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ambulance is an ambulance. When one answers a ten fifty-four, who asks questions?’
    I reached for a cigarette and stiffened my nerves with a quick drag. ‘Has it been found yet?’
    â€˜Yes, the same night. They left it parked outside the Manhattan General.’ She borrowed my cigarette for a couple of puffs then put it back between my lips. ‘I’m going to make some coffee.’
    I followed her mechanically into the kitchen. My mind was in overdrive. Figuring all the angles. ‘Do you realise what this means?’
    She nodded as she put some beans into the grinder. ‘I think so. But go ahead and tell me anyway.’
    For once I had to force the words out. ‘It means that – that someone must have known he was – coming.’
    â€˜Exactly,’ said Miriam. ‘The question is – who?’
    Who indeed? I had been besieged with questions all week and now more were crowding into my overworked brain. How could they have known? What was their role in all this? Where had they come from? Were they people like us, or had they come from beyond time and space as he had? Why, of all the hospitals in New York, had they chosen the Manhattan General? And did whoever ‘they’ were, know about us? I can at least tell you one thing for sure. When something like this is dropped in your lap at one a.m. in the morning, all carnal thoughts fly out the window.

Chapter 2
    The following Saturday, I drove up to Sleepy Hollow. On top of the metaphysical turmoil created by the mystery man at the hospital, it had been a pretty heavy week at the office and on the back seat of the Porsche I had a caseful of papers that I’d promised myself I’d read through by Monday morning. Miriam was working but hoped to make it up-state on Sunday after lunching with her parents in Scarsdale. Normally, I’d have stayed in my apartment. I think the real reason I left town was because I wanted a moment of relative peace and quiet to reflect on what had happened. At least I like to think that was the reason. That I had a choice, and not because it had all been worked out for me.
    Around five in the afternoon I was sitting at my work table in the living-room, reading through an inch-thick deposition on a patent infringement case I was preparing. I glanced idly out of the window towards the trees that mark the western edge of my modest spread. Between the house and the trees is this big open stretch of grass. Miriam likes to call it the lawn, but to me it’s only lawn when it looks like astro-turf. This is grass. At least some of it is. My neighbour took great pleasure in telling me that most of the green bits were clover. Anyway … there I was, gazing through the window, thinking that (a) I would have to get the mower fixed, and (b) that it was time for another cup of coffee. I mention this because I am absolutely certain about what I did or, to be more precise, did not see.
    As there were only thirty pages of the deposition left, I decided to finish it off first. I read through a couple more pages then looked out of the window again. And there was this guy in a pale brown robe and white head-dress walking across the grass towards the house. Now ithad taken no more than a minute to read those two pages. There was no way he could have got to where he was unless he had stepped out of thin air. I sat there, glued to my chair, and watched him come closer. Then I saw the bandages and knew I was in trouble. It was our friend from the Manhattan General …
    Was I frightened? Yes, a little. I think what I really felt at that particular moment was a sense of wonder. Amazement. I just could not believe that this was really happening to me.
    I used a slip of paper to mark my place in the deposition and went out on to the porch. I saw him pause to look at my car before he came on up the steps through the rock garden to the house. It was the same guy all right but he looked a lot better than he had