“But the funny thing is, he couldn’t pick them up! He tried to pretend he had just dropped the first couple, but they rolled out of the bowl and right across the floor when he reached for them. And then he began to get frightened. He grabbed up his hat and his gloves and ran out.”
Then John Wiggins paused. He was looking down at Alice Wilson, and for the first time he really saw the change that had occurred in her.
“Why—why—” he said, “do you know, your hair is the same color as the coins?”
“Oh, it isn’t!” Miss Wilson protested, blushing scarlet at the first compliment a man had paid her in ten years.
“It is,” he insisted. “And you—you’re lovely, Alice. I never realized before how lovely. You’re as pretty as—as pretty as a picture!”
He looked down into her eyes, and without taking his gaze away, reached down and took her hands in his. He drew her up out of the chair, and still crimsoning with pleasure, Alice Wilson stood and faced him.
“Alice,” John Wiggins said, “Alice, I’ve known you for a long time, and I’ve been blind. I guess worry blinded me. Or I’d have seen long ago how beautiful you are and known what I’ve just realized. I know I’m not much of a success as a man but—but, Alice, would you be my wife?”
Alice Wilson gave a little sigh and rested her face against his shoulder so that he might not see the tears in her eyes. Happiness had mostly eluded her until now, but this moment more than made up for all the years that were past.
John Wiggins put his arms about her, and behind them the little god grinned and went busily on with his minting. . . .
Jacob Earl stamped into his library in his home and locked the door behind him, with fingers that shook a little.
Throwing his hat and stick down, with his gloves, onto a chair, he groped for a cigar in his desk and lit it, by sheer force of will striving to quell the inward agitation that was shaking him.
But—well, any man might feel shaken if he had put his hand down on a cold brass paperweight and had felt the thing twist in his grip as if alive, had felt a shock in his fingers like a sudden discharge of electricity, and then had seen the thing start to spout gold money.
Money—and Jacob Earl gazed down at his soft, plump white hands almost with fright—which had life in it. Because when he had tried to pick it up, it had eluded him. It had dodged.
Angrily he flung away his barely smoked cigar. Hallucinations! He’d been having a dizzy spell, or—or something. Or Wiggins had fixed up a trick to play on him. That was it, a trick!
The nerve of the man, giving him such a start! When he had finished with the little rabbit, he—he—
Jacob Earl did not quite formulate what he would do. But the mere thought of threatening somebody made him feel better. He’d decide later what retaliation he would make.
Right now, he’d get to work. He’d inventory his strong box. Nothing like handling hard, tangible possessions, like stocks and bonds and gold, to restore a man’s nerves when he felt shaky.
He spun the combination of his safe, swung open the heavy outer door, unlocked the inner door, and slid out first a weighty steel cash box locked by a massive padlock.
Weighty, because it held the one thing a man couldn’t have too much of—gold. Pure gold ingots, worth five hundred dollars each. Fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of them.
He’d had them since long before the government called in gold. And he was going to keep them, government or no. If he ever had to sell them, he’d claim they’d been forgotten, and found again by accident.
Jacob Earl flung open the lid of his gold cache. And his overly ruddy face turned a sudden pallid gray. Two of the ingots in the top layer were missing!
But no one could get into his safe. No one but himself. It wasn’t possible that a thief—
Then the gray of his face turned to ashen white. He stared, his breath caught in his throat. As he stared, a third ingot had vanished. Evaporated. Into thin air. As if an unseen hand had closed over it and snatched it away.
But it wasn’t possible! Such a thing couldn’t happen.
And then the fourth ingot vanished. Transfixed by rage and fright, he put his hands down on the remaining yellow bars and pressed with all his might.
But presently the fifth of his precious chunks of metal slipped away from beneath his very fingers into nothingness. One instant it was there, and he could feel it. Then—gone!
With a hoarse cry, Jacob Earl dropped the cash box. He stumbled across the room to his telephone, got a number.
“Doctor?” he gasped. “Doctor Norcross? This is Jacob Earl. I—I—”
Then he bethought himself. This couldn’t happen. This was madness. If he told anyone—
“Never mind, Doctor!” he blurted. “Sorry to have troubled you. It’s all right.”
He hung up. And sat there, all the rest of the day, sweat beading his brow, watching the shiny yellow oblongs that had fallen on the floor vanish one by one.
In another part of town, another hand crept toward the telephone—and drew back. Minerva Benson’s hand. Minerva Benson had discovered her deformity almost the instant she had arisen, late that morning. The stiff, lifeless face affixed to the back of her head now. Thin, vicious, twisted, the features of a harpy.
With trembling fingers she touched it again, in a wild hope that it might have vanished. Then she huddled closer on the end of the sofa in the darkened room, whose door was locked, blinds drawn.
She couldn’t telephone. Because no one must see her like this. No one. Not even a doctor. . . .
And in her tiny, spinsterish home Netty Peters also crouched, and also feared to telephone.
Feared, lest that strange, dreadful second voice begin to clack and rattle in her throat when she tried to talk, tried to ask Doctor Norcross to come.
Crouched, and felt her throat with fingers like frantic claws. And was sure she could detect something moving in her throat like a thing alive.
