Well, after that, of course, matters got steadily worse. She was driven from home, after blasting the bathtub and spoiling a valuable Angora kitten. (It was later made into a muff, but moths got into it. That, however, is another story, and not an especially good one.)
Poor Scarlett was excluded from all fan gatherings. Sun stroke and eclipse were her constant companions. She came with the deluge and was gone with the wind.
The girl was utterly friendless. She roamed wildly here and there, haggard, careworn and miserable, in a tattered gown made from the covers of AMAZING STORIES. At night people could hear her moaning under their windows, and they huddled closer to the fire, whispering, “Fetch aft the rum, Darby! Evil walks abroad tonight and I feel my soul shudder in me. No soda, thanks!”
Hopeless and forlorn, Scarlett stowed away on a schooner out for Hong Kong. But she was discovered, cursed for a Jonah, and set ashore on a cannibal isle in the South Seas.
It was a blessing in disguise. The natives mistook her for a goddess. They were used to bad weather, and did not attribute the altered climate to Scarlett.
So they garlanded her with leis and made her their queen.
And she rained happily ever after.
ALL IS ILLUSION
You doubt it? Well, reasonably enough so did Bertram Moore. But he argued the point with the wrong—eh, man.
BERTRAM MOORE should never have entered the strange little tavern. But, even so, he might have avoided serious trouble had he kept his temper and refused to argue with the belligerent midget with the fuzzy whiskers. Mr. Moore, being Irish, certainly should have suspected something amiss from the moment he walked into the unusual taproom.
A tall, gawky, and red-haired fellow was Bertram, with a face somewhat reminiscent of a philosophic horse—not really ugly, though. The sort of average, fortyish person one sees every day, a little past his prime but not yet beginning to crumble. A likable guy, though he talked too much.
Bertram Moore had a watch, and this watch could really be blamed for the whole affair. It wasn’t an unusual timepiece. Quite an ordinary one, in fact. But it was Moore’s watch, and thereby had acquired a certain air of sanctity to him. He wound it religiously and consulted its passionless face whenever necessary. The only trouble tonight was that its hands pointed at eight thirty instead of seven thirty. This nonconformity caused Moore to arrive at the Union Depot exactly one hour too soon to meet his sister, Corinne, who, after living in New York for twenty-five years, had suddenly looked around her, fought down a fit of violent nausea, and decided to visit Bertram.
Moore was not a man of sudden impulse. He compared his watch with the clock oh the depot tower, found several other timepieces, and finally, to clinch the argument, asked a porter what time it was. Seven thirty. Corinne’s train would not arrive for an hour. Moore stared around at the painfully clean and glittering depot and hastily went toward the bar.
One glance through the glass door, however, dissuaded him. The room was sardine-full. Moore, being civilized, preferred to hoist his elbow in comparative quiet, so he emerged from the depot and stared around.
Across the street was an empty lot. It had been empty for years, what with taxes, high Tents, and depression. Much to Moore’s surprise, however, he saw that a building had been erected on the lot.
Things had a way of popping up overnight, Moore thought, and was much closer to the truth than he knew. He walked toward the structure. It was a high-arched dome, something like the Brown Derby without its brim, and there were no windows. From the swinging doors clouds of smoke and the noise of merriment proceeded. Moore entered and burst into a spasm of coughing.
At first he could see nothing for the smoke. The big room was filled with it, a gray, coiling cloud pungent with the aroma of scented tobacco. Then, gradually, Moore began to make out objects through the mist.
There were no booths. Tables were set at random here and there, until they vanished hazily into the fog. People sat at the tables, and at the nearest one was a bald, fat old man with a blaze of jeweled rings hiding his fingers. He was smoking a narghile, and emitting an extraordinary amount of smoke, Moore thought. Moreover, his clothing was unorthodox. He wore a goatskin strategically, and a wreath of vine leaves on his bald dome completed the ensemble. This was obviously either a masquerade or an advertising stunt.
The fat old man hiccuped loudly, lifted a pewter mug from the table, drained it, and waved negligently to Moore. He said something in a language Moore did not understand. But his gesture, as he pointed to a nearby table, was eloquent enough.
