By now I was beginning to think a little more coherently. From his last remark I thought I had him. “How can you possibly know about Napoleon, not to mention Mark Twain or the Carson show, if this is, as you say, only the early part of the first century? Aren’t you a little ahead of yourself?”

The old man patted my shoulder approvingly. Then he proceeded to lecture me as patiently as a kindly professor would deal with his favorite pupil. “There are a handful of us, too few perhaps, who have been given the power to break through the boundaries of space and time whenever it is considered necessary to do so in the interest of truth. For us, neither the past nor the present nor the future actually exists. Instead, there is a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future.”

“That sounds like something from Saint Augustine’s Confessions.”

He patted my shoulder again. “Very good, Matthias! The range of your knowledge is more than I dared to expect. Aurelius Augustinus is one of us. In his own way he has assisted many of the world’s finest minds in their struggles with the darkness of uncertainty for almost sixteen centuries. He and I are two of the older messengers, but we still manage to light our share of candles.”

Messengers? Candles? Sixteen centuries? Was I hallucinating? Had I gone completely mad after the “Tonight Show”? Did someone slip a drug into my scotch at that bar? Or had I just slipped over the edge of reality into a world of biblical apparitions—ghosts I had struggled so long to capture on the pages of my unfinished manuscript that they had now captured me? Out of habit I reached for a cigarette, but my hand froze in midair.

Joseph chuckled. “Remember, son, it is A.D. 36. Even the Indians in your own hemisphere will not acquire the vice of smoking tobacco for another seventy years or so. And your cigarettes will not evolve from cigars for at least fifteen hundred years. Unfortunately, my powers do have their limitations. I am only able to transpose living tissue back and forth through time and space. Your cigarettes—Golden lights, I believe they are called—as well as your clothing and valuables, are all back in your room at the Century Plaza.”

“Holy cow! What’s going to happen when they find all my stuff in that room and no trace of me? And my wife? I almost forgot Kitty. She’ll be frantic!”

“Do not concern yourself with such matters, Matthias. Time can be made to retreat or advance or even remain stationary. If you are fortunate, you might be able to fulfill your wish, find the truth you seek here, and still be returned to your hotel in time for breakfast. Unless …”

“Unless what?”