The Early Asimov. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  She disappeared for a moment and returned with an aspirin. “your Reginald de Meister, from your books, told you, in person, he was in love with Letitia Reynolds?”

  “That’s right.”

  June swallowed the aspirin.

  “Well, I’ll explain, June, the way he explained it to me. All characters really exist-at least, in the minds of the authors. But when people really begin to believe in them, they begin to exist in reality, because what people believe in, is, so far as they’re concerned, and what is existence anyway?”

  June’s lips trembled. “Oh, Gramie, please don’t. Mother will never let me marry you if they put you in an asylum.”

  “Don’t call me Gramie, June, for God’s sake. I tell you he was there, trying to tell me what to write and how to write it. He was almost as bad as you. Aw, come on, Baby, don’t cry.”

  “I can’t help it. I always thought you were crazy, but I never thought you were crazy!”

  “All right, what’s the difference? Let’s not talk about it, any more. I’m never going to write another mystery novel. After all-” (he indulged in a bit of indignation)-”when it gets so that my own character-my own character-tries to tell me what to do, it’s going too far…

  June looked over her handkerchief. “How do you know it was really de Meister?”

  “Oh, golly. As soon as he tapped his Turkish cigarette on the back of his hand and started dropping g’s like snowflakes in a blizzard, I knew the worst had come.”

  The telephone rang. June leaped up. “Don’t answer, Graham. It’s probably from the asylum. I’ll tell them you’re not here. Hello. Hello. Oh, Mr. MacDunlap… She heaved a sigh of relief, then covered the mouthpiece and whispered horasely, “It might be a trap.”

  “Hello, Mr. MacDunlap!…No, he’s not here…Yes, I think I can get in touch with him…At Martin’s tomorrow, noon… I’ll tell him…With who?…With who???” She hung up suddenly.

  “Graham, you’re to lunch with MacDunlap tomorrow…

  “At his expense! Only at his expense!”

  Her great blue eyes got greater and bluer, “And Reginald de Meister is to dine with you…

  “What Reginald de Meister?”

  “Your Reginald de Meister.”

  “ My Reg-”

  “Oh, Gramie, don’t… Her eyes misted, “Don’t you see, Gramie, now they’ll put us both in an insane asylum-and Mr. MacDunlap, too. And they’ll probably put us all in the same padded cell. Oh, Gramie, three is such a dreadful crowd.”

  And her face crumpled into tears.

  Grew S. MacDunlap (that the S. stands for “Some” is a vile untruth spread by his enemies) was alone at the table when Graham Dorn entered. Out of this fact, Graham extracted a few fleeting drops of pleasure.

  It was not so much, you understand, the presence of MacDunlap that did it, as the absence of de Meister.

  MacDunlap looked at him over his spectacles and swallowed a liver pill, his favorite sweetmeat

  “Aha. You’re here. What is this corny joke you’re putting over on me? You had no right to mix me up with a person like de Meister without warning me he was real. I might have taken precautions. I could have hired a bodyguard. I could have bought a revolver.”

  “He’s not real. God damn it! Half of him was your idea.

  “That,” returned MacDunlap with heat, “is libel. And what do you mean, he’s not real? When he introduced himself, I took three liver pills at once and he didn’t disappear. Do you know what three pills are? Three pills, the kind I’ve got (the doctor should only drop dead), could make an elephant disappear-if he weren’t real. I know.”

  Graham said wearily, “Just the same, he exists only in my mind.”

  “In your mind, I know he exists. Your mind should be investigated by the Pure Food and Drugs Act.”

  The several polite rejoinders that occurred simultaneously to Graham were dismissed almost immediately as containing too great a proportion of pithy Anglo-Saxon expletives. After all-ha, ha-a publisher is a publisher however Anglo-Saxony he may be.

  Graham said, “The question arises, then, how we’re to get rid of de Meister.”

  “Get rid of de Meister?” MacDunlap jerked the glasses off his nose in his sudden start, and caught them in one hand. His voice thickened with emotion. “Who wants to get rid of him?”

  “Do you want him around?”

  “God forbid,” MacDunlap said between shudders. “Next to him, my brother-in-law is an angel.”

