Pete groaned. “An’ you got me into this! If you hadn’t egged me on that first day—Oh, well. I’ll face the music.”
Pete re-entered the king’s presence. “Okay by me. I’ll meet this Lancelot guy tomorrow at Tournament Park. Admission free.” This last was added torment to Pete’s tortured soul.
The court sighed sorrowfully. Sir Cumference had been a charming fellow. The officers disbanded shaking their heads.
THAT night Al, with an air of mystery, led Pete to his cubby-hole, where he had been permitted to stay in deference to his friendship with Sir Cumference. Once there, Al wasted few words.
“You have no chance tomorrow if you fight Sir Lancelot on even terms. What do you intend to do?”
“Get drawn and quartered, I guess,” Pete sputtered.
“I think I can spare you that. I have a device here . . .” He gestured to a table. Over the dying embers of a tiny flame in a brazier was a retort and a large vessel of water. Suspended upside-down in this, half in and half out, was a smaller vessel.
“Even in these barbarous times nitric acid is known,” Al explained. “It’s called ‘aqua fortis.’ Nitric acid plus copper gives nitric oxide, which is in the retort over the flame. Along the tube leading from retort to vessel are moist iron fillings. When passed over these filings, the gas becomes nitrous oxide. As you see, the tube curves upward at the end to discharge the nitrous oxide into the vessel suspended upside down with its mouth in the water. This keeps it way from the air. Inside that small vessel lies your salvation. Do you understand?”
“It’s clear as mud,” Pete groaned. “How now, sirrah! Nitrous oxide is laughing gas!”
Pete stared hard. “Blast it, anyhow! Now I know you must be Professor Aker. I’ve wondered about you all along. But how the dickens did you get here before I did, when you couldn’t have left Mayhem’s place till after I did? That’s what kept me wondering.”
“My dear boy,” the alchemist went on, “while Dr. Mayhem was hastily constructing an electric Time-chair at his home—it was impossible to take your body up to the University without risking serious trouble with the authorities—he insisted that I go back into time to keep you out of trouble until the completed Time-chair could bring us both back.
“He said I owed you a debt of gratitude for your services when I returned to the days of the Pharaohs. So I came. Mayhem found it possible to send my mentality on this journey without a complete Time-chair, the same as with you, though it requires the complicated chair to bring us both back.
“Dr. Mayhem plotted the exact potential of the electric charge that sent you here, then gave me a slightly stronger one. I had been here three days when you arrived, on the alert for any indication that a stranger was in our midst.”
“An’ you egged me into getting solid with the king—” Pete shouted.
“—because I was a poor alchemist, unable to travel where you might go. But if you were persuaded to stay here, then I could keep an eye on you and extricate you from any difficulty that might arise.” Al beamed, pleased with himself. “And I seem to be needed right now.”
Pete grunted, turned back to the subject of Lancelot and the nitrous oxide. He stared at the stuff a long while, then made a snap decision.
“I dunno,” he said. “Maybe this Merlin’s on the level. I know Lancelot is. And if they’re fighting fair it don’t seem right to work monkey business with Lancelot. So I think I’ll say ixnay on this proposition.”
And Pete left the room, with the dumbfounded Aker staring after him, something like admiration struggling in his eyes . . .
Pete felt very low. Across the meadow from him Sir Lancelot sat his horse, looking very powerful, and with a far-away gleam of fanatic, self-righteous virtue in his eyes.
“A goody-goody,” thought Pete, but that didn’t make the lance in his hands seem any more serviceable. In a minute the judicial battle would commence. And in about two minutes, Pete felt, it would be all over. He toyed with the helmet in his lap before putting it on.
Just then Merlin, smirking with anticipated triumph, sauntered up to him. Without a word he seized Pete’s armor at the collar, smiled evilly, and tossed a big handful of what seemed to be dust down inside the metal suit. The spectators jamming the park muttered fearfully. Merlin was casting a spell on the doomed Sir Cumference.
Pete, taken by surprise, shoved the magician scornfully aside. “Spells! That’s baloney. One side, down-beat—”
The cymbals clashed. The fight was on! Lancelot came roaring across the field with his lance at the ready. Pete hastily clamped on his helmet, started to raise his lance. Then unaccountably he twitched. Then he squirmed. Faster and faster he squirmed, till his armor rattled like a skeleton on a tin roof. Frantically he clawed with iron fingers, scratching futilely on his plates. On thundered Lancelot.