Moore advanced and took his seat at the table. Most of the others were occupied, he discovered, by a motley assortment. It was difficult to see clearly through the fog, but he thought their clothing, while more plentiful than the old man’s, was equally odd. He caught glimpses of high-crowned and pointed hats, white robes, black robes, and similar eccentricities.
The waiter approached. He seemed normal enough, a cadaverous man rather grimly dressed in a Tuxedo. His sallow face was quite expressionless, and his eyes were peculiarly glazed. In his lapel he wore a lily. Also, he walked with the stiff, mechanical stride of a zombie.
“Your order, sir?” he asked in a deep, grating voice.
“Whiskey sour,” Moore said. The man departed, returning almost immediately. He set down a pewter mug on the table. Moore paid, and tested the drink. It wasn’t a whiskey sour. He was sure of that. But he didn’t know just what it was. It was heady, strong, pungent, and yet curiously sweet. The fumes mounted to his brain swiftly. Potent stuff.
Now Moore always could carry his liquor, and he certainly couldn’t have got tight on one mugful. Yet his head was unquestionably swimming when the belligerent midget with the fuzzy whiskers arrived.
AT FIRST GLIMPSE Moore saw only beard, a vast, overwhelming avalanche of curly white hair that floated across the floor like a tumbleweed. The beard mounted the chair opposite, Moore’s. A small hand emerged from the mess and thumped the table. Two beady, twinkling eyes regarded Moore with a certain sardonic humor in their depths.
The waiter brought a pair of brimming mugs. The midget began the conversation.
“Nasty curmudgeon,” he said throatily, staring at Moore, who pointedly ignored the remark. But the midget could not be squelched.
From the depths of his beard he extracted a long, keen knife and thumbed its edge. “I am not in the habit of being snubbed,” he observed.
Moore looked around for the waiter, but could not locate him in the swirling gray smoke. He said, with a certain delicacy, “I beg your pardon. I didn’t hear—”
“Ah,” said the midget. “That’s better. Better for you. For a copper coin I’d have slit your weasand.
The horrid little man was either drunk or mad, Moore decided. He looked for the door.
The midget laughed, and inserted liquor into the depths of the beard. “Drink up,” he said menacingly, and Moore obeyed.
The drink was potent. Remarkably so. Moore felt his terror vanishing. In its place grew indignation. Was he to be bullied by a puppet—a mere bug of a man, whom he could squash with one blow?
“To hell with you,” he said slowly and distinctly, and then wondered at himself. Was he trying to start a barroom brawl? Moore shuddered; he had a rather nice taste in such things, and, moreover, did not favor the idea of becoming embroiled with the beard. The very sight of the thing was loathsome. It was all tangled and woolly, and burs and dead leaves were entangled in it.
The midget’s eyes snapped dangerously. “To hell with me?” he asked.
Moore nodded.
“You’re not a magician?” the other asked rather doubtfully. “No? Then it’s all right. A figure of speech merely. Drink with me, friend.”
More liquor had surprisingly appeared. It was downed. Moore made the odd discovery that his spinal cord had been dissolved; in its place was a column of the fiery drink. It seemed to move up and down like the mercury in a thermometer. But the sensation was not entirely
unpleasant. Smoke blew in his eyes; he coughed and stared across at the fat man with the narghile.
“Funny place,” he said in an undertone.
The midget looked surprised. “What did you expect on Midsummer Eve?” he asked, and Moore couldn’t quite figure out what he meant. It seemed to mean something, but—
The fat old man arose and went, toward the back. He passed close to Moore’s table, and, glancing aside, said in a kindly voice, “All is Maya—illusion.” He hiccuped, drew himself up in a dignified manner, and hastily continued his journey into the smoke.
The midget nodded. “How true,” he observed. “Oh, how true: All is illusion.”
Moore felt in an argumentative mood. He lowered the pewter mug from his lips, smacked them slightly, and said, “Boloney.”
“By that,” the midget said, “I am inclined to believe that you are skeptical. But how can you be? I am a noted authority on such matters and I assure you that all is illusion.”
Moore refuted the contention with a sneer. “Prove it,” he snapped.
