Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Again he smote the table. “It was on the tip of my tongue when you came bursting in here like a mad tiger to ask you to phone Miss. Bishop. I had reconsidered. I need the money, as who knows better than you, you low spy? If Metro won’t up the offer, then I have no recourse. I support you in luxury, and luxuries cost money. I’m a poor man. Beset on every side!” Here he glared at Dr. Krafft’s mild, abstracted visage half eclipsed behind the coffee cup.

  “Beset on every side!” he roared, maddened at the sight. “I was going to reconsider that termagant’s offer. You hear me, Peter? If it hadn’t been for your insults, I was going to grant your heart’s desire!”

  “Uncle Edmund—” Owen began. “Uncle Edmund, I—”

  The sound of ripping paper interrupted him. Smiling fiercely, Uncle Edmund was tearing Claire’s contract across. Laying the two halves together, he then tore them the other way. The quartered contract fluttered to his plate.

  Uncle Edmund picked up his half emptied coffee cup and poured its contents on the fragments.

  “There!” he shouted. “There! Now you’re sorry! Too late, my sneaking young friend, too late! Out you go! Now, this very second! Out of my sight! If you aren’t packed and gone in fifteen seconds I’ll have that nincompoop chief of police put you in irons. Go, go, go!”

  And Owen went.

  As he hastened from the room, he heard Dr. Krafft say placidly, “I had a most interesting dream last night . . .”

  * * * * *

  He thought with anguish as he hurled shirts and socks into his suitcase;

  “If my dream had only been real! If I could Only turn the clock, back far enough to get Claire’s contract signed—”

  At this moment a pair of socks coiled up like—you have guessed it—a gastropod, missed the suitcase and hurtled to the unmade bed. Owen saw them vanish down a blanket ravine, rummaged absent-mindedly, and felt his fingers close on something small, round, hard and cool. It ticked;

  FACE to face, he and the blue enamel clock turned blank stares upon one another. “Dream?” murmured Owen distractedly. “Dream? Then I am a fish?” and he looked down anxiously for fins. He had none. That much was still unreal. But here in his hand, ticking gently away, was the clock that had made last night an endless repetition of itself—unless he’d dreamed the whole thing.

  “A backspacer,” Owen thought frantically, shaking the clock in a senseless way. “It backspaced in time. The moving finger writes—” Quite of their own volition, his own fingers reached for the knob on the clock that turned the minute-hand. “It can’t happen,” he assured himself, even as he turned the hand. “It was all a dream. I know that. I’m no fool. But all the same, if it would.—”

  The clock had said nine-five before he turned it. Carefully he twirled the black minute-hand until the dial said eight fifty-five.

  “Can I lure it back to cancel half a line?” Owen asked himself madly. “That’s the question. If I can—though of course I can’t—then everything’s dandy.

  I can unpack my suitcase and go right on downstairs to breakfast.”

  Then he looked at the bed and said to himself blankly, “What suitcase?”

  For it was no longer there. Shirts and socks had flown back into their nests by magic. The suitcase even now reposed on the top shelf in the closet. And from downstairs came the gentle clatter of dishes and the voices of C. Edmund Stumm and Dr. Krafft in cheerful morning converse.

  Peter Owen dropped the clock in his jacket pocket, closed a trembling hand firmly over it, and went downstairs to breakfast.

  “You need not have been so prompt, Peter,” Uncle Edmund said with a vitriolic smile. “Sit down, sit down, since you’re here. Still, it’s bad enough having to eat oatmeal. When I have to look across the table at your porridge-face at the same time—” He shuddered ostentatiously and poured more cream from a miraculously renewed jug into his bowl.

  “Good morning, Uncle,” Peter Owen said in a firm voice. “Good morning, Doctor. Did you find Maxi?”

  Dr. Kraft shook his head sadly.

  “Any mail, uncle?” Owen inquired with great cunning, forcing a smile.

  “Don’t smile at me, sir,” Stumm said. “You merely increase the likeness to oatmeal by giving the impression it’s been sugared. No, there was no mail that concerns you.” Here he licked the cream off his thin lips and smiled as at a pleasant private jest.

  “I have a job for you after breakfast,” he added, fixing Owen with a gimlet glance. “That pudding-head Egan who calls himself police-chief left a ticket on my car last night. Go down and fix it.” Owen swallowed painfully. “But, Uncle, you know Egan won’t—never mind, I’ll pay the ticket.”