THEN, at the last instant, Pete’s mad jitterbugging toppled himself from the saddle, and his opponent raced by in a cloud of dust to spear the ticket booth at the extreme end of the stadium. The defenseless booth burst apart in a spray of kindling. Then Lancelot turned to see an amazing sight.
Pete was rolling and tossing about the grass in a frenzy, divesting himself of his armor. Then he proceeded to take off his clothing as well, to the shrieking astonishment of the audience. Only when Pete stood in his medieval drawers, armor strewn all over the place, did he cease that incessant wriggling.
He turned toward the royal boxes and shook his fist at Merlin. “Itching powder!” he snarled. “Your two-bit ‘spell’ is the oldest gag in the world—hairs cut up real fine, I’ll bet. Okay. I was willing to fight fair, but if this is the way you want it—You asked for it, pal!”
Just then Al, the alchemist, dashed onto the field. “Expected Merlin would try something underhanded,” he panted. “Here’s the nitrous oxide. Going to use it now?”
“You’re darned tootin’,” snapped Pete. “And another thing, I want a rope. Twenty feet at least. The rope that raises the flag in front of the stadium entrance.”
The alchemist nodded, ran to get it. Pete clambered aboard his mount, still scantily clad. Lancelot, completely befuddled by this unorthodox maneuver, was caught flat-footed and hemmed in at the end of the field.
Pete swerved sharply in and hurled his lance like a javelin. Lancelot tried to parry with his own shaft. There was a clang, and Pete’s weapon bounced off the enemy’s mighty chest. But before Lancelot could recover himself, Pete had brought his horse to a halt right beside his opponent.
Reaching over, Pete raised Lancelot’s visor. Delicately, as if cracking an egg on the edge of a frying-pan, he broke the container of nitrous oxide gas in Lancelot’s face. Then he slammed the visor shut and held his hand momentarily over the grille.
Lancelot shuddered, jerked, and his head tipped back.
“Ha-ha-ha!” he howled in woeful mirth as tears streamed down his face.
Great spasms of hysterical laughter racked him. He chuckled; he giggled uncontrollably; he roared in wild glee.
“Ho-ho-ho!” yelled Lancelot, holding his sides in quaking merriment, sobbing hilariously as he reeled about. The more he sought to stop the painful spasms, the more he bellowed.
The crowd, at sight of the virtuous, puritanical Lancelot literally laughing himself sick, had gone stark mad.
Pete, seizing his opportunity, galloped back to the entrance, met Aker and got the length of rope. Quickly he made a slip-noose. Then, whirling his improvised lariat about his head in cowboy fashion, he dashed back to the fray.
“Hi-yo, Sil-ver!” he shouted, and dropped the lasso over his enemy with the first cast.
Lancelot hit the ground with a tremendous impact. “He-he-he!” he burbled gustily, weeping in happiness.
Victoriously Pete dragged the hapless Lancelot across the field before the astounded multitude and drew up before King Arthur and Merlin, whose face was a delicate chartreuse.
“Now then, Merlin!” he cried. “You are about to—”
Suddenly
Merlin began to revolve slowly. The king and Guinevere began to spin. Then the entire universe went round and round sickeningly, till everything was a blurred pinwheel of . . .
Wham!
*****
IT WAS in Mayhem’s private lab in the rear of his house that Pete found himself, seated in the doctor’s Time-chair. An argument was going on.
“I tell you, Dr. Mayhem, that science proved indubitably this time that it is indispensable. Without it, Manx would never have survived. Science,” Aker waggled one finger toward the heavens, “triumphs.” He snickered.
Mayhem turned to Pete. “Urn—awake, Pete? You don’t mean to say that Professor Aker’s science was necessary to rescue you from your difficulties this time! I can’t believe it!” Pete admitted the fact. “But it was a frame-up, so it don’t count. I wouldn’ta been in no trouble in the first place if the prof hadn’t urged me to stick around with King Arthur an’ that bunch. I woulda just minded my own business. It was a dirty trick, that’s what! I mighta been killed!” Mayhem smiled. “Um—it’s true Professor Aker did urge you to stay, and thus was responsible indirectly for your predicament. But—did I understand you to say that otherwise you would not have gotten yourself into any trouble?”
