Mr. Peabody shook his head, with a wry little smile.
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t be so easy, explaining,” he said. “But I’m ready to give up the gift—whenever I can.”
“I don’t understand you, Dad.” Her face was trembling.
“Now I must go. I hope the police didn’t see me. I’ll come back, whenever I can.”
She departed, and Mr. Peabody wearily returned to his miraculous goldfish.
Five minutes later the door was flung unceremoniously open. Mr. Peabody looked up, startled. And the gleaming ghost of a tiny fish, half-materialized, shimmered and vanished.
Mr. Peabody had expected to see Brant, returning. But four policemen, two in plain clothes, trooped into the room. They triumphantly informed him that he was under arrest, and began searching the apartment.
“Hey, Sergeant!” came an excited shout from the bathroom. “Looks like this Doc Brant is in the ring, too. And it ain’t only jewel-robbery and fraud and counterfeiting. It’s murder—with mutilation!”
The startled officers converged watchfully upon Mr. Peabody, and handcuffs jingled. Mr. Peabody, however, was looking curiously elated for a man just arrested under charge of the gravest of crimes. The haunting shadow of pain cleared from his face, and he smiled happily.
“Hey, they’re gone!” It was the patrolman in the bathroom. His horror-tinged excitement had changed to bewildered consternation. “I saw ’em, a minute ago. I swear it. But now there ain’t nothing in the tub but water.”
The sergeant stared suspiciously at Mr. Peabody, who looked bland but exhausted. Then he made a few stinging remarks to the bluecoat standing baffled in the doorway. Finally he swore with much feeling.
Mr. Peabody’s hollow eyes had closed. The smile on his face softened into weary relaxation. The detective sergeant caught him, as he swayed and fell. He had gone to sleep.
He woke next morning in a hospital room. Dr. Brant was standing beside the bed. In answer to Mr. Peabody’s first alarmed question, he grinned reassuringly.
“You are my patient,” he explained. “You have been under my care for an unusual case of amnesia. Very convenient disorder, amnesia. And you are doing very well.”
“The police?”
Brant gestured largely.
“You’ve nothing to fear. There’s no evidence that you were guilty of any criminal act. Naturally they wonder how you came into possession of the counterfeit; but certainly they can’t prove you made it. I have already told them that, as a victim of amnesia, you will not be able to tell them anything.”
Mr. Peabody sighed and stretched himself under the sheets, gratefully.
“Now, I’ve got a couple of questions,” Brant said. “What was it that happened so fortunately to the debris in the bathtub? And to the stone in your head? For the X-ray shows that it is gone.”
“I just undid them,” Mr. Peabody said.
Brant caught his breath, and nodded very slowly.
“I see,” he said at last. “I suppose the inevitable counterpart of creation must be annihilation. But how did you do it?”
“It came to me, just as the police broke in,” Mr. Peabody said. “I was creating another one of those damned goldfish, and I was too tired to finish it. When I heard the door, I made a little effort to—well, somehow let it go, push it away.”
He sighed again, happily.
“That’s the way it happened. The goldfish flickered out of existence; it made an explosion in my head, like a bomb. That gave me the feel of unmaking. Annihilation, you call it. Much easier than creating, once you get the knack of it. I took care of the things in the bathroom, and the stone in my brain.”
“I see.” Brant took a restless turn across the room, and came back to ask a question. “Now that the stone is gone,” he said, “I suppose your remarkable gift is—lost?”
It was several seconds before Mr. Peabody replied. Then he said softly:
“It was lost.”
That statement, however, was a lie. Mr. Peabody had learned a certain lesson. The annihilation of the meteoric stone had ended his pain. But, as he had just assured himself by the creation and instant obliteration of a small goldfish under the sheets, his power was intact.
Still a bookkeeper, Mr. Peabody is still outwardly very much the same man as he was- that desperate night when he walked upon Bannister Hill. Yet there is now a certain subtle difference in him.
A new confidence in his bearing has caused Mr. Berg to increase his responsibilities and his pay. The yet unsolved mysteries surrounding his attack of amnesia cause his family and his neighbors to regard him with a certain awe. William now only very rarely calls him “Gov.”
Mr. Peabody remains very discreet in the practice of his gift. Sometimes, when he is quite alone, he ventures to provide himself with a miraculous cigarette. Once, in the middle of the night, a mosquito which had tormented him beyond endurance simply vanished.
And he has come, somehow, into possession of a fishing outfit which is the envy of his friends—and which he now finds time to use.
Chiefly, however, his gift is reserved for performing inexplicable tricks for the delight of his two grandchildren, and the creation of tiny and miraculous toys.
All of which, he strictly enjoins them, must be kept secret from their parents, Beth and Dr. Brant.
My Best Science Fiction Story Page 53