The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  He heard all this with half an ear. Occasionally, he rumbled an “uh-huh” or squeaked out a “no kiddin’?” Once, looking at his great-uncle in open admiration, he exclaimed, “Yuk-yuk!

  When I get to your age, Pop, I wanna be an old goat just like you.” But he spent most of his time staring at fellow passengers, usually feminine ones, letting his eyes cross, and making such pithy comments as “woo-woo!” or “phooey.” Finally, though, Papa Schimmelhorn tapped the shoe box resting on his knees, and said, “Zo, Lidtle Anton, dot iss vhy I bring vun dingus only—because it iss zo zecret. It vill do eferything dot I haff told aboudt, alzo anoder trick vhich iss a big surbrise.”

  Little Anton’s eyes widened. Focusing on the shoe box, they crossed slightly. “Yipe!” he remarked. “You got it right here with you, huh?” Then, with evident pleasure, he jerked his thumb over his left shoulder. “Hey, I betcha that’s why that little bastard in the corner’s been tailing us!” he cried. “I betcha he’s a spy.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn was not just a genius. He was a genius with savoir faire. Turning calmly, he squinted at the undersized, sallow individual three seats behind them. Instantly he was amused. “Dumkopf!” he guffawed. “Chust because he follows, it does nodt mean der lidtle bastard iss a shpy. Haff you nodt heard about der FBI? Dot’s vot he iss. It iss security.”

  “Nuts to you, Pop,” retorted Little Anton loudly. “I seen G-men in pitchers. They don’t look like what you catch in rat traps.”

  “Ho-ho!” Papa Schimmelhorn slapped his thigh; his merriment resounded through the car. “Der FBI iss defer, Lidtle Anton. Dot iss a disguise!”

  By now, all eyes were on them, and comments were being freely made on every hand. This seemed to embarrass the little man. For a few seconds he wiggled in his seat. Then, pulling his pork-pie hat down over his ears, he scuttled out and vanished.

  After that, the tumult gradually subsided, and the other passengers, losing interest, went back to their newspapers and naps.

  Papa Schimmelhorn patted Little Anton on the head. “You are a foolish boy,” he told him. “Vhen you are older iss time maybe to vorry aboudt shpies. Iss bedter now you leaf it all to me.”

  “Fooey,” muttered Little Anton. “I guess you think you’re the only genius in the family. Well, Pop, don’t say I didn’t tell you.” And he withdrew into himself, to stare at his feet and pick moodily at an occasional pimple.

  Papa Schimmelhorn did not chide him for his rudeness. Suddenly he sat bolt upright, eyes flashing, whiskers twitching. A tall brunette was coming down the aisle toward them.

  She was a very well-turned brunette, a bit like those who used to undulate through the earlier efforts of Cecil B. DeMille, but with modern upholstery. She wore something spectacularly black, dangled long scarlet earrings, and carried a neat overnight bag. As she came slithering up to them, her slanting eyes seemed to search each face longingly. Then they found Papa Schimmelhorn’s and rested there. Passing by, she gave him a lingering, torrid smile.

  Papa Schimmelhorn took a deep breath and looked at Little Anton. Little Anton uncrossed his eyes, drooled, and said, “Yum-yum.” Momentarily, at least, rapport was re-established.

  The brunette took the seat once occupied by the small, sallow man. Her perfume drifted forward to them powerfully.

  It made the hairs in Papa Schimmelhorn’s big ears quiver. “Lidtle Anton,” he said decisively. “I haff ideas…”

  “Me too!” croaked Little Anton.

  “…und vun idea iss dot she iss going to Atlantic City, for der beaudty condests. Und anoder iss dot Albert’s friends are maybe busy vith der grafity, und die black holes, und theories I cannot undershtand. Iss plenty time. Ve, you und I, take maybe a vacation by der sea. Maybe ve go to this Atlantic City, vhere are such inderesting people. You can learn all aboudt America…”

  * * * *

  The Lorelei Hotel was neither the finest nor the most fashionable in Atlantic City. Its days of glory had departed with the bloomer bathing suit, and now it catered to retired clergymen, lieutenant colonels’ widows, and people in modest circumstances with four or more children.

  Papa Schimmelhorn and Little Anton, falling into none of these categories, were welcomed coldly by the management. A grim Nantucket clerk inspected them, demanded payment in advance, and had them whisked so quickly through the lobby’s purple plush and potted palms that they failed to see the brunette and the small man in the pork-pie hat registering in their wake.

