The Collected Stories

by Earl

  “The curse!” Aldic emphasized.

  “Oh no, sor! Please!” Superstition won. “What—”

  He broke off as a pedestrian bore down on them. In one swift gesture, the policeman slipped Aldic into his coat pocket, and whistled tunelessly till the person passed. Boro had safely huddled behind a leg.

  Aldic straightened out his rumpled shirt as the big but gentle hand once again held him as on a platform.

  “What would yez have me do, sor?” the policeman asked, now irrevocably a fellow-conspirator with his little charge.

  “I want directions,” Aldic demanded, “to get to a certain address—” He gave it.

  “Your wings—” suggested the policeman respectfully, half turning the mannikin to look.

  “It pleases me to use your transportation, crude as it is,” Aldic lied magnificently to cancel the superstition. “Which subway, for instance. Answer me!”

  “Yes, little sor! Well, you’ll be after taking the Eighth Avenue subway. Then—” The policeman gave explicit directions.

  Aldic nodded. “The Fairy Queen will reward you for this deed. But if you tell a soul you have seen us—the curse! Now put me down and turn away. It is not well for you to see, as we vanish from mortal sight.”

  PLACED on the sidewalk, Aldic grabbed Boro’s hand and scampered for the curb. They ran along it. When they looked back, the policeman had just turned around, but too late to see them. He stood for a moment, as though asking himself a silent question regarding the episode’s reality, then moved off, scratching his head.

  “What fools these Big Ones be!” Aldic said, as his distant relative Puck before him had first said, centuries before.

  The memorized directions ringing in his ears, Aldic led the bewildered Boro several blocks along, hugging shadows when there were eyes to see. Then into a subway kiosk, down stairs, and under a turnstile to the train platform. Human eyes might have seen them, as the two mannikins crossed clear stretches, if they had thought to look down rather than at their own eye-level. Aldic used every advantage of shadow and niche with masterful forethought.

  A sign said: “Uptown express.”

  The train was long in coming. Boro paled as the mighty ten-car juggernaut rumbled up, to stop with creaks and hissings. Preoccupied Big Ones stepped off and on. The doors hissed shut. Aldic pulled Boro forward and they leaped to a small open platform between cars, as the train started.

  If the ride in the car had seemed exciting, this to Boro was heartstopping, for he saw concrete walls rushing by no more than a foot away. The noises alone were terrifying, to one used to the solitude of deep forests. The train ground to a halt at station after station, and kept thundering on and on.

  “We aren’t crossing half of Earth,” Aldic smilingly informed Boro. “This is all one city. Seven million of the Big Ones live here, in an area smaller than your tribe’s hunting ground.”

  “The Big Ones are mad,” Boro decided, giving up trying to conceive how many finger-countings equaled seven million.

  At the station labeled “181st St.”, they left the train and scuttled up to open air. Aldic took his bearings from the hanging lights of a bridge spanning the Hudson. George Washington Bridge, the policeman had called it.

  One street down and several over they went. Aldic saw a street sign saying “St. Nicholas Ave.”, named after one of their race, of centuries before, who had made toys for the children of the Big Ones. The next street was Audubon. Aldic followed its curb. Finally they peeped from behind a tree that seemed out of place in this steel and stone world. An apartment building held the number “87.”

  “That’s it,” Aldic said. “We’re going in.”

  “Going in?” Boro protested. “We’ll be trapped!”

  “We take our chances,” admitted Aldic. “But we have two things on our side—smallness and wits.”

  “Is that the only place we can get this—this money we have come for?”

  “No.” Aldic smiled, as though enjoying a future joke. “But the most appropriate.”

  “What fools we be!” Boro suddenly said. “Risking our necks, and the safety of our people—for what? Why are we doing it, Aldic?”

  “Because a friend among the Big Ones outweighs risks.”

  Aldic sighed heavily. “But mostly, I think, out of defiance to the Big Ones. Our people’s spirit lives on the sagas of ventures against our unnamed masters who do not even know we exist. . . .” Boro nodded slowly. He remembered the ceaseless warnings of his childhood, to fear the Big Ones. And then, like a light in darkness, the tales of exploits under their very feet. The Big Ones, too, yearned and strove for liberty, even a shadow of it.

