by Fritz Leiber
The letter to Mr. Finkelberg finished, he said, “What else is on the docket, Rhoda?”
She had already risen, revealing in the process the utterly luscious figure that had put the frustrating word drool into his dreams. Glancing at him over her shoulder, she replied, “Mr. Doheny wants to see you for a moment—and that Willy character is waiting outside.”
There was a flash of something—was it gloat or mere incipient triumph?—in the slightly tilted violet eyes that warned him nothing pleasant lay in store for him.
He said, “Okay, Rhoda, tell Park I’m free if he wants to see me. I’ll buzz you to send Mr. Willy in the moment I’m through.”
She shrugged as she reached for the doorknob. Jerry could have sworn she muttered something suspiciously like, “Means nothing to me.” Rhoda’s attitude was as expressive as any words, so he couldn’t be sure. He thought, Some day, you fresh witch—some day, but he wasn’t really very confident. Two years could constitute quite a wilting process.
Parker Doheny popped in. He was round, rosy and, as usual, a-burble with enthusiasm. He was also Jerry’s partner and the real reason for his having to stay chained to a desk. Parker was an awesomely brilliant idea man and all-around scientist—with about as much practical money or business sense as a child of two. The very thought of taking a trip and leaving Park in charge gave Jerry gooseflesh—it gave him visions of hard-won capital flowing into bottomless funnels labeled Perpetual Motion or Portable Hole or Vegetable Metals. So it was Park Doheny who took the trips while Jerry sweated things out, chained to his desk and Rhoda’s sneers.
Research Development, Inc., was exactly what it sounded like. The purpose of the firm was to put inventors—or scientific idea men, as Jerry preferred to call them—in touch with laboratories or commercial firms where their ideas could be developed and put to use and profit. It was a small but successful and rapidly growing outfit. It filled a basic need, not only for scientists, but for firms whose budgets did not run to vast outlays for free research.
Park Doheny was glowing. With totally false modesty, he laid upon Jerry’s desk what looked like a certified check on lingerie-pink paper. It was a certified check from the Magnum Corporation, made out to Research Development, Inc., in the amount of $50,000.02.
Jerry was impressed, although he had no desire to show it. “What are the two cents for?” he asked mildly.
“I’ve been wondering, myself,” said Doheny blandly. “Well, this time old woolly-head, as I understand from Miss Carlin you have been heard to call me, came through. This is for that little unrefillable bottle top you told me would never sell. It will cover our outlay to Garretson, pay him a fat fee, and leave us five grand commission.”
“Nice going, Park,” said Jerry sincerely. He added solemnly, “Not even I can be right all the time.” No wonder, he thought, Rhoda had been more superior than usual—she knew he had screamed his head off when Park took on Garretson and his unrefillable bottle top.
The buzzer sounded. He flipped the switch and Rhoda’s dulcet vitriol sounded in his ears. “Mr. Willy is getting impatient,” she said. “Shall I send him in?”
It was a tactless blunder—if it was a blunder. Right at the moment when his impractical partner was indulging in a bit of deserved self-inflation, she had to remind them both of Jerry’s worst error in judgment—and most expensive—since the foundation of R-D, Inc.
Doheny moved toward the door, carrying his check. On the threshold, he paused and said, “I’ll have Rhoda bank this if you don’t need her for a moment.” Then he added, “It may cover some of the expenses you’ve incurred with your friend Amos Willy.”
For once, Jerry could think of nothing to say.
* * * *
Amos Willy entered and sat down quietly in the blond-leather armchair facing Jerry at one side of his desk. Looking at him, Jerry knew, as always, that here was the utterly dedicated man. Dedication shone from his slightly myopic eyes, from the wild, unshorn disorder of his hair, from his frayed shirt-collar and well-worn tweeds, from the scuffed, unshined toes of his loafers. It was this dedication, this integrity, that had sold Jerry on Amos Willy from the first time that virtually unknown scientist had worked his way shyly through the office door. As he had told Park Doheny, “I may not know a damned thing about rhodomagnetics, but I pride myself on knowing a little about men. I’m backing Amos Willy all the way.”