  “He has no business outside my books.”

  “For my part, he has no business inside them. Since I started reading your manuscripts, my doctor added kidney pills and cough syrups to my medicines.” He looked at his watch, and took a kidney pill. “My worst enemy should be a book publisher only a year.”

  “Then why,” asked Graham patiently, “don’t you want to get rid of de Meister?”

  “Because he is publicity.”

  Graham stared blankly.

  “Look! What other writer has a real detective? All the others are fictional. Everyone knows that. But yours-yours is real. We can let him solve cases and have big newspaper writeups. He’ll make the Police Department look silly. He’ll make-”

  “That, “ interrupted Graham, categorically, “is by all odds the most obscene proposal I have ever had my ears manured with.”

  “It will make money.”

  “Money isn’t everything.”

  “Name one thing it isn’t…Shh!” He kicked a near-fracture into Graham’s left ankle and rose to his feet with a convulsive smile, “MI. de Meister!”

  “Sorry, old dear,” came a lethargic voice. “Couldn’t quite make it, you know. Loads of engagements. Must have been most borin’ for you.”

  Graham Dom’s ears quivered spasmodically. He looked over his shoulder and reeled backward as far as a person could reel while in a sitting position. Reginald de Meister had sprouted a monocle since his last visitation, and his monocular glance was calculated to freeze blood.

  De Meister’s greeting was casual. “My dear Watson! So glad to meet you. Overjoyed deucedly.”

  “Why don’t you go to hell?” Graham asked curiously.

  “My dear fellow. Oh, my dear fellow.”

  MacDunlap cackled, “That’s what I like. Jokes! Fun! Makes everything pleasant to start with. Now shall we get down to business?”

  “Certainly. The dinner is on the way, I trust? Then I’ll just order a bottle of wine. The usual, Henry.” The waiter ceased hovering, Flew away, and skimmed back with a bottle that opened and gurgled into a glass.

  De Meister sipped delicately, “So nice of you, old chap, to make me a habitue of this place in your stories. It holds true even now, and it is most convenient. The waiters all know me. Mr. MacDunlap, I take it you have convinced Mr. Dom of the necessity of continuing the de Meister stories.”

  “Yes,” said MacDunlap. “

  “No,” said Graham.

  “Don’t mind him,” said MacDunlap. “He’s temperamental. You know these authors.”

  “Don’t mind him,” said Graham. “He’s microcephalic. You know these publishers.”

  “Look, old chappie. I take it MacDunlap hasn’t pointed out to you the unpleasanter side of acting stubborn.”

  “For instance what, old stinkie?” asked Graham, courteously.

  “Well, have you ever been haunted?”

  “Like coming behind me and saying, Boo?”

  “My dear fellow, I say. I’m much more subtle than that. I can really haunt one in modem, up-to-date methods. For instance, have you ever had your individuality submerged?”

  He snickered.

  There was something familiar about that snicker. Graham suddenly remembered. It was on page 103 of Murder Rides the Range:

  His lazy eyelids flicked down and up. He laughed lightly and melodiously, and though he said not a word, Hank Marslowe covered. There was hidden menace and hidden power in that light laugh, and somehow the burly rancher did not dare reach for hi
s guns.

  To Graham it still sounded like a nasty snicker, but he cowered, and did not dare reach for his guns.

  MacDunlap plunged through the hole the momentary silence had created.

  “You see, Graham. Why play around with ghosts? Ghosts aren’t reasonable things. They’re not human! If it’s more royalties, you want-”

  Graham fired up. “Will you refrain from speaking of money? From now on, I write only great novels of tearing human emotions.”

  MacDunlap’s flushed face changed suddenly. “

  “No,” he said.

  “In fact, to change the subject just a moment-” and Graham’s tone became surpassingly sweet, as the words got all sticky with maple syrup-”I have a manuscript here for you to look at.”

  He grasped the perspiring MacDunlap by the lapel firmly. “It is a novel that is the work of five years. A novel that will grip you with its intensity. A novel that will shake you to the core of your being. A novel that will open a new world. A novel that will-”

  “No,” said MacDunlap.

