Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  Tink sighed.

  “He’s the one to worry about. Not me.”

  It was about a half-hour after that when the reporters arrived. A jewel theft was always good news, but when it had a tie-in with the season’s most glamorous ingénue, it became really hot.

  They fired a thousand questions at him through the bars:

  “Are you in love with Lola Langtry?”

  “Were you working alone on the job?”

  “Did she scream when you jerked the brooch from her?”

  Jonathon answered the questions patiently, as carefully as he could. Finally they trooped off. That is, all but one. A lean gray news hound whom Jonathon had seen a few times before about town stuck behind.

  “My name is Lafferty,” he said. “You’ve done some writing haven’t you? Play or something wasn’t it?” Jonathon nodded, pleased in spite of himself that anyone should know of that.

  “You aren’t the guilty party in this thing are you?” Lafferty asked casually.

  “No,” Jonathon said wearily. “I’m not. But nobody listens to me.”

  “They will,” Lafferty said. “This little masquerade is about over.” Nastee watched the reporter leave with a troubled look in his eye.

  “Something’s up, Tink,” he said positively. “What do you know about it?”

  Tink swung gracefully from one bar to another like a trapeze artist.

  “You’ll see,” he said coyly, “you’ll see.”

  THE day dragged by and night settled over the city. At eleven o’clock the warden opened the door to Jonathon’s cell.

  “Your bail has just been taken care of,” he said.

  “By whom?” Jonathon asked.

  “Max Swart. He also wants to see you as soon as you can make it from here to his place. He sent his car here and it’s waiting for you.”

  Jonathon left in such a hurry that Tink and Nastee barely had time to rub the sleep out of their eyes and leap to their accustomed spot on his shoulder. On the trip through the city in Max Swart’s smooth car Jonathon racked his brain for an answer to the puzzle of Max Swart’s interest in him. But nothing he arrived at made sense so he gave up.

  When he reached the duplex apartment where Swart lived he was whisked to the penthouse in a waiting elevator and led into the Swart apartment by an obsequious butler. Through heavily carpeted corridors and finally to the library. The butler threw wide the double doors of oak and Jonathon was on his own.

  Seated behind a huge desk in the center of the room was Max Swart. Jonathon entered the room and saw that Lola was seated in an overstuffed chair in the corner and Lafferty, the news-hound, was leaning against the wall.

  “My boy,” Max cried jovially, “Welcome to the shack.”

  “Lemme talk,” Lafferty said bluntly. “Something stinks about this whole deal and that’s why I got you together. In the first place Swart I think the robbery was phoney, a press agent’s gag. This lad didn’t take the brooch, in fact nobody took it, but you wanted the public to think this particular person did take it.”

  Swart shrugged good-naturedly.

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Because this young guy is a playwright. You figure that if the public gets interested in this guy as a thief, it’ll be good publicity when you buy a play from him and star Lola Langtry in it, the gal whom he robbed.”

  SWART stood up and rubbed his hands excitedly. He paced back and forth behind his desk like an overweight panther.

  “It’s terrific!” he cried suddenly. “It’s got everything. We’ll do it. What do we care if he’s a thief? All writers are anyway. Instead of jewels he can steal scenes and dialogue from now on, only its respectable.”

  “I’m not a jewel thief,” Jonathon snapped irritably.

  Lafferty swallowed incredulously. “You mean you didn’t have this cooked up already?” he demanded of Swart.

  “No,” Swart said expansively, “We missed a bet on that, but thanks to you we can capitalize on the publicity yet. We’ll all make barrels of money,” he paused and glanced meaningly at Lafferty. “You understand, of course, that I mean we will all make barrels of money.”

  Lafferty nodded and smiled.

  “I get you. I’ll forget all about tonight and pretend I was bowling instead.”

  Swart picked up Lola’s diamond brooch from his desk and walked to the mantle and placed it in a wall safe.

  “Then the whole thing’s settled,” he boomed. “Even to keeping the diamond brooch that started the whole business here in my wall safe tonight.”

  “Mr. Swart,” Jonathon said, “if you want me to write plays for you—fine. About working with Miss Langtry though I can’t say. That’s up to her.”

  Max Swart looked at Lola and saw the delightful blush which stained her cheeks and the shy smile that fluttered over her lips.

  “I think everything will be all right on that angle,” he said drily.

  Tink did a little jig step and slapped Nastee on the back almost knocking him over.

  “I win,” he chortled. “I win. Everything’s perfectly happy. The guy got out of jail and got a job, and unless I’m way wrong he’ll get the girl too.”

  “I’ve still got five minutes,” Nastee snarled peevishly. “My time isn’t up and I’ve got an idea that’ll put him right back where he started. I’m going to cop the brooch again and plant it on him. When they find it a second time, he’ll be through for good.”

  “You’re repeating yourself, you know,” Tink said scornfully.

  “There’s no law against that,” Nastee retorted.

  He ran across the floor and up the wall. Tink followed him dolefully. He saw Nastee walk across the mantle and climb into the interior of the wall safe. Then he chuckled.

  Stepping across the floor, he slammed the door to the wall safe and twirled the combination handle.

