Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  Larry said, “Hi.”

  The man bowed elaborately and said, “You fir—first.”

  “Oh no. You. I insist.”

  The man’s foolish grin deepened. “Very well. Thank you.” He moved up the stairs to the third floor. There he took out a key, unlocked the door and seemed to forget about Larry until the weight of the latter’s shoulder sent him hurtling into the room.

  Larry found the light switch before Craig knew quite what had happened. Craig rolled over, saw Larry standing in the doorway, and started to rise. By the time he had reached his feet, he was sober. “Who the hell you think you are?”

  “I want the envelope—the blue envelope.”

  Craig sneered. “I’ll give you an envelope. I’ll break your goddam skull!”

  He charged across the room. He slammed head-on into a perfectly timed right. He went down.

  “I want that envelope.” Craig roared and came up through a red haze. “I’ll kill you—you son—”

  Larry brought up his knee and connected just below Craig’s belt buckle. Craig doubled over. Larry took Craig’s head in his hands and smashed his face down on the same knee. Craig gagged. Larry took him by the shirt-front and smashed a fist into his face. Craig went down, blood spouting from his nose.

  “The envelope—the blue one.”

  “Well, you don’t have to get so rough,” Craig whimpered.

  “I was just trying to make a buck. A guy’s got a right to make a buck.”

  “Give me the envelope—now—or I’ll maim you for life. I’m not kidding.”

  “Sure—sure—it’s in the drawer there.” Craig cowered on the floor as Larry took the blue envelope from the drawer, turned and walked out of the apartment.

  Twenty minutes later, Larry handed Patricia Morley back her pen. “That ought to do it,” he said. He had written The Secretary of State, Washington, D.C. Personal Important! “Guess that will make it all right,” and he got out of the car and dropped the letter in a box near the main post office. When he came back, he said, “Now I’m going to take you home. You still haven’t given me the address.”

  That afternoon at three, Larry met Patricia at a restaurant off Times Square. He said, “You saw the papers?”

  “Yes, they found him—there in that apartment—dead.”

  “He must have been there when we were. And still alive.”

  “Oh, Larry. What are we going to do?”

  “Nothing, I think.”

  “Nothing? But we should—”

  “The government is probably already on the trail of the fat man—maybe Craig too. But I’ve given it some thought and I don’t think John would want us to do any more. If he had he’d have given us orders.”

  “To think he was right there—all the time!”

  Larry nodded soberly. “Yes—he could have saved his own life, probably, by just calling to us, but all he wanted was to get the blue envelope back into the proper hands. He gave us instructions and we followed them. I think we ought to let the government carry on from here. After all, there’s nothing more we could do to help. We don’t know anything they don’t—or won’t find out.”

  “Very well, if you say so, Larry.”

  “When we were there in the apartment,” Larry said softly, “he was dying. I’m sure of it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because of the disjointed pictures he threw into my mind—our minds. I saw that cave in the mountains. Then I was a tiny midget, trying to kill you on a vast table.”

  “I didn’t get that last one.” He smiled. “But one thing—I think John would want me to see you once in a while—sort of keep an eye on you.” She smiled back. “I’ve no objections—none at all.”

  LOVE THAT POTION

  First published in the February 1955 issue of Fantastic.

  The incredible adventures of Reggie Van Ameringen rapidly are becoming classics in the field of fantasy. Of them all, none is more hilarious than this episode in which he sets out to help a lovely girl find the ingredients for a love potion —only to find himself on the wrong end of the eye of a newt!

  “EXCUSE me, but would you know where I could find the eye of a newt?”

  Reggie Van Ameringen put down his tall frosted glass and looked suspiciously at the young lady who was sitting beside him at the bar. She was a very lovely blonde, with wide blue eyes, a gamin little face, and a figure that might have been designed by a sex-starved engineer. “Well, well,” Reggie said. “The eye of a newt, eh?”

  “That’s right. I wonder if you know where I could find one.”

