The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  “Okay,” she said regretfully, “you phone die Chinesers, und aftervards I call Mrs. Hundhammer und der pastor, und Mrs. Laubenschneider, und giff them der goot news.” She glared at Papa Schimmelhorn. “Put der shtuff avay,” she ordered, “und be useful for a chanche. Set der table so Lidtle Anton can sit down to dinner.”

  Obediently, he did what he was told. The phone calls were made. Dinner arrived—a very good one because of Little Anton’s expertise and Chinese connections.

  They ate, and all through the meal Little Anton listened to a highly biased account of what had happened on Little Palaeon. Knowing his great-uncle, he was able to read between the lines, and at times it was all he could do not to burst out with “Whee-whee-ew!” Whenever he could, he winked at Papa Schimmelhorn to encourage him.

  Then, after supper, the Hundhammers and Mrs. Laubenschneider arrived to hear the glad tidings from Mama Schimmelhorn’s own lips, and Papa Schimmelhorn was exiled to the basement. When Little Anton tried to join him there, she put her foot down firmly, and so, until it was time to leave and catch his flight, he had to suppress his curiosity and listen to pious ejaculations and devout rejoicings over a steeple destined to be the highest in New Haven.

  It was not until three days later, on his way back, that he was able to hear Papa Schimmelhorn’s rather more detailed and dramatic story; and during those three days, Mama Schimmelhorn relaxed her disciplinary measures only once. In recognition of the fact that he had indeed succeeded in making lead into gold, and that consequently he deserved at least some of the credit, she allowed him to attend a celebratory service on the Sunday, at which Pastor Hundhammer delivered a homily on how virtue, as exemplified by church steeples, could surprisingly burgeon forth from unlikely soil, and how even in the most unregenerate of sinners there lurked—even if it was unintentional and hard to find—the impulse to be of some service to mankind. As his congregation knew Papa Schimmelhorn very well indeed, having on more than one occasion had to fend him off their wives and daughters, their sisters and their cousins and their aunts, the Amens with which his words were greeted were passionately sincere—and none resounded more impressively than the deep bass Amen uttered by Papa Schimmelhorn himself.

  Otherwise, he remained in Coventry, fiddling around in his basement workshop, sometimes comforting himself with his assorted clocks or with the dulcet tones of his cuckoo watch. He thought about the Princess, sighing occasionally and reminding himself of Sarpedon Mavronides’s philosophical consolations. He thought about Miss Niki and Miss Emmy, and how they had sported in the waves. And he worried about his gold-making machine and what Meister Gansfleisch and the Russians might have done with it. Waiting for Little Anton to come back, he carefully prepared a packet of the mutated catnip for him to smuggle somehow to poor Ismail.

  Little Anton returned on schedule, and Mama Schimmelhorn welcomed him joyfully.

  “Ach,” she said to him, “I haff now a full schedule. Pastor Hundhammer makes me Chairvoman of der Church Committee for der new shteeple, so I am busy, busy, busy. Most of der time I vill be avay, und maybe you can keep der eye on Papa so ve have no monkeyshines vith more naked vomen.”

  Little Anton promised her faithfully that he would indeed keep an eye on his great-uncle, and hinted that he would guide him tactfully into the paths of innocence; and the moment she left the house he fetched Papa Schimmelhorn up out of the basement. He poured out two glasses of Bristol Milk.

  “Very well, Papa,” he said, sitting down. “Tell me all.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn was only too ready to oblige him. He felt rather more optimistic than he had, for that morning Gustav-Adolf had not only brought him a freshly caught mouse as a peace offering, but had actually purred for him again.

  He told his story simply and dramatically, leaving out none of the important details; and for the first time, Little Anton heard the whole truth about Niki and Emmy, Meister Gansfleisch and Twitchgibbet, the dreadful episode of the concoction that took der lead out of der pencil, Humphrey and the love potion, the Princess—(“Ach Gott!” exclaimed the ex-Prince regretfully. “Nefer haff I known such a voman!”)—his investiture as her consort and the pagan practices of Little Palaeon, then her insistence that he fight the Minotaur, and finally, how he had at once recognized the dreaded demigod as only a Jekemsyg.