  Papa Schimmelhorn surveyed their room with satisfaction. Appropriating the bed nearest the window, he unpacked his carpetbag, taking from it a gay aloha shirt, a pair of sandals, a suit of flowered puce pajamas which he suspended from the gilded gas-and-electric chandelier, and a cuckoo clock. This last, with the aid of a large nail and a shoe heel, he hung upon the wall.

  “Chust like at home,” he sighed—and waited for Little Anton to say something complimentary.

  But there was no reply. Instead, behind him, he heard a sharp, metallic click. He turned—and gasped.

  Kneeling on the floor, Little Anton was unlocking the first of three enormous suitcases.

  “Vhere—?” exclaimed Papa Schimmelhorn. “Vhere did you get those?”

  “Switzerland,” said Little Anton placidly.

  “But—Gott im Himmel—How?”

  “I wanna be a smuggler. I’m practicing. When I’m real good, I’ll sneak Chicanos in over the border. But this’ll do for now. You’re a genius, Pop; you can figger the technique out in no time.”

  He opened the first suitcase. “Watches,” he stated smugly. “Two hunerd of ’em, duty free.” He opened up the second. “Algerian post cards,” he announced. “They oughta go like hot cakes.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn took one quick look. “No vunder they exborted you from Schvitzerland,” he muttered, turning crimson.

  “My clothes and stuff,” finished Little Anton, indicating the third suitcase. “They’ll keep till later.”

  But Papa Schimmelhorn said nothing more. He sat down on his bed, and, while Little Anton busily took inventory, he ransacked his mind for scraps of information about his grand-nephew. Once in a while, he recalled, Mitzi Fledermaus had mentioned her small son in letters to Mama. Little Anton had been an imaginative child, dreaming funny dreams, claiming to have playmates whom he alone could see, disappearing for hours on end mysteriously. And hadn’t there been some odd business about shoplifting, which nobody could prove?

  Papa Schimmelhorn’s brain whirred and clicked, considering all these matters together with such other data as the lad’s uncanny mastery of colloquial English. He came to a conclusion.

  “Mein Lidtle Anton,” he began sweetly. “I haff been thinking. Vhere iss vun chenius in der family iss maybe more…”

  Little Anton was stuffing packages of post cards in his pockets. “Now you’re catching on,” he grunted without pausing.

  “…und right avay, vhen you arrife, I say, ‘Our Lidtle Anton iss zo shmart, a child protigy. Someday he iss a chenius chust like me.’”

  “Pop,” said Little Anton, “you don’t know the half of it.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn’s voice became deeply serious. “Ve cheniuses must shtick together, Lidtle Anton. I vill teach you eferything I know, und you—” he rubbed his hands, “—vill show me how iss vorked der lidtle suidcase trick.”

  “Yuk-yuk!” crowed Little Anton. “You sure got a corny line, Pop.” He moved toward the door.

  “Vait, Lidtle Anton!” cried Papa Schimmelhorn. “Vhere are you going? Iss nine o’clock.”

  “I’m gonna peddle feelthy peectures,” replied Little Anton, patting his bulging pockets. “This looks like just the place, and I need lettuce. And don’t you worry none about the cops. Now everybody’s liberated, and anyhow they can’t touch us wholesalers.” He turned the knob. For a fraction of
a second he crossed his eyes. “Wanna know something about that mouse aboard the train, Pop?” he asked. “She’s got a cuckoo tattoed on her tummy!”

  Abruptly the door closed behind him, and he was gone—leaving his great-uncle with an imagination nicely titillated, and an even tougher problem on his mind.

  “Vould you belief it?” marveled Papa Schimmelhorn. “A cuckoo on der tummy. How beaudtiful!”

  Like a caged tom-tiger, he started pacing up and down. How did the boy know? And how could that know-how be pried out of him? There—there had been something—something in one of Mitzi Fledermaus’ letters, about how little Anton, then aged four, had been reproved for prattling of a corner around which no one else could see. Perhaps—

  Papa Schimmelhorn stopped pacing. Changing to sandals and aloha shirt, he stretched his huge frame on the bed in order to attack the problem comfortably. Presently, the cuckoo on the wall popped in and out and sang ten times, marking the hour…

  And, almost at once, there came a tiny knocking on the door.

