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attention. When Harrison finished he said, distastefully, one abrasive phrase in pure Middle-Western English. It indicated that he was less than happy about what he’d just heard.
    Then he said cagily:
    “But why do you bring this news to me?”
    Harrison stammered. Pepe spoke. He explained apologetically that the shop of Carroll, Dubois et Cie had aroused his interest. He’d taken Harrison there. He’d met Ma’mselle Valerie…
    “Oh yes,” said Carroll. “Nice girl. Pretty, too!”
    Ma’mselle Valerie had known Harrison when they both were children. Telling him the news of her family, she’d mentioned Carroll, her uncle by marriage. Then Harrison spoke awkwardly:
    “And I’d started my research because of something you’d said in class, sir. You said that the state of the cosmos at any given instant was merely the probability which under the circumstances had a value of one. And of course that implied all sorts of other probabilities which had cancelled each other out, so that a close examination of history ought to show some anomalies, things which once were fact, but whose factuality had been cancelled.”
    “I said that?” demanded Carroll.
    “It follows from the first statement,” explained Harrison. “It was interesting. So when I got a chance to go after a Ph.D. I started to do research on a well-documented period of history. I picked the Napoleonic era and started to look for events which at the time had really happened, but later on turned out not to have happened at all.”
    Carroll shook his head, frowning.
    “I shouldn’t have said it,” he said irritably. “It wasn’t good sense. It wasn’t even so, though I thought it was. A fact is a fact! But there are some damned queer ones! Go on!”
    Harrison explained his painstaking search through the personal papers of historical characters. He repeated that somebody named de Bassompierre had passed on facts that nobody could possibly have known at the time.
    “Wait a minute!” said Carroll darkly. “I wonder…”
    He strode out of the room. He practically filled the doorway as he passed through it. A moment later his voice boomed in another part of the cottage. He sounded angry. A woman’s voice joined his. There was a first-rate squabble. It ended with Carroll shouting. A door slammed, and he came back. The woman’s voice continued, shrill and muffled.
    “It wasn’t my brother-in-law,” said Carroll irritably. “He swears he didn’t peddle such information. He wouldn’t have the brains to do it anyhow. And God knows my wife wouldn’t think of it! This is the devil of a mess!”
    Harrison suddenly felt numb. He’d been clinging desperately to the hope that his discoveries were deceptions. He’d been lured to the shop by that hope, and then to St. Jean-sur-Seine and to this present place and moment. Carroll’s history had let him hope that it would all turn out to be eccentricity, or mild lunacy, or something equally reassuring. But Carroll took him seriously! Carroll did not think him insane! Instead, he accepted the incredible statements without question and had moved to find out if the plump M. Dubois in the antique costume was responsible for the facts of which Harrison had told him.
    “I—I—” said Harrison. Then he was unhappily silent.
    “It’s the devil!” said Carroll, scowling. “Using the thing was against my better judgement to begin with! I was an ass to. I was an ass from the beginning! But how the devil…”
    Pepe stirred. It seemed to Harrison that Pepe was paler than ordinary.
    “Professor, sir,” asked Pepe unsteadily, “do you mean that these things we’ve been trying not to believe are—are not our delusions? It was very comforting to believe that I was slightly cracked. You see, this de Bassompierre…”
    “Delusions?” said Carroll irritably. “Unfortunately, no! You aren’t cracked that I can see. But who the devil has committed the insanity that I can see? Who else listened to my lectures