  “A novel that will blast the falseness of this world. A novel that pierces to the truth. A novel-”

  MacDunlap, being able to stretch his hand no higher, took the manuscript.

  “No,” he said.

  “Why the bloody hell don’t you read it?” inquired Graham.

  “Now?”

  “Well, start it.”

  “Look, supposing I read it tomorrow, or even the next day. I have to take my cough syrup now.”

  “You haven’t coughed once since I got here.”

  “I’ll let you know immediately-”

  “This,” said Graham, “is the first page. Why don’t you begin it? It will grip you instantly.”

  MacDunlap read two paragraphs and said, “Is this laid in a coalmining town?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I can’t read it. I’m allergic to coal dust.”

  “But it’s not real coal dust, Mac Idiot.”

  “That,” pointed out MacDunlap, “is what you said about de Meister.”

  Reginald de Meister tapped a cigarette carefully on the back of his hand in a subtle manner which Graham immediately recognized as betokening a sudden decision.

  “That is all devastatin’ly borin’, you know. Not quite gettin’ to the point, you might say. Go ahead, MacDunlap, this is no time for half measures.”

  MacDunlap girded his spiritual loins and said, “ All right Mister Dorn, with you it’s no use being nice. Instead of de Meister, I’m getting coal dust. Instead of the best publicity in fifty years, I’m getting social significance. All right, Mister Smartaleck Dorn, if in one week you don’t come to terms with me, good terms, you will be blacklisted in every reputable publishing firm in the United States and foreign parts.” He shook his finger and added in a shout, “Including Scandinavian.”

  Graham Dornlaughed lightly, “Pish,” he said, “tush. I happen to be an officer of the Author’s Union, and if you try to push me around I’ll have you blacklisted. How do you like that?”

  “I like it fine. Because supposing I can prove you’re a plagiarist.”

  “Me,” gasped Graham, recovering narrowly from merry suffocation.

  “Me, the most original writer of the decade.”

  “Is that so? And maybe you don’t remember that in each case you write up, you casually mention de Meister’s notebooks on previous cases.”

  “So what?”

  “So he has them. Reginald, my boy, show Mister Dom your notebook of your last case. -you see that. That’s Mystery of the Milestones and it has, in detail, every incident in your book-and dated the year before the book was published. Very authentic.”

  “Again so what?”

  “Have you maybe got the right to copy his notebook and call it an original murder mystery?”

  “Why, you case of mental poliomyelitis, that notebook is my invention.”

  “Who says so? It’s in de Meister’s handwriting, as any expert can prove. And maybe you have a piece of paper, some little contract or agreement, you know, that gives you the right to use his notebooks?”

  “How can I have an agreement with a mythical personage?”

  “What mythical personage?”

  “You and I know de Meister doesn’t exist.”

  “Ah, but does the jury know? When I testify that I took three strong liver pills and he didn’t disappear, what twelve men will say he doesn’t exist?”

  “This is blackmail.”

  “Certainly. I’ll give you a week. Or in other words, seven days.”

  Graham Dorn turned desperately to de Meister. “You’re in on this, too. In my books I give you the keenest sense of honor. Is this honorable?”

  De Meister shrugged. “My dear fellow. All this-and haunting, too.”

  Graham rose.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home to write you a letter.” Graham’s brows beetled defiantly. “ And this time I’ll mail it. I’m not giving in. I’ll fight to the last ditch. And, de Meister, you let loose with one single little haunt and I’ll rip your head out of its socket and spurt the blood all over MacDunlap’s new suit.”

  He stalked out, and as he disappeared through the door, de Meister disappeared through nothing at all.

  MacDunlap let out a soft yelp and then took a liver pill, a kidney pill, and a tablespoon of cough syrup in rapid succession.

  Graham Dorn sat in June’s front parlor, and having long since consumed his fingernails, was starting on the first knuckles.

  June, at the moment, was not present, and this, Graham felt, was just as well. A dear girl; in fact, a dear, sweet girl But his mind was not on her.