“Exactly,” Pete snapped. “I wanted to just go along peaceable till you brought me back here again. There wouldn’ta been no trouble a-tall.”
The two scientists smiled at one another. Aker shook his head.
“Ah, no, Manx, my boy. That’s impossible. As you say, we know human nature too well!”
IMPROBABILITY
Any girl would fall in love with a man who could knock out two bigger men and a 45-calibre bullet with one punch. Even if it did happen just by chance.
WHEN the bald-headed little man came into the Tribune’s press room nobody paid any attention to him. The typewriters kept on snapping; copy-boys continued to answer the yelps of the rewrite gang; and the guy stood there in a dazed sort of way, with his eyes as big as saucers. I’d just finished a story, and as I tossed the flimsies to a boy, I noticed that Baldy, after hesitating a while, was heading for the publisher’s office. I went after him and pulled him back as he had his fingers on the knob.
He turned pale blue blinking eyes on me. “Oh,” he said faintly. “I want to see—”
“You don’t want to go in there,” I said. “You’d be murdered. How’d you get past the desk girl outside?”
“She was busy, so I just walked in. I’m a member of the staff,” he said proudly, and showed me a little brown card. He was a Rural Correspondent. He told me so, and I could hear the capital letters in his voice as he said the words. Sending in a story once in a while to the Tribune, and maybe getting paid space rates—lousy ones at that—meant, a lot to Baldy. His name, I saw on the card, was Lew Hillman.
“I’ve got a big story for you,” he said. “Too important to write in. I came down myself. It’s about Doctor Fabrin.” He stopped as though I ought to know the guy.
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, that’s the fellow you want to see.” I pointed, and he left me. Ten minutes later I looked up from my typewriter to see Baldy beside me again, looking sick.
Before I could say anything he burst out, “He wouldn’t believe me! He said I’d faked it. But I’ve got photographs—look at these!” He spilled a lot of pictures on my desk. There were a few shots of a sprawling, low building—“Palmview Hospital,” Baldy said, stabbing his finger down on the prints—and about a dozen views of a chunky, ordinary-looking man. The only funny part was this: in some of the pictures the guy had two legs, but in others he had only one.
“We don’t buy accident shots,” I said, “unless there’s some new angle involved. I can’t—”
“You don’t understand,” Hillman broke in. “I got those pictures of Dryer two months ago, when he first came to the Palmview Hospital. I always take pictures of visitors, you know—so I’ll have ’em on file in case anything breaks. Two months ago Dryer had only one leg. But now he’s got two—a new leg grown right on the stump. I’ve seen it!”
The guy was crazy. I almost told him so. But he was so serious about the whole thing that all I said was, “You’ve got to have proof. These photos aren’t enough.”
“Proof!” he said. “Dryer’s proof, isn’t he? I got a sworn statement from him, and one from Doctor Fabrin.” He tossed them on my desk.
I looked them over, but of course they didn’t mean much. Either fakes, or written for publicity.
Then I happened to remember something I’d seen in the paper about Palmview Hospital. I told Hillman to wait a minute and went down to the morgue. There wasn’t much stuff on Palmview, but I dug it all up.
The place was owned by Doctor Fabrin, who wasn’t such a big shot, apparently. He leased out part of the hospital to various people from time to time, for his few patients weren’t making him rich. I gathered Fabrin was an eccentric, rather incapable fellow who didn’t stand too highly in the profession.
According to the morgue, something had happened a few weeks ago at Palmview. A half-nutty physicist named Guy Naismith, who had leased the basement for experimental work, had managed to blow himself up pretty thoroughly. He was moved upstairs and put to bed in the hospital proper. Also there were some funny anecdotes from the neighborhood—the usual junk that every paper gets, about strange lights, inexplicable noises, and such. But the part that held my interest said that Doctor Fabrin had announced a discovery that would revolutionize medicine—something that would cure incurable maladies. That was all he said; no hint of his methods. But it was enough to give me a hunch that there was news to be had at Palmview.