Mrs. Edward Norton moved along the tree-shaded streets toward the downtown section of Locustville with all the self-conscious pride of a frigate entering a harbor under full sail.
She was a full-bodied woman—well built, she phrased it—and expensively dressed. Certainly the best-dressed woman in town, as befitted her position as leader of Locustville’s social life and the most influential woman in town.
And today she was going to use her influence. She was going to have Janice Avery discharged as teacher in the high school.
Distinctly she had seen the young woman smoking in her room, the previous evening, as she happened to be driving by. A woman who should be an example to the children she taught actually—
Mrs. Norton sailed along, indignation high in her. She had called first at Minerva Benson’s home. Minerva was a member of the school board. But Minerva had said she was sick, and refused to see her.
Then she had tried Jacob Earl, the second member of the board. And he had been ill too.
It was odd.
Now she was going directly to the office of Doctor Norcross. He was head of the school board. Not the kind of man she approved of for the position, of course—
Mrs. Norton paused. For the past few moments she had been experiencing a strange sensation of puffiness, of lightness. Was she ill too? Could she be feeling lightheaded or dizzy?
But no, she was perfectly normal. Just a moment’s upset perhaps, from walking too fast.
She continued onward. What had she been thinking? Oh, yes, Doctor Norcross. An able physician, perhaps, but his wife was really quite—well, quite a dowdy. . . .
Mrs. Norton paused again. A gentle breeze was blowing down the street and she—she was being swayed from side to side by it. Actually, it was almost pushing her off balance!
She took hold of a convenient lamppost. That stopped her from swaying. But—
She stared transfixed at her fingers. They were swollen and puffy.
Her rings were cutting into them painfully. Could she have some awful—
With her free hand she began to pat herself, at first with puzzlement, then with terror. Her clothing was as tight on her as the skin of a sausage. It had shrunk! It was cutting off her circulation!
No, it hadn’t. That wasn’t true. She was growing! Puffing up! Filling out her clothes like a slowly expanding balloon.
Her corset was confining her diaphragm, making it impossible to breathe. She couldn’t get air into her lungs.
She had some awful disease. That was what came of living in a dreadful, dirty place like Locustville, among backward, ignorant people who carried germs and—
At that instant the laces of Mrs. Norton’s corsets gave way. She could actually feel herself swell, bloat, puff out. Her arms were queer and hard to handle. The seams of her dress were giving way.
The playful breeze pushed her, and she swayed back and forth like a midnight drunk staggering homeward.
Her fingers slipped from the lamppost.
And she began to rise slowly, ponderously into the air, like a runaway balloon.
Mrs. Edward Norton screamed. Piercingly. But her voice seemed lost, a thin wail that carried hardly twenty yards. This was unthinkable. This was impossible!
But it was happening.
Now she was a dozen feet above the sidewalk. Now twenty. And at that level she paused, spinning slowly around and around, her arms flopping like a frightened chicken’s wings, her mouth opening and closing like a feeding goldfish’s, but no sounds coming forth.
If anyone should see her now! Oh, if anyone should see her!
But no one did. The street was quite deserted. The' houses were few, and set well back from the street. And the excitement downtown, the herd of strange ponies that all day had been kicking up their heels, as Henry Jones and his volunteer assistants tried to pen them up, had drawn every unoccupied soul in Locust-ville.
Mrs. Norton, pushed along by the gentle breeze, began to drift slowly northward toward the town limits.
Tree branches scraped her and ripped her stockings as she clutched unavailingly at them. A crow, attracted by the strange spectacle, circled around her several times, emitted a raucous squawk that might have been amusement, and flew off.
A stray dog, scratching fleas in the sunshine, saw her pass overhead and followed along underneath for a moment, barking furiously.
Mrs. Norton crimsoned with shame and mortification. Oh, if anyone saw her!
But if no one saw her, no one could help her. She did not know whether to pray for someone to come along or not. She was unhurt. Perhaps nothing worse was going to happen.
But to be sailing placidly through the air, twenty feet above the street, puffed up like a balloon!
The breeze had brought her out to a district marked for subdivision, but still vacant. Fruit trees grew upon the land. The playful wind, shifting its quarter, altered her course. In a moment she was drifting past the upper branches of gnarled old apple trees, quite hidden from the street.
Her clothes were torn, her legs and arms scratched; her hair was straggling down her back. And her indignation and fear of being seen began to give way to a sensation of awful helplessness. She, the most important woman in Locustville, to be blowing around among a lot of old fruit trees for crows to caw at and dogs to bark at and—
Mrs. Norton gasped. She had just risen another three feet.
With that she began to weep.
The tears streamed down her face. All at once she felt humble and helpless and without a thought for her dignity or her position. She just wanted to get down.
She just wanted to go home and have Edward pat her shoulder and say “There, there,” as he used to— a long time ago—while she had a good cry on his shoulder.
She was a bad woman, and being punished for it. She had been puffed up with pride, and this was what came of it. In the future, if ever she got down safely, she’d know better.
As if influenced by the remorseful thoughts, she began to descend slowly. Before she was aware of it, she had settled into the upper branches of a cherry tree, scaring away a flock of indignant robins.
