Read Online Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson - Free Book Online

a hand-painted dish in its case-white with green and gold patterns and a pair of floating blue angels.
    Here's a photograph, taken in 1914, of a bus which picked up people from the trains and brought them to the hotel entrance.
    Here's the program for The Little Minister. Here's her photograph.
    I'm looking at it through a blur.
    There's an iron and another dish with a painting of the hotel on it. There's the telephone and hotel register and napkin ring and menu and something that looks like a printing press. I pass them by and walk along the corridor toward the stairway leading to the patio. I'm leaving everything behind to-
    Wait a second!
    � � �
    People stared at me as I raced across the patio. I didn't care. Nothing mattered but what I was doing. I even failed to open the lobby door for an old woman close behind me. I yanked the door open and plunged inside. I wanted to run across the lobby but controlled myself. Heartbeat clubbing at my chest, I walked across the lobby, strides as long as I could make them, and went up to the desk.
    "Yes, sir, can I help you?" asked the man.
    I tried to look and sound casual; normal anyway-casual was beyond me. "I wonder if I could speak to the manager?" I asked.
    "I'm sorry, he's in Florida right now."
    I stared at him. Was I to be defeated already?
    "Perhaps you'd like to speak to Mr. Lyons," said the man. "He's handling things until the manager gets back."
    I nodded quickly. "Please."
    He pointed toward an alcove to my left. I thanked him, moved there quickly, saw a door, and knocked on it. No one answered so I went inside.
    The office was empty, but to my right was another office with several people working in it. One of them, a secretary, came in. I asked her where Mr. Lyons was and she said he'd just stepped out but might return at any moment. She asked if she could help me.
    "Yes," I said. "I'm a television writer and I've been assigned to prepare a special program about the history of the hotel."
    I told her that I'd been to the Hall of History, the local library, and the main library in San Diego but had been unable to locate enough material and was at a standstill and needed assistance.
    "I thought, perhaps, you might have some material on the hotel's background in your files," I said.
    She said she thought they might but couldn't say for sure.
    Mr. Lyons could, however, since he'd worked for the hotel since he was fourteen when he started as an elevator operator.
    I nodded, smiled, and thanked her, and left the office. How could I wait to see Mr. Lyons when the need to find what I wanted was like a feeling of starvation? I walked across the lobby, sat on a chair, and stared at the office door, waiting for Mr. Lyons to come back; willing him to return. "Come on, come on," I murmured over and over.
    Finally, I couldn't stand it any longer and got up to return to the office. As I did, the secretary came out. When she saw me, she changed direction, and moved toward me. We seemed to approach each other with a dreamlike slowness. Then she was in front of me and telling me that, perhaps, the person I should talk to was Marcie Buckley, who worked in the Lawrence office (Lawrence is the man who, apparently, owns the hotel) and had prepared a short book entitled The Crown City's Brightest Gem, about the history of the hotel.
    She pointed the way to me, I thanked her, smiling (I think I smiled), and walked through the Promenade Room, up a small ramp, and opened a glass door. Inside the office was an old man and two women, one of them at a front desk, facing me.
    "I'd like to speak to Marcie Buckley," I said. The attractive young woman returned my look. "I'm Marcie Buckley," she told me.
    I smiled again, repeating my lie. Television special, research standstill, need for further information. Could she help me?
    She was nicer than I expected; certainly nicer than I merited. She pointed toward a desk at the rear of the office. It was piled with books and papers; hotel documents she'd