  Little Anton was entranced. “Well,” he commented, “at least, except for my dear great-aunt, you came out smelling like a rose—as they say here in America. It’s too bad, though, that you never can remember any of your own devices so that you can duplicate them. Pêng-Plantagenet would be pleased as punch to make you a millionaire for that gold-maker of yours.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn’s face fell. “Dot iss vun reason I am vorried, Lidtle Anton,” he confided, holding his glass out to be refilled. “Maybe Meister Gassi has more sense than I beliefed. On Lidtle Palaeon, I vas sure he vould turn der dial up too high und wreck eferything, but vot iff I am wrong? If die Russians haff der gold, because I cannodt made der machine again, eferyvun blames me.”

  For a moment, Little Anton frowned, thinking hard. Then suddenly he almost dropped his glass, leaped to his feet. “My word!” he cried excitedly. “Why didn’t I put two and two together? Flying down here I read something in the paper. Wait just a second and I’ll get it—I have it in my room!”

  He rose. In half a minute he was back with the Montreal Star. “I think we’ve solved your problem. Listen! It’s in a column—Hot Line from Moscow.”

  Official spokesmen here—he read—announced today that the vigilance of Soviet security authorities had “totally frustrated a Western-capitalist-imperialist plot against Russia’s artistic and cultural heritage by trapping a secret CIA infiltrator before he could accomplish his nefarious purpose.”

  The infiltrator, they declared, had posed as an eminent scientist and defector from the Free World.

  They categorically denied persistent reports that such an agent, before his apprehension, succeeded in penetrating the Kremlin itself, destroying innumerable art objects made of precious metal, and burning down an architectural treasure, a Kremlin building dating back to Ivan the Terrible.

  “I have a feeling,” remarked Little Anton, smiling, “that we have found your Meister Gansfleisch, and that we can guess what’s going to happen to him.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn heaved a great sigh of relief. “I am so glad,” he said. “Now iss off my mind. Odervise I feel guilty all my life.”

  He sat back in his chair. “Ja,” he said, “Lidtle Anton, iss true I nefer can remember how I make mein dinguses, so I can make vun time only. But—” He peered into his glass abstractedly. “But maybe der luff potion—ach, I did nodt infent it, so if I try…” He licked his chops. He felt an old familiar tingle. His whiskers quivered. He raised his glass. “Ve drink a toast!” he boomed. “Ve drink to—But you do nodt know her? You haff nodt met lidtle Tilda Blatnik? Ach, Lidtle Anton—such a predty pussycat!”

  T.V. (Feghoot 48)

  In 1962, the heads of three major TV networks begged Ferdinand Feghoot to advise them. “Freedom of speech is at stake!” cried A. Cerberus Mishmash. “Besides, we all shall lose money! It’s that man, Norman Minow! He’s forced me to cancel Rape West of the Pecos, a nice clean family show, no nakedness in it!”

  “That’s right,” put in one of his fellows, “and we had to scrap Sadist after lining up seven sponsors. Don’t American children have any rights any more?”

  “You know what he called us?” shouted the other. “It was in this morning’s Drew Pearson. ‘Abominable Snowmen,’ and after Hillary[1] proved they don’t even exist!”

  “Feghoot,” Mishmash demanded, “how long must we put up with him? Will he hold office for decades, like J. Edgar Hoover?” He shuddered. “Or is this only a phase? You know the future; you can tell us. It’s worth sixty-four thousand, maybe more.”

  “It wo
n’t last very long,” Feghoot replied with a smile.

  There were three sighs of relief. “That’s fine,” crowed Mishmash, as he wrote out the check. “Say, won’t it be good to get back in the groove!”

  “Oh, you won’t be able to do that,” said Ferdinand Feghoot. “Your industry will never be quite the same again. You see, it’s now passing through what we can only describe as its Minow pause.”

  [1] Sir Edmund.

  A KILLING IN SWORDS [Part 1]

  DEDICATION

  For Rosalie, who drove me to it.