And there she caught.
She had quite a lot of time in which to reflect before she saw Janice Avery swinging past along a short cut from the school to her home, and called to her.
Janice Avery got her down. With the aid of Bill Morrow, who was the first person she could find when she ran back to the school to get aid.
Bill was just getting into his car to drive out to the football field, where he was putting the school team through spring practice, when she ran up; and at first he did not seem to understand what she was saying.
As a matter of fact, he didn’t. He was just hearing her voice—a voice that was cool and sweet and lovely, like music against a background of distant silver bells.
Then, when he got it, he sprang into action.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “Mrs. Norton stuck up a tree picking cherries? I can’t believe it.”
But he got a ladder from the school and brought it, gulping at the sight of the stout, tearful woman caught in the crotch of the cherry tree.
A few moments later they had her down. Mrs. Norton made no effort to explain beyond the simple statement she had first made to Janice.
“I was picking cherries and I just got stuck.”
Wild as it was, it was better than the truth.
Bill Morrow brought his car as close as he could and Janice hurried her out to it, torn, scratched, bedraggled, red-eyed. They got her in without anyone seeing and drove her home.
Mrs. Norton sobbed out a choked thanks and fled into the house, to weep on the shoulders of her surprised husband.
Bill Morrow mopped his forehead and looked at Janice Avery. She wasn’t pretty, but—well, there was something in her face. Something swell. And her voice. A man could hear a voice like that all his life and not grow tired of it.
“Lord!” he exclaimed, as he slid behind the wheel of his car. “And Betty Norton is going to look just like that someday. Whew! Do you know, I’m a fool. I actually once thought of— But never mind. Where can I take you?”
He grinned at her, and Janice Avery smiled back, little happy lines springing into life around the corners of her lips and her eyes.
“Well,” she began, as the wide-shouldered young man kicked the motor into life, “you have to get to practice—”
“Practice is out!” Bill Morrow told her with great firmness, and let in the clutch. “We’re going someplace and talk!”
She sat back, content.
VI
The sun was setting redly as Dr. Norcross closed his office and swung off homeward with a lithe step.
It had been a strange day. Very strange. Wild ponies had been running through the town since morning, madly chased by the usually somnolent Henry Jones. From his window he had seen into the bookstore across the street and distinctly perceived John Wiggins and Alice Wilson embracing.
Then there had been that abortive phone call from an obviously agitated Jacob Earl. And he had positively seen Mrs. Luke Hawks going past in a brand-new car, with a young man at the wheel who seemed to be teaching her to drive. Whew!
There would be a lot to tell his wife tonight.
His reflections were cut short as he strode past Henry Jones’s backyard, which lay on his homeward shortcut route.
A crowd of townsfolk were gathered about the door in the fence around the yard, and Dr. Norcross could observe others in the house, peering out the windows.
Henry and Jake Harrison, mopping their faces with fatigue, stood outside peering into the yard through the cautiously opened doorway. And over the fence itself, he was able to see the tossing heads of many ponies, while their squeals cut the evening air.
“Well, Henry”—that was Martha, who came around the corner of the house and pushed through the crowd about her husband—“you’
ve rounded up all the horses all right. But how’re you going to pay for the damage they did today? Now you’ll have to go to work, in spite of yourself. Even if they aren’t good for anything else they’ve accomplished that!”
There was an excitement on Henry’s face Dr. Norcross had never seen there before.
“Sure, Martha, sure,” he agreed. “I know I’ll have to pay off the damage. But Jake and me, we’ve got plans for these hooved jackrabbits. Know what we’re going to do?”
He turned, so all of the gathered crowd could hear his announcement.
“Jake and me, we’re going to use that land of Jake’s south of town to breed polo ponies!” he declared. “Yes, sir, we’re going to cross these streaks of lightning with real polo ponies. We’re gonna get a new breed with the speed of a whippet, the endurance of a mule, and the intelligence of a human.
“Anybody who seen these creatures skedaddle around town today knows that when we get a polo pony with their blood in it developed, it’ll be something! Yes, sir, something! I wish—
“No I don’t! I don’t wish anything! Not a single, solitary thing! I’m not gonna wish for anything ever again, either!”
Norcross grinned. Maybe Henry had something there.
Then, noting that the sun had just vanished, he was home.
Up in his room, Danny Norcross woke groggily from a slumber that had been full of dreams. Half asleep still, he groped for and found the little piece of ivory he had kept beside him ever since he had fallen asleep the night before.
His brow wrinkled. He had been on the stair, listening to the grown-ups talk. They had said a lot of queer things. About horses, and money, and pictures. Then he had gotten back in bed. And played with his bit of ivory for a while. Then he had had a funny thought, and sort of a wish—
The wish that had passed through his mind, as he had been falling asleep, had been that all the things Dad and Mom and the others had said would come true, because it would be so funny if they did.
So he had wished that just for one day, maybe, all Henry Jones’ wishes would be horses, and money would stick to Luke Hawks’ fingers, and Jacob Earl would touch something that would coin money for somebody else for a change.
Young Witches & Warlocks Page 5