The professor held this contrivance lovingly in his hand a moment. Then he dangled it before Tubby’s nose. Tubby shrank back.
“That bottle,” said the professor slowly, “contains my discovery.”
Tubby blinked at it, but found no words to say.
“Look at it carefully,” said the professor, “it is the most wonderful thing in the world this minute.” Tubby looked.
“What do you think is in that bottle?” asked the professor. Tubby looked harder, apparently the vial was empty.
“That don’t look like nothin’,” said Tubby.
“But that’s just what it is,” said the professor.
Tubby pondered this carefully a moment.
“What is what?” he asked finally. “
The professor frowned. “That is Nothing,” he said with emphasis, “and I have found it.”
Tubby waited, blinking solemnly like an owl.
“You are not a man of, great imagination, I see,” continued the professor. “I shall have to tell you—from the beginning.”
“But—” began Tubby.
“When I was a little boy,” went on the professor, unheeding, “years ago, I began my search for the infinitely small. All these years I have delved and delved into smallness. And at last I have reached my goal—the bottom of the abyss—the absolute zero of littleness. And I have it there in that bottle.”
“But—” began Tubby again.
“The infinitely small,” droned the professor, “the absolute, concrete entity of nothing—the most marvelous discovery since the creation of the world— it’s in that bottle.”
Tubby’s jaw dropped; his eyes seemed popping from his head as he stared at the professor’s solemn face.
“In that bottle,” went on the professor slowly, “with wonderful patience I have isolated and imprisoned all the Nothingness in the universe.”
There was a long pause. Tubby gulped hard. Then he plucked up his courage. “How—how much of it is there?” he managed to ask.
The professor laid down the vial.
“An infinite amount,” he answered. “I have gathered it bit by bit from everywhere. There is no Nothingness left in the universe now. It is all compressed into that bottle. I see you do not understand,” he added as Tubby continued staring.
“Yes—no,’’ said Tubby…
“I shall explain—everything,” said the professor.
“By this great discovery,” he went on after a moment, “I have captured from the world and all the stars of the universe all the Nothingness they possessed. I have captured it all, and made it my slave. It has a wonderful power, this Nothingness. It will make us. both rich. That is where you arc going to help me. Watch carefully.”
He took the vial in his hand and turned the tiny stop-cock. “Listen,” he said softly, and squeezed the bulb. Tubby heard a very faint hissing sound.
“That is some of the Nothingness escaping,” said the professor. “Now watch.” He began squeezing the bulb again, aiming the nozzle at the little black bag on the table. Slowly the bag seemed to fade away, and in a moment it was gone.
“When the Nothingness comes out of that bottle, whatever it touches it turns to Nothing. Now do you understand?”
“No—yes,” said Tubby.
“It is because of this wonderful power, I have brought it to you,” said the professor. “You are going to help me make money out of it. Don’t you see, with this we can wipe out anything in the world?
“Suppose a man wants to be rid of some one else. A little of this, and the other person is gone—vanished into the realm of Nothingness. Think of what people will pay for that!” Tubby’s eyes were glistening with cupidity.
“I am a scientist—not a business man; you will be the business man. We ? will divide the profits.”
“Right,” said Tubby at last. .
“This Nothingness can do other wonderful things,” continued the professor. “For instance, it can wipe out thoughts. How much is two and two”
“Four,” said Tubby.
“Think of No. 4—think hard. Now, you see, I turn this valve almost off. We only want a little Nothingness for this experiment.”
He turned the stop cock as he spoke. Then he raised the vial to Tubby’s head, pressing the point of the nozzle against his temple. Tubby winced.
“I won’t hurt you,” said the professor. “Think hard—No. 4, is that it?”
“No. 4—right,” said Tubby.
The professor squeezed the bulb a very little. Then he turned the stopcock on full again, and laid the vial on the table. .
“Now, then,” he said, “what number was it you were thinking of?” Tubby wrinkled up his forehead, but said nothing.
“What number?”
“Number—number—-I don’t know,” faltered Tubby.
“But you do remember you were thinking of some number?” persisted the professor. .
“Yes,” said Tubby, “but it ain’t there now.”
“You’ve forgotten it,” said the professor. “That thought has gone into the realm of Nothingness. It will never come back. That’s because I used just the right amount of Nothing.
“Don’t you see? That was the last thought in your mind; it was the easiest to wipe out. If I had used more Nothingness you would have lost other thoughts—those you had a few moments ago, for instance. The most recent always go first. Now do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Tubby. “But—”
“But what?” asked the professor.
“But ain’t it funny,” said Tubby, “why my head didn’t turn to nothin’, too, when you squirted that bottle at it? That ain’t right now, is it?”
The professor smiled. “You are a clever man. I always knew you were. But, you see, I had the point of the nozzle pressed against your temple. The Nothingness only works as it sprays out. It could not spray out until it got inside your brain. If I wanted to annihilate your head I would spray it from further away.”
“Oh,” said Tubby.
“So, you see,” continued the professor, still frowning severely, “how delicate and wonderful a thing this Nothingness is.
“Now let us talk business,” he added briskly. “You are going to help me make the money. We will divide the profits. Is that understood?”
“You got to have me,” said Tubby.
“Well?” asked the professor.
“It ain’t right to only give me half,” persisted Tubby. “Maybe I won’t help you,” he added cunningly.
“But you must,” the professor said with an injured air.
Tubby’s brain was busy. “What’s that over there?” he asked abruptly.
“Where?” asked the professor. As he turned to look, Tubby suddenly Seized the vial, and began spraying it violently up and down over his companion.
The little man gasped with astonishment. A look of mingled fear and rage overspread his face. But before he could move to defend himself, he began to fade. Tubby frantically continued spraying, and in a moment the professor had disappeared.
Then Tubby set down the vial and lay back in his chair. He was trembling violently; his brain was in a turmoil. On the table before him lay the precious bottle—all his now, to make him rich and famous.
For a long time Tubby sat and gloated over his good fortune. “Rich and famous, rich and famous,” he kept thinking. Then, slowly through his confused brain came the fear of what he had done. The professor was dead; he had killed him. He thought about this for a while. A murderer! Visions of prison, then the electric-chair floated before him.
A murderer! He knew it. But nobody else knew it. If only he could forget. That would make it all right. Forget!
Tubby picked up the vial and stared at it vaguely. “It can wipe out thoughts, too.” The professor had said that.
Tubby continued staring at the vial as it lay in his hand. Then slowly he raised it to his head. Pressing the nozzle against his temple he squeezed the bulb vigorously.
Then he started t
o his feet. The vial slipped from his hand; there was a sound of breaking glass. He gripped the back of his chair. His other hand went to his eyes. His brain was reeling. He sat down suddenly.
Tubby blinked solemnly across the smoke-laden room. Under the light in the center his three friends sat playing cards.
“The smallest microbe—” he began aggressively.
Highway
by Robert W. Lowndes
You may perhaps be accustomed to taking a certain route in your daily course between your home and your office, or school, or favorite store. You may have to walk several blocks or drive a certain distance. In the ; course of your daily routine you—if you are like almost everyone else — probably navigate this route without giving it any particular thought. Your feet are directed by habit, you now where you are and where you are going, you know what your next turn will be, you don’t think about it any more. And then one day, by some twist of mind, you suddenly seem to open your eyes and spot a street that seems new to you or a side-road that you had never noticed before. It startles you for a moment until you rationalize it back into obscurity by the thought that it has always been there, that you must have always seen it, just never bothered to notice. Probably your rationalization is accurate —maybe … Now here’s a story about the old road to Stamphis. You remember it—or don’t you?
IT WAS just about a year and a half ago,” said Harvey, “that the three fools from nowhere came to see me about the Stamphis highway.” “From nowhere?” I objected.
The ex-Selectman filled his pipe. “How many ways do you suppose there are of getting into town, Bob?”
“Well, first of all, the orthodox methods: train, bus, private car.”
He shook his head as he took my proffered matches. “There’s always someone on hand at both the railway station and bus terminal. The fools were impressive to look at; if they’d been seen, you can be sure that whoever saw them would have talked about it.
“As for private cars, Peabody and Jem White are at either end of town with the Japanese. Beetle brigade. Every car is stopped. And neither of them would have kept quiet about a load of such-looking gentlemen, were they to pass through.”
I recovered my matches. “Couldn’t they have one at night?”
“Then the town patrol would have spotted them. The boys don’t get offensive about it, but they check up on every car on the highway after dark. We aren’t taking any chances on fifth columnists, no sir.”
This, I decided, could go on indefinitely. And I was more interested in the main story. “Looks like you’re right, then,” I conceded. “But tell me about the Stamphis highway.”
“They were philanthropists, or So they said. Soon’s I heard that word, I thought to myself that they were probably confidence men. Never heard of a philanthropist yet who didn’t have something up his sleeve.
“Well, they came to see me, showed credentials and what not. It all looked in perfect order, you understand.”
“What were they like?” I interrupted.
“Distinguished looking. Very distinguished. You felt that you must have heard of them before, such prominent people couldn’t have slipped by your notice all these years. And yet you couldn’t exactly place your finger on them.”
“Did they look like foreigners?”
“No-o-o. Clean cut,.spruce-looking Americans—main one was around 40, I should say. Very polite, friendly—it’s hard to believe that they were such fools.”
I threw my butt away and stared gloomily out into the main street. It’s no use to try to hurry Harvey, or get him to tell a story in any but his own way. And, if you ever want to get the whole story, don’t start an argument until it’s all out. He’ll explain any strange-sounding details later.
“Maybe you’ll remember that the highway department was in something of a mess around that time? Jenkins had just been sent up for embezzlement, and we were in the red badly.
“Well, just at the right time, the fools showed up with their proposition. They wanted, they said, to replace the existing road with a four-lane highway to Stamphis, and run a side-road in as well. They would pay for it themselves, and put a toll bridge across the swamp.
“We’d been considering bridging the swamp for a long time, seeing as how it cost us so much to replace roads running through there, but saw no way of going through with it. And you know what would have happened to any Selectman who suggested getting financial aid from the government.”
I nodded. I knew very well what would have happened inasmuch as my brother had committed political suicide by trying.
“I won’t go into all the technical details, except to say that the deal Was made, and they started to work on the highway.
“There was just one bit of trouble from the very first. They kept on talking about the Stamphis highway. Ever hear of the place?” -
I’d been hoping Harvey would ask me that soon. “No,” I replied happily.
“Neither had any of us. We were as polite as we could be to the fools, but it was difficult because none of us had ever heard of Stamphis. We didn’t want to look like fools ourselves, but that’s the way it was.
“My assistant, Jeffrey, got around that. He brought in his cousin, who was visiting him at the time—I guess they talked it over beforehand—and, seemingly just as a bit of hospitality introduced him to the fools. So we got the chance to ask them where in tarnation Stamphis might be without losing face.”
“Where was it?” I asked in what I hoped was a moderate tone of voice.
“Oh, they showed us. One of them took out a map smiling and wagging bis finger at us, making snide remarks about our typical brand of humor—nothing offensive, mind you. He took out a map and showed us our town, then drew a pencil line across to Stamphis.
“Jeffrey’s cousin spoke up then. ‘But Waterloo’s right there,’ he said. The rest of us just held our breaths. We were afraid that an unpleasant situation might develop.
“But it didn’t. The fools were wonderful diplomats. Before anything unpleasant could happen, they urged that we drive with them to Stamphis and complete the deal as their guests.”
He puffed away on his pipe meditatively. “You know, the only way I can explain it is that a lot of people, myself included, must have gotten somewhat touched for a spell. Because we’d all forgotten that there was such a place as Stamphis. But, after all, seeing is believing.
“There was something odd about the fools, too, while I think of it. I thought it was just my eyes, but Jeffrey noticed it, too, and he doesn’t need glasses yet. Their shadows sort of flickered.”
The telephone rang just then and Harvey excused himself. He came back a couple of minutes later. “That was Buckley,” he remarked. “By the way, Arlene wants you to bring home some ant powder. How much longer will you two be staying, this summer?”
“Until the end of the month. Then it’s back to New York, and I’ll have to admit I’m not sorry.”
“Don’t like the country, eh?”
“Not for any long periods, Harvey. But what about Stamphis?”
“It was there all right. Not a bad-looking little town at all. Neatly laid out, nice-looking buildings, tasteful homes.”
“New?”
“Some of it. But it was established a long time ago. After the Civil War.” “But that’s impossible!” I exclaimed. “I drove through this state only a couple of years ago, and I passed through Waterloo on the way. I wouldn’t be forgetting that; got taken for a ride in a big way at a garage, when I stopped to have my car fixed.”
Harvey shook his head. “I think you must have been mistaken, Bob. But let me get on. As I was saying, the fools finished the deal and the highway was built. You see that for yourself; they did a fine job, hired a good deal of men from the town, although the foremen were all from Stamphis.
“But they never made any money on it, and they must have lost thousands on that side road. The one through the swamp.”
“Huh?”
“Remember passing a
side road on your way here, one with ‘Road Closed’ signs up?”
I pondered for a moment. “Yes,” I replied at last, “I think I do.”
“Well, that’s it. They tried to run it through the swamp. No one but a fool would think of it. They built it for about fifteen miles then gave it up. That’s why the road is closed; it doesn’t lead anywhere—just comes to a dead stop all of a sudden and there you are, about ten miles from Stamphis, and nothing but a swamp ahead of you.”
“Jeepers, who would do a thing like that?” I protested,
“You see?” said Harvey. “It’s just as I said. They were fools.”
Arlene insisted upon our driving to Stamphis that very night, after I told her of my chat with Harvey, and I must admit that some such action had been in my mind anyway.
“It’s been a long time since I was there,” she sighed as I slid behind the wheel. “And I’ve neglected Grandfather Wheeler terribly.”
“You never told me you had relatives there.”
It’s rather strange, now that I think of it, but Arlene and I know next to nothing about each other’s past. About a year ago, I was sitting in a theatre, trying not to look at a particularly vapid secondary feature while waiting for the main show. My eyes fell upon an attractive woman a row ahead and I recall thinking that if her personality and character equaled her looks, she’d make a swell wife.
I must have said it aloud—I do have a habit of talking to myself in low tones, because she turned around and whispered back: “That might be very nice for you, but what would I be getting?”
There was an empty seat next to her; I moved into it to apologize and somehow we got to talking, in low tones, so that I didn’t see much of the main feature thereafter. I wouldn’t exactly call it love at first sight; we found each other so interesting that it didn’t come to me until some time after we were married that I loved the gal. Don’t ask me to explain that one, either.
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