  They were alone at the bar, and only a few couples were scattered about the wide cool lounge. It was three in the afternoon, and Reggie was waiting for his fiancée, Sari. “It’s a bit odd you know, but I was just thinking about newts, myself,” he said. “You aren’t a mind reader, by any chance?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Was I talking to myself? Running on about newts in a low babbling voice?”

  “Do you do that often?” The girl was smiling at him pleasantly.

  “Well, quite a bit. Not about newts particularly. But other things. It helps pin the old thought tight to the old gray matter.” He raised his empty glass. “How about a drink?”

  “I’d love that.”

  “Tophole.” Reggie called the bartender and explained than he wanted two more drinks, one for himself and one for the young lady. He began to tell the bartender about the newt business, but the man escaped hurriedly to the end of the bar; he knew all about Reggie’s conversational madnesses, and he wanted no more of them. Once he had gone out and got drunk after Reggie had explained why he didn’t like cheese. It started with an uncle who had cornered the yogurt market in Persia, and wound up with a cousin who had loosed two hundred lobsters on the floor of the Met during the Sextet from Lucia. What this had to do with Reggie’s aversion to the cheese the bartender had never learned. But he had felt his brain cracking ominously as he tried to follow the torturous twists of the story. That was why he wanted no part of the newt business.

  “I think our bartender is a little abrupt,” the girl said.

  “Charlie? Perish the thought. Soul of courtesy and tact.” Reggie nodded firmly. “Curious chap, though. Full of little tics. Can’t stand cheese. Spent a whole afternoon telling me about it. Well, spice of life and all the rest of it.”

  “But getting back to newts,” the girl said. “Do you think you could help me find one?”

  “Easiest thing in the world. Great old buddy of mine named Freddy Myrtlehead breeds them. I was thinking about him and his newts just a bit back.”

  “Why does he breed newts?”

  “It’s a good longish story.” Reggie’s fresh drink had arrived and he took a meditative pull at it. “Freddy had a farm in the country. Queer place for a farm maybe, but there it was: barns, house, pastures, all the rest of it. Freddy’s father gave it to him. Get Freddy into the open air, give him keen eyes, things like that. But Freddy didn’t like the look of the place. So he paved it.”

  The girl choked on her drink. “Are you serious?”

  “Oh, quite. Freddy tore down all the buildings, wrecked the silo, turned the cows loose on the highways, shot the chickens, and hired a bloke to come in and pave the whole bloody place. Miles of it. Took all summer.”

  “And then what happened?” the girl said. Some of her composure had disappeared; she was watching Reggie with an expression blended of confusion and alarm.

  “Well, Freddy’s Governor raised quite a fuss. So to calm him down Freddy put in some newts in his apartment. Breeding them, you see. Same thing as a farm, actually. Animals growing, messing up the place, hay on the floor.”

  The girl said, “Do you think he could let me have an eye from one of his newts?”

  “Oh, quite. He’s deuced generous about them. Nothing stingy about old Freddy. Friend wants a newt. ‘Take half a dozen,’ old Freddy tells him.”

  “He sounds marvelous. Could we go to see him
now?” Reggie hesitated, and a little frown stole over his pleasantly vacant face. Freddy was officially Off Limits. That was Sari’s sternest injunction. No more Freddy. She had been dashed firm about it, ever since he and Freddy had tried to buy Mexico. “Well, I’ll give you his address,” he said unhappily. “Same thing, really. Freddy will take good care of you.”

  “But I simply couldn’t go to a stranger and ask him for one of his newts.”

  “I suppose not,” Reggie said thoughtfully. “Pretty cheeky business.”

  “Couldn’t you come with me? Please. It’s so terribly important.”

  Reggie didn’t doubt this for a minute. Anyone who needed the eye of a newt undoubtedly needed it in the worst way. “Well, I’m not supposed to see Freddy,” he confessed. “My girl doesn’t like him.” The girl smiled. “She needn’t know, of course. I’ll never tell. And I’ll bet you’re a regular old clam when you have to be.”

  “That’s right. Just button the old lip up tight and no one’s the wiser.”

  “Shall we go then?”

  “Righto.”

