Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  She stood and put both slim warm hands on his shoulders. “I’m through with my little speech now. I’ll wind it up by saying I love you, more than any warehouse of minks, or any harbor of yachts. Do what you want now, dear, and tell me about it tonight. We’ll have caviar or beans, depending on what happens. And either way, remember, I couldn’t love you more than I do.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him warmly on the mouth. “Goodbye now, darling,” she said, and walked swiftly out of the office.

  “Whew!’” Mortimer said.

  The door opened almost immediately and the young man returned. “Well, Chief?” he said anxiously.

  Mortimer smiled thinly. Now he knew what Colby, would want to do. This whole body he was inhabiting was alive—pulsing from head to toe: This was a fighter’s body, the body of a man who lived every day to the hilt of his energy and strength, a “Sell everything!” Mortimer snapped. “We’ll show Bailey something before the day is over. I want every asset I own converted into cash—my homes, cars, everything. I’ve never backed down, and it’s too late to learn a new way of operating. Now, get moving on this. Fast!”

  “Yes, sir,” the young man snapped. He scooped up the papers from the desk and left the room on a run.

  Mortimer smiled and drew a deep breath. This was living! Suddenly his head buzzed warningly. The dizziness again. He was on his way! Damn it, he thought. He’d have liked to stick around and find out how this thing would turn out. He hurried to the leather-covered divan and stretched out comfortably, smiling. Still, his next visit might be even more interesting. He closed his eyes.

  A VOICE SAID, “The Times, Shorty.”

  Mortimer opened his eyes, and blinked them twice. A large, young man in a dripping raincoat and snap-brim hat stood before him, holding a coin in his hand. It was late evening and crowds were hurrying past Mortimer, running to get out of the drenching rain. He stood under a leaking, tarpaulin, a bundle of newspapers under his arm, a change apron tied about his ragged overcoat.

  “Come on, Shorty, it’s raining,” the young man said good-naturedly.

  “Sure, sure,” Mortimer said. He gave the man a, paper from under his arm and accepted a nickel. With a sigh, he watched the young man hurry off and lose himself in the crowds.

  This was a fine note, he thought indignantly. A minute ago he was selling railroads as if they were sticks of chewing gum, and now look at him—a newsie! He edged out into the rain and caught sight of his reflection in a drugstore window. And what a character! Small, red-faced, shoulders hunched against the cold and damp, a shadow of whiskers along his slack jowls. Mortimer ground his teeth in irritation—and then cut that out hastily. The teeth, were false, and they didn’t fit very well.

  “Times, Shorty!”

  “Sure, sure,” he mumbled.

  This customer was an older man, well dressed, with a pleasant, intelligent face. He put the paper in his pocket, and said, “No news yet on your boy, eh?”

  “Well . . . no”

  “Mortimer said, since the questioner sounded as if he anticipated a negative answer.

  The man stood there, ignoring the rain, a little frown above his eyes. “Well, it’s no use to say not to worry,

  I know. But believe me, ‘Missing in Action’ isn’t the end of things in lots of eases. Soldiers get into tough spots, you know, cut off from their outfits, and they might take weeks getting back. You know how that is.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Mortimer said in his new husky voice. So he—or this newsie—had a son missing in action!

  “And your boy would know how to take care of himself, I think,” the man said. “He was a fine athlete, I know.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Mortimer said.

  “Well—if there’s anything I can do just say the word,” the man said. He patted Mortimer’s arm and walked on with the crowd.

  Two or three other customers asked about the same things in the next half hour. Shorty was obviously a familiar, well-liked figure on this corner. Mortimer began to feel a new warmth for this man Shorty. He was not much on looks, or brains, perhaps, but he was respected by the people who knew him. And that was something.

  IT WAS ABOUT eight o’clock when the two boys appeared. They both said “Hi,” to him and ducked in beneath the tarpaulin. They were good-looking kids, in their early teens, with frank, friendly faces. Without self-consciousness they huddled close to him to get away from the rain.

  “No news yet, Shorty?” one of them said hopefully.

  Mortimer shook his head.

  They were both silent a moment, shifting awkwardly on their feet. Then one of them blurted out: “Shorty, we came to ask you a favor.

