Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “Yes. It was probably wind against the window panes,” said Mr. Lee, who was never at a loss for an answer.

  MR. LEE and Terrence met that afternoon in the board room of the Exchange National Bank.

  “My daughter tells me you are still looking for a job,” Mr. Lee said. He stressed the word “still” faintly, and got across the impression that Terrence had been unemployed since at least the start of the Punic Wars.

  “I’ve had miserable luck,” Terrence said. He was still unnerved by his experience of the morning with Mr. Carruthers.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Mr. Lee said, with total disbelief in his tone. “What kind of a job do you want?”

  “Anything at all. Anything that’s fitting, you understand.”

  “Oh, I see. Do you think we might persuade you to start off as, say, a vice-president?”

  Terrence laughed good-naturedly. He lit a cigarette with an expansive gesture. “That would be an excellent place to start, I’m sure.”

  “Yes, you’d have room for advancement,” Mr. Lee said. He paused a moment, studying the shining mahogany surface of the board table. Then he said: “I am a vice president of this Bank. I’ve held my present title thirteen years, before which I was respectively, a cashier, a secretary, a teller, and office boy. With great deal of hard work, plus certain intellectual endowments, I’ve got as far as I have in my profession. Are you willing to take the same chance, put in the same hard work over the years?”

  “Well, now,” Terrance said, uneasily.

  “I thought so. For some reason which escapes me completely, my daughter finds herself in love with you, Mr. O’Reilly. You know of this—er—aberration, I presume.”

  “Oh, certainly.” Terrence smiled with the grace of an Irish King. “I love her too, you know.”

  “That’s going to make it nice for both of you,” Mr. Lee said. “You will need this mutual affection to take your minds off your stomachs.”

  “I don’t get you,” Terrence said. He smiled, then decided there was nothing to smile about. He stopped smiling.

  “Get this then, Mr. O’Reilly. If my daughter persists in her tasteless and mysterious affection for you, I’m going to pack her bag and set it on the doorstep this evening. You can take care of her from now on. And with your present financial prospects I think she’ll have to get used to a series of eighteen day diets.”

  “You’re not going to give me a job?” Terrence said, still puzzled by the nature of developments.

  “No, I’m not going to give you a job,” Mr. Lee said. “I wouldn’t give you a job—”

  Mr. Lee was saved the trouble of finishing his sentence by an urgent knock on the door.

  “Come in,” he said.

  A well-dressed worried-looking man entered. He glanced, from Mr. Lee to Terrence, then back to Mr. Lee again. “There’s been some trouble, sir. A fifty-thousand dollar bearer bond has disappeared.”

  “Nonsense!” Mr. Lee said. “Nothing ‘disappears’ in this bank.”

  “Well, we haven’t been able to find it sir. Mr. Zembelli asked for a check of his bonds, and when we went through his envelope the fifty-thousand dollar bond was gone.”

  “Is Mr. Zembelli here now?”

  “Yes, sir. Very much so, if you. know what I mean.”

  “I understand.” Mr. Lee turned to Terrence. “You’ll have to excuse me now. We were through with our talk, at any rate.”

  “I’m pretty good at finding things,” Terrence said unexpectedly. “Why don’t you let me help you?”

  Mr. Lee smiled. Then he laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh. “Come along with me,” he said.

  * * *

  “I don’t figure this move,” Nastee said.

  He and Tink were reclining on Terrence’s shoulder, as that young man hurried after Mr. Lee’s spare figure.

  “You’ll see,” Tink said. His tone was cheerful.

  “Don’t gloat,” Nastee said petulantly.

  “I can’t help it,” Tink said, laughing.

  TERRENCE followed Mr. Lee to a paneled room on the second floor. Present were several bank officials, and a round little man with red cheeks and mournful brown eyes.

  “Ah, Mr. Zembelli,” Mr. Lee said.

  “My bond, where is my bond?” Mr. Zembelli said dolefully.

  “Well, that’s what we’re going to find out,” Mr. Lee said.

  “That’s nice of you, Mr. Zembelli said, and went and looked out a window.