The word “rhodomagnetics!” had emerged as a snort from Roheny’s scientifically solid nostrils. “They’re still a hundred years away.”
“Maybe,” Jerry had replied. “But I’d like to be able to hang a picture to my wall without having to screw a hole in the plaster—”
His partner had rolled his eyes toward heaven, thrown up his hands and walked out, muttering something about, “And he thinks I’m screwy!”
Amos Willy rested a suede-patched elbow on Jerry’s desk and said. “This is just a progress report, Mr. Hale. I think you ought to know I’ve achieved a three milligram attraction between a gram of silicon and ten grams of fuller’s earth.”
“This is important?” Jerry asked, not unkindly.
“It’s the first concrete success I’ve attained,” said Amos Willy, his dedicated eyes ablaze. “It’s proof I haven’t been barking down the wrong well.”
Jerry restrained an almost irresistible impulse to unscramble the metaphor and said, “That’s wonderful, Amos. Any chance of giving me a demonstration? My partner seems to feel that you’ve essayed the impossible.”
The scientist hesitated, looked his confusion, blushed, stammered, finally said, “You’ve trusted me, Mr. Hale, so it’s only fair that I should trust you. I’ve been doing my best to keep my personal expenses low, since my experimental and research work have been so expensive. I…” He hesitated, then said, “When can you come?”
“Right now, if it’s okay with you,” said Jerry, delighted at the chance of escaping, however briefly, the gloats of his partner and Rhoda Carlin.
Amos Willy hesitated again. “You may find it—well, not quite what you expect,” he said.
Jerry came around the desk and laid a friendly hand on the scientist’s back. “I may be a heel,” he said. “At any rate, I’ve been called one by experts. But nobody ever called me a snob.”
“And you won’t tell a soul?” Amos Willy asked anxiously.
“Secrecy is part of the stock in trade of R-D, Inc.,” Jerry assured him. “Without it, we’d be nowhere.”
The scientist looked at Jerry doubtfully, then sighed and said, “Very well, come along then. But please don’t go outdoors when we get there—you might be—er—noticed.”
* * * *
Jerry was still trying to figure that one out when they hit the street and flagged a taxi. To get to Willy’s laboratory, wherever it was, meant he would be outside—as he was bound to be when he left it. So how could he not go outside? He gave it up after a while and decided to let nature take its course.
While Amos Willy’s laboratory was scarcely in a part of the city favored with frequent mention in the society gossip columns, it scarcely seemed a district where being noticed might cause difficulty. The cab pulled to a halt in front of what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse or loft building, one of many that lined the almost deserted street. Amos paid off the driver, who looked at the money suspiciously and said, “What kind of queer is this?”
Jerry stepped in and paid the fare himself—but not before noticing that the bill the driver had returned to the scientist was one of the large, old-fashioned currency notes that had been pulled from circulation in the late 1920s. As Amos Willy unlocked a door at one end of the warehouse, he said, “Where did you get that bill, Amos? It looked almost new.”
“It is new,” said the scientist bafflingly. He led the way to what appeared to be a service elevator of ancient vintage, one that was ope
rated by pulling on a cable of twisted wires. Before putting it in motion, he uncovered what looked like a ship’s capstan, off in a corner of the lift. “This is something I thought up to help save expenses,” he said. “The economics are quite extraordinary.”
Puzzled, Jerry peered over his shoulder, saw him check a knob that appeared to register a set of numbers that reminded him of the numbers on a dashboard speedometer. It was turned to 1-8-9-1. The scientist ignored the cable, but said, “And now—we press this.” He pushed a button on the left of the capstan, there was a brief sense of movement. “We’re in the basement,” he added, as he opened the lift door.