  “Out of your own pocket?” Stumm demanded sharply. “Suit yourself. I won’t pay it. What good does it do me to be the first citizen of Las Ondas if the Gestapo harries me night and day? I’ve brought more tourist business into Las Ondas since I bought this house than they had in their whole history before I got here. If Fred Egan thinks he can harass me with parking tickets simply because. I left my car beside a fireplug all night, he’d better think twice. Go down directly you finish breakfast and take care of it, Peter. Grime rolls unchecked through this town while Egan creeps, through the underbrush waiting for me to make some petty misstep. I’m above the law in Las Ondas!”

  He paused and drank coffee fiercely.

  “Are you sure there wasn’t any important mail?” Owen asked in a distracted voice. “I’d better go look. Maybe you missed something.”

  “Sit down, sir! Do you take me for a fool like you?”

  “Ah,” Dr. Krafft murmured placatingly. “Lovely morning, lovely morning Last night, gentlemen, I had a most interesting dream—”

  “Hum!” Uncle Edmund said abruptly. “That reminds me. So did I. Most interesting.” He regarded a piece of toast in his hand, sneered at it and hurled it into his mouth. Speaking around it, he went on. “This morning I am more inclined to give Dr. Krafft’s theories special credence. I myself had an odd, yet thoroughly convincing dream. Prescient, perhaps. I had a bird’s-eye view, as it were, of what Dr. Krafft might call the temporal plenum. It is spherical.”

  “Ah,” Dr. Krafft said noncommittally.

  “It is spherical,” Stumm repeated in a firm voice. “Like the celestial sphere. I was surprised, in my dream, to see what I took to be a wooden shoe come sailing toward me. In this vessel I observed a party of time-travelers from the distant future who were visiting this day and age to see with their own eyes the man whose name must have gone ringing down the corridors of time to their own era—namely, me.” He paused. “C. Edmund Stumm,” he murmured, smiling to himself, like a man pouring cream over his own ego.

  “Curious thing,” he added presently. “Their anchor. Something odd about it.”

  “What?” Owen inquired in an urgent voice. “Did you see it?”

  STUMM gave him an angry glance.

  “None of your business,” he said. Then a look of yet deeper bliss stole across his features as he regarded his nephew. He touched his coat pocket with a loving hand. Paper crackled.

  “By the way, Peter,” he said suddenly. “I’ve had an offer from Metro for Lad Pantagruel. They’ll pay five thousand more t. an your termagant friend offered me yesterday. I just thought you’d be interested.” He cleared his throat slightly. “In spite of Miss Bishop’s vile temper and worse manners,” he said, “I might just possibly reconsider my decision, if she can meet Metro’s generous price. Think it over, my boy.”

  Owen looked at his uncle searchingly. In which now had he lied? Which tale was the true one? What ought he to do next? He was still debating the question when Dr. Krafft said in a gentle drone, “My dream was much like yours, Edmund. Yes, you have guessed it. A schooner filled with time-travelers. Curious, eh? Essentially the same, though colored by our different personalities and interpretations. I dreamed that my tesseract-projection experiments were rising like bubbles to the surface of the paratemporal plenum, attracting the atte
ntion of our friends, the travelers. You know, the anchor intrigued me, too. Now that I think of it, the anchor seemed to be swinging to and fro, like a pendulum. Of course it could swing no farther than twelve hours.”

  Dr. Krafft paused, pondering. “Why of course?” he asked himself in a murmur. “Why did I say that? Part of the dream, no doubt. Time and space get confused so easily.” Here he sighed. “Dear Maxi,”, he said. “With Maxi, I could work out the whys and wherefores. Without Maxi—” He shook his white head, a gentle scowl darkening his features. “In my last tesseract-projective session,” he said, “I am almost certain I penetrated through to the next adjacent temporal dimension. A most interesting new chain of ideas hovered at the very verge of my mind. Oh, Maxi, where are you!”

  “Forget about Maxi,” Stumm said shortly. “You waste enough time on your experiments as it is. Remember, I have only three more weeks to get the rough draft of the new play finished. I’ll want your close attention this morning, Sigmund. Yesterday you spent the whole day nose to nose with that idiotic stone frog. Today we have something more important to consider—Act Three.”

