johnny looked around, and they even peered under the table. Who had the professor been talking to? With an amused smile the old man walked over to the table and patted the statue on the head.

"This," he said, "is my new friend. His name is Brewster, and he—"

"My name is
not
Brewster," said the statue, cutting him off. "I am Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, and I am a god of Upper and Lower Egypt. Don't listen to anything that this elderly wreck tells you. He's as full of garbage as a disposal unit."

Fergie and Johnny were stunned. For several seconds they just stared at the statue openmouthed, but then suddenly Fergie let out a loud, braying laugh. "Hey, I know what the heck's goin' on!" he crowed, jabbing his finger at the professor. "He's been practicin' ventriloquism, an' he's been throwin' his voice at this statue here. Hey, pretty good, prof! I coulda swore—"

"I am
not
throwing my voice," said the professor huffily. "The wretched statue actually talks, because he is... well, who he says he is. I like to call him Brewster because he reminds me of Brewster the rooster, who is the trademark of Goebel's beer."

"Yeah, sure, sure!" sneered Fergie, glancing skeptically at the professor. "We know all about it!"

"Oh, very well!" sighed the professor as he turned to the statue. "Show them what you can do, Brewster."

"Do I have to?"

"Yes, you do."

There was a pause. Then, as the boys watched, the statue rose slowly from the table. It turned bright pink, and then it began to spin rapidly, so rapidly that it looked like a rosy blur. Finally, when it had stopped spinning, the boys saw that the statue had turned upside down and was hovering a full six inches above the tabletop.

"There!" said Brewster crankily. "And now, if you don't mind, I shall return to my normal shade and position. This is all very undignified, and it is making my head hurt."

With a sudden flip the statue turned right side up and landed on the table with a
thunk.
Silence fell, and the boys looked at each other. Neither of them had ever seen a god of Egypt before, and they really did not know what to say to it. With a calm, self-satisfied smile, the professor sat down in the chair that was pulled up next to the table. He took a box of Balkan Sobranie cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one.

"Now then," he said placidly as he puffed, "aren't you two going to ask me where I found this charming creature? You're not? Well, then, I'll tell you: I found him in the temple of Abu Simbel in Egypt. That is why there is sand on the floor of my study, by the way. Hrmph! To continue: I arranged it so I would be there one evening in fourteen B.C., before the drifting sand had blocked up the entrance to the temple. Otherwise—"

"You
whaaaat?"
said both boys, speaking at once.

The professor grinned toothily. "Got you with that one, didn't I? I'll bet you're both wondering how I got to a temple in Egypt in the year fourteen B.C. Come on, admit it. You're stumped!"

Fergie gave the professor a dirty look. "Well, we were kind of wonderin', but we figured you'd cook up some flaky unbelievable explanation. Didn't we, John baby?"

Johnny said nothing. He was always embarrassed when Fergie got smart-alecky with the professor, even though he knew the old man didn't mind.

The professor sighed and ground out his cigarette in the ashtray. "I can see, Byron," he said wearily, "that you really won't be satisfied until you see my little secret with your own eyes. Very well, O ye of little faith! Come with me into the depths of the basement, and all things will be made clear." He shoved his chair back and got up, but as he was about to turn away, he paused and glanced at the statue. "Are you coming along, Brewster?" he asked.

"No," said the statue in a bored tone. "I think I shall remain here. When you have been around for five thousand years, there's nothing that can really excite or surprise you anymore. Have a good time."

"Thanks," said the professor curtly, and he motioned for the boys to follow him.

Humming tunelessly the professor marched to the cellar door, and Fergie and Johnny followed him. The old man opened the door, flipped on the cellar light, and took a long-barreled flashlight from a shelf just inside the doorway.

"I have always felt that there was something odd about this house," the professor said as he started down the cellar stairs, "but I could never quite put my finger on it. You see, the man who lived here before me was a history professor like myself, and he disappeared mysteriously in the summer of 1921. When I came here to live, I found that I was having very vivid dreams about places I had never been to, like Constantinople and Madrid and Rome. In my dreams I saw those cities as they were in the Middle Ages, which is not so strange, because my specialty in history is the Middle Ages. But the dreams always seemed so lifelike, and I saw so many things that I couldn't possibly have read about, that naturally I wondered what was causing the dreams. Well recently I took apart a set of shelves in a dark corner of my basement, and behind the shelves I found a blocked-up doorway."

"A doorway?" asked Johnny wonderingly. "Where does it go?"

The professor smiled. "That, children, is what you're going to find out."

Silently Fergie and Johnny followed the professor across the uneven cement floor of the cellar. They passed the furnace and a littered tool bench, and finally came to a dark corner where a stone archway loomed. The professor shone the beam of his flashlight down a dank, moldy-smelling tunnel of mortared stones, and at the far end the boys saw another gaping black arch. Just outside the arch bricks were stacked, and a pickaxe leaned nearby.

"As you can see," said the professor as he motioned for the boys to come closer, "I have unblocked that doorway. Come with me, but I warn you: If you feel a bit queasy, there's good reason—this is the gateway to yesterday."

After a brief hesitation the boys followed the professor through the second archway. Somewhere in the gloom the professor found a switch, and when he clicked it, three bare bulbs near the ceiling came on. The boys gasped. They were standing in what looked for all the world like an old-fashioned subway station. On the right was a raised platform with a funny little wooden ticket booth, and directly before them, mounted on a pair of rusty tracks, was a green-and-red trolley car. The railing on the rear platform still glimmered faintly with gold paint, and on the side of the car was a rusting metal sign. The flaking silver letters said ALL OUR YESTERDAYS.