  Together they strode forward, to complete a saga that would warm their people’s hearts for generations to come. The apartment-hotel loomed as one of the most impenetrable strongholds of the Big Ones. To get in—and out—would be adventure supreme.

  CHAPTER IX

  An Adventure in Cat-Taming

  THE only entrance to the big apartment building was a revolving door. Aldic peered cautiously through the glass partitions into the lobby beyond. At this late hour, only the night telephone operator was there, dozing with his back to the doorway.

  “Push!” Aldic commanded, and together, straining their utmost, they managed to shove the strange door just far enough to slip in and run under a lobby chair.

  “I know something of these dwellings,” Aldic said. “The Big Ones here live on various shelves. I have to find out which level we want.”

  They fell silent and waited as a late arrival entered, exchanged a perfunctory greeting with the sleepy operator, and went up in an elevator. Then Aldic crept around the desk and looked over the man’s bobbing head at a chart beside a series of pigeon-hole mail boxes. In returning, the spear slung behind his back clicked against the desk.

  The operator started, stared around in half interest, then went back to his dreams with the muttered word: “Mice!”

  “We have to reach the 11th floor,” Aldic informed Boro. “Come.”

  He had already seen that the door marked “Stairs” was propped halfopen, to create something of a breeze since the night was warm. The stairwell was utterly deserted, and used only in emergency, such as fire. The Big Ones used the elevators, averse to unnecessary physical effort.

  Using their spears as poles, they vaulted from step to step, each as high as they were. It became hard work after a time, and the stairs seemed endless.

  “I would rather climb a mountain,” panted Boro, “where at least the slope is gradual.”

  At the fifth landing, Aldic peered from the propped-open door out into the hallway. His eyes gleamed at a daring thought. He pulled Boro with him to the automatic elevator, open at this level where the last passenger had stepped out. That is, open except for a precautionary latticed metal gate through whose framework they wriggled, into the cage.

  Unslinging his useful lariat again, Aldic cast for a knob at the chest level of the Big Ones, pulled himself up, and pounded in the button labeled “11” with his fist. An automatic door hissed shut and the cage arose like an obedient slave.

  “Magic!” Boro muttered fearfully, and then grinned delightedly as nothing dire happened. Harmless magic, anyway.

  AT the 11th floor, the automatic door opened and they squirmed through the lattice-gate into a carpeted hall. Rows of doors lined both sides. Behind them slept dozens of the Big Ones, unknowing of the two tiny intruders.

  “They are packed like rabbits in a warren,” grunted Boro. “Who are they hiding from?”

  Aldic stopped before a door marked “C” with a name card under it that meant nothing to Boro, for he could not read the Big One’s language, though he understood it well.

  “Now we have to get in. There is but one way. Keep close to me, Boro.”

  After a cautious glance up and down the hall, Aldic boldly stood before the door and rapped on it with his spear-butt. The sound would register within as a knock, a custom of the Big Ones to inform
each other of their presence, rather than an uluating shout of “Eyooo!”

  It was not till the third series of knocks that their quick ears heard sound within. Two ponderous slippered feet approaching the door. Aldic tensed. The clank of a lock sounded and the door opened a few inches. Puffeyed with sleep, the face of a middle-aged, portly man peered out.

  Astonishment at seeing no one came over his features. He had no suspicion that two little forms, down where he hadn’t dreamed of looking, had already slipped into the room, past his legs.

  Closing and locking the door, muttering to himself, the man crossed the room, clicked off a shaded lamp, and retired to an inner room. Aldic and Boro heard the creak of his bed, and then the sound of his heavy breathing.

  Aldic’s beating heart eased.

  “Well,” he whispered to Boro, “now we are here. We have three days—at the most—to accomplish our mission.”

  “And just what is that?” Boro demanded. “You have been very secretive, Aldic. How will we get this money?”

  “We’ll see,” Aldic said non-committally. “It is close to morning. We can do nothing now. We will observe what is before us.”

