The Alibi Machine

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McAllister left the party around eight o'clock.

"Out of tobacco," he told his host apologetically. The police, if they got that far, would discover that that had been a little white lie. There were other parties in Greenwich Village on a Saturday night, and he would be attending one in about, he estimated, twenty minutes.

He took the elevator down. There was a displacement booth in the lobby. He dropped a coin in the slot, smiling fleetingly at himself-he had almost forgotten to take coins- and dialled. A moment later he was outside his own penthouse door in Queens.

He had saved himself the time to let himself in, by leaving his briefcase under a potted plant earlier this evening. He tipped the pot, picked up the briefcase and stepped back into the booth. His conservative paper business suit made him look as if he had just come from work, and the briefcase completed the picture nicely.

He dialled three times. The first number took him to Kennedy International. The second to Los Angeles International. Long distance flicks required the additional equipment available only at what had once been airports: equipment to compensate for the difference in rotational velocity between different points on the Earth. The third number took him to Lucas Anderson's home in the high Sierras.

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