Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “Very well. This is my hypothesis. These articles of transportation were brought here to this living room in a time machine. Some being from the future—perhaps millions of years in the future—has fled back to this era. I further believe—”

  “Now hold on,” Dave said. “I said I’d listen with humility, but that’s not a synonym for stupidity.”

  “You think it would be stupid of you to listen to me?”

  “I don’t think, I know.”

  “Stupidity is a result of one of two things, my friend: the inability to ascertain facts, or the refusal to face them. You are in the latter category at the moment. You have looked at facts, but you are afraid of their implication and so you pretend that you didn’t see them. Isn’t that true?”

  Dave was silent a moment, trying to follow Dr. Shaw’s reasoning. Then he sighed softly and ran a hand through his hair. “But your explanation is preposterous,” he said at last.

  “And what would you call yours?”

  “I don’t have any explanation,” Dave admitted.

  Dr. Shaw smiled. “Let us at least look at mine then. This being from the far-distant future is fleeing from something or someone, I assume. He is searching for another means of flight. That is obvious. But why should he be searching for a means of transportation if he has a time machine? The answer that suggests itself to me is that his pursuer also has a time machine. Therefore our fleeing creature from the future must find a new method of transportation if he is to escape his pursuer.” Let us for convenience give these beings—whose existence is still an assumption on my part—names to distinguish them. Supposing we call the hunter Z and the quarry X. X is fleeing from something, obviously. What it is, we can only conjecture. But flight presumes guilt, so let us accept as a fact that he is guilty. And pursuit presumes vengeance, or retribution so let us think of Z as an avenger. Is all of this acceptable to you?”

  Dave didn’t know what to say. So he said, “Sure, I’ll string along. X is on the run, Z is hot on his trail. Is that it?”

  “That is our assumption. It is a staggering concept, I must admit. Think of X, a superior being, the repository of millions of years of cultivation and development, think of this creature fleeing into the past, seeking refuge in the trackless forests of forgotten centuries. And following his every dodge and turn is the avenger, Z. X is searching for some means of flight that will enable him to elude his fate. Think of him in the fifth century before Christ, staring with puzzled eyes at a cart wheel. It is too primitive for him to understand immediately. But he eventually sees what it is used for and he takes it with him. And the same thing happens with the saddle, with the kite. Perhaps he didn’t realize that the saddle required a horse under it, and that the kite was merely a toy. Perhaps he is helpless to infer the meanings and uses of these things, as helpless as you or I might be if we came upon an ant hill for the first time and found it necessary to determine by direct observation the meaning of these tiny creatures’ infinite activity. Our inadequacy would stem not from a lack of intelligence but from a superabundance of it. And that may be the problem that X faced. But he solved that problem. He found a means of transportation, and has resumed his flight.”

  “What do you mean? What transportation did he find?”

  “Your wife,” Dr. Shaw said. “X de-materialized himself and took possession of your wife’s consciousness. He will direct her to take him wherever it is that he must go. That is why I told you that she is in no danger for the moment. As long as she serves X’s purpose, she will be safe. But when he no longer needs her she will be in great danger.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Dave said slowly. But in his heart he did believe it. Something about Dr. Shaw transformed these fantasies into blunt hard truth.

  “Think of your wife’s behavior,” Dr. Shaw said. “Was it she, or was it someone else who told you those lies, who fled from you?”

  “What can we do?” Dave asked him helplessly.

  “Good!” Dr. Shaw caught his arm. “First you must tell the police that your wife has returned to you. Get them to stop their search. X cannot move while the police are after your wife. With the search for her ended, X will resume his flight. And we will follow.”

  “How can we find my wife without the police?”

  “I have already located your wife,” Dr. Shaw said quietly. “She is in a small hotel on West Fifty-Seventh street. Last night, when I heard of these objects, I hired a private investigator to watch this building, and to follow your wife if she went out.”

  “You knew she was going to run away?”

  “Oh, yes,” Dr. Shaw said. “I knew that X would waste no time. Quickly, now. Call the police. Tell them your wife has come home. Let them think it was merely a domestic spat. Then we will go to the hotel where your wife is staying, and make plans to follow her.”

