And it did seem such a clever game! I suppose if thegum were stale--" Her voice trailed off when she saw the horror onElvin's face.
Wordlessly he pointed at the open jar. The room fell silent. All thirtyof the youngsters looked at him. Their chomping jaws became motionless.
"Is--is that mine?" he whispered hoarsely.
"The jar you brought in?" Mrs. Schermerhorn asked. "I don't know, Mr.Elvin, I'm sure. Mabel Travis was supposed to bring the gum for thecontest, and she forgot where--"
"But mine wasn't gum." He licked his lips, uncomfortable in the focus ofso many staring eyes. "A--a rocket of some sort fell in the field, justbeyond the irrigation ditch. I found the cylinder inside. It mightbe--it could be--anything."
Elvin had the strange sensation, for almost ten seconds, of looking at amotion picture film that had stopped at a single frame. Then, as if theprojector had started to run again, all thirty of the youngsters brokeinto activity. For another second the analogy of the film persisted;Elvin had the elusive impression that each of the youngsters wascarefully playing a part.
* * * * *
They clamored to go out and see the rocket. Mrs. Schermerhorn protestedthat they would ruin their clothes trailing over the fields after dark.The guests allowed themselves to be talked into putting off theircuriosity until morning. As their excited talk faded, Mabel Travislooked up at Elvin.
"Was your jar the one on the bookcase, Mr. Elvin?" she asked, eyeing himwith her enormous, blue eyes.
"Yes. Is that where you got--"
"No." The room was still again, and all the youngsters were looking ather with a peculiar anxiety. "I thought that was one of the prizes. Youknow, when we played forfeits earlier in the--"
"Of course," Mrs. Schermerhorn put in. "Bill Blake did win a jar ofcandy, didn't he?"
"And that's what I thought the jar was when I saw it on the bookcase,"Mary Travis continued. "So I took it upstairs and put it with our coatsin the bedroom. I'll get it for you, Mr. Elvin." Slowly she picked upthe nearly empty jar on the floor and recapped it. "I'm going to takethis back to the drugstore tomorrow morning and demand my money back. Icertainly don't like being cheated!"
When she returned to the living room, she handed Elvin his cylinder ofcolored balls and slowly his fear dissipated. Until a competentauthority analyzed the contents, the jar represented unknown danger. Itmight be harmless; but it could also be an explosive, a form of fuel forthe rocket, perhaps even germ colonies used in biological warfare. IfBill Blake had taken it home with him as an innocent jar of candy--Elvinshuddered.
The party broke up and Elvin went to his room. He hung his suitcarefully at the back of his closet to preserve the creases and therebycut down on his cleaning bill. After five years of living on a teacher'ssalary, such economies had become second nature with him. He brought outhis blue serge and hung it on the door; it was the suit he would wearnext week to school.
Saturday dawned crisply sunny. Elvin shaved and dressed leisurely.Through the dormer windows of his room he saw the rich, black fieldsthat surrounded the ranch house and the distant ridge of misty mountainsbeyond the desert, one or two of them crested with snow.
* * * * *
The Schermerhorns, of course, were already awake and busy. Elvin heardthe clatter of dishes in the kitchen. He saw the twins, David andDonald, tall and muscular in their tight jeans and brilliant plaidshirts, working in their shop back of the garage. Pop Schermerhorn wasin conference with a score of day laborers clustered around thehalf-dozen tractors in the drive. Through the open garage door Elvincould see the Schermerhorn Cadillac, the station wagon, and the redConvertible that belonged to the twins.
The scene could be duplicated, with minor variations, on any day of theweek. Elvin always resented the Schermerhorn prosperity, even though PopSchermerhorn had been kind enough to offer him board and room when itwas obvious the family did not need the additional income.
Elvin never allowed himself to forget that the Schermerhorns owned oneof the largest ranches in the valley as well as the feed store in SanBenedicto and a half-interest in the bank. Yet Pop Schermerhorn actuallyboasted that he had never gone past the eighth grade in school, and hiskids were fortunate to be considered mentally normal. Elvin had thetwins in class; he knew the limits of their ability. Donald had an I.Q.of 89, David of 85.