"Oh my gosh!" said Johnny, and his hand flew to his mouth. Then, as he looked beyond the car, his awe gave way to disappointment. The tracks ran a little way and ended at a blank wall of granite blocks.

The professor grinned. "Doesn't look like the trolley is going anywhere, does it?" he said, walking over to the car and running a finger along the dusty rail. "That, however, is where you're wrong. The man who lived here before me used the trolley to go to— but I'll tell you about that in a minute. First I just want you two to have a look around. Enjoy yourselves."

Johnny climbed into the car and walked up and down the narrow, aisle. He sat on the wicker seats and tried to read the dusky advertisements that were mounted above the windows. Meanwhile Fergie vaulted onto the platform and peered into the ticket booth. He saw a roll of faded pink tickets and a conductor's metal punch. Gritty dust lay over everything, and the shells of dead insects were curled here and there on the shelf inside the booth. As the boys poked and peered, the professor hummed and lit another cigarette. He seemed to be perfectly relaxed and at home in this strange place.

Fergie turned and stared at him. "Did... did the guy who lived here before you build this whole shebang?" he asked in an awestruck tone.

The professor shook his head. "No," he said. "He did not. Back around 1892 there was a plan to build a subway in Duston Heights. It was a pretty crackbrained idea, because the city doesn't need such a thing, and never did. However, the contractors did build a few hundred yards of tunnel and this charming station, but after a while the money ran out and they walled up the thing and forgot about it. Later when my friend the old historian moved into this house, he knocked down the wall between his cellar and this station, and then he decided to do a few, ah,
alterations
on the trolley car."

"Alterations?" asked Fergie. "What do you mean?"

The professor looked very smug, as he always did when he knew something that others didn't know. "Come down here, Byron," he said, motioning toward the trolley car, "and I'll show you what I mean."

Fergie jumped down off the platform and followed the professor up the steel steps into the little car. They walked to the front, where they found Johnny poring over a very strange set of controls. There were brass levers
and knobs and wheels, and set in the leather-covered dashboard of the car were four tiny fan-shaped windows. Over one window the word day was stamped in gilt letters. Another was labeled MONTH, and still another said YEAR. The farthest window on the right was labeled place. All the little windows were white and blank. Mounted before the controls was a metal swivel chair upholstered in tufted black plush.

"Pretty weird, eh?" asked the professor.

"It sure is," replied Johnny. "But how does it work?"

The professor sighed and twiddled one of the brass wheels. "As you may have guessed," he said casually, "this is a time machine. It isn't a terribly good one, because old Townsend—that was his name, Aurelian Townsend—had to use the equipment that was available to him in those days: vacuum tubes, the magneto from a model-T Ford, and batteries from a Reo electric car, and the spring-wound mechanism from an old Regina Polyphon music box. Not very efficient stuff to work with, if you're trying to leap the boundaries of time and space. Luckily, however, old Townsend managed to find the Holes of Time."

Johnny was startled. "What are those?"

Fergie shrugged. "Aah, it's just something that he made up. Look, none of this is gonna work—you can bet your bottom dollar on that. He's just tryin' to take us both for a ride."

The professor turned and glared at Fergie over the top of his glasses. "I'll take you for a ride, all right!" he said through his teeth. "But it won't be the ride that you're expecting, and when you get back you'll realize that I have
not
been talking through my hat. Unless, of course, you would prefer to go upstairs and wait for us to return."

Fergie set his jaw and looked grim. "If this piece of tin is goin' anywhere," he muttered sullenly, "then I'm goin' along too. Okay, get it moving. I'll just sit and wait." He slumped into a seat and folded his arms.

The professor sighed and shook his head. Then he asked Johnny to get out of the driver's seat. Johnny did, and the professor sat down at the controls. He twirled wheels and twiddled knobs and pulled levers, and soon the fan-shaped windows were glowing yellow. They reminded Johnny of the dial on the Atwater Kent radio in his grandparents' parlor. "These holes in time," the professor went on as he adjusted a knob, "occur for no reason in certain places. One of them is in the upper story of a three-hundred-year-old house in Topsfield, Massachusetts. But since nothing interesting ever happened there, the hole is not of much use. There's another hole in a cave at the bottom of the Atlantic, about two miles deep. But you'd need a lot of fancy equipment to visit
that
hole, so I suppose we can pass it up.
A-a-and
there's another hole at the temple of Abu Simbel in Upper Egypt, and still another in the crypt of a medieval church in London. But we are not going to any of these places."

"So where
are
we going?" Fergie snapped irritably.

"Be quiet and watch!" the professor said, and he fiddled with more dials. A loud electrical humming filled the air, and the boys noticed that the air inside the car was shimmering. The windows went dark, and they seemed to be hurtling forward at a tremendous speed. The car jolted and bumped, and the boys had to cling to the nickel-plated handles that were mounted next to their seats. The professor clutched the sides of his swivel chair, which vibrated madly, and still the wild ride went on. Johnny was afraid he would get sick, and he remembered the time when he had thrown up after riding the Tilt-A-Whirl at the local fairgrounds. Still the car jolted, and the humming noise got louder. Then, with a loud, long, ear-piercing screech of metal, the car began to slow down. Outside the windows of the trolley car, endless walls of stone seemed to be hurtling past. With a shuddering bump the car stopped, and Fergie was pitched forward onto the floor.