  THE HOTEL ROANOKE was a small but respectable hotel between Seventh and Eighth avenues on Fifty-Seventh street. There was a pleasant, dimly-lighted bar which could be entered from the lobby as well as from the street, and it was here that Dr. Shaw and Dave met a tall, graying man who called himself Jones. He was the investigator Dr. Shaw had hired that morning.

  Jones sat at the bar, a beer before him, in a position to watch the lobby and the desk.

  “She went upstairs right after she registered,” he told Dr. Shaw. “She hasn’t been down since.”

  “Excellent. Mr. Masterson, Mr. Jones.”

  “You’re her husband?” Jones asked Dave without curiosity. “Yes. How did she seem?”

  “Okay, I guess. Worried though.”

  “We’ll take over now, Mr. Jones,” Dr. Shaw said.

  “Whatever you say, Doc.”

  Dr. Shaw gave him some money. Jones nodded to both of them, said, “So long,” in a careless voice and strolled from the bar.

  Dr. Shaw ordered drinks after they had settled on stools which gave them a view of the lobby. “Now it’s only a question of time,” he said. “When she comes down we’ll be able to determining our course of action.”

  They were silent for a few moments. Then Dave said, “Are you sure she’s in no danger?” His voice was steady, but his stomach was tense and cold with fear.

  “She is safe for the time being, I believe. She will be safe as long as she is useful to X.”

  “Damn him, damn him,” Dave said violently.

  “Yes, he has done an evil thing.”

  They waited an hour at the bar, saying little to one another and watching the people who flowed back and forth across the lobby. Then Dave started as Polly appeared and walked quickly to the desk. She carried an overnight bag which she put down at her feet as the clerk presented her with a bill. Obviously she had phoned down to have her account ready. She fumbled in her purse and gave the clerk some money. He smiled and went away, presumably to make change.

  Dave got slowly to his feet. Everything inside him ached with longing for her. He had believed Dr. Shaw while she was gone from him, but now that she was only ten seconds from his arms he forgot everything but his need and his fear. She was so slim and small standing there, so vulnerable and defenseless, that it made this cat-and-mouse farce suddenly unbearable.

  Dr. Shaw caught his arm. “Sit down,” he said quietly. “She doesn’t know me. I’ll follow her and see where she’s going.”

  “No, I’m going to her,” Dave said.

  “You can’t!”

  “I can’t stay here.” Dave shook Dr. Shaw’s hand from his arm. “I can’t let her walk out of my life.”

  “Go to her now and she will be destroyed,” Dr. Shaw said very softly. “Take her in your arms and you will hold a dead woman. That I can promise you. The only salvation is to let X use her now. Our chance will come later. That I also promise you.”

  Dave put both hands to his forehead. The pressure inside his head was so intense that he had the giddy fear that his skull might split open.

  “All right, all right,” he said thickly. “Follow her! Don’t let her ge
t away.”

  He sat down again but turned his eyes away from the lobby. He couldn’t stand to watch her leave, he knew. Dr. Shaw rose and left the bar. Dave waited for him hopelessly; his mood had changed. Seeing Polly had charged and reanimated him, but now his spirits sunk back to a morass of despair. There was just nothing to be done. If Dr. Shaw’s fantastic hypothesis was correct, what hope was there? And if he were wrong, what else could possibly explain this behavior of Polly’s?

  Dr. Shaw returned in a moment or so. His lively eyes glinted with excitement as he shook Dave’s arm. “Don’t count us out yet,” he said. “She’s gone to the International airport. We’ll follow her. X has had everything his own way up till now, but we may give him a surprise. Come, let’s go.”

  The remainder of that night was like the splintered images that flash through the mind in fearful, giddy dreams. They trailed Polly to the International airport where they learned (by watching her as she had her one piece of luggage weighed) that she had a ticket on the nine o’clock flight to Chicago. Dr. Shaw bought a seat on the same plane, and Dave arranged to take a ten-thirty flight that would get him to Chicago several hours after Polly’s had landed. Dr. Shaw planned to follow Polly from the airport in Chicago. When he learned where she was heading for he would have Dave paged at the Chicago terminal and pass on the information. Then they would arrange to meet and pick up her trail.