“But it’s obvious, isn’t it?’. Things are only what they seem. That’s why magic is possible.”
“You’re drunk,” Moore said insultingly.
“I’m drunk? By Father Poseidon and Cronos! Not for thou—not for years have I been accused of that. If you weren’t drunk yourself—”
“Prove it,” Moore said again, pressing home his advantage.
THE BEARD twitched indignantly. A small, gnarled brown hand emerged and pointed at Moore’s pewter mug. “You think, that’s liquor, eh?”
Moore was rather doubtful-, but he nodded anyway. The midget gleamed with satisfaction. “Then it isn’t. It’s water. Taste it and see.”
Moore tasted. Unfortunately he was in no condition to realize whether he was drinking liquor or benzine. It did taste rather watery, but Moore wouldn’t have admitted it for the world. He said it wasn’t water.
“And you’re a crackpot,” he continued, remembering the knife and angry that he had once been afraid of the midget. “Go away before I step on you. All is illusion—ha!” He made impolite sounds.
“You believe the evidence of your senses?” the beard inquired. “Do you really think the moon is round?”
“Oh, gosh,” said Moore, and drank again.
“It looks round to you,” said the midget, “but does round have the same significance to everybody else? What you call round may be square to another man. How do you know how the moon looks to me?”
“If you’re so interested in the moon, go away and look at it,” Moore said. But the midget was persistent.
“How do you know how I look to somebody else? How do you know how you look to me? The five senses aren’t arbitrarily fixed. They are illusions. All is illusion.”
“Listen,” said Moore, losing his temper and getting a headache, “your beard’s an illusion. My hand’s an illusion. I’m pulling your beard.”
He did so, vigorously. “That’s illusion, too. Laugh that off.”
There was tumult. The midget yelled and screamed and fought. Presently Moore fell back in his chair, clutching a tuft of curly whiskers.
“Now by Kronos and Nid!” said the midget in a soft, deadly voice. “You’re going to catch hell for this, my fine fellow. If you think—mgh!” The beard bristled terrifyingly. “I’ll show you whether all is illusion or not!” He found a slender, short rod of polished dark wood and pointed it at Moore. “I lay on you the curse of illusion,” he continued. “The blight of the five senses! I put upon you the veil of Proteus!”
Moore knocked away the wand with a wavering blow. He felt suddenly sobered. Why, he couldn’t tell. But abruptly he was filled with an ardent desire to leave this smoky, insane dive. Without another word he rose and unsteadily made for the door.
The malicious laughter of the bearded midget followed him. It continued as he walked across the street, and died as he stepped upon the opposite curb. Moore turned.
The tavern was gone. Only the empty lot remained.
FOR A BRIEF second Moore felt unwell. Then he realized what had happened. He was more drunk than he thought; obviously the tavern must lie several blocks away, and he had walked the distance without realizing it. Grunting, he looked at his watch.
Just eight twenty. Time for a cup of coffee before Corinne’s train got in. Moore entered the depot, made his way toward the restaurant, and then, struck by a sudden thought, turned instead to the drugstore, where he purchased caffeine citrate and downed several tablets rapidly. That done, he returned to the restaurant and drank coffee. He sobered rapidly.
He sat at the counter, lost in introspection. Thus at first he did not realize that curious and amused glances were being cast at him. Presently he heard an audible sniff.
Moore looked up. The man at his left, a hulking bronzed gentleman, suppressed a grin and stared hastily down at his feet.
That was only the beginning. Moore at length realized that he was the cynosure of all eyes. Apprehensive, he furtively examined his clothing. O.K. He looked at his face in a nearby mirror, and was rather pleased than otherwise. A distinctive sort of face. Not handsome, but strong. Like Gary Cooper’s. Perceiving that his thoughts were beginning to veer, Moore drank more coffee.
A loud-speaker said that the train was in. Moore paid for his potation, and, avoiding various glances, went out to the runway and waited for Corinne. He saw her at last amid the crowd, a brittle blonde with inquisitive eyes and a firm chin. She hadn’t changed much. A competent, businesslike, but rather sardonic young woman. There were short, sharp cries and awkward embraces. Corinne sniffed and drew back.