  Dawn was already spangling through curtained windows. The two little men were under a wide concealing structure that Aldic vaguely knew was a studio-couch. They waited to see how they could spin their plot against the Big Ones.

  TWO hours later, the household woke to life. A maid-servant emerged from one bedroom and began bustling in the kitchen. Shortly after the man arose and sat to breakfast, with his wife.

  Aldic and Boro saw little, for the time being. But the voices and noises came to them clearly.

  The two Big People eating seemed at odds.

  “That darling fur-piece is only $700, dear,” sounded the wife’s voice, in false sweetness. “Now’s the time to get it, in spring. Prices go up in the fall, you know.”

  “I can’t afford it,” the man’s voice came wearily. “Stop nagging me. You don’t need it in the first place.”

  “But I want it, dear, and you can afford it—”

  It went on, with variations, till the man left for his office, slamming the door. The woman vented herself on the maid, ordering her about sharply. Later, another voice sounded, that of a boy-child, as he was awakened, dressed, and given breakfast.

  The morning hours passed, while Aldic and Boro listened to the doings of typical Big Ones, little of which they understood. The maid had finished the dishes and was making beds and bustling about the apartment, dusting. The wife made telephone calls and lolled about.

  The boy-child wandered around, and eventually began playing with a cat in the living-room, near the studio couch. Aldic and Boro shrank back against the wall. They did not fear the child, but the cat—

  And suddenly its canny eyes pierced under the couch. Its fine senses told it there was something amiss, and it crept under. A great, menacing head loomed before the two little men, as large to them as an elephantine tiger. Two yellow eyes sought them out of the gloom under the couch, and a low growl rumbled from its throat.

  “We must kill it,” Boro grunted, “before it kills us.”

  Aldic hesitated. “They will hear the noises. This cat spoils everything!”

  “Tabby!” sounded the little boy’s voice, in childish accents. “Come back. I want to play with you, Tabby.”

  But Tabby, all his animal instincts alert, was after prey. Tail swishing, he crept close to the two little creatures, claws ready. Boro’s spear was balanced for a cast at one gleaming yellow eye.

  Aldic knocked it away.

  “Tabby!” his voice piped out. “Tabby—nice Tabby! Nice pussy!”

  AT the point of charging, the cat eased slightly. Puzzled, its ears cocked forward. As Aldic repeated his soothing words, it seemed undecided, but suddenly relaxed. Its feline instincts dissolved before the plain fact of hearing a spoken voice. Any creature that spoke, no matter how strangely small, was its master.

  “Nice Tabby!” Aldic soothed away its last doubts, stroking its fur and tickling its ears. He jumped back startled at a new rumbling sound. The cat was purring like a great beating drum.

  “You have tamed it!” Boro marveled. “You are a brave man to try it, Aldic.”

  Aldic thought it unnecessary to tell Boro he had been frightened stiff, at the crucial moment, not knowing whether a sharp claw would rend him or not. They both tensed, then.

  “Mummy!” sounded the child’s voice as it suddenly ran to next room. “Mummy, who is Tabby talking to, under the couch? I heard them just as plain!”

  Aldic and Boro looked at each other. Exposed, trapped!

  The woman’s voice answered.

  “Tabby is talking to the little brownies, that’s all. Now Elsie is going to take you to the park to play. Mother is going to a bridge party.”

  When they had left, Boro shook his head in bewilderment. “Brownies? Did she mean us? But why didn’t she capture us then, since she somehow knows we’re here?”

  Aldic laughed uproariously. “Boro, at times you are utterly—well, never mind. We’re safe. Come, the place is empty. We can scout around.”

  The following hours were an adventure in themselves. With the soul of a true explorer, Aldic went through all the rooms. Suddenly he seemed to go a little wild. He bounced up and down on cushioned chairs. He leaped to a dresser-top and tried to run a giant comb through his red mane, and admired his image in a mirror. When the phone rang, he lifted the instrument from its cradle in his strong arms and laughed to hear the impatient “hello!

  hello!” from it before he thrust it back.