  Polly and Dr. Shaw left on the nine o’clock flight, and Polly apparently had no inkling that she was being followed. She sat in the waiting room until her flight was announced, her slim brown legs crossed, her hands folded quietly in her lap, her eyes looking straight ahead into space. When the nine o’clock plane to Chicago was called she rose and walked quickly to the exit gate from where the passengers were streaming out to the plane.

  Dr. Shaw walked a few feet behind her . . .

  Dave caught his flight an hour-and-a-half later. By then he wasn’t even thinking any more. His mind felt like a sponge that had been squeezed dry. When he reached Chicago he walked up and down the immense, brightly-lighted waiting room, smoking tasteless cigarettes and watching the thin edge of dawn that was cutting across the horizon. Another day. People going to work. Trains and buses running. Breakfasts being eaten. Another day. And he walked in circles about a waiting room at the airport of a strange city, as disembodied and unreal as a figure in a nightmare . . .

  Then the metallic voice of the announcer called his name.

  Dr. Shaw’s voice was crisp and urgent in his ear. “She’s taken a train up to a little town in Wisconsin, a place on the Indian reservation. It’s called Flambeau. We can pick her up there easily enough, I think, so I’ll wait here for you. I’m at Union station. Meet me at the Information booth. Hurry.”

  And the phone clicked dead.

  The cab ride took only a half-hour at that time of the morning, but to Dave it was a hopeless, pointless stretch of time—as every minute had been since Polly disappeared.

  He met Dr. Shaw in the vast, vaulting expanse of the Union station. The doctor had tickets for a train that was scheduled to leave shortly, and within a matter of minutes they were rolling on their way. The train was a local, and their car was hot and stuffy. It was an eight-hour ride; the last half of it seemed endless for the train stopped at every station during the Wisconsin leg of the trip. When they stepped down onto the platform at Flambeau, the sun hit them like a blinding sledge hammer. But there was a dry cool feeling to the air, and a pleasant scent of pine drifted in from the forests.

  IT was a small village, with a post office, gas station, garage, and several grocery stores. Dr. Shaw made inquiries at one of the stores and learned that Polly had bought a supply of food and had asked if there were any vacant cottages in the area. The grocery clerk, who was friendly and talkative, told them that she had wanted an out-of-the-way place where she wouldn’t be bothered by the summer tourists.

  “Funny thing,” the clerk said, grinning. “Old Mac Johnny was in here at the time, and he sent her to a place of his. Nobody goes up there anymore. It’s near Eagle Lake, if you know this country.”

  “No, I don’t,” Dr. Shaw said politely. “But I want to be satisfied that my daughter has chosen a safe place to stay. I have no objections to her desire for a back-to-nature vacation, but I shouldn’t like her to get too far from civilization.”

  “Oh, she’s your daughter, eh? Well, she’s safe enough at old Mac Johnny’s cottage, It’s that far out of the way, you see.”

  “I suppose there’s a taxi that could take us there?”

  “Well, yes. But you’ll have to wait for it to come back. Joe, that’s the driver, took your daughter out and he ain’t back yet.”

  “I see. Thank you very much.” They waited two hours for the taxi to return, and. by then it was four o’clock in the afternoon. Joe, the driver, wasn’t too eager to make another long trip, but Dr. Shaw overcame his disinclination with the promise of a sizeable tip.

  And then they were off, bouncing over rutted dirt roads in the old car, winding their way between beautiful green stands of timber.

  “X has planned this as his hide-out,” Dr. Shaw said, nodding with satisfaction. “He would be quite safe from Z here, hidden away in the mind of a young woman, who ostensibly wanted only a little privacy in which to enjoy a vacation.”

  “How can we save my wife?” Dave cried despairingly. “I don’t give a damn about X. I want her back.”

  “We will do what we can,” Dr. Shaw said gravely.