It was a large, old-fashioned basement, with a smell of damp ashes familiar since Jerry’s childhood. He wondered a little that such a basement should lie under a warehouse—it looked more appropriate to a plain house, with its radiating furnace pipes just under the ceiling.
He forgot about this as Amos Willy led him to a wooden door, which he opened. This, it appeared, was his laboratory, and he ran through a demonstration of his silicon-fuller’s earth rhodomagnetic attraction that left Jerry unimpressed, since he didn’t really know much about the theory or practice of non-ferrous magnetism.
Then the inventor said, “Of course, my notes are all filed in my rooms upstairs. Would you mind coming up there? I’ll scout around and make sure Mrs. Talbot and Dora are out of the way.”
Puzzled, Jerry obeyed. He followed his client upstairs to the main floor, a hideous golden-oak, flowered-carpet, and stained-glass monstrosity, then up two more flights. It was, he thought, certainly an old-fashioned house. Then, with the force of a lightning bolt, he recalled that they were in a warehouse.
It didn’t make sense—nor did Amos Willy’s two rooms on the third floor front. Jerry turned shuddering eyes away from a birch-bark chromo inscribed, God love our happy home, then from a picture of some large antlered animal standing defiantly over the dying body of its mate. Ignoring his host, he went to the window and looked out.
They weren’t even in the same part of the city—they weren’t in the same era, unless Jerry had gone mad. He saw a stout gentleman pass slowly along the sidewalk on the other side of the street, wearing a high-crowned derby with an absurdly rolled brim and a watch chain thick as a hawser across his brocaded waistcoat. He noted a pair of ladies in long skirts and—he gulped—bustles. He saw a boy in a Buster Brown suit roll a hoop slowly down the street in the opposite direction from an open victoria driven by a top-hatted coachman and inhabited by an elegant lady who lolled beneath a fringed parasol.
Only faintly did he hear Amos Willy repeat his name to get his attention. Turning on the inventor, he blazed, “Damn rhodomagnetics now, Amos! Is this a joke, or have you invented some sort of time-travel machine?”
The scientist looked mildly distressed. “It’s not exactly a matter of time travel,” he said. “The theory is simple enough once you understand it. I put the thing together to save money.”
“You did what?” Jerry discovered he was shouting.
“Well…” His vehemence had flustered the inventor. “You see, I knew I was costing you a lot of money, and what with the cost of living up so, it seemed economical to work this out. It cost very little, and the savings are enormous. My rooms only cost three dollars a week, and that includes breakfast. I can live like a king on less than fifty dollars a month. Look”—he turned toward the files that filled one wall of his paiior-study—“I have them all itemized.”
Jerry said, “Oh, my God!” and collapsed upon an elaborate chair of black walnut that looked as if it had been upholstered with horsehair—and that felt like horsehair when he sat on it. He said, to a distressed and bewildered Amos Willy, “What time—I mean, what date is it here?”
“Let me think,” said the scientist. “Why, it’s June, 1891. I’m not sure of the exact date. And I’m not sure it’s really a time-travel machine. You see—”
“Skip it,” said Jerry rudely. “I wouldn’t understand it anyway. But, man, don’t you realize what you’ve done? Don’t answer that—you evidently don’t. Can you get us back where we belong?”
“Of course,” said Amos, moving toward the door. “I hope you won’t spread our little secret.”
“Don’t worry,” said Jerry. “Who’d believe me if I tried?”
It was incredible, he thought as he followed Amos down the carpeted stairs. The man who had discovered time travel had used it to save money, not to make it. On the return trip, which was accomplished without incident, he paid close attention to the capstan.
“And that’s all there is to it?” he asked when they were back.
“That’s all there is to it,” the scientist repeated. “It’s really a very simple process, once the quantum mathematical theory behind it is understood. I got the idea one morning in the bathtub.”
“You’ve shown me a miracle,” said Jerry solemnly. “And you can vary the date of arrival by turning that doodad?”