“Who spilled perfume oil you?” she demanded.
“Perfume?”
Corinne looked at him steadily. “I detect a strong aroma of violets about your person. Offensively strong.”
“Funny,” Moore said, blinking. “I don’t smell it.”
“Then your nose is stultified,” Corinne remarked. “I could smell it on the train. Bert, I’ll have to take you in hand. A little motherly guidance is what you need. A dash of perfume, perhaps, if you insist—but not violets. It is not done. You must have taken a bath in the stuff.”
“Well,” said Moore, rather at a loss, “I’m glad to see you. Want a drink?”
“Yes,” Corinne told him, “very much. But not enough to accompany you into a cocktail bar. People might think that offensive odor emanated from me.”
Touched to the quick, the man led his sister outside and superintended the extrication and disposal of baggage. Presently he was driving his sedan along Wilshire Boulevard, Corinne at his side. The girl had opened the window and stuck out her head. Moore grimly kept his eyes straight ahead. Corinne had changed for the worse, he decided.
CORINNE’S head re-entered the car. She touched Moore’s arm.
“What’s wrong with your car, Bert?” she inquired.
“Eh?” Moore depressed the accelerator and let the steering wheel play loosely. “Nothing. Why?”
“That noise.”
The man listened intently. “That’s the engine.”
“It isn’t the engine. There’s a whistle—
“Sh-h,” said Moore, and, after a pause, “no, it’s in your ears. Must be.”
Corinne eyed him steadily. Suddenly she collapsed in his lap. Moore jammed on the brake before he realized that his sister had bent forward in order to apply her ear to his chest. She straightened and eyed the man speculatively.
“That whistle,” she said, “is coming, out of you. You’re making it. A noise like a . . . a—”
“A what?”
“A policeman. His whistle, I mean. Why don’t you stop it? It doesn’t amuse me.”
“I’m not whistling,” Moore snapped.
“You mean you can’t help it?”
“I mean I’m not doing it.”
“Maybe you swallowed something,” Corinne said, and sighed. People acted less unexpectedly in New York. There one could foresee things. A whi
ff of violets blew on the girl, and she shut her eyes.
Just then a motorcycle officer appeared and motioned Moore to the curb. The man dismounted and put one foot on the running board. His mouth opened, and abruptly: closed. He stared hard at the driver, his nostrils twitching slightly.
“What’s the matter?” Moore asked. “I wasn’t speeding.”
The officer didn’t answer. He peered into the car, scrutinized Corinne, and looked into the back. Finally he said, “Who’s doing that whistling?”
Before Moore could speak, Corinne broke in swiftly, “It’s the motor, officer. The overhead gasket valve sprang a leak. We’re going now to get if; fixed.”
“The—overhead-gasket valve?”
“Yes,” Corinne said with great firmness. “The gasket valve. The overhead one, you know.”
There was a brief pause. Finally the officer scratched his head and remarked, “If I were you, I’d get it fixed as soon as you can. You’re disturbing the peace.”
The girl smiled sweetly. “Thank you,” she returned. “We’ll get it fixed. Right away. You know how those gasket-valves are.”
“Yeah,” said the officer, and watched the car speed away. Then he thoughtfully climbed on his motorcycle. Under his breath he injured plaintively, “Just what in hell is an overhead-gasket valve, anyway?”
CORINNE was slightly nervous by the time they arrived home. Moore owned a two-story house in a suburb. It was surrounded by a small lawn, a tree or two, and a dog. The dog was named Banjo. He was not a small dog, and this seemed to be something he could never quite realize. Banjo had once seen a Pekingese, and ever since labored under the delusion that he, too, was a lap dog. Inasmuch as part of his sinister ancestry was collie, he was exceptionally hairy, and he had managed to attain the unique distinction of being able to shed all the year round. This vast and behemothic creature came galloping around the corner of the house, saw the car, and came to an immediate decision.
Banjo had theories about automobiles. They moved; ergo, they were alive. And his master was now obviously a captive of one of these eerie beings. With courage worthy of a greater cause, Banjo charged forward and sank his teeth in a tire.
Collected Fiction Page 130
