The Collected Stories

by Earl

  Doc finally figgered out directions and we headed uptown for where Medical Center used to be, if it was still there. The way led down to ground-level Broadway. I reckon I druv pretty good, all things considered. I didn’t knick but three or four fenders and swiped one running board clean off, but they should of watched where they was going. You has very careless drivers in 2039.

  “Keep your eyes off the sidewalks,” admonishes Doc, seggestively, as though I’m looking there.

  I kep wondering, though, how women could wear sech short skirts, halfway above their knees, without most of them being the worse off, till I saw a big billboard which says: “Girls—why have knobby knees? Or thick ankles? Plastic Surgery Incorporation will correct that, painlessly, completely. Special bargain rate this week.”

  “Same old world,” says I, “in more ways than one.”

  MEDICAL CENTER was still there, on the river, and twice as much of it, according to Doc. We inquore inside, Doc fidgeting impatiently, and finally we was ushured into the presence of Dr. Joel Pench, research biologist.

  Doc started right in eagerly, and give the whole story. Dr. Pench looked kind of shellshocked. “Don’t you believe me?” bleats Doc. “You must! Listen, I did research here at Medical Center in 1932. I can name half the staff of that time, and your records will prove I’m right!”

  Dr. Pench put his fingertips together, eying us. “lye heard of you two, over the newscasts,” he says slowly, like he ain’t committing hisself as yet. “Pardon me. just a moment.”

  He come back in a few minutes with ten husky young internes at his back and another sawbones, a psykitrist.

  “Tell your story to Dr. Pearson,” says Dr. Pench sweetly.

  Doc goes through the dismal details again, thinking he was getting somewheres. Dr. Pearson stroked his beard all the while in a way I didn’t cotton to. I see them young internes trying to keep from grinning.

  When Doc finishes, Dr. Pearson shaken his head sadly.

  “A clear case of paranoia, with delusion of a life in the past,” he murmurs. “And the other, the big one, must have complications of homicidal mania, to judge by his previous actions.” He turns to his men. “Take them to Ward 6B, boys.”

  The internes advance on us, with a strait-jacket and some rope, and at this point I feels they is need of my intervention. “Looky here’, fellers,” I grits out calmlike. “If yore fixing to lay a hand on me or my pardner here, I cain’t promise what’ll happen.”

  “He’s the dangerous one, boys!” pipes up Dr. Pearson. “Tackle him first.”

  They come up friskily, like they’d handled many a maniac in their time. One of them vermin grabbed my arm. I shaken him off so hard he fell agin’ the wall with his head and said, “Wug, wug, wug!” Then. I taken the nearest two by the scruff of the neck and banged their heads together and flang them among the others, bowling them all over.

  “Stop, you idiot!” I hear Doc Meade entreat from a corner where the other two doctors was, too, but I’m past sech admonitions.

  They was pandymoanyum for a while, I allow. If I was a short-tempered man I’d of been inclined to violence. The internes was cursing and grunting and trying to git at me, but I fit them off. I pulled my punches, too, on account of I has respect for the medical perfession. I didn’t knock but three of them out.

  Still they come at me, grimlike. Seeing they was determined to start trouble, I figgered they was nothing left to do but start manhandling them. They is a saying down where I come from in Texas that they’s only two things worse than a mad bull—a cyclone and Breck Wacker on the rampage.

  Good thing I’m a mild-tempered man. I only throwed them, one after another, agin’ the wall, gentlelike so as not to hurt them. Suddenly cops busted in, looked around amazed, and one of them jerked out his shock pistol and aimed it at me. I ducked aside but got the charge in my left leg a bit and went down like a poleaxed steer.

  But it still took them ten minutes before they could quiet me, with a cop each sitting on my arms, legs and stomach.

  “Back to jail!” says the captain, glaring down at me on the floor. “Jailbreaking, stealing a car, leaving the scene of an accident, demolishing a Federal robot—you’ll get a pretty stiff sentence out of this, you maniac!”

  “Exactly—maniac!” chirps Dr. Pearson. “This man will not go back to jail, captain. He’s going into our mental ward, in a padded cell!”