  Some of the gang said we shouldn’t—because of Jimmy—but we came anyway.”

  “I’m glad you did,” Mortimer said. “What is it?”

  “Well, it’s the clubhouse our dads built. We’re opening it tomorrow night,” one of the boys said. “And we’re having a dinner.”

  “Yeah, our mothers all chipped in on the food,” the other said.

  “And we want you to come,” the first one said. “We want you to come for the first night. Some of the kids thought you wouldn’t want to. But we hoped you’d come. It just wouldn’t seem right without you there. After the way you’ve helped us.”

  “Sure I’ll come,” Mortimer said. He spoke with perfect confidence; he knew that’s what this Shorty would say.

  “Gee, that’s swell! Will you really? Thanks, thanks a million, Shorty,” one of the boys said. “We’ll, come by tomorrow night to get you. Okay?”

  “That’ll be fine,” Mortimer said.

  The kids ducked out from the under the tarpaulin and raced down the street.

  Mortimer watched them, a little smile on his face. Nice kids, decent kids. Kids like this Shorty’s son had been, without a doubt. Shorty wasn’t a happy man these days, Mortimer thought. But he would still be doing, what he could to keep going, keep living.

  Mortimer sold three more papers before the buzzing started in his head. He sat down on a little up-ended fruit crate beside the stand, and stared at the falling rain.

  His eyes closed then and he went to sleep.

  “LOOK, HE’S waking up!” a voice cried.

  Mortimer was in a deep chair, and someone was fanning his face. With a pleasurable feeling of anticipation, he wondered where he was and who he was this time.

  He opened his eyes.

  “Mortimer, you’re all right?” Minerva cried.

  “Oh,” Mortimer said. Disappointment welled up in him as he stared at Minerva’s thin, face, and realized that he had come back to his own timid, joyless existence.

  The professor was on hand too, rubbing his hands anxiously, and peering at Mortimer with near-sighted concern.

  “Did it work?” he said imploringly.

  “Yes . . . yes, it worked,” Mortimer said slowly.

  “I’ll have the law on you,” Minerva shouted to the professor. “Exposing my husband to your dangerous inventions. He’s been unconscious for more than an hour.”

  Mortimer sat up slowly. The earplugs were still in his ears, but the machine was silent. He looked at it thoughtfully. Then he looked at Minerva. She was in command again now. Sternly, uncompromisingly, she stared at the professor. “You’ll go to jail,” she announced.

  Mortimer looked about the antiseptically clean and hostile room. How he’d always hated those animal figurines on the coffee table! And those lamps, covered with cellophane to protect their shades. He suddenly groaned as the scenes of his life flashed in front of him like a stepped-up movie. The bank, the lifeless, desolate bank, and Minerva, with her gossip, her health meals, her plans for final retirement to a boarding house in the mountains. It was all stale, all without juice.

  “We thought you were dead,” Minerva said to him now, in a crisp and accusing voice; “I’ll have, something to say to you about this ridiculous nonsense, Mortimer.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you will,” Mortimer said.

&nbs
p; “You gave me an awful fright. You looked Just like a dead man.”

  “Did I?” Mortimer said. “Well, I. wasn’t. I was alive, Minerva, very much alive.”

  THAT WAS true, true as truth itself, he thought. For the first time in his life he had been alive. Through the courtesy of other human beings.

  He had lived by proxy for a little while, and had learned what promise and excitement life might hold. With Angelo he had known love, and the life of a strong good man. With Colby it had been, excitement, primeval, dangerous excitement, the life of a fearless, stalking animal, who asked no quarter and yielded none, and took what he wanted from the world with strong confident hands. And with poor little. Shorty, what had it been? Sacrifice, pain, a humble little job. But Shorty was living, too. He’d had a son; an athlete, and Shorty had probably seen him racing past enemy tacklers on cold fall days, or sinking baskets while an excited auditorium roared his name. And Shorty had friends now. Those kids. They were his friends.