  It was concerned instead with a miasmic series of flashbacks over the preceding six days:

  —Say, Graham, I met your side-kick at the club yesterday. You know, de Meister. Got an awful shock. I always had the idea he was a sort of Sherlock Holmes that didn’t exist. That’s one on me, boy. Didn’t know-Hey, where are you going?

  —Hey, Dorn, I hear your boss de Meister is back in town. Ought to have material for more stories soon. You’re lucky you’ve got someone to grind out your plots ready-made-Huh? Well, goodbye.”

  —Why, Graham, darling, wherever were you last night? Ann’s affair didn’t get anywhere without you; or at least, it wouldn’t have, if it hadn’t been for Reggie de Meister. He asked after you; but then, I guess he felt lost without his Watson. It must feel wonderful to Watson for such- Mister Dorn! And the same to you, sir!

  —you put one over on me. I thought you made up those wild things. Well, truth is stranger than fiction, ha, ha!

  —Police officials deny that the famous amateur criminologist Reginald de Meister has interested himself in this case. Mr. de Meister himself could not be reached by our reporters for comment. Mr. de Meister is best known to the public for his brilliant solutions to over a dozen crimes, as chronicled in fiction form by his so-called “Watson,” Mr. Grayle Doone.

  Graham quivered and his arms trembled in an awful desire for blood. De Meister was haunting him-but good. He was losing his individuality, exactly as had been threatened.

  It gradually dawned upon Graham that the monotonous ringing noise he heard was not in his head, but, on the contrary, from the front door.

  Such seemed likewise the opinion of Miss June Billings, whose piercing call shot down the stairs and biffed Graham a sharp uppercut to the ear-drums.

  “Hey, dope, see who’s at the front door, before the vibration tears the house down. I’ll be down in half an hour.”

  “Yes, dear!”

  Graham shuffled his way to the front door and opened it.

  “Ah, there. Greetin’s,” said de Meister, and brushed past.

  Graham’s dull eyes stared, and then fired high, as an animal snarl burst from his lips. He took up that gorilla posture, so comforting to red-blooded American males at moments like this, and circled the slightly-confused detective.

  “My dear fellow,
are you ill?”

  “I,” explained Graham, “am not ill, but you will soon be past all interest in that, for I am going to bathe my hands in your heart’s reddest blood.”

  “But I say, you’ll only have to wash them afterwards. It would be such an obvious clue, wouldn’t it?”

  “Enough of this gay banter. Have you any last words?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “It’s just as well. I’m not interested in your last words.”

  He thundered into action, bearing down upon the unfortunate de Meister like a bull elephant. De Meister faded to the left, shot out an arm and a foot, and Graham described a parabolic arc that ended in the total destruction of an end table, a vase of flowers, a fish-bowl, and a five-foot section of wall.

  Graham blinked, and brushed away a curious goldfish from his left eyebrow.

  “My dear fellow,” murmured de Meister, “oh, my dear fellow.”

  Too late, Graham remembered that passage in Pistol Parade:

  De Meister’s arms were whipcord lightning, as with sure, rapid thrusts, he rendered the two thugs helpless. Not by brute force, but by his expert knowledge of judo, he defeated them easily without hastening his breath. The thugs groaned in pain.

  Graham groaned in pain.

  He lifted his right thigh an inch or so to let his femur slip back into place.

  “Hadn’t you better get up, old chap?”

  “I will stay here,” said Graham with dignity, “and contemplate the floor in profile view, until such time as it suits me or until such time as I find myself capable of moving a muscle. I don’t care which. And now, before I proceed to take further measures with you, what the hell do you want?”

  Reginald de Meister adjusted his monocle to a nicety. “You know, I suppose, that MacDunlap’s ultimatum expires tomorrow?”

  “And you and he with it, I trust.”

  “You will not reconsider.”

  “Ha!”

  “Really,” de Meister sighed, “this is borin’ no end. You have made things comfortable for me in this world. After all, in your books you’ve made me well-known in all the clubs and better restaurants, the bosom friend, y’know, of the mayor and commissioner of police, the owner of a Park Avenue penthouse and a magnificent art collection. And it all lingers over, old chap. Really quite afIectin’.”