  Reggie paid his tab and then looked admiringly at the girl as she paused to wait for him at the exit. Quite a stunner, really. And a brain to boot. Coming up with that business about not telling Sari! Why in the deuce hadn’t he thought of it? Sari would like her, he thought dreamily. That silver-blonde hair, and the heavy eye makeup, it was quite neat. And she had gorgeous legs, slim and graceful in sheer nylons, and the little black suit she wore looked as if it had sprayed onto her body. Particularly around the hips. Yes, Sari would find her great fun. Might be well to toss them together some day. Great friendships started that way.

  The thought of Sari brought another little frown to his face. Something about her had slipped his mind. He shrugged helplessly. No use chasing after the wiggling little thought now. Probably lurking in the deepest pool in his head.

  He strode across the room and tucked the girl’s hand under his arm. “Well, let’s go a-newting,” he said cheerfully—

  Sari arrived at the lounge about ten minutes after Reggie and the girl had departed. The bartender looked at her sadly and shook his head. He didn’t speak.

  “Oh, dear, what is it now?” Sari said. She was a petite, slender red-head, with eyes that were blue or green depending on her mood. At the moment they were very green.

  “Some dame picked him up,” the bartender said. “She eyed him like a cobra looking at a fat chicken and planning the menu. Then she moved in.”

  “Was she attractive?” Sari said, in a voice that tried for casualness and missed by fifty feet.

  “In a kind of flashy way,” the bartender said. “They struck up a nice conversation about newts.”

  “Newts,” Sari said, tapping a small foot slowly on the floor. “Did you by any chance hear the name of that peerless ass, Freddy Myrtlehead mentioned?”

  “No, I just got the newt pitch, and then I turned out. Look, I’m an old man with flat feet, Miss, but why don’t you tell that guy to get lost?”

  “Because he would,” Sari said sadly. “And then I’d have to go and find him …”

  Reggie and the girl arrived at Freddy Myrtlehead’s in very high spirits. Her name was Dee Light, which she had taken for the stage. She wouldn’t tell her real name, because she claimed it was too, too dull. In the cab she had sat close to him, hugging his arm companionably, and Reggie was pleasantly aware of the soft pressure of her body, and the far-from-subtle scent of her perfume. But at Freddy’s they came on bad news. Freddy, a pear-shaped young man with glassy eyes and a high nervous laugh, explained that he had disposed of his newts several weeks back.

  Dee looked as disconsolate as anyone with her endowments could look, and was only partially mollified by Freddy’s suggestion that he whip them up a few pints of Martinis. But after a few drinks everyone’s spirits picked up. Freddy stood at the mantel in a pose he had picked up from a big-gamehunting relative, and explained why he had got rid of his newts. It was a longish story, full of sub-plots, but the burden of it was the management had insisted that either he or the newts must clear out. Apparently it made no difference to the management which departed; in fact there was a healthy hint that they both go; but Freddy had

  circumvented this by coming down with mumps and being placed in quarantine.

  Reggie listened jealously to this long account. “We’ve got to be trotting along,” he said, catching Freddy between breaths. “Grand fund and all that. But there’s more to life than a good laugh all around. Dee and I must find a newt.”

  Freddy peered into his drink and sighed. “People with a purpose in life. Very lucky, favorites of the Gods. I wish I had something to do.”

  Dee nodded sympathetically. “But with all your money I should think you’d be able to find ever so many things to do.”

  “Governor’s got all the money tied up,” Freddy muttered.

  Dee cleared her throat. “Shall we go?” she said sweetly to Reggie.

  Downstairs, Reggie blinked in the late afternoon sunlight. “I’m at a loss,” he said. “Where to find a newt? That’s the problem.” Then a thought struck him. “Look, what do you want a newt for?”

  Dee sighed and looked pensive. “I—I’m afraid you might not believe me.”

  “Well, why not? Lots of perfectly good reasons for wanting newts. That’s why there are newts. Quite a mess if people wanted newts and there weren’t any around.”

  “You are sweet,” Dee smiled. “So—understanding. But it’s a very long story. Would you like to go to my apartment? It’s quiet and comfortable, and I could tell you all about it then.”

