“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

By now I was shivering also. I think the temperature was around 45 degrees. Fred sat in one of the folding chairs and I hurried inside. I slid the kitchen window shut so he couldn’t call into Jane. She still sat at the card table, of course. “We’ve got a problem,” I said to her on my way to the closet. “I’ll tell you about it....” I grabbed my heavy corduroy coat. “We’ve got to call the police. I’ll be back in a minute.” I helped Fred put on my coat and bundled him up. He readily agreed to my offer of some hot tea or coffee. I went back in to put the water on the stove for heating. In all the visitors we’ve had, this one went the furthest, I thought, to the point I’d often wondered about: actually calling the police for help in handling someone. I didn’t want to call them, but had no choice. I fumbled around looking for their number (we hadn’t written it in the front of the book, as you’re supposed to). When finally I called on the speaker phone, the number rang four times by my count, and I began to wonder what we’d do if for some reason the police simply never answered. Did they work Saturday? Call the State Police, I thought. When someone did answer, I explained the situation. Whoever I talked to had evidently been questioned by someone also looking for us—if not Fred himself —but his description of the person, as being older and with white hair, didn’t match Fred’s appearance at all, so I didn’t press the point. (Later I wished I had.) But I hadn’t explained much of the situation when my caller said, “We’ll have someone up there right away.” I said we’d be waiting.

The water wasn’t hot yet. When I looked out on the back porch Fred was gone. The door was half open. I had instant visions of him wandering away, not really meaning to, but perhaps getting lost—and wearing my best coat. His bags sat there on the ramp Frank Longwell had made for Jane’s chair. A moment later Fred came back into view from in back of the garage. “I had to go to the bathroom,” he said, tightening the coat around him. He didn’t seem to be so cold now. I told him I’d called the police, and he nodded. “Fred means you and your wife no harm at all,” he said, speaking for Seth again. I told him I knew that. I still wanted to know what he was going to do when he’d left here.

I was just going back in after the hot drink when the dark-colored police car pulled up Holley Road and turned into the driveway. I waved to the officer driving. He was a youngish man with a mustache. He came inside the porch and I began to explain the situation to him as briefly as I could. “How did you get here?” he asked Fred. “I walked,” Fred answered. “Fred has read some of our books,” I said. “This is difficult to explain briefly, but he came here from Denver, he said, and he has no money, and nowhere to go when he leaves here. He’s given us those books and manuscripts” —I pointed to them, stacked up on the picnic table—“and he wants my wife to read them. I don’t have his address—”