  Mr. Lee picked up a thick brown, folder from a desk. He; removed a sheaf of bonds and went through them, carefully, noting their numbers against a typewritten list on the cover of the folder.

  “It’s not here,” he said.

  “We know that,” Mr. Zembelli said in a mournful voice.

  Mr. Lee went into an open vault and Terrence, followed him. Mr. Lee looked on a shelf where the Zembelli folder had been kept, and then got down, on his knees and crawled about the floor. When he stood, his face was flushed and there was a worried line about his eyes. He glanced at another of the officials, shrugged his shoulders and went outside.

  “We’re still looking,” he said to Mr. Zembelli’s sadly hunched shoulders.

  “I don’t like to be putting you to all this trouble,” Mr. Zembelli said, sighing. “I shouldn’t have bothered you with my bonds, maybe, in the first place. But everybody knows it isn’t safe to keep them in the home. Your bank says so on its radio program. So I brought them down here where I could have them always safe.”

  There was an embarrassed silence.

  Terrence suddenly felt a tug at his finger. Glancing down he saw nothing; but the tug was unmistakably repeated. He moved willy-nilly in the direction of the pull.

  “Where are you going?” Mr. Lee asked waspishly.

  “I—I don’t quite know.”

  Terrence was led across the room, and the pressure on his finger caused him to hold his arm out before him, so that he looked like a water-diviner as he moved hesitantly along. He stopped at a bookcase and his hand was moved up and placed against a large dictionary. He removed it from the shelf under the same invisible compulsion that had led him to it; and then, because he didn’t know what else to do, opened it and flipped through its pages.

  Everyone in the room was watching this strange behavior, so he turned, and smiled weakly at them. Then he put the dictionary back in place.

  Again there was the tugging on his finger and he was taken back to the desk where Mr. Zembelli’s folder rested.

  “What kind of nonsense is this?” Mr. Lee-snapped.

  “Let him alone, please,” Mr. Zembelli said in a soft despairing voice. “He is maybe more efficient than even this so-efficient bank.”

  Terrence picked up the folder, put it down again; and then he saw a tiny edge of paper extending from beneath the desk blotter. He pulled at it, and almost simultaneously a delighted shriek sounded from Mr. Zembelli.

  “My bond, my bond!” he cried.

  * * *

  “What a lot of corny nonsense!” Nastee snapped. “Leading him to the dictionary first!”

  “Well, it made a good act,” Tink chortled.

  “Now I’m mad!” Nastee muttered.

  “FRANKLY, you saved us from an extremely awkward situation,” Mr. Lee said to Terrence with reluctant grace. “I think perhaps we might resume our previous conversation—”

  An officer of the bank touched his arm, whispered in his ear. Mr. Lee glanced at Terrence, who was smiling cheerfully. Mr. Lee’s gaze slid down to Terrence’s outside suit pocket.

  Mr. Lee coughed. “What is that in your pocket, please?” he said in a gentle voice.

  “In my pocket?” Terrence reached down, pulled out an impressively embossed bond. “Well, well,” he said.

  “Ah—precisely,” Mr. Lee said, taking the bond from his hand.

  “It must have got in there while I was—er—looking for the other one,” Terrence muttered in confusion.

  “Ah—yes,” Mr. Lee said. “Well, may
I escort you to the door?”

  “What a dirty trick,” Tink said, with feeling,

  “You see, I win!”

  “Yes, but you had to make him look like a thief.”

  “Ah, so what? I told you he was a dope.”

  The two Leprechauns rode downstairs on Terrence’s slumping shoulders.

  The lobby of the bank was crowded with mid-afternoon depositors. Mr. Lee, along with several officers of the bank, led Terrence rather pointedly toward the revolving doors.

  “I can’t understand how that bond got in my pocket,” Terrence said. “It’s been a funny day. Things keep happening to me in the darndest way.”

  Suddenly the revolving doors spun harder than usual and three stocky men pushed their way into the lobby. They were masked, and carried guns in their hands.

  “Stick ’em up!” they shouted.

  “My God!” cried Mr. Lee.