  “Tophole,” Reggie said warmly. He was more certain than ever that Sari would like this girl. Bursting with hospitality, really. And Sari would appreciate that.

  Dee didn’t live in an apartment, actually; she lived in a very elegant hotel, and her room had a southern exposure and a terrace. Everything looked cosy and home-like; there was even a pipe in an ashtray on the coffee table. Dee picked it up with a laugh and put it in her mouth. “One of my secret vices,” she said, and. then put it out of sight. “Would you like to fix a couple of drinks while I get into something more comfortable?”

  “More comfortable than what?”

  “Than what I’m wearing, of course.”

  “You look pretty comfortable.”

  Dee smiled at him. “Don’t you want me to change?”

  Reggie found the conversation confusing. “You do just what you think best,” he said, tossing the problem cleverly back into her lap. “I’ll make a drink.”

  Dee returned in five minutes wearing black Bikini shorts and a bra. Her skin was tanned the color of honey, and she was displaying it to the legal limits. “Would you bring my drink to the terrace?” she asked Reggie. “I’m just a little pig about sun. I think the sun-worshipers were really on the right track, don’t you?”

  Reggie sighed. A grand girl, but her questions upset him. And in the midst of measuring out two Wimp Bloaters he had no time for distractions. He murmured something without looking up and went on with the complicated business of the Wimp Bloaters.

  When he brought the drinks to the terrace Dee was lying face-down on a chaise lounge.

  “Would you mind putting a bit of lotion on my back?” she said, looking up at him and smiling slowly.

  “Pip pip,” Reggie said. Setting the drinks down, he picked up the bottle of suntan lotion and applied a smooth coat to her even smoother skin. “Well, cheers,” he said, retrieving his glass. “Can’t think of a liner way to kill time.”

  She giggled. “Naughty boy.”

  Reggie giggled too. “Like to drink, that’s all. Can’t do a thing about it.” Sighing with contentment he sat down in a deep chair and closed his eyes.

  Dee raised herself on one elbow and stared at him suspiciously. It was obvious from her expression that she hadn’t known many men who closed their eyes when she was around in a bathing suit. Finally she managed a little smile. “You haven’t
asked me about the newts,” she said, pouting.

  “Slipped the old mind.”

  “You’ll think I’m insane.”

  Reggie waved a languid hand. “Nasty word. Hear it all the time, for some reason. Family, lawyers, even old Sari, always prattling about somebody being insane.”

  Dec said, “I’m desperately in love with a man who doesn’t even know I’m alive.”

  “Tell him, girl, tell him,” Reggie said firmly. “Trot out the old birth certificate. Get a letter from a doctor. ‘This girl alive’. That sort of thing. Couldn’t hurt Might help. Drink?”

  “No—no, thanks.” Dee took a long breath that stretched her B-cups to the danger point. “What I mean is, he doesn’t love me. And without him life isn’t worth living. I—I’m ready to shoot myself.”

  “Messy business,” Reggie said, frowning slightly. “If we put our old heads to it we might think of something neater. Gas!” He sat up, nodding cheerfully. “Much better. No fuss at all.”

  “Listen, wise guy,” Dee said, with a distinct edge to her voice, “save your bright ideas for-—” She stopped and recovered herself. “You just don’t understand,” she said, sighing deeply. “You’re so contented and happy that you don’t realize how much I’m suffering.”

  “I say,” Reggie said, touched. “That bad, eh?”

  “It’s hideous. And—well, you will think I’m crazy, but I’ve found the recipe for a love potion, and I want to make it and use it. It’s my only chance.”

  “Love potion, eh? One sip and the bloke goes starry-eyed? That sort of thing?”

  “Yes,” she said eagerly. “It’s a potion I learned of from an old gypsy. And it works! I know it does.”

  “That solves all the problems. No gas, no pining for lost love. Slip the potion to the chap and pick out a ring. Neat.”

  “But I don’t have the ingredients to make the potion. That’s why I wanted the eye of a newt.”