“I suppose so,” said Amos. “I’ve never tried any other date. Why should I when I’m so well off where I am?”
“No reason at all,” said Jerry.
They left the warehouse and walked toward the nearest avenue to pick up a cab. “I’m not sure this life you’re leading is healthy,” he told the scientist. “After all, this is the time you were born into. Surely, you have some interests here beyond your science—friends, a girl.” He saw by Amos’ blush that he had scored and put on the pitch. Amos had earned relaxation, a refresher, a vacation, a party. Jerry would take care of the precious inventions and experiments and see no harm came to them.
By the time they parted, Amos had his check for five hundred dollars and Jerry had the keys to the warehouse service elevator and the lodging house back in time.
“I’ll take good care of them. Don’t worry about a thing. Go out and have yourself a ball,” he said as they parted.
“A ball?” said Amos. “What sort of a ball?”
Hurrying away, Jerry told himself, “You’ll never know, sport.”
It was not that Jerry had anything really nefarious in mind—at any rate, where the dedicated Amos Willy was concerned. He merely wanted to get back there, to 1891 and look around. After all, it was opportunity—fantastic opportunity—and Jerry was hardly the man to let its knock go unanswered.
* * * *
That night he lay awake in his Sutton Place bedroom, thinking, figuring, computing. For once, R-D, Inc., and its myriad problems were pushed into the hind-quarters of his mind.
The next morning, he called the office and told Rhoda to cancel his appointments until further notice. He was going to have to move—and move fast. There was no telling when the dedicated Amos might come wandering back from his hastily induced holiday.
Jerry spent the entire morning at the Public Library, delving into old almanacs and sports record books. Then he went downtown to the second-hand bookstore district and purchased a half-dozen books, dealing with horse-racing history, with baseball, with the operations of the stock-market, with general life in the early 1890’s. By the time he was finished, it was past three o’clock and the banks were closed, so he returned to the office.
“Where have you been?” Rhoda asked him as he entered. “You must have gotten a million calls.”
“How about Mr. Willy—did he call?” he asked, trying to hide from her the wholly masculine urge that all but overwhelmed him at sight of her shoulders, throat, and upper bosom, revealed by a backless summer dress.
“No—that screwball’s the only one who didn’t,” she told him. Then, after eyeing him curiously, “You sure you’re all right, Jerry?”
“Huh? Who me? I’m fine,” he told her.
He went in to his desk and tended to office affairs, though his heart was not in it. Twice, he almost told Park Doheny about Amos Willy’s amazing discovery, but eac
h time he managed to hold his tongue. Park would not believe him, and he had promised Amos to keep his secret secret. Every time he thought of it, Jerry could only wonder at a man so dedicated that he had invented a time machine simply to cut down living expenses while working out his theories on rhodomagnetics.
He was going to have to make his move the next day, so he was in and out of the office, completing his preparations. A theatrical costumer supplied him with a Gay Nineties outfit—complete from straw boater with elastic to suede-topped high-button shoes. He found it impossible to get paper money, so he invested in a hundred silver dollars, dated before 1890, and, for fabulous prices, managed to pick up another five hundred in properly dated twenty-dollar gold pieces. By the time he had all this assembled at the office, it was after five. Gathering his impedimenta, he bade Rhoda Carlin a polite farewell, rode down in the elevator and hired a cab to take him to the warehouse.
When he got out, another cab pulled up behind his and Rhoda emerged, revealing a breath-taking expanse of nylon leg. Wishing the silver dollars weren’t quite so heavy, and that the box containing his costume weren’t quite so awkward and bulky, Jerry waited until she came up to him.
“What’s the idea?” he asked her.
“You left these at the office—I thought you might need them,” said the girl. She handed him, without expression, the precious box that contained his gold pieces. Feeling slightly sick to his stomach over danger averted, Jerry thanked her.
Regarding him curiously, she said, “Have you gone stark, staring nuts—or what?”
“What difference does it make to you?” he asked her.