  Silence—deep tense silence—settled like a pall over the large room.

  Terrence heard a faint tinkling laugh, and then something like red-hot darning needle jabbed him in the rear.

  “Ouch!” he bellowed and leaped forward, clasping both hands to his offended region.

  “Smart guy,” one of the bandits said, and his finger closed on the trigger of his gun.

  But nothing happened.

  And Terrence, forced into action, so to speak, promptly slugged the man on the jaw. Terrence had his shortcomings but they were not in the area of physical effectiveness. The man went down in an untidy heap.

  The other two men tried to fire their guns, but before they could get them working, Terrence was on them like an enraged, lion, laying about with savage enthusiasm.

  It was all over in a twinkling.

  * * *

  “Aw, I quit,” Nastee said disgustedly.

  “You’d, better!”

  “You’re acting like a Leprechaun in a B movie,” Nastee said witheringly. “Hold-up men! Heroics! It’s enough to make me sick . . .”

  MR. LEE SAT at his desk, a rare smile on his face. With him were Terrence and Carol, arm-in-arm, and the president of the bank.

  “We need a new detective, it so happens,” Mr. Lee was saying.

  “We couldn’t find a better one,” the president of the bank said, beaming at Terrence.

  “Oh, darling,” Carol said happily.

  From the edge of an inkwell on Mr. Lee’s desk, Tink and Nastee surveyed the scene with varying reactions.

  “Gosh, isn’t she pretty,” Tink said, sighing.

  “Ah, they’re still a pair of dopes. And I got an idea—”

  “No, that’s not fair. You said you quit.”

  “Yeah, but I changed my mind. I—”

  Tink turned and pushed Nastee very hard. There was a barely audible plunk as Nastee fell into the inkwell.

  “What “was that?” the president of the bank inquired, peering at the inkwell.

  “Air bubble,” Mr. Lee said crisply.

  He picked up a pen and began jabbing it into the inkwell and the noise it made drowned out Nastee’s impotent protests and Tink’s delighted laughter . . .

  VANGUARD OF THE DOOMED

  First published in the February 1951 issue of Amazing Stories.

  Was it chance alone that sent this meteor streaking earthward—or did an alien power direct it as an opening bid for conquest?

  CHAPTER I

  “WF18 CALLING WC33M . . . WF18W calling WC33M . . . WF18W calling WC33M . . .”

  He repeated the call over and over into the microphone, a pleading note in his voice. But the loudspeaker remained silent. It had been silent all evening. He had repeated his call at half-hour intervals, but there had been no answer.

  There had been no answer for a week.

  Frowning at the silent loudspeaker, Bradley Dunn lighted a cigarette. He thought back over the nightmare events of the past week, and he wondered if they formed the reason for her silence. He had learned little about the girl in the brief month of their short-wave radio acquaintance. He knew that her name was Faye Manning, that she seemed to be a radio ham like himself—but that was about all.

  Faye Manning . . . A voice from a short-wave radio loudspeaker. A voice belonging to a girl he had never seen.

  Yet that voice had formed a picture of her in his mind. It had told him things about her that she had never put into words. It was soft, cultured, breaking frequently into clear, silvery laughter. It held no affectation, no coyness or pretense. It contained warmth and sincerity, a quick intelligence that carried her easily over a wide range of knowledge.

  Her voice further told him that she was an attractive girl, even though it seemed unlikely that an attractive girl would indulge in a hobby as sedentary as short-wave radio. She had the youth and vitality, the self-confidence and zest for life that went with good looks.

  In three years of short-wave radio broadcasting Dunn had learned a lot about voices. But in those three years he had never encountered a voice quite like Faye Manning’s. It held an inexplicable magnetism, a challenge. It was a voice that both revealed and concealed. For there was also an odd yet persistent quality of mystery about her. She avoided speaking of herself or her surroundings, somehow always managing to keep their conversations on an impersonal basis.

  There were times when she had seemed downright furtive—conspiratorial. Her radio contacts with him had been brief, hurried, made in a low-pitched tone as though she wished to avoid being overheard.