  Tink’s mouth was parted in a wide grin. That’d hold Nastee.

  He crawled up and took a seat before the wall safe. He’d let him out after midnight, but not a second before.

  Nastee would be furious at being tricked but it was his own fault. Tink could picture him now, red-faced and impotent, tramping up and down inside the safe, probably swearing like a trooper. He wouldn’t be fit to live with for weeks after he let him out.

  Tink didn’t care. He looked down at the happiness he had created and his tiny, tinkling laugh bubbled from his throat, contented and happy.

  Lola looked up at Jonathon and smiled at him.

  “Funny,” she said, “but I thought I heard someone laugh.”

  “It was probably my heart,” Jonathon said.

  [*] Irish folklore is full of beliefs about the “little people,” both good and bad. Perhaps the most famous of them all are the leprechauns, who are said to be invisible, except to true Irishmen, and only to them on certain occasions. They are, insist the Irish, the “voice” we call conscience.

  THUNDER OVER WASHINGTON

  First published in the October 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures.

  It was a mighty fine gesture of friendship and peace that the Ussarian government was making—but it was off-color somewhere . . .

  “DELANEY!” somebody yelled, “Wake up! I got something here I want you to get busy on.”

  It was a boiling hot day and there was not a whisper of a breeze stirring. When it gets that way in Washington it is reminiscent of some of the more torrid scenes in Dante’s Inferno. I had been slumped listlessly in my chair in the office of the Standard trying vainly to convince myself that my extreme discomfort was merely a mental condition when Der Führer’s voice had suddenly drowned out the drowsy hum of the fan.

  “Delaney!” he roared again, “Snap out of it!”

  I opened my eyes and swore feebly. I thought desperately of dying on the spot to avoid going to work but I finally discarded the idea with a sigh. The only thing wrong with it was that I’d be darned if I’d give the paper a feature story for nothing. I climbed unhappily to my feet and s
louched over to the City Ed’s desk.

  He was working cheerily in his shirt sleeves apparently oblivious to the heat. He looked up at me and smiled.

  “Going to be a warm one today,” he said contentedly.

  “Going to be?” I echoed hollowly. “If it gets any hotter the lizards will break out with prickly heat.”

  The Chief paid scant attention to my suffering.

  “I’ve got a hunch,” he said, “that I just stumbled across a little something that might cook into a nice yarn.”

  I winced at the word cook, but because the Chief’s hunches are kind of miraculous I forgot the heat long enough to get interested.

  “What’s the dope?” I asked, settling myself on the corner of his desk.

  “Just this,” he said. “The embassy of the Ussarian government is presenting a special gavel to the Senate tonight. It will be used for the first time tonight in the special session that’s been called to discuss these war-aid bills. It’s been ballyhooed as a sort of good-will gesture, and as an indication of the warm and lasting friendship between the nations and all that sort of bunk.”

  “I read about it,” I said. “What’s the angle?”

  “That’s what I want you to find out,” the Chief grinned: “The government of Ussar has been sitting on the sidelines and playing both ends against the middle until no one can be sure of what they’re out for. But one thing is certain. They haven’t any love for us and they’d stab us in the back the minute they got the chance. So that’s why this presentation of a new gavel and all that boloney about lasting friendship sounds screwy as the devil.”

  “Maybe so,” I said anxiously, “but it’s no job for a reporter. This is State Department stuff. Why don’t you tell them about it and let me go back to sleep.”

  “Because,” the Chief said softly, “the State Department is not on my payroll, but you are. I want some kind of a feature on the presentation of this new gavel. If there’s an eightball in the wood pile it’s your job to roll it out where we can see it.”

  I felt like telling him that he’d been reading too many Thrilling Spy stories, but some kind Providence must protect me in moments like that, for I didn’t. Instead I said:

  “Okay. I’ll get your feature, but don’t expect me to find a huge net of intrigue and mystery wrapping its tenacles about the White House. This is Washington and not the first chapter of a wild novel about fifth columnists and the Red Menace.”

  “I know this is Washington,” he snapped, “but you apparently don’t. This is the capital of the most powerful nation in the world and if you don’t think that every move of the foreign embassies here is important, you’ve got no business masquerading as a reporter.”

  The Chief is very odd on some points. One thing in particular is his queer idea that Washington is full of hot news. Hot air maybe, but not hot news.

  “Okay,” I said for the second time, “I’ll get busy.”

  I stuck my hat on the back of my head, waved a not-particularly-fond farewell to the Chief and left the office.

  I HOPPED in a cab, gave the driver the address of the Ussarian legation, and settled back to think. As much as I disliked to admit it, the Chief’s hunch was queerly reasonable. Ussar was, diplomatically speaking, squarely perched on top of the international fence. But there was little doubt in anyone’s mind that when she did leap down and join the party it would be on the opposite side of the fence from the whiskered guy in the red, white and blue suit. So why all this sudden love and kisses?

  I shrugged mentally and decided to stop worrying until I had something to worry about. I closed my eyes and thought wistfully of the lucky girls at the World’s Fair who were frozen in ice five times every working day. The cab stopped after a while and I climbed out, paid the driver, and walked into the offices of the Ussarian legation.