  It was a three-hour ride to Mac Johnny’s cottage. When they came to a narrow lane on the left side of the road, the driver stopped and said, “Just follow that path by the lake. It’s only a few hundred yards. That’s where Mac

  Johnny’s place is. You’ll find it.” Dr. Shaw paid him off and they climbed out of the car, stiff and tired from the long, bouncing trip. They entered the woods, and went along the winding path, moving cautiously through the windy darkness. With the setting of the sun the air had become cold; it whirled around them, tugging at their light summer clothes, chilling them to the bone. They followed the path for about ten minutes, and then Dr. Shaw held up his hand. Ahead of them was the smooth dark expanse of the lake, glinting faintly in the last dim light, and to the left of it was a small, wooden cottage, outlined blackly against the night.

  “You must say nothing when we meet her,” Dr. Shaw said. And now his voice had changed. It was determined and firm, and it felt like an iron bar through the dark silence. “Do you understand that? It is the only way we can hope for success.”

  “All right. Let’s go!”

  Dr. Shaw walked purposefully down the path to the lakeshore, and then followed a curving little lane that led to the porch of the cottage. He went up three wooden steps and hammered solidly on the door with the heel of his hand.

  A light flashed inside. Then quick footsteps sounded, and the door was opened. Polly stood in the doorway, frowning at the doctor.

  “What do you want?” she asked. She couldn’t see Dave, in the darkness.

  “We want to come in,” Dr. Shaw said, pushing past her into the small, crudely furnished living room of the cottage. Dave followed slowly. He looked at his wife, but she returned his gaze without recognition.

  “Polly, I—”

  “Silence,” Dr. Shaw said very quietly. He was staring at Polly, his eyes very bright and lively. She looked at him steadily, coldly, for a full minute. The silence settled heavily in the room. Outside a loon cried and the sound spread eerily through the darkness.

  Polly took a step backward, and one of her hands moved to her throat. There was a fine line of perspiration on her forehead now and her breath was coming faster.

  SHE opened her mouth and the sounds that came from it were shrill and unintelligible. Suddenly she dropped to her knees as if she had been struck a heavy blow from behind. Dave started for her. Dr. Shaw held up his hand imperiously, and shouted something wild and meaningless at her, as she knelt before him, her hands limp at her
side, her head inclined on the slender column of her throat.

  Dave was held motionless by a sense of terror in the room—something vastly greater than his own fear and terror. He watched his wife sink slowly to the floor. She fell easily and softly, turning sideways and rolling limply onto her back, flinging her arms wide in the gesture of a person crucified; her slim ankles came together as if drawn to each other by invisible bonds.

  And then she screamed and put her hands tightly over her face, and there was another sound in the room like that of high thin laughter in the depths of a great cavern.

  Dave started for her but Dr. Shaw caught his arm. His face was haggard, and his high forehead was covered with beads of perspiration.

  “X has gone,” he said hoarsely. “Didn’t you see? He has gone to the water.”

  “I saw nothing. I understand nothing,” Dave cried helplessly.

  “Your wife is safe. She is all right. Don’t try to understand.” Dr. Shaw gasped out these words as he fell heavily to the floor, and once again Dave heard a sound that drove chills of fear through his body. The sound was like that of laughter—high, thin laughter heard in a vast cavern, but now there was a hard, triumphant tone running through it, a sound of implacable, relentless vengeance.

  And Dave saw something flash past him—going through the door and toward the water—as he ran to Polly’s side and took her trembling body in his arms. She was hysterical, she knew nothing of what had happened, and she clung to him with the strength of a frightened child. There was nothing he could do but hold her tightly against him, and tell her that everything was all right and that they would be going home.

  Explanations—of a sort—could come later. Dave knew he wouldn’t tell everything he had learned—he knew that as Dr. Shaw sat up slowly and looked at him with puzzled eyes. “Say, what’s all this?” Dr. Shaw said in a slow, wondering voice.

  “It’s something like amnesia,” Dave said. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Nelson, Jeremy Nelson. I—I live in New York. I’m an insurance man. Hey, I’ve got to get to a phone!”