  “But the anchor!” Owen said plaintively. “I wish one of you could remember what it looked like. I wonder if—”

  “The voice of the oatmeal,” Uncle Edmund said unpleasantly.

  “Maxi!” Dr. Krafft exclaimed in a sudden, high voice. He leaped to his feet, his aged face illuminated with joy. “Yes, I have guessed it! I remember where I left Maxi! In your library, Edmund! Excuse me, I must go to Maxi!”

  In a rapid shuffle he hastened across the room toward the library door. The beam of his own delighted face seemed to precede him like the beam of a flashlight. Stumm watched with a certain sardonic expression on his cormorant features that Owen found rather baffling.

  “Uncle Edmund,” he said.

  “Well?” This was an impatient snarl. “I don’t believe Miss Bishop’s backers will raise their price again. But the sale could be closed at their top price if I could get her back today.”

  “Edmund!” Dr. Krafft’s horrified cry from the library brought both men to their feet in alarm. “Edmund! Robbers! Thieves! Oh, my poor Maxi!”

  CHAPTER IV

  Time for Patience

  THE library was indeed a dreadful sight. Glass from a broken french door glittered on the carpet. Rain had soaked the curtains and shapeless smears of mud led across the wet rug toward a shattered wall-cabinet. Once it had been glass-fronted. Once it had held a singularly uninteresting collection of gold coins, property of C. Edmund Stumm. It was empty now.

  Stumm’s breath hissed dramatically through his teeth. “My coins!” he said, and rushed across the room toward the looted cabinet.

  “Maxi!” the Doctor cried again in a distrait voice, rushing after him. But he went only as far as the huge desk, where he bent to pat an empty corner of that vast bare surface tenderly. “There he sat, last night. Now I remember. Oh, my poor Maxi, stolen! Edmund, we must get Maxi back or I am a ruined man!”

  “Nonsense,” Stumm said, staring at the cabinet. “My coins are gone—thousands of dollars’ worth.” He was grossly exaggerating, though the collection did have some intrinsic worth and was heavily insured. “What would burglars want with a stone frog? Had he any real value, like my coins?”

  “Only to me,” Krafft told him sadly. “But I know he sat here last night. I remember clearly now. The burglars must have taken him, and I shall never think again.”

  “Peter,” Stumm said coldly. “Hand me the phone.”

  —‘But Uncle Edmund,” Owen said, glancing at the wall behind the desk, where a medium-sized safe exhibited a steel circle let into the panels, “hadn’t you better check up on everything first? Maybe the burglars took more than the coins. Shall I open the safe?”

  “I said hand me the phone,” Stumm repeated even more coldly. “No shillyshallying, young man. For every moment we delay the burglars may be drawing farther away, beyond the reach of the police. Let that safe alone! You’d like to learn the combination, wouldn’t you, my clever young friend it may disappoint you to know there’s nothing of any value in it—only papers. Now will you hand me the telephone, or must I fling up the window and shout for the police myself?”

  Owen handed the instrument over in silence. There was a certain fierce satisfaction in Stumm’s voice as he gave the mayor’s number.

  “Now we’ll see,” he muttered, waiting. “Now that great lummox of a Police Chief will—hello, hello! Is that you, James? C. Edmund Stumm speaking. My house has been robbed.”

  The telephone sputtered excitedly at this dramatic announcement.

  “Chief Egan did it,” Uncle Edmund said in a firm voice. “Oh, I’m not accusing him personally. I don’t say he robbed me with his own butter-fingered hands. But crime has been running riot too long in Las Ondas, James, and this is the last straw. You know the trouble I’ve been having with that man. Egan has got to go!”

  The telephone again sputtered.

  “I don’t care if he has six dozen children,” Uncle Edmund snapped. As Mayor of Las Ondas your job’s to protect the citizenry. This place is rapidly degenerating into a new Casbah. I refuse to let my name be connected with a dive as noisesome as the lowest quarters of Port Said.”

  Expostulation from the telephone.