  A bewhiskered clerk in a black suit bowed to me from a receptionist desk and asked me what I wanted.

  I showed him my press card and told him.

  He beamed broadly. His black whiskers parted and his two rows of large white teeth showed through the underbrush.

  “Oh yes, yes, yes,” he cried emotionally. “Tonight we present the gavel to your government. It is a great manifestation of the mutual friendship and aims of two great nations.”

  “Banana oil,” I muttered.

  He arched a hairy eyebrow at me.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “Where’s the gavel now?”

  “Oh the gavel is not as yet arrived,” he explained importantly. “It will arrive at the airport in a few minutes on the special plane from Ussar. All the members of the legation, except myself, are on hand to commemorate the glorious occasion of its safe arrival.”

  I thanked him and left. Some of my enthusiasm was dwindling. I was convinced now that there was no ulterior designs or purposes lurking in the minds of the bewhiskered ministers from Ussar. The heat was still practically unbearable as I climbed into another cab and gave the driver directions.

  As we approached the airport I heard a muted throbbing growing louder above me so I peeked out the side of the car just in time to see a huge bi-motored transport nosing down for a landing. I knew that no commercial planes were scheduled to arrive at this time so with my usual brilliant reasoning I deduced that I was watching the arrival of the plane carrying the good-will gavel from Ussar.

  I told the driver to stop and I climbed out to get a good gander at the plane as it soared down to the landing field. I was squinting up as it passed over me, trying to get a clear look at its construction when suddenly an amazing thing occurred.

  From the cloudless expanse of blue sky overhead a lightning bolt flashed a blazing crimson fork across the nose of the settling plane. The plane swerved suddenly but continued to settle toward the landing field.

  Before I could let loose a yell of astonishment another brilliantly blinding flash slashed past the plane. Two terrific bomb-like bursts of thunder followed, shaking the ground like I was standing on a mound of jelly.

  THE plane dipped suddenly and headed for the ground at a sharp angle. I held my breath as it plowed toward the earth at an almost impossible landing speed. But the pilot must have been related to the original Wright brothers, because at the last instant the nose of the plane came up and the ship pancaked to a hard, but safe landing.

  My knees were clacking together like castenets by this time. The cab driver leaned out of the side of his car and scratched his head bewilderedly.

  “Thunder and lightning,” he muttered. “It ain’t right. There ain’t a cloud in the sky, nor a drop of rain between here and New York.”

  I was thinking hard about those two vivid forks of lightning myself. Of course it was probably an ordinary electrical phenomenon but it had certainly seemed as if those bolts of lightning had been aimed at the Ussar plane.

  I shook my head to shake out the screwy ideas that were roosting there. If I kept it up I’d get like the Chief, looking for wild, fantastic stories in every commonplace occurrence.

  I climbed back into the cab and we drove onto the landing field. I could see the Ussarian plane, motors still idling, surrounded by a bevy of diplomats, photographers and airline officials. We were still a few hundred yards from the plane when I saw two or three of the Ussarian diplomats separate themselves from the crowd and hurry to a huge black touring car that was parked twenty or thirty feet from the plane.

  They all climbed in, the doors slammed, the motor roared to life and the huge car moved swiftly away.

  “Step on it!” I yelled to my driver, “there goes my story.”

  The cab surged forward, but by the time we reached the rope barriers that separated the landing field from the parking lot, the Ussarian embassy car was disappearing around the bend of the road that led from the airport on the opposite side of the field.

  I climbed out and cursed fluently. It was irritating enough to be sent out on a juvenile assignment on a day that wasn’t fit for any human being,
but to have the thing settle into a hare-and-hound proposition . . .

  I realized wearily that the Ussarian delegates had probably collected their thrice-cursed gavel and were now speeding back to their legation with it. Which meant I would have to trail them back there and listen to stupid, official statements enunciated as if they were worthy of being stamped out on solid gold tablets.

  The airline officials had disappeared into their haunts, the grease monkeys were climbing over the plane and the only other human beings left were a small, harried looking man who was checking a long list of figures and the pilot who had brought the plane into the field.

  Seeing him reminded me of the peculiar lightning flashes that had flashed past the plane when he was landing.

  I told the cabby to wait a minute, and sauntered over to the plane.

  THE pilot was climbing off one of the wings as I approached. He was a small, toughly built young fellow with a heavy dark beard. He was wearing regulation flying togs and the glasses of his helmet were shoved high on his forehead displaying black, unwinking eyes.

  “That was a nice landing,” I said conversationally. “I thought for a minute you might have a little trouble straightening out.”

  He smiled faintly and then peered carefully into the clear vast stretches of white sky. When he looked back at me there was a puzzled uncertain look in his eye. In spite of the heat he looked as if he might start shivering.

  “I’ve been flying for quite a while,” he said almost to himself, “and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Like what?” I prompted gently.

  “Thunder and lightning,” he muttered, shaking his head. “From the minute I took the ship up in California until I just pulled in now, the sky has been full of lightning, popping around the ship and shooting in front of it. I’ve never seen anything like it. And the funny thing about it is that it all happened in a perfectly clear sky.”