  I

  The Death of Don Juan

  The mayor of San Francisco was stabbed to death at approximately ten thirty on the evening of October twelfth, while Alastair Alexandrovitch Timuroff was at the opera. This was fortunate, for on a number of occasions Mr. Timuroff had stated publicly that the city, and indeed the world, would be better off if His Honor came to an untimely end. The people who afterward remembered this and made unkind remarks would have recalled it much more vividly and unpleasantly had there been any doubt as to his whereabouts.

  Timuroff always took his closest friends to hear Don Giovanni: Liselotte Cantelou, dark and full of fire, who was Viennese and his mistress; his secretary, blonde Olivia Cominazzo, and her husband, Inspector Peter Cominazzo of the homicide detail; and Judge Clayton Faraday, small, elegant, precise, who was as devoted to Liselotte as he was to the opera. Timuroff had first taken them to dinner at the little Russian restaurant on Hayes Street, a block from the opera house, which he said appealed to the Muscovite in him because it was rather like dining with Nabokov’s Pnin, and to the Scot because its charges were so moderate. Then they had gone on to a really splendid performance, marred only when their neighbors in the front row of the dress circle recognized Liselotte, began to buzz about it, and had to be quelled by the Cominazzo frown usually reserved for culprits in the morning lineup. They stayed, applauding until after the final curtain, and left their seats only after the crowd had thinned.

  “Memorable! Absolutely memorable!” exclaimed Timuroff as they walked down the staircase. “The Don Giovanni was the best I’ve heard since Ezio Pinza’s. As for the Dona Elvira—ah!” He blew a kiss in the general direction of the muse of music. “One soprano only, in all the world, could have done it better.”

  “Thank you, dear,” murmured Liselotte.

  “But I was remembering Elisabeth Schwarzkopf!” said Timuroff, all innocence.

  “Beast!” She dropped his arm. “For this, never, never will I let you make an honest woman of me. Go away!” She stamped her foot to punctuate the statement, which had already attracted the attention of three old ladies and a plump young clergyman. They stared, first at her in some astonishment; then at Olivia, bright and tiny; then at the contrast between Pete Cominazzo’s football frame and Judge Faraday’s small-boned fragility; and finally at Timuroff s five-foot-eleven fencer’s figure and the scar that ran from his Tartar cheekbone to the trim corner of his graying moustache. The old ladies drew back, twittering. The clergyman smiled doubtfully, as though unable to decide whether their social standing merited a stern rebuke or an enlightened tolerance. And Liselotte, trilling her famous laugh, daintily slapped Timuroff’s behind, repossessed his arm, and told him that she loved him anyhow.

  “Oh, I remember Pinza,” Olivia said, “though I only saw him once when I was little, in South Pacific. He looked just like Pete.”

  “Now that’s true love,” declared Timuroff. “Most wives would’ve said Pete looked like Pinza. So you love Pete, and Lise says she loves me—though she loves her alimony even more. And tonight’s performance was a splendid one. Let’s celebrate. Champagne must flow.”

  “Not for me,” said Judge Faraday. “I’ve a hard day ahead of me tomorrow.”

  “But tomorrow’s Saturday,” protested Liselotte.

  “Yes, dear Lise—but a man’s last year on the federal bench is as demanding as any of the others. I have my homework to get done if I’m to be worth my salt on Monday.”

  Clayton Faraday’s parents, both Kentuckians, had endowed him with a patrician nose, a surprisingly deep and well-modulated voice, and a stem courtliness which evoked the law’s majesty wherever he presided. People seldom argued with him.

  Liselotte made a face, told him that she was désolée because only he could keep her Timmy out of mischief, let him kiss her hand, and then suddenly embracing him, kissed him good-night.

  They parted with regrets and promises.

  “I just can’t get used to it,” Pete said. “He’s a great guy, but somehow I always see him in black robes, under the Great Seal of the United States.” He shook his head. “Well, how about coming up to our place? We’ve a couple of bottles already chilled. I’ll make the drink that ex-cavalry character invented at Fort Bliss—jigger of tequila, jigger of brandy, fill it up with champagne. Smooth as a horse’s nose, he said it was.”

  “He didn’t invent it at Fort Bliss,” said Timuroff, wrinkling his nostrils. “He invented it in Juarez, across the river, where liquor was cheaper.”