  These, three people, Angelo, Colby and Shorty, were living the human drama to the hilt. They knew love, anger, pain, sacrifice—the very stuff of life. Mortimer was the dead man, a walking dead man, waiting for the necessary formality of rigor mortis so that he could be put in a box and lowered, into the ground. He wouldn’t be any deader then than he was now, of course.

  “Now, get that machine and yourself out of my house,” Minerva snapped at the professor.

  Mortimer’s hand moved slowly, surely, as if it had a life of its own, and snapped on the machine.

  “I’ll help you,” he said meekly as the buzzing began again in his ears.

  He lifted the machine and, as he did so, his hand moved again, quickly, happily, and snapped down the right switch—the one the professor had told him was the permanent switch.

  Mortimer straightened, holding the machine to his chest. The buzzing was louder, and he was already very sleepy.

  He started for the door.

  “Mortimer, where do, you think you’re going?”

  Mortimer was smiling. He wasn’t conscious of falling.

  “I’m going—” he said, and then he struck the floor, and the machine shattered under his weight. But Mortimer wasn’t conscious of this. Mortimer was gone. To take pot-luck with humanity.

  THE MAN WHO BOUGHT TOMORROW

  First published in the April 1952 issue of Amazing Stories.

  Reggie paid a nickel for a look at tomorrow’s news . . . and demanded a fast refund!

  THE SEQUENCE went about like this: A printing machine, in some unaccountable manner, fouled up an ad in one issue of a magazine called True Astrology.

  A month later, a Chicago news vendor sat on a fruit crate beside his stand peering at this one particular copy of the magazine. His name was Creepy Brown, and he was a small, red-nosed little man, with narrow, alert eyes, thinning brown hair, and an impressive gift for self-delusion. Creepy was an optimist; he believed in astrology, in fortune tellers, in the exploiters of the occult—in anything, for that matter, that promised him a break, a train trip, a blonde, a pot of gold. Creepy, on this night, was reading one particular ad over and over, his lips moving slowly, his forehead crinkling with effort. There was something wrong with the ad. Some of the words were strange to his eye. The ones he recognized offered a promise of help, but the sense of the message was destroyed by the unfamiliar words.

  Still, it was exciting to roll those words on his tongue. They had a nice solid ring to them, and gave him a sense of power which he enjoyed without understanding.

  Supposing someone should help him, he thought pleasurably. Wouldn’t that be fine! But how? What did he really want? Girl’s? Money? Well, of course. But supposing he could have anything he wanted. What would it be?

  Creepy’s thoughts strayed along the horizon of his interests, on which loomed nothing so trivial as atom bombs, wars, and the state of the world. Standing prominently before all else was the forthcoming fight between Ace Nelson and Wild Billy Bell for the middle-weight championship of the world. That was it! If he could only know how that battle was going to turn out. What more could anybody want? Now, if someone would just tell him that little thing—or better still, let him see a copy of the newspapers after the fight. That would do it.

  Smiling and rubbing his jaw, Creepy bent closer to the book and reread the ad in a clear, slow voice

  YOH-AGPARTH twitched in his century-old sleep, and caused a tremor that dislodged a mountain side in the Himalayas. He rose on one elbow, and the frown on his dark face was blacker than the lightless depths of his vast cavern. Again it came, the faint, tugging, loathsome command, bringing him up to a sitting position. How long had it been since that call had brought him from these passages? Not since the Egyptian seer, Farak, had divined the secrets of Bal.

  And now again! A slave to human whims. Yoh-Agparth cursed horribly, and the demons of hell, hearing him, tried piteously to cross themselves.

  And what was it this time? Ah, the same foolish plea. The future! Always they wanted to know what was coming. Why couldn’t they wait? Did they expect tomorrow to be kinder? The fools!

  Yoh-Agparth stretched his arms and leaped skyward, and his harsh laughter trailed behind him like a plume . . .

  ON THE same night that these two things occurred, Reggie Saint Gregory strolled from his club and stood for a quiet, rewarding moment contemplating the glacial serenity of Lake Michigan. Reggie rather liked nature. Trees and bushes and water. Things like that. A chap knew where he stood with them. They were solid and comfortable. No shifting around, no back talk. You could look at a tree all day without getting into trouble. No confusion about trees. A chap stood here, the tree stood there, and that was that. But people—altogether different matter.