  THE LAST TIME he had spoken to her—almost exactly a week ago—there had been a restrained excitement in her words, a hidden tension . . . a hint of dread.

  “Something has happened, Brad,” she had said. It was one of the few occasions she had used his first name, both having begun addressing each other by their first names only a short while before. “I can’t explain, but it’s very important. This set is going to see a lot of use, and so I may not be able to keep in touch with you for a while. Please try to understand.”

  He had pressed for an explanation, trying desperately to prevent losing contact with her, even temporarily. His existence had come to center about his talks with her, and the thought of having them interrupted had been as unpleasant to face as that of giving up such a vitally necessary function as sight.

  “What is it, Faye?” he had asked, “Is there something I can do?”

  “I’m afraid not. In fact, I don’t know if I’d want anything done. This thing that’s happened . . . well, it’s important, Brad. In a lot of ways. I’ll have to sign off now. I’ll get in touch with you later, if I can.”

  “Faye, wait! Please. If there’s something seriously wrong—”

  “I’m sorry, Brad,” she had hurriedly broken in. “I really must sign off.” He had not heard from her since. He crushed out the cigarette with sudden violence and ran a hand through his thick brown hair. Loneliness and discontent showed in the pucker between his hazel eyes, in the downward curve of his wide mouth. His features were mobile and sensitive, clashing with the rugged strength that lay in his wide cheekbones and the angularity of his jaw.

  He turned away from the radio set in a surge of restlessness, and abruptly he was aware of the silence that filled the bungalow, a silence that seemed to settle most heavily in this particular room. He ran a bitter gaze over the littered workbench near the short-wave apparatus, over the tool cabinet and the tier of laden shelves beside it, over the studio couch and the large, overflowing bookcase against the opposite wall. The familiarity of the room mocked him. It was a reminder, a symbol of the emptiness of his life. He was twenty-eight, an electronics engineer, considered a valuable employee by his superiors, but for him existence had not yet taken on real meaning.

  She had brought a needed brightness into his surroundings. Her soft voice and silvery laughter had been a bridge to a more vivid and interesting world. An immaterial bridge, yet one he might have crossed. He told himself again that he should have asked for her address, should have made an attempt to see her. Certain things
she had said indicated that she lived in the same city, or at least sufficiently close to it to do something about meeting her personally.

  But he had hesitated to suggest a meeting at too early a stage. It had seemed wiser to wait until they knew more of each other, until they knew what to expect when they met face to face.

  HER CONTINUED silence weakened his resolution now. He was growing seriously worried. He had the vague yet persistent impression that she was in trouble of some sort, and he wanted to know if she was all right, if there was something he could possibly do. He had been unable to locate her in any of the ordinary directories, but she could be traced through her radio call letters.

  “Something has happened, Brad . . . Her words rose in his mind again, and he wondered if the planetoid that had entered the Solar System to menace Earth had anything to do with the crisis she faced. The Celestial Hammer, as the weirdly behaved object had come to be called, had brought fear and confusion into millions of lives, and its terrible threat may easily have brought disorder into Faye Manning’s. Thousands of persons had already fled the city in the past week. She may have been one of them.

  But recalling something else she had said, he doubted that. “This set is going to see a lot of use.The words held no suggestion of intended flight. They held instead a hint of mystery. What sort of use could she have meant, if not that for which an amateur broadcasting outfit was intended and for which it was licensed? And if she were using her set for the proper purpose, why wasn’t it possible for her to keep in touch with him?

  Slumped in his chair, Dunn shook his head wearily. Mystery, questions, uncertainty, dread . . . He’d had enough of that during the past several months. Everyone had had enough. First the war, with the Slav-Asian Powers threatening to engulf the world—if atomic weapons did not destroy it first. Then the strangely erratic planetoid that had wandered into Earth’s path, an even greater threat since it was beyond human control. Dunn corrected himself. No, not beyond human control, if a madman named Everett Stonecrest was to be taken seriously. Stonecrest claimed to be able to direct the movements of the planetoid at will. It was he who had dubbed the object the Celestial Hammer.