  “You see?” commented Liselotte pleasantly. “My Timmy was also in the cavalry. We wait, and all comes to light. Now at last we learn why he did not remain in the army of the Argentine Republic. Evil companions and this terrible drink made him seduce his colonel’s wife, like me. It was a great disgrace. In the army of the Argentine, they are even now forbidden to mention him by name.”

  “Dear Lise! How much more fun it would’ve been if it were true. But—” he touched his scar—“I was separated from that service quite honorably after a serious motor accident in Uruguay, which I must tell you all about some day. Think of it, except for that, I might now be dictator of Argentina, or at least a general, instead of humbly selling antique arms in San Francisco.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Cominazzo. “Humbly”

  “How else?” asked Timuroff.

  “Pete, I don’t think we ought to go to our apartment. Tonight’s been so much fun, and you know what’ll happen. Kielty will phone you, or Harrell, that someone’s just been shot or something, and everybody’s sick, and can’t you help out just this once? Just this once! It’s happening twice a week. It—it simply isn’t fair!”

  “Sweetheart, tonight the chief himself couldn’t roust me out. We’ll crack those bottles, and fix some lobster archiduc. Like in Vienna, Liselotte. You know, young hussar officers trying the routine on lovely ballet girls, and ancient field marshals trying it on lovely ballet girls? With Strauss waltzes played by poor Gypsies hopelessly in love with lovely ballet girls.”

  “I do not understand. In the convent, they did not tell me of such things.” She gave him her best mother superior look. “Perhaps this used to happen long ago, when our good Franz Josef ruled. Or maybe you have just been reading naughty books?”

  Olivia giggled. “They confiscate them from juvenile delinquents,” she said, “but there’s not much in them about ballet girls, or field marshals, or even lobsters. Well, okay, I give up. Only I warn you, the lobster and champagne’s just a blind. Pete has The Pistol out of safe deposit, and he’s all set to show it off, as if we all hadn’t seen it fifty or a hundred times.”

  “Ungrateful wench! Who was it helped me trace my Italian ancestry to the greata Lazarino Cominazzo of Brescia? Who gave us this pistola made by him? Your boss, that’sa who. He gets lobster and champagne. Tim, you’d like to see the great pistola, wouldn’t you?”

  “Absolutely!” said Timuroff, loyal to his wedding present. Olivia winked at Liselotte. “A nice little station wagon would’ve been more practical, and it would’ve cost less.”

  “Or a platinum mink coat,” suggested Liselotte.

  “You have to buy those,” said Timuroff. “You can’t just trade collectors out of them.”

  They waved good-night to the uniformed sergeant directing traf
fic out of the opera parking lot, and drove off in Liselotte’s apple-green Rover, up Van Ness, then a block east on Greenwich. Timuroff, at the wheel, talked of his ancestor, Alastair Drummond of Skrye, who had escaped from Cromwell to serve under the czar Alexei Mikhailovich, father of Peter the Great, and who had died in Muscovy full of years and honors in 1696, the very year of the great Lazarino’s passing—giving Pete a chance to mention the great Lazarino’s artistry once or twice. Olivia and Liselotte put in a few pointed remarks about how silly it was for men to waste so much time on outdated firearms and ancestors deader than doornails.

  They kept it up in the garage and the elevator, breaking off only when Pete unlocked the door. He headed for the kitchen; and Timuroff, making an unkind remark about people who thought only of their base appetites, took The Pistol from the mantelpiece. It was a lovely Brescian snaphaunce, its steel mounts carved and intricately pierced, made while Charles II still reigned in England. He regarded it with affection: it was in perfect condition; he had obtained it for a quarter of its value; by giving it he had rewarded one firm friendship and cemented another; it was one more pleasant grace note to the evening.

  There was a muffled pop from the kitchen, and presently Pete came in again, grinning, carrying a silver tray with chilled glasses and a champagne bottle. “Come on, girls!” he called over his shoulder. “Mr. Lobster can wait while we drink a few toasts.”

  “To me?” Olivia called back.

  “To the pistola,” Pete replied.

  And then the telephone rang.

  The silence was instant and complete. The thing rang again. Olivia and Liselotte appeared at the door.