HALF an hour later I was in Hillman’s rickety car bouncing out of the city. He was grateful but worried.
“Listen,” I said, “I’m not going to swipe your story. I’m going to do some investigation on my own. You may have something, but without proof nobody’s going to believe you. I had to bet the boss a bottle of Scotch I’d get a headline exclusive story before he’d let me go.”
“It’s news, all right,” Hillman said, his pinched face eager. “Funny thing, I’ve been keeping my eye on the hospital ever since I got to know Naismith—”
“He’s the physicist that just blew himself up, isn’t he?”
“Yep. I figured he was good for a story—I talked to him a while ago, and he said he was on the track of something big. I couldn’t understand much about it, but he was working on—uh—” Hillman fumbled in his pocket, brought out a crumpled sheet, and thrust it at me. The car swung toward the ditch, but with a jerk at the steering-wheel he straightened it out. “I made a few notes—”
I couldn’t make much of the scribbles. “Entropy . . . Determinism is a dominant characteristic—see Eddington . . . Causality fails in sub-atomic matter . . .”
“Very nice,” I said, stuffing the paper back in his pocket. “Maybe an atom blew up in his face.”
Hillman was offended. He didn’t speak again till we drew up before the Palmview Hospital. I recognized the place from the photographs. An ordinary type of sanatorium, rather run down at the heels. The grass needed cutting, and the windows were dirty. I followed Hillman into the office and the desk girl put down a magazine and stared at us.
“We’d like to see Doctor Fabrin,” my companion said.
That was as far as he got, for a group of internes, patients, and nurses came racketing through a swinging door on the trail of a big beefy man with grizzled gray hair and a face like a bulldog’s. Everybody seemed excited. Hillman hurried toward the big guy.
“Doctor Fabrin, I’ve brought a reporter from the Tribune—”
“Yes, yes, yes!” Fabrin gestured impatiently at me. “Come along. A new case—”
He blew past me like a cyclone, trailing the crowd behind him, and Hillman and I followed. Up a flight of stairs, along a corridor, and before a door with a number on it—and there he turned around, big arms lifted.
His thick lips blew out in a noisy hiss.
&nbs
p; “Quiet! Leave me, all of you! You, Hillman—and you—come!” He waved us through the door and into a room where a pale, thin youngster was propped up in a wheel-chair by the window.
I said, “Doctor Fabrin, my name’s Hailey—of the Tribune. Can I get some dope on this leg-growing stuff you’ve invented?”
Fabrin blinked. “Eh? Oh—that, yes. That was nothing.”
The patient in the wheel-chair piped up, “You a reporter? Here’s something for you to print. When I came here I had hemophilia. Now I’m cured—Doctor Fabrin cured me. See?”
HE SLAMMED his arm down on his knee, held it up for my inspection. There was a slight reddening on the skin, but this vanished almost immediately. “See? A week ago if I’d done that my arm would have swollen up like a balloon.”
Fabrin was nodding happily. “Yes, yes. He is right, Mr. Hailey.”
“A bleeder, eh?” I said. “Seems to me they’ve found cures for hemophilia before, Doctor Fabrin. Snake venom or albumen to coagulate the blood—”
“I used none of these. D’you think albumen would grow a new leg on a cripple? I am not a faker or a publicity-seeker.” Fabrin glared at me. I grinned placatingly.
“Okay, Doctor. The Tribune would appreciate any information you’d care to give.”
“One moment.” Fabrin made a perfunctory examination of the patient, patted his shoulder reassuringly. “You’re in fine shape, lad. A few more days and you can go home.”
He led us back into the corridor. “My office is this way.”
But just as we reached the door—something happened. It was my first real experience of the incredible thing that was taking place in Palmview Hospital. Later I was to realize its meaning, and to understand the frightful peril I had been in when a little tingling shock raced through my body, like a galvanic current, and made me stop short, wondering. I turned to Fabrin, and was astonished at his expression. There was real fear in that heavy, bulldog face—but it was gone immediately.
“Wait,” he said shortly. “I’ll be back—” He nodded toward the door and hurried away. After a moment’s indecision Hillman went after him.
Collected Fiction Page 156