  “Ho-ho?” boomed Papa Schimmelhorn. “Lidtle Anton, you are back zo soon?”

  The door opened. But Little Anton did not enter. Instead, there stood the brunette. She was clad in cocktail pajamas of black and red, vaguely Chinese in motif, fitting her like a snake’s new skin.

  Her eyes went wide as she saw Papa Schimmelhorn. Her hand flew to her lips. “Oh!” she cried out. “I—I must have the wrong room!” Papa Schimmelhorn bounded to his feet. His beard almost swept the floor as he bowed. He assured her gallantly that, from his point of view, quite the reverse was true.

  Suddenly she smiled. “Why, I know you. But—but the conductor told me you were going to Princeton. You’re the professor who was on the train.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn hung his head modestly. “I am nodt a professor. I am chust a chenius.”

  “A—a genius! Oooh!” Somehow the door seemed to close itself behind her. “Then you know all about science, don’t you? I mean about geometry and physics and—well, everything?” She clasped her hands together. “Please, may I come and talk to you sometime, when—when you aren’t busy inventing your new theories?” Her voice was deep, disturbing—rather like Edith Piaf with whipped cream. It set the follicles of Papa Schimmelhorn’s beard to tingling. “I haff chust finished der qvota for this veek!” he roared gleefully. “Ve can talk now—” He came toward her, eyes focused on her midriff. He took her gently but firmly by the elbow.

  “Oh, Professor,” she breathed, “I’m just so lucky.”

  Deciding to be subtle, he led her to a chair. “Der name iss Schimmelhorn,” he cooed, “but you can call me Papa.”

  “My name is Sonya—er, that is, Sonya Lou.”

  “I call you Lulu. Dot iss easier. Don’dt vorry, I show you a goot time. I call der bellboy right avay for popcorn.”

  “I just adore popcorn,” said Sonya Lou.

  He rang for room service. He sat down on the chair’s arm beside her. He let his right hand wander to her waist.

  She looked up at him. “Now you shall tell me about science,” she whispered fervently.

  Papa Schimmelhorn’s left hand moved to join his right. Its index finger hovered over her bright pajama jacket’s second button. “Ve shtart,” he told her, “by talking aboudt birds. I luff der lidtle birds—zo cute! Shparrows und pipshqveaks und robin-redchests. But ezpecially—” he gave the button an experimental tweak, “—dear lidtle cuckoos.”

  Ferdinand Wilen’s arrival in New Haven coincided closely with Papa Schimmelhorn’s departure—and, at first, these two events seemed to do wonders for Captain Perseus Otter. He now jutted forward jauntily, as though, after a perilous and weary voyage, he had been dry-docked and given a fresh coat of paint. His likeness to the Hero of Trafalgar became even more striking than before. He even made an effort to resume his fruitless courtship of a lush divorcee named Mrs. Bucklebank.

  But two days passed—and three—and four. And on the fifth day Captain Otter found himself once more in the presence of old Heinrich Luedesing and of the Board. Only now they were reinforced. Wilen sat there, with a nervous tic and bags under his eyes. So did a vice admiral, bluff-bowed and broad in the beam. And two rear admirals. And a big, ruddy officer whose fourth row of gold braid was topped off with a loop.

  The three admirals, obviously, were giving Captain Otter the deep freeze. The other officer, just as obviously, was trying to conceal what amounted to an utter fascination.

  “Dr. Wilen,” rapped the vice admiral, “please make your report.”

  Wilen’s thin hands wrestled with each other on the table. “I’ve checked everything,” he said hysterically. “I’ve gone over it four times—every servo-mechanism, every relay, each power supply and part and process—everything. And all I’ve found is a little waste space, and four terminals that don’t lead anywhere.” He gnawed his nails. “It ought to work, really it ought to! And—and it still turns out my tubes with c-c-clockwork in them, no matter what I do! And they’re still outside when they should be in. Oh, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  He collapsed sobbing; and the vice admiral turned to Otter.

  “Well?” he said.

  Captain Otter shivered and said nothing.

  “Speak up, Otter. Did you or did you not recommend the retirement of this—er, this Papa Schimmelhorn?”

