Part 2 (1/2)

Policemen started shooting. They piled out of their cars. The street was echoing with yells and shouts. I was terrified. I exerted an enormous effort of will and mustered every atom of energy at my command. I sent a full-power heat blast up the street. I have never marshalled a bigger blast, even in the contests at our training school in Area Twelve.

Fifteen automobiles burst into flames. Twenty or thirty men and women fell screaming to the sidewalk, their clothes burning. A flock of roasted pigeons fell smoking out of the sky. A black cloud condensed over the street, and a forked tongue of lightning flashed from it.

Every woman within a quarter of a mile felt the hot electrical force of the male principle. I dived into the Times Square subway entrance and sprinted down the stairs. There was a men's washroom at the end of the platform.

I heard the wild tumult of pursuit behind me. I pushed open the door.

A man was there was.h.i.+ng his hands. I strangled him, tore off his clothes, and put them on myself. Hastily, I twisted my face about so that I looked like an entirely different person. I opened the door and started walking slowly back down the platform.

A platoon of policemen with drawn guns was sprinting down the platform towards me. They were followed by a yelling mob of civilians which included hundreds of women. They swept by me. I was safe, but s.h.i.+vering with fear, Excellency. I was spent. I couldn't have mustered up a heat ray strong enough to warm the end of my nose.

I stumbled around the corner and away from that neighborhood. Then I went into the first restaurant I saw, and gorged. After a five dollar plank steak, three gla.s.ses of milk, one gla.s.s of beer, and apple pie a la mode I was still ravenous; still energy-minus.

I went a block up the street, into another restaurant, and bolted down exactly the same meal again. Strength started to flow slowly through my veins. After one more meal in still another restaurant, my confidence returned.

The newspapers handled the affair with amazing restraint. The facts brought in by their reporters naturally sounded fantastic to the editors, so they rearranged them to ”make sense.” The reticence of the authorities, particularly the F.B.I., helped to convert what might have caused a national panic into just an unusually spectacular chase after an escaped murderer. The burning cars were laid to hooliganism on the part of the bystanders. The people who got burned, so the stories explained, were hurt by the gasoline explosions of the burning cars. The ma.s.s hysteria of the women was caused by the excitement. The papers said that the steel necktie worn by my stooge at the theatre had to be cut off by a water-cooled electric saw. They said that however I did it, it was a clever trick.

The next few days, Your Excellency, were the most difficult of my stay here. I knew that the full power of not only the F.B.I., but of the whole national government, would be concentrated to destroy me. I had to hide--hide, and get a new start.

The money in the pockets of my borrowed suit didn't last long. I couldn't possibly risk presenting myself as a strong man or a magician again. I became a ditch digger and a day laborer, and finally drifted into the professional wrestling racket. Many of the top wrestling promoters live in Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C. I rented a little white clapboard house with green shutters, out in the country beyond Silver Springs, Maryland.

I was careful to keep myself a second-rate wrestler. This was exasperating, Your Excellency. At any time I could have beaten three or four of their best wrestlers simultaneously. Everything was fixed so I won and lost when they told me to. We even practiced how we were going to win or lose before each match. I was very obedient and very scared.

I did everything _not_ to attract attention. I started to use the male principle again, but so sparingly that everything looked natural.

I tried to fit into the life of the community and become an American.

I joined a Bowling League. I learned to play a game called ”Canasta.”

I got to be great friends with a man named Nat Brown, an automobile mechanic. He lived with his extraordinarily beautiful wife, Helene, in a house about a half mile away.

The Browns used to ask me to dinner, and I would meet their friends. I grew very fond of them. We would sit around and drink beer and play cards and talk until late at night about politics and philosophy and love and everything else on earth. It was by far the swiftest part of my education in America, living with these lighthearted, charming people who obviously liked me.

The only disadvantage was the problem raised by my increasing fondness for Helene Brown. She was a vivid incarnation of the female principle, and yet I knew I must not touch her. I had a constant battle with myself to maintain the disinterested relations.h.i.+p necessary to continuing with these people without complication.

Both Nat and Helene Brown used to come to see me wrestle whenever I had a match in Was.h.i.+ngton. Whether I won or lost we would go out and drink beer together. I would sometimes bring another girl along. More and more I started to feel like a real native American. A couple of close friends, Excellency, did a lot for your humble servant.

Three days ago I was riding along Connecticut Avenue in my new car.

When I stopped for a light, I saw a familiar face in the crowd crossing the street. It was the tall heavy man, the F.B.I. agent who had tracked me down and tried to capture me in the theatre the night of the big battle. I could sense the ma.s.s of metal carried under his left arm.

He was hurrying along with another man. When I saw who it was my blood froze in my veins. It was my neighbor, Nat Brown. He also had a ma.s.s of metal under his left arm.

It was clear to me then that, in spite of my precautions, the F.B.I.

had spotted me weeks ago. How, I do not know. Nat Brown was their surveillance agent.

I drove home immediately to finish this letter and get it off to you.

I may not be alive tomorrow. The launching apparatus is concealed in a tool shed about a half a mile behind the house. I am going to put down my recommendations and get this off immediately--before it's too late.

As I see it, Excellency, there are only four courses available to us: