"Welcome to Gotham," Oxford said equably. "Baghdad-on-the-Subway, home of some of the lightest fingers in the world."
"Come, now," Wells objected. "London's pickpockets are the deftest known. Look at Oliver Twist and Fagin. It's well known that social conditions—"
"It doesn't matter," Oxford said. "We've got the white card from W. R., and there's no problem about drawing some more cash and even springing for another wallet. Maybe a card of safety pins'd be a good idea, too."
"Well," Dark said uneasily, "that's all very well about the money and so on. But the chap got away with my notepad and, uh . . . " He searched for the word, but there was no equivalent in this language. "What I use to write with, you know. Among other things."
Oxford set his glass down. "Write with?" he said. "Among other things? What other things?"
"Well. . ." Dark took a sip of his liquid. "It's a tool we have, d'you see? You can set it to write on metal, or for small cutting and welding jobs, or for melting, or drilling, or punching holes. It's a matter of controlled, um, energy."
"Holes," Oxford said thoughtfully. "What size holes?"
"Oh, pretty much what you choose. It's a matter of focus,"
Oxford emptied his glass and demanded that it be refilled. When this had been done, he took a long drink from it. "What does this jim-dandy little tool look like?" he asked softly.
"Well, like a . . . like what it is. About so long, and a bit thinner than my finger. Comes to a point at the end."
"Something like this?" Oxford said heavily, reaching inside his coat and bringing out an object.
"Fairly. Only it's metal, of course, not wood. What's that thing?"
"We call it a pencil. Only all it does is write. It doesn't cut, melt, weld or punch holes in things. Damn it, man, do you realize—"
At this moment there arose a hubbub just outside the room—shouts of amazement, alarm and rage, and the sound of running feet.
Oxford turned and ran from the counter. We followed, heedless of the attendant's cries for payment for what we had consumed.
In the anteroom, a large area paved with decorative stone and adorned with trees in containers, we observed a slightly built native struggling in the clutches of three others. A cloud of smoke was rising from a large glass case containing a number of boxes and piles of elongated brown cylinders. The top of the case was marred by an irregular hole with a melted edge, and feeble flames flickered among the case's contents, producing the smoke, which was highly aromatic.
"Say, what d' hell is dis?" The native behind the case called out in agitation. "Dis bloke comes in an' asks fer a hot tip on a horse, so I'm a pal an' give him one, an' he goes to write it down, and next thing you know, dere's a hole in me case an' eight dollars' wort' of Perfecto Perfectos are goin' up in smoke all by demselves!"
"It wasn't me!" the captive native squealed. "Somebody must of set off a bomb in—"
"I'll handle this," Oxford said, stepping forward. He pulled his wallet from his pocket, flapped it briefly in front of the men holding the struggling native, so quickly that I doubt they could have had time to see anything displayed to them, and said, "Inspector Callahan, Anarchist Squad. We've had our eyes on this fellow for a long time, and now we've caught ye in the act, ye dim spalpeen! All right"—he gestured at us, grimacing ferociously, from which I deduced that he wished us to aid him in this sudden impersonation—"Sullivan, Dougherty, O'Brien, Levinsky, Napolitano, secure the prisoner and hustle him out! I'll meet yez on the street afther I've sifted for what this offers in the class of clues."
The four of us and Wells surrounded the confused native and marched him from the building. He seemed dazed and said nothing, only staring at his right hand, which I observed to be reddened and blistered.
"I think," Dark said, "that this must be the fellow—"
"Better drop that until . . . the Inspector comes out," Wells said.
Our prisoner emerged from his stupefaction at the sound of Wells's voice. "Which one are you?" he said sharply. "I don't know no Levinskys, or Napolitanos or Sullivans what talks like dat. Say, what kind of game is—"
Oxford now rejoined us, holding up a glittering shaft of metal. "This yours?" he asked Dark. "Found it in the cigar case. Dopey the Dip here"—I was surprised to find that he knew the little native's name, but I supposed that his work must have given him access to all sorts of information—"dropped it when his hot tip got hotter than he'd figured."
"All I done," the little chap whined, "was try t' write de horse down. But de pencil wasn't workin', and I give it a twist, an' den . . ."
"Quite a nice pencil," Oxford remarked musingly. "Where'd you get it?"
"Ah . . . Wanamaker's," the fellow said huskily. "Dey was on sale."
"Same place you got this and this?" Oxford reached inside the native's jacket, brought out Dark's notepad and wallet, and handed them to their owner.
"Say, you can't—"
"I just did, Willie."
The little man bristled. "Say, you ain't no bulls! What—"
Oxford nodded. "Right as rain, Raymond. We are not the bulls. We're with the Big Fellow."
The prisoner paled. "Not . . . ?"
"Not him," Oxford said scornfully. "D'you think that bozo has gadgets like the one you made the mistake of heisting? No, our boss is so big you haven't even heard of him. And you'd better make sure, Chauncey, that he don't hear of you, get me?"
"O . . . Okay. I . . . I c'n go?"
"You'd better, if you know what's good for you. All right, boys, he won't—"
"Ha!" Dark exclaimed delightedly. He had been inspecting his restored property. "That idiot didn't hurt it at all. See—" He pointed the instrument at the pavement. A hole about the size of a vehicle wheel in diameter and about the width of three fingers in depth appeared in it.
We all looked at it with fascination, none more so than our prisoner, who seemed especially struck by the fact that the perimeter of the shallow crater intersected the tips of his footgear, exposing the ends of his toes. He gave a shrill cry, wrenched himself from our grip, and bounded across the street, heedless of the rushing vehicles.
"Huh," Dark said. "Guess I spoke too soon. He must've jiggled the focus setting a bit. It shouldn't have done that."
"Shouldn't it?" Oxford said with quiet politeness, stepping away from the indented circle. "Perhaps you'll be good enough to arrange that it doesn't do it again? Or to put it away where some damned pickpocket can't get at it?"
"No need to be stuffy," Dark answered. "I can't help it if some bungler gets hold of a good tool and misuses it. Anyhow, nothing much happened."
"Nothing much!"
Dark chuckled. "Now, if he'd turned it up to full power, number twelve focus, say, well that would have been a different story."
"Different?" Wells said. "Different in what way?"
"Well . . . the core of your planet is molten, right? So—"
"I think we'd best get back to the hotel, fellows," Oxford said, looking suddenly quite tired.
That evening, in our quarters in a place called the Waldorf-Astoria, Oxford turned to me and said, "So far you haven't given me palpitations, Raf. D'you suppose it'd be safe for you to accompany me on a little stroll through the purlieus? Most of the time it's okay, hanging around you fellows and thinking about the bylines I'm going to get out of it—but once in a while it really hits me that I'm hobnobbing with men from some star I can't even see at night, and I'd like to take a small dive off the wagon. You game, Raf?"
I understood from this that Oxford wished companionship in some excursion about the city, and readily agreed. We walked to near where the wedge-shaped building was, the evening being clement, and were soon at a large structure adorned with arches and constructed of a golden stone.
Oxford told me that it was called a garden, which I did not understand, and was named for an open space next to it, called Madison Square. We ascended to the roof, where we found a number of tables, trees in containers, and a raised platform wh
ere singers and musicians performed.
This, according to Oxford, was known as a roof garden. I was impressed with the flexibility of a culture which apparently had no difficulty in handling the concept of a garden (of one sort) atop a garden (of quite another), neither of them resembling a plot of earth for growing edible or ornamental vegetation, but it also seemed to me to argue an imprecision of thought which boded ill for our hopes for this people's technical advancement. It would do us little good to have Wanderer refitted by a race which might well have three contradictory definitions of "aft control vane."
"Hey," Oxford said, "George M.'s here tonight—over there." He gestured toward a group at another table. "Bet you anything they ask him to do a number—sure enough, there they go."
The leader of the musicians who had been playing a lilting tune—having to do, Oxford informed me, with a woman who was cheerful in spite of (or perhaps because of) the loss of her mate—now came down from the platform and approached the table Oxford had pointed at. He spoke to a short man seated there, who, after shaking his head and smiling, arose and bounded to the platform.
The musicians struck up a lively air, and the short man capered about vigorously and sang in a loud, though not unpleasing, voice. His selections—involving, I recall, an announcement of his birth during the present month, called July, his preference for the name Mary, and a statement that he would soon be at a numbered street about a mile uptown from where we were—somewhat mystified me, but were received with great applause, in which I joined.
When the man came down from the platform and made for his table, Oxford called out to him, "Mr. Cohan!"
He approached us and said, "Hi. You're—oh, yeah. Ned Oxford. Hearst papers, right? Met you when you were going out to cover the Russky-Nip scrap. Say, you know I tried to work up a song about that, but never got to first base. Had a good line about the Yalu Peril, but there wasn't any heart to it. Main problem, audience didn't know which side they were rooting for."
Cohan looked at me sharply. "Heard something . . . yeah. You one of the fellows in this Hearst stunt?"
"Stunt?" Oxford said.
"Been talk around, last day or so, that your boss is up to something new, going to be a big story. This fellow part of it? Something about men from Mars, way I understand it. You from Mars, fellow?"
I looked at Oxford, nonplussed. He sighed and said, "There's no way of keeping a secret once the wise guys on Broadway start getting a sniff of it."
"Rosenthal and them are making book that Hearst is pulling a Barnum routine," Cohan said.
"Well, you could clean up pretty well if they give you odds," Oxford told him. "It's no stunt. Certified, proven fact, and the story breaks tomorrow. But don't put any money on Mars. Ambassador Raf, here, comes from a lot farther away than that. Listen, Cohan, you'll keep this on the Q.T., okay?"
"Surest thing you know," Cohan said. "I don't want the odds to drop before I've got a bundle down."
Oxford then took me to a place inhabited by members of his craft, among whom he circulated with great animation. I was left to my own devices at a counter much like the one at the Hoffman House, with nothing to amuse me but the view in a mirrored surface behind the counter and a glass of what Oxford called a "highball," arrived at by mixing a brown, aromatic fluid with water.
The taste was somewhat sharp, and the drink seemed to me to require further dilution. The attendant was in earnest conversation with a client some distance away, but I was pleased to see a large bottle of water within my reach. I withdrew the plug that closed its top and filled my glass, and was surprised to find that the taste was no less sharp, though different. The diluted drink in any case warmed me, and I looked with considerable interest and amusement at the images in the mirror, no longer minding Oxford's desertion.
The attendant, when he returned, seemed upset that I had helped myself to the water, but was mollified when I handed him the quantity of local currency he asked for. It seemed to me an excessive amount to pay, but I had no way of knowing the native customs on this point. And I had to admit that it was considerably more authoritative than any water I had yet tasted here.
Some time later we found ourselves at yet another counter, in a room of what appeared from the outside to be an elegant private house, but which, Oxford assured me, was the quarters of an organization of "players." I was about to ask him what game or games the members played, when my attention was drawn by the sight of Mr. Cohan talking animatedly to a group of people at the far end of the room. I pointed this out to Oxford, who invoked the name of one of the planetary deities, said, "I'd better give George M. the quietus on this again," and left me.
A native standing next to me at the counter sipped from his glass and said, "With a bare bodkin, preferably?"
I ran over the local expressions of inquiry I had assimilated and essayed what I hoped was an appropriate one. "How?"
"Oh, George is a good enough fellow. It's just that it offends me to the very soul that the theater has come to this pass. The song-and-dance stuff is all the go now, and trashy melodramas, and that fellow Shaw drawing the crowd by standing everything on its head. Nobody wants the real thing, the Bard. Women flock to the theater to look at me—"
I inspected him to see if I could determine the reason for this. He had wavy, thick hair; a straight, sharply pointed nose; and a firm, rounded jaw, and appeared to glare as he regarded me. I could see nothing really peculiar about him.
"—so all the managers care about is finding something that keeps my profile stage front. I could play Hamlet—"
"At what?" I asked.
My neighbor turned his stare upon me. "Not a joking matter; greatest role on the stage," he said truculently, and I realized my mistake. "Play," both in this conversation and, presumably, in the name of the club I was visiting, was to be understood in the sense of acting a part in a drama, not engaging in a sport or contest. It was another example of the chaotic nature of this language, and it struck me indeed that it might be possible to construct a whole sentence the significant words of which could be taken two ways.
"I 'played' in the 'garden,' " I said, chuckling at the conceit.
The man next to me ignored my deft wordplay and said, "Could do a Hamlet that'd knock their eyes out." He stared at the glass he held, then drank from it. "Listen." I did so, hoping to learn something of this Hamlet matter, but he then changed the subject, advising me that being was the central question of existence (or possibly the other way round; his terms were elaborate and unclear) and that, in the face of certain conditions (which he enumerated), voluntary termination of life might be called for.
One advantage of the philosophical style of conversation is that, being both personal and imprecise, it requires little in the way of actual information, and I welcomed the chance to engage in a discussion which would not reveal my ignorance. "The ethics of self-ending vary from world to—from place to place," I observed. "But if you were to do as you suggest, how then would you get to play Hamlet?"
My neighbor looked first at me, then into his glass, apparently studying it deeply. "Either I've been having too many of these things, or you have," he said. "Maybe both. What the hell did you mean by—No, I don't want to know. I'll be as bad off as you are if I try to work out what you said. Are you on the pipe or something?"
"Your race's fluids affect my physiology differently from the way they do yours," I explained. "I find they cheer but do not inebriate. That may, of course, be a result of my internal modifications as an Explorer." I had a feeling that there was something wrong with what I had just said, but could not isolate it.
"An Explorer?"
"Why, yes, how did you know?" My glass was empty, and I took a good draught from the one Oxford had left behind him. "Speaking of Exploring, I am reminded of the story of the time Pado's crew dropped in on this methane-breathers' world. They breathe methane there, d'you see," I explained, wishing him to be clear on the point, "not as it might be oxygen or helium or whichever it is you
people use—I forget just what for the moment." The anecdote was a good one, and I fancied it held my listener's interest fully, as he stared at me throughout it, his eyes fairly glazing" with the intensity of his concentration.
Just as I finished, Oxford came up to us and said, "Sorry I took so long with Cohan, Raf, but I've got him to see he mustn't—ah, hello, Jack."
"Oxford," my conversant said in a low, plaintive voice, "this fellow's been telling me—to be fair, I should say I think he's been telling me—that he's a creature from another world. Has my mind slipped its clutch, or do you have the latest model in lunatics in tow?"
"Been spilling the beans, Raf?" Oxford said severely. "You know you shouldn't. . . ah, well, it's not that important. Jack'll keep it under his hat, I'm sure, and the story breaks tomorrow anyway. No harm done. Yeah, Jack, Raf's with a bunch of fellows that got stuck here when their, um, airship—only it goes through space—cracked up near Frisco, and Hearst's keeping 'em under wraps 'til he can spring the news right. They've already seen Teddy Roosevelt and been stamped 'passed.' Read all about it in tomorrow's American and Journal."
The man closed his eyes and drew in, then let out, a long breath through his mouth. "That's it," he said in a whisper. "When the ears go back on you and start feeding nonsense to the brain, then it's time to throw in the towel. Tomorrow I'll probably start hearing cues from some other play right in the middle of the second act." He pushed his glass from him. "Gentlemen, you have seen Jack Barrymore take his last drink, to be shortly followed by his exit, pursued by bugbears. Good night, sweet princes, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if I hear flights of angels singing me to my rest this night!"
I watched him leave the room, then turned to Oxford and said, "Sighbleshap."
"What?"
I was aware of points of heat at my nose and cheek-bones the sudden physical manifestation of impatient anger at Oxford's probably deliberate obtuseness. "Excitable chap," I repeated with forced patience.
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