  “Yes, sir. But…”

  “Do you realize, Otter, that the Wilen scanner is a project on which we are engaged jointly with the British? As you have perhaps heard, they are our allies. They have gone to the trouble, Otter, to send their largest carrier over here—H.M.S. Impressive, commanded by this gentleman.” He inclined his head toward the gold braid with the loops. “Captain Sir Sebastian Cobble, C.B. She’s in New York harbor, equipped with everything except Assembly M. Assembly M must be installed aboard her in two days. Forty-eight hours, Otter. See to it. I’m holding you responsible.” There was a sigh, possibly of relief, from Woodrow Luedesing.

  “I was given to understand, Admiral—” Captain Perseus Otter was very pale, “—that my duties here were advisory. I have done what I could. I have even sent a man to search for Schimmelhorn. Beyond that…”

  “Come, come, Otter! It’s scarcely our tradition to push off our responsibilities, especially on civilians. Do you mean to tell me that since you came here you have been nothing but a figurehead?”

  There was a sharp crack as Captain Sir Sebastian Cobble, C.B. bit his pipestem through. “Certainly not, sir,” sputtered Captain Otter. “Well, then, you should have no trouble. Find this Schimmelhorn, have him fix this Assembly M or whatever it is, and get it aboard Impressive right away.”

  While the vice admiral was saying this, a secretary had entered and whispered something in old Heinrich’s ear. “Now, I am sorry,” he announced unhappily. “Papa Schimmelhorn ve haff nodt found, but Mama Schimmelhorn iss here. If you vant, I bring her in.”

  “By all means,” nodded the vice admiral. “She may have information.”

  Old Heinrich left the room and returned immediately escorting a very straight old lady in stiff black taffeta. She was armed with an umbrella, and there was fire in her eye.

  “Chentlemen,” said Heinrich Luedesing, “I like you to meet Mama Schimmelhorn.”

  The admirals rose.

  Mama Schimmelhorn surveyed them. “Gobs,” she remarked disapprovingly. “Drinking und chasing girls und making noise at night.” There was a display of self-restraint. “Ma-am—” the vice admiral bowed. “I am delighted. I am sure that you can be of help to us. We must find your husband…”

  “Ha!” The sharp ferrule of Mama Schimmelhorn’s umbrella tapped the floor. “Dot no-goot! Fife days he iss avay—und here iss vot I get!” Opening a black, beaded reticule, she Fished out a post card, and passed it to him.

  It was not one of Little Anton
’s. It was a picture of the Taj Mahal. On one of the windows, a big X had been scrawled. And, on the reverse, there was a message which, roughly translated, read: Haffing shvell time. Vish you vas here. X iss our room. Luff und kisses, your goot husband, Papa. (Also Lidtle Anton.)

  “But he forgets der postmark!” cried Mama Schimmelhorn. “Atlantic City! Chust vait!” The vice admiral thanked her. He promised to deliver Papa Schimmelhorn into her fond custody. Then he turned again to Captain Perseus Otter.

  “Well, we know where he is,” he declared. “Take my advice, Otter. If it’s agreeable to Sir Sebastian here, he can take you aboard Impressive, and put to sea. Contact the shore patrol at Atlantic City. They’ll help you pick up Schimmelhorn. I hear he has one of the assemblies with him, so that’s all settled. Now do you see how simple it all is?”

  “Dot’s vot I told you.” Old Heinrich smiled and nodded. “Don’dt vorry. Papa Schimmelhorn vill fix.”

  “I shall sail at four, sir,” said Captain Sir Sebastian Cobble, eyeing Captain Otter dubiously.

  But Dr. Ferdinand Wilen said never a word. Staring intently at a point in space, he was busily vibrating his lower lip with a forefinger.

  While the inventor of Assembly M was puzzling himself into this tizzy at New Haven, Papa Schimmelhorn and Little Anton were by no means idle in Atlantic City.

  Day by day, Little Anton’s smuggled stock of watches and Algerian post cards dwindled, while his newly acquired roll of bills fattened correspondingly.

  Day after day, too, Papa Schimmelhorn pursued Sonya Lou, or Lulu. He tempted her, successively, with feats of strength, accounts of his past conquests, light refreshments, and burning words of love. He even, on two occasions, gave her flowers.

  And nothing worked, not even the desolate (and absolutely false) complaint that Mama Schimmelhorn did not understand him. So far as he was concerned, the cuckoo tattooed on her tummy remained a mystery.