  “Oh! oh! oh!” Doc Meade was wailing. “Breck, now we are sunk! We’ll never get a chance to prove our identity, locked up in this institution! Oh! oh! oh!”

  That made me so plumb disgusted that I got mad for the first time and riz up like a wounded grizzly, upsetting the cops holding me down like they was bags of feathers. I got my back agin’ the wall so’s I could stand with my weak leg and bellered for them to take me, if they could, dead or alive.

  The captain simply aimed his shock gun at me—

  Well, in that moment I realizes, before it came, that me and Doc is about sunk, with nobody believing us, neither the scientific authorities, the police authorities, nor the bank people. I begin to wonder if maybe in 1939 we had people in jail or a nuthouse. But no use thinking. The captain is squeezing his finger and I’m about to git it. And me and Doc has come all the way from 1939 jest to help fill a 2039 institution—

  JEST THEN somebody busts in, yelling his head off. It’s Henshaw, our banker friend, of all people. He passes a hand acrost his eyes at the ruins of furniture and men and then shaken his head at the captain not to paralyze me.

  “These men are telling the truth!” he cries. “They are from 1939! The matter preyed on my mind, since they visited me, so I took Dr. Meade’s fingerprints out of the lock-box he specified and took them down to the jail to check them with his fresh prints. They are the same!”

  The cops fell back, mouths open. The internes, those that was conscious, stopped groaning. Dr. Pench and Dr. Pearson looked at Doc Meade like he was a ghost. They wa’n’t a sound in that room for a minute.

  Then Doc Meade struts out onto the middle of the floor, proud as a bantam. He looked around like a king surveying his disgraced subjects. “Of course,” he says, condescendingly, “we won’t press any charges against any of you for false arrest, or manhandling our persons—”

  “Manhandling your persons!” gasps one of the internes, going limp.

  The cops file out now, disappointed that we ain’t criminals, and the internes leave, groaning and staggering, and the excitement is over—almost. They is only one thing left to tell about. I been keeping myself in the background in what I writ so far on account of my modesty. But, hell, I got to git in here somewheres.

  The two doctors and Henshaw is questioning Doc Meade eagerly, now that they know who he is. Dr. Pench goes into the next room for a book to look up Doc Meade’s record from a hundred years back,. and lets out a piercing shriek from there. We go to look and it turns out Dr. Pench has been cornered by a maniac, who escaped while all them internes was away from the ward. A real mania this time, and with a fire ax in his hands!

  “Dr. Pench is going to be murdered before our eyes!” moaned Dr. Pearson. The maniac was brandishing his weapon over Pench’s head and evidently gitting a kick out of seeing him wince.

  “Do something, Breck!” urges Doc Meade, shoving me forard like I should tackle a man with an ax and a dern mean look in his eye. I’ll break the bones of any man calls me a coward but that there situation had me plumb stumped.

  Then I spies the rope in the corner them internes left that they been fixing to tie me with before. I has it in my hands and make a slipknot loop in no time. I bust into the other room twirling the loop around my body like us experts do.

  “Stop!” says the lunatic, turning and waving his ax. “I’m going to split the doctor’s head open. He thinks I’m crazy. I’m Napoleon. Who are you?”

  “Breck Wacker, from 1939,” I says to humor him.

  “Crazy, eh?” he leers. “Now go away or I’ll—”

  He waves
his ax in my direction. But he is also watching me make the rope talk. I twist it up and down like a live snake and jump in and out of the loop and almost forget about Dr. Pench, thinking about old times. But then he moans, and seeing I has the full interest of the maniac, I lets fly. I flang that rope slicker than I ever tossed one in 1939 and afore he knew it, his arms was pinned to his sides. The ax dropped. I hogtied him so fast I bet I beat the world’s record.

  “Y-you saved my life!” stutters Dr. Pench, wiping his bald head and gitting up.

  “You’re a wizard with a rope!” praises Dr. Pearson. “You could make money on the stage, demonstrating your ability. And of course you’ll need some.”

  “Money!” snorts Doc Meade. He turns to the bank president. “Henshaw, you can make any cash installment arrangements you wish, with the seven million eight hundred thousand dollars your bank carries for me.”