Yet such a family literally rolled in money, while Elvin was like aslum-dweller staring emptily into a crowded shop window.
Matt Henderson turned in from the main highway as Elvin finishedbreakfast. He joined the reporter and they walked out to the fieldbeyond the irrigation ditch. In daylight the terrain was very different.Elvin backtracked over the same ground several times before it dawned onhim that he could not locate the rocket.
Perspiration beaded his face. That was impossible! The rocket was largeenough to be seen from any point in the field. Even if some part of themechanism had caused it to rise again during the night, Elvin would havefound the gaping hole the point of the projectile had torn in the earth.But there was nothing. Not a furrow in the ploughed field was disturbed.
Visibly amused, Matt Henderson departed, repeating his formula aboutbrands of liquor. This time, Elvin thought, the reporter actuallybelieved it. Elvin walked back to the ranch. He was very angry; but,more than that, he was coldly afraid--and he had no idea what he wasafraid of.
The Schermerhorn twins stopped him as he crossed the driveway.
"You sure made us bite on that one, Mr. Elvin," Donald said goodnaturedly.
"Yeah," David added. "All the kids came over early this morning to seeyour rocket."
"I guest we deserve it, though," Donald went on philosophically, "forpulling that deal on you in class last week."
* * * * *
Gary Elvin went up to his room in a daze and sat staring at the bottleof colored spheres. It seemed entirely clear what had happened lastnight; yet, conceivably, the rocket could have been an hallucination. Ifso, it was because of the grinding frustrations of his job. But Elvinhad a good mind; he did not have to let a bunch of discourteousrattle-brained kids get him down. David and Donald had given him theclue: the rocket was simply a practical joke he had played on his classof tenth graders.
The second step in driving out the "dream" was an appeal to authority.He must understand the limits of scientific possibility in the use ofrockets. That meant a trip to the library. Although it was four miles toSan Benedicto, Elvin decided to walk; the exercise would help clear hishead.
He entered the library at eleven-thirty, half an hour before thebuilding was closed for the weekend. It was a good library. Theassessment rate in prosperous San Benedicto was high, and books had beenpurchased wisely. In the card catalogue Elvin found listed a number ofup-to-date references that he could use; but there was nothing on theshelves. Five minutes before closing time, he asked the librarian forhelp.
"I don't suppose there's anything in," she answered. "We've had aperfect run on books all morning."
"You mean everything in the library is out?"
"Everything worthwhile." She beamed. "And most of the borrowers wereyour tenth graders, too, Mr. Elvin. You've certainly done a wonderfuljob of inspiring that class to do serious reading. Why, do you knowMabel Travis has been in here three times today? She took out sevenbooks as soon as the library opened, and she had them back bynine-thirty. Said she'd read them all, too."
"Seven books in less than two hours?" Elvin laughed.
"I suppose she thought she had. Poor little Mabel! She hasn't much towork with, you know. But it was her new attitude I liked--so intense, soserious. And she was doing such heavy reading, too."
Elvin walked back to the Schermerhorn ranch, enjoying the noon-daywarmth. San Benedicto was crowded with Saturday shoppers. He met hisstudents everywhere, and always they commented on the practical joke hehad played on them. By the time he was back in his room, the fiction ofthe joke was thoroughly established in his own mind.
He almost believedit himself.
He glanced again at the transparent cylinder of spheres. A chemist mightbe able to analyze the contents and say where the jar had originated.Perhaps Miss Gerkin could do it. She had taught science for more thantwenty years at San Benedicto High. Yet Elvin knew he couldn't ask herfor help. If the colored balls turned out to be nothing more than hardcandy, then by inescapable logic he would have to accept the fact thathe was suffering from a major hallucination. It was more comfortable notto know the truth.
The idea of candy, however, brought up another association. Mrs.Schermerhorn had said that earlier in the evening Bill Blake had won ajar of candy as a prize. Bill Blake was the prize joker of the tenthgrade. Elvin had what seemed to be an intuitive flash of understanding.The rocket had been a
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