  And everywhere they went, the cat went, purring, gamboling. Boro entered into the spirit of the thing and they chased one another around the huge furniture, yelling. They were children in the castle of the giants. It was a lark. It was fun, too, to sit in chairs and pretend they were Big Ones.

  “I’m hungry,” Boro said finally.

  In the kitchen, dragging a chair over, Aldic managed to open the refrigerator, shivered in its icy draft, and speared a slice of sausage and a small piece of cake. They were careful to leave no crumbs.

  Aldic suddenly darted out of an open French door, onto a veranda. They peered out, between a grill railing, at the widespread city, stretching up and down the Hudson in unbelievable cubistic masses. When they peered straight down, for what seemed a sheer mile to them, Boro drew back dizzily.

  “Enough is enough,” he grunted. “Let us get our business done and go.”

  SOBERED, they thought of their mission. Aldic led the way to the bedroom, with the instincts of a master burglar. In a drawer of a dressing-table, he found a jewel-box and opened it. Treasure gleamed forth. Rings of gold, chains of silver, arid a string of iridescent pearls.

  “Those pearls are perhaps worth a thousand dollars, in the Big People’s conception,” Aldic mused. “They will do—”

  But now a key sounded in the front door. Aldic acted with the rapidity natural to their size, closing the box and drawer so no sign would point to their presence. Then they barely had time to race back under their studio-couch hiding-place. They would have to get the pearls at night.

  The maid and little boy had returned. Soon after, the wife was back, and dinner was prepared. Hardly had the man arrived and the meal begun, than it started again.

  “Tomorrow’s my last chance to get the fur-piece, dear. It’s genuine high-grade fox.”

  Aldic and Boro looked at each other. Though they hated the fox as a mortal enemy, in their woodland haunts, it seemed outrageous for the Big Ones to kill them only for their fur, not in selfprotection.

  “I can’t afford it,” the man parried, as he obviously had for days.

  Henry! Don’t lie to me.” The feminine voice was strident now. “You’re foreclosing the property that Harvey has up north and it’s sheer profit because they’ve more than paid for it with interest. You told me yourself you have a cash buyer, at twice its value—and twice what the fur would cost.”


  “Why did I ever tell you?” the man pleaded with the universe at large. At the end of the meal, he gave up. “I knew it wasn’t any use. Here’s the money,—darling! I’m going to have a little poker game with the boys tonight. Okay?”

  “Why, of course, honey!”

  But if the woman was thrilled, another in the place was much more thrilled—Boro. Under the couch, he turned astounded eyes on Aldic.

  “Now I see! I thought I recognized the man’s voice—Henry Bainbridge, the Big One whom we saw up north, telling Harvey he would have to give up his home!”

  Aldic laughed a little. “You finally caught on, Boro!”

  Boro cursed himself for his thick-wittedness. They listened to the household sounds, ready now to play the final act in this strange drama.

  After an evening phoning all her friends and telling them of the darling fur-price she was going to buy the next day, Mrs. Bainbridge went to bed. The maid and junior had retired.

  CHAPTER X

  Plaything for a Child

  WHEN all was quiet, Aldic and Boro crept forth. Getting the drawer open in the bedroom was tricky work, for it squeaked. But the heavy snores of the woman in bed—they could see now she was fat—were louder. Aldic tugged open the jewel-box. Seven crisp pieces of green paper lay three now, over the jewels, with the figure “100” on each.

  “I’ll take these,” Aldic decided.

  “But they are only paper,” objected Boro. “Take the treasure.”

  Aldic looked rather witheringly at Boro. “This paper is that which is called money.”

  Boro flushed at his ignorance.

  “The pearls would be hard to sell,” Aldic said decisively. “And our friend might not even take them. This paper money is better.”

  Folding and stuffing the bills inside his shirt, Aldic led the way to the front. “We will get out when the man returns, late tonight. Our mission is accomplished. There is no further danger. Ah, we have made fools of these Big Ones!”

  But danger struck, as they passed the open door of the boy’s bedroom. The cat confronted them suddenly, desiring to play, remembering the afternoon’s cavortings. It mewed loudly, cuffing at them and rolling on the floor in moonlight. One of its playful pats knocked Aldic stunned to the floor.