Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 12.djvu/63



LOOK like a tramp, Doris," I said. "Like a bum from the bowery."

We sat on a bench gazing out at the moonlit Hudson River with the glittering George Washington Bridge before us. I was dressed in a greasy tattered blue serge suit, a peaked cap pulled low over my eyes; no collar, and I hadn't shaved for four days. My name is Bob Manse. I'm a Shadow Newsman; my job is to ferret out undercover stuff. I was going to do some of that ferreting later on tonight.

Doris Blake didn't mind, how I looked because she was blind. Only yesterday the bandages had been removed from her eyes after an operation. She had been blind from birth. The surgeons had thought now that they could give her sight—and they had failed.

Her hand went out to touch my face, now as I joked about my looks. "Just the same. Bob—I—I do wish I could see you." She was smiling a twisted, pathetic little smile. And then she tried bravely to turn it into a whimsical grin. "That surgeon said I was born too soon. In a hundred years or so, science would be able to fix my eyes."

"Fine," I said. "We'll wait, Doris—gives us an excuse to live a long time There comes the Albany Night Line, just coming under the bridge."

Eyes of the blind. I had sworn I would be her eyes, for all the rest of our lives. We were engaged, planning to marry next year. She had wanted to break it, now that the operation had