  “Oh, about that,” says Henshaw. “You see, when the gold market collapsed in 1977, with the production of cheap sea-gold, all gold bond holdings devaluated accordingly. Yours too, naturally. Your account is worth today—let’s see—about two thousand five hundred dollars.”

  DOC MEADE recovered without any ill effects. Especially with the honors and banquets heaped onto him later, for his scientific achievement of bringing us alive to 2039. But now that’s wore off, too, and we’re jest ordinary citizens of 2039. Doc’s got a funny look in his eyes these days, two years after our coming to these times. He ain’t never given away his secret of how he worked the suspenders anermation. Maybe he’s calkalating to try it again, I dunno.

  Hell, I’d be glad to leave these times. They ain’t much I like about 2039. Except one thing. I can wear silk underwear here—which I always had a secret hankering to do—without my being classed as a dude. You couldn’t do that in my times.

  THE INVISIBLE ROBINHOOD

  Unseen, relentless, the Invisible Robinhood stalked crime rings and war lords. Ted Marne and Leda Norris knew his name but neither knew the awful secret he bore

  CHAPTER I

  Out of Thin Air

  THE young couple strolled down the deserted midnight street.

  The party had been fun and they were still laughing. They had decided to walk a ways, in the cool night air, before taking a subway. They were too absorbed in their conversation to think of danger as they passed the black patch of an unlighted gangway.

  “Stick ’em up!” came the command.

  Something hard jabbed in the young man’s back. The girl started to give a shriek, but was silenced by the harsh voice of the bandit who had loomed out of the shadows.

  “Take it easy, sister. You don’t want your boyfriend shot, do ya? Hand over your stuff. No fuss, now—”

  After a hopeless glance up and down the street, the young man gave up his wallet, watch and gold stickpin. The girl was forced to give her pocketbook, earrings and silver bracelets. She fumbled nervously. Impatiently, the gunman clutched at the locket around her neck.

  “Oh, not that!” gasped the girl. “I’ve had it all my life—please—”

  “Shut up!” growled the bandit. “I take what I want. I’ll have that locket, too—”

  “I don’t think you will!” said another voice. The gunman whirled, tensely, ready to shoot. He saw nothing to shoot at. But something like a steel hand grasped his wrist and twisted it sharply. He dropped his gun with a cry of agony.

  “Rat! Preying on people like a vulture—” said the ghostly voice again, from empty air.

  Something like an iron fist cracked against the bandit’s jaw, snapping his head back. The gunman tried to run away, but an unseen fist struck him in whichever direction he tried. Again and again blows landed till the robber dropped unconscious, with blood streaming from his battered face.

  The young couple, arms tightly entwined, had watched with paralyzed amazement. Now they saw an invisible something retrieve their stolen articles from the prone man’s pockets. The articles formed themselves into a little heap on the sidewalk.

  “There you are!” spoke the disembodied voice. Then they heard soft footfalls retreating down the street. But they saw only the bare sidewalk!

  UP in a small office perched like an eyrie on the 44th floor of the office building, “Doc” Hobson rubbed his hands gleefully. He opened the last envelope, took out the dollar bill enclosed, and tossed the coupon on the floor with hundreds of others.

  The discarded coupon read—“Please send me the S 6-page booklet on How To Grow New Luxuriant Hair, even though completely bald, with the scalp-massage method, by Dr. Fred Hobson, world-famous authority on this method. I enclose herewith a dollar bill. My name is—”

  There were spaces then for name and address, with a heavy-print note at the bottom stating a money-back-in-five-days guarantee, if not satisfactory.

  “The laugh is, we don’t even send ’em a booklet!” chortled Hobson, raising his hand to pat his own bald head. “I’d like to use the method myself—if I knew it! Now come on, Kirby, and help me pack these bills together in bundles of a hundred.”

  “A pleasure, doctor!” grunted Jack Kirby, his partner in their bold swindle. They laid dollar bills carefully on top of one another and pasted strips of paper around bundles of a hundred.

  “Eleven hundred and fifty-eight today,” declared Doc Hobson when they were done. He locked the door carefully and then opened their safe. They took out the other packets of dollar bills therein and heaped them on the desk.