  “Nice night, isn’t it, sir?” the doorman said.

  “Ah . . . yes,” Reggie said. He rather liked conversation, too. Until it got out of hand. At the moment, though, it was going fine. A fine, spirited give-and-take.

  “But a bit cold after all,” the doorman said.

  “Well . . .” The talk was going off on a tangent now, Reggie realized moodily.

  The doorman stifled a yawn. His feet hurt and he wished Reggie would go home. “Considering last year though, it’s not bad,” he said.

  Reggie thought hard, trying to remember last year’s weather. It must have been important, or this chap wouldn’t have brought it up. Something fishy about last year’s weather, maybe. What could it be? “Ah . . . yes,” he said, straddling the issue slyly.

  The doorman eyed Reggie’s lean, pleasantly vacant face with misgivings. Sometimes talk with this young man had a way of trailing on indefinitely. “Anyway, the farmers are probably happy,” he said, seeking another avenue of interest.

  Reggie frowned slightly. What the devil did the farmers have to do with it? This doorman, he thought, while obviously a good solid chap, behaved as if his mind were on a pogo stick. Really, it was wearing. He sighed. “I don’t know any farmers,” he said. “I couldn’t say.”

  “Well, naturally,” the doorman said, with a little laugh.”

  Reggie pondered this. Why was it “natural” that he knew no farmers? Come to think of it, why didn’t he? With a little start of alarm, he realized that the conversation had taken a mad turn. He had to break it off before it got completely out of hand, “Well . . . good night,” he said.

  “Good night, sir,” the doorman said, and went gratefully back to his cubicle beside the lobby.

  ALONE, REGGIE strolled down the quiet, wind-swept grandeur of Lake Michigan, mulling over the evening. It had been pleasant, in a dullish sort of way. Dinner at the club, and then a quiet snooze in the library. After that a bit of poker. Actually, Reggie didn’t play poker; he wasn’t allowed to. But he watched with great enthusiasm. He never understood why the members were so damned secretive about their cards. Acted as if money were involved instead of a lot of silly chips,

  Reggie walked past the Water Tower, past the Tribune Tower, and then turned East on
Ohio street. He had a small bachelor apartment in this neobohemian but still elegant area of Chicago. The streets were empty now, and the, wind coming off the lake was definitely cold.

  He hurried along, eager to get out of this weather and into his apartment. The streets were empty, and bits of waste paper somersaulted along the curb. High above him a cold, pale, lonely star blinked in the black sky. Reggie turned up his coat collar and put his hands deep in his pockets. Hellish weather. He remembered something about the farmers, but he couldn’t pin it down. They either were happy or unhappy about it, that was it.

  He plowed along, head bent against the wind, until he came to the first intersection east of Michigan Boulevard, where there was a newsstand at which he bought his papers. There was a nickel in his overcoat pocket, cold to the touch even through his gloves, and he fished it out and raised his head to the wind. He was almost abreast of the newsstand, and what he saw then made him raise his eyebrows in astonishment.

  The newsdealer whose name, Reggie knew, was Creepy, was sitting on a fruit crate and leaning back limply against the wooden side of the stand. His eyes were fixed straight ahead of him in a glazed state, and his teeth were rattling together like hot dice. On his lap was an open copy of a magazine.

  Directly before him knelt a tall, splendidly proportioned man, with calm, noble features and eyes that gleamed with a crimson light. This magnificent creature wore a flowing white robe, and his curling black hair was held in place with a heavy, jewel-encrusted band of gold. In his powerful outstretched hands he held a golden tray; and on the tray rested a single newspaper.

  “Well, well,” Reggie said.

  He put his hands on his hips and studied the weird tableau. This is dauced queer, he thought, regarding the seemingly paralyzed newsdealer and the kneeling figure of the strange man with a little frown. Deuced queer way to sell newspapers, he thought. He dropped his nickel on the golden tray and took the newspaper and put it in his pocket. Must be a new merchandising stunt. Damned lot of overhead, though. Two men at every stand, instead of just one, and neither of them paying much attention to business.