Time Tunnel by Murray Leinster Page A

in the balance at one end of the time-tunnel, where Napoleon reigned. At the other end the survival of the human race was in question. The tunnel could have been used to adjust both situations. But it was actually used to keep a shop going.
    M. Dubois packed his stock-in-trade into saddlebags under the eyes of Carroll and of Harrison. He had already changed to a costume suited to another time.
    “I notice,” said Carroll, in the tone of one who politely tries to make conversation, “that you specialize now. At first you carried an assortment of products through the tunnel. Now you seem to take only perfume.”
    M. Dubois said depressedly, yet with a certain pride:
    “These perfumes have no competition where I market them. I have a business connection and it is mere routine to deliver these and collect for them. These are the most valuable objects I can transport with strict legality.”
    “Ah,” said Carroll pleasantly, “then as a member of the firm I must be getting rich!”
    Dubois said painedly:
    “Madame, my sister, considers that if the business is permitted to go on as it has done, some security for one’s old age should be possible. But only if the business goes on as it has!”.
    Carroll shook his head. Dubois strapped up the second saddlebag.
    “Georges,” said Carroll. “You are a very efficient man in your way. Granted that you have a particular correspondent in Paris, who buys all you take to him, you must have an arrangement with someone in St. Jean-sur-Seine for horses and so on. And they simply must consider you a smuggler! Has it occurred to you that some day they may decide to rob you? You couldn’t very well protest. Not to Napoleon’s police!”
    Dubois said indignantly:
    “But I do not deal with law-breakers! My arrangements are with persons of discretion and reputation!”
    “But you wouldn’t tell me who they are?”
    M. Dubois looked appalled. He did not answer.
    “My poor Georges!” said Carroll kindly. “My wife, your sister, rules us both intolerably! She sends you back to eighteen-four when you have not rested from your last journey! She is prostrated because I want to use some of my own well-earned money, and takes elaborate precautions so I cannot get so much more as would buy me Caporals! What do we get out of this slavery of ours?”
    Dubois said with dignity:
    “I do not bandy words with you. I do what is appropriate. What is estimable. I have great confidence in the judgment of my sister. Her advice has invariably been correct And I find that so long as I behave with circumspection, following the ordinary rules of prudence, there is nothing to fear in an occasional journey to—ah—the place where I conduct business.”
    He picked up the two saddlebags.
    “ M’sieur ,” this was to Harrison, “I trust you will continue your discussions with M. Carroll and come to a desirable conclusion.”
    He opened the crude door in the dining room. As it opened, there was a flash of light from the farther end. A roll of thunder followed immediately. The muted sound of rain could be heard. Air came into the dining-room from the tunnel and the year 1804. It was cool, wet air. It smelled of rain and green stuff and freshness.
    “Georges,” said Carroll, “is it wise for you to go out into such a storm?”
    The sky outside the cottage was full of stars, but thunder again rumbled faintly through the time-tunnel.
    “That,” said Dubois reprovingly, “is one of the inconveniences of business. But no one will be about the streets. I should be well on my way before daybreak.”
    He went heavily into the time-tunnel, carrying his saddlebags. Carroll grimaced. When Dubois had vanished he said almost sympathetically:
    “He is not altogether absurd, this brother-in-law of mine. Except with his sister, he is even valiant in his own way. If she had married a Landru, who would have cut her throat, or if he had married a woman able to defend him from my wife, he might have been a poet or a