  “Ten grand in ten days!” summarized Hobson. “We’ll take these to the bank now, have them changed to big bills, and skip the city. The Federal agents will be on our trail any day now, for defraud through the mails. Ten grand—not a bad haul!”

  Kirby laughed, tossing a pack in the air and catching it. “And all it cost us was two week’s rent here, and a couple hundred in advertising. That’s what I call profit!”

  “What do you say we take a run down to Palm Beach and blow ourselves to a good time—on other people’s hard-earned dough?” suggested Doc Hobson.

  “Good idea!” exclaimed Kirby, tossing the packet in the air again.

  But this time he did not catch it. The packet mysteriously stopped in mid-air and then seemed to float toward the window.

  “What the hell!” gasped Kirby, passing a hand in front of his eyes.

  Hobson stared, paralyzed at the phenomenon.

  At the open window, the strip binding of the packet ripped open and the dollar bills flung themselves out into the wind. Fluttering and twisting, they fell toward the ground, like a shower of green rain.

  “The wind is blowing just right,” said a voice from in front of the two frozen men. “The money will drift into the tenement district a few blocks away. The people there can use the money more than you two—gentlemen!”

  The disembodied voice went on calmly, as Hodson finally made a move.

  “Put down that gun, Hobson—excuse me—Dr. Hobson! I have you covered. Besides, you don’t know what to shoot at or where.”

  Another packet rose off the desk, floated to the window and was there dispersed out into the open air.

  “Don’t try to stop me,” said the voice. “I’d just as soon shoot you as not. Jack, be a good boy and hand me the packets. Hobson, you help too. In fact you, Hobson—you scatter these bills, as I showed you how.”

  The men had to obey, under threat of bullets that might snuff out their cowardly lives. Hobson stood at the window, and as Kirby handed him the packets, he broke the bands and flung the money out.

  “Isn’t it fun?” said the unseen voice sweetly. “Look how pretty those bills twinkle as they drift down!”

  But Hobson and his partner did not see anything pretty in the sight. They were sick. It wasn’t so much the loss of the ten thousand dollars they had so cleverly swindled. It was the thought of their utter helplessness against this invisible presence that struck cold terror in their dazed minds.

  WOODROW JONES stepped forward before the loudspeaker microphone. Adopting th
e look of a patriarch about to address his flock, he raised his arms. The crowd fell silent, in the rally hall.

  “My worthy friends,” he began in his sonorous voice. “I am not here to make an empty speech full of double-edged promises. I’m going to get right down to brass tacks. Our platform guarantees five things. First is the matter of schools, for your children and mine. We’ll build new schools, modern, splendid, worthwhile—”

  “But very expensive to the taxpayers!” interrupted a soft voice directly in Woodrow Jones’ right ear.

  The politician had choked on his last word, startled. He looked around to see who had spoken, but there was no one nearer than those seated on the platform, twenty feet back of him. What was the matter with him, thinking he was hearing things?

  He turned back to the crowd, excused himself for the pause and went on. “Secondly, I have fool-proof plans for reducing taxes, in six months, to two-thirds of their present rate. And—”

  “Of course,” said the mocking voice in his ear, “after that the taxes will strangely rise higher—and higher—”

  This time Woodrow Jones was definitely taken aback. He had heard the voice as plainly as if someone stood at his very side. Yet the limelighted stage was barren of a soul. Jones’ men in back of him looked at him blankly, wondering why he stared around so queerly. They had obviously heard nothing.

  Jones’ amplified voice went on, but it was a little unsure now. He got through the taxation matter and launched into item three on his election platform.

  “Extensive park improvement has long been needed in this district. We have a budget for that, which provides for the best of swimming pools, ball grounds, landscaping, and—”

  “And which also, Woodrow Jones, provides for a large amount of graft for you and your group!” The voice in his ear again, unmistakable.

  Woodrow Jones’ nerves pounded. His fat cheeks quivered. He didn’t want to go on. He almost felt sick. Yet he knew he must go on, or probably lose the election. He went on. His voice had a quaver to it and the audience stared at him closely. Already they sensed the exposed insincerity in his tone. His friends back of him looked worried.