  “No,” Stumm said finally, “Egan goes or I go, and that’s final. I warn you, James, I’m seriously thinking of moving. Choose between us. Egan’s persecuted me to the last ditch, and here I take my stand. Who sent a policeman to make trouble at four o’clock in the morning only last week, when I was giving a party? Egan. Who put a ticket on my windshield last night? Who tried to make me move along Sunday when I was parked in the middle of Main Street signing autographs? I tell you, James, it’s Egan or me. Take your choice.”

  Firmly he banged the telephone down. When he met Owen’s anxious gaze he was beaming with unwonted geniality.

  “Mark this day in red,” he commanded metaphorically. “My triumph over that oafish lumpkin is achieved at last.” He glanced at the gently mourning Krafft. “Nor can I feel too grief-stricken at Maxi’s departure. He took too much valuable time, far better devoted to me. I feel in fine fettle, Peter. It’s a beautiful day, the lark’s on the wing and I might even consider letting your Miss Bishop have my play, if she catches me in a good mood and controls her vicious temper. Are you sure those backers of hers have the actual cash ready to hand over?”

  “Positive,” Owen declared, almost carolling. “Shall I telephone her?”

  “If you like,” Uncle Edmund said graciously. “And if you think it worth while. When she crashed out of here yesterday I seem to recall a few ill-chosen remarks about preferring death to the role of Lady Pantagruel. Still, I feel kindly toward all the world today. Do as you think best. And Peter—make sure she brings a certified check.”

  CHIEF EGAN, a minor though in his way an important figure in the tale of Peter Owen, was large, pink-faced, kind-hearted and perhaps not too efficient. When Las Ondas was a wide place in the beach highway, he sufficed the town well enough. But his ways were still small-town ways. And he insisted quite irrationally on enforcing the laws of Las Ondas even on. Las Ondas most illustrious, citizen.

  Peter Owen met him at the door. Followed by three officers, almost the entire police force of Las Ondas, the chief came in awkwardly. Embarrassment seemed to strike him pink and helpless whenever he came within range of C. Edmund Stumm. He grinned anxiously at Owen.

  * * * * *

  “Hello, Pete,” he said with a sigh of relief. “Thought Mr. Stumm. might answer the door. What’s the trouble?”

  “Burglars,” Owen said succinctly. “Come along, Chief—this way.”

  The library door was closed. Chief Egan turned the knob, found it recalcitrant, murmured, “Stuck, is it? Rain last night must have made the wood swell,” and after an instant’s tussle threw his mighty shoulder in a heave against the door, which shot wide open with the accompaniment of a sharp crack and
a thud. A howl of rage followed instantly.

  Through the open door the form of C. Edmund Stumm was revealed flat on his back, a notebook clutched in his hand and a frightful expression on his narrow face.

  “Oh, golly,” Owen said, hurrying past to lift his uncle from the carpet.

  “Gosh,” Egan gulped, turning very pink indeed. “I—uh—I’m sorry, Mr. Stumm. Were you coming out?”

  “Yes,” Stumm said after a long pause. He allowed Owen to help him to his feet in deep silence, while his face turned redder and redder with a sort of luxuriant fury. “Yes, Chief Egan,” he said meticulously, brushing at his. trousers, “I was coming out; I had hoped to avoid all possible irritations today and concentrate on my work. In order to shun the very sight of your incompetent jowls, I decided to get my notes and clear out before you lurched into my library.” Here he shook the notebook wildly in midair. Words temporarily failed him.

  The cormorant glare shifted to Owen.

  “And as for you,” he said ferociously, suddenly shifting his attack, “if that termagant Bishop woman so much as sets her toe inside my house today I’ll have her arrested for breaking and entering. The very prospect of hearing her loathsome voice makes me froth at the ears. I shall close the deal with Metro this very morning. Shut up, sir! Give this brainless buffalo what information he pretends to need. It won’t do the slightest good. As for Miss Bishop, we will not discuss the matter. A man can endure just so much. After being assaulted with a door and flung halfway across my study—why, the man’s no better than a murderer! Out of my sight, both of you! And take your Gestapo with you. Quick, before I lose my temper!”

  Hastily Owen drew the policeman into the library and closed the door. From the hall extension he could hear Uncle Edmund’s voice acidly demanding Long Distance. Chief Egan, crimson-eared, lumbered forward to examine the looted cabinet, but Owen had little attention to spare. He was listening to Uncle Edmund rapidly putting his call through, getting his “man and saying loudly, for the benefit of any eavesdropping ears.