The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  “I'm stuck,” said Austro when they were alone. “How does the gang turn the amethysts into gravel stones without a beta-phase furnace? And we haven't finished inventing that yet. And how did Dusty throw the pieces of gravel through the window without breaking it anyhow? And how were the amethysts got out of the room? It's that international gang of amethyst thieves. We will need a Paris Office and a Man in Hong Kong to combat them.” “Aw, c'mon, Austro, you can do better than that,” Mary Mondo said.

  “I'm stuck too,” Roy Mega said. “Oh, the facts are clear enough. The man walked into the Party Without Walls, took poison, and died. But how does his wallet and jewels and trash disappear with so many people around them? What was his motive? How am I going to get my client out of this smelly situation?”

  “Aw, c'mon, Roy, you can do better than that,” Mary Mondo said.

  “And now we have a visitation,” Roy growled. A big man walked in and sat down.

  “Six feet two inches, two hundred and twenty-two pounds, little beady eyes, size eleven shoes, police detective named Ratsel Rattigan,” Austro mumbled without looking.

  “How do you guys do it?” Rat Rattigan asked. “Hey, are you going to have some of the Big Star Detective Agency sequences in the Rocky McCrocky comic strip? I sure do like that comic strip.”

  “Aw c'mon, Rat, don't bug the kids their first day in business,” Mary Mondo said.

  “Now we have the minions of the law breathing hot fire down our necks, and we're both stuck,” Roy complained. “What do we have going for us? What are our positions of power? Item: both of us are geniuses. And one of us, you Austro, has an alien mentality.”

  “Item: we are friends with one girl ghost — Mary Mondo,” Austro said. “She is a drag, but ghosts sometimes have novel viewpoints.”

  “Now you're getting warm, Austro,” Mary Mondo said.

  “We can carry scientific projection almost to its limit,” Roy Mega said.

  “That's all right for the straight stuff, Roy,” Austro moaned, “but it's a couple of curve balls that they've thrown past us. We have no clues, no clues.”

  “Aw kids, you're knee-deep in them,” Mary Mondo said.

  Mary Mondo was a ghost. She had really begun as a split-off personality of a girl named Violet Lonsdale who had died several years before. But Mary Mondo, being stronger than the personality from whom she had split off, had refused to die. And, never having been alive in a bodily sense either, she became an unclassified ghost. Well, what young ghost does not have a skeleton in her closet, or unrealized flesh in the rumpus room of her mind?

  “We need an oracle,” Roy Mega said.

  “Aw c'mon, I'm here,” Mary Mondo pointed out. “I'm an oracle.”

  “Maybe if we tied the two cases together we could solve them both,” Roy hazarded.

  “And if one of them falls off an alp the other one will too,” Mary Mondo spoke.

  “That's like tying two rocks together and throwing them in a pond and telling one of them to hold the other one up,” said Rat Rattigan the police detective. “But we don't have much on your client, Roy. Just failing to report a murder, and concealing a corpse, and herself. We'll probably charge her with murder, but that's just to get her to talk plain. Maybe she can tell us what poison it was. It doesn't seem to be one of the more deadly ones. It probably just barely killed him, if at all.”

  “What's the best deal I can get for her?” Roy asked.

  “We'll likely book her in and then release her on her own cognizance.”

  “She doesn't have any,” Roy said.

  “Then maybe we will throw her in the slammer for about three days.”

  “Three days!” cried Selene O'Keene, returning from her lunch with George Artless. “Oh, I'd perish in three days. I'd die like a bird in a cage without walls.”

  “There are little scratching sounds on my eardrums,” Roy said. “I may have to roll out one of the amplifiers to see what they are.”

  “It's Mary,” Austro said. “I've known mice that could squeak louder than that.”

  “I don't know why you fellows can't hear the girl,” Rattigan said. “I can always hear her all right. I like her. She hasn't got much body, but I like her anyhow.”

  “Haven't you Big Star Detectives solved our cases yet?” Selene O'Keene asked.

  “No, you didn't give us an hour. You came back early,” Roy Mega told her.

  “Think deep and think fast for the rest of the hour then,” George Artless said.

  So Austro and Roy thought about the two cases that they had tied together.

  “I have to find out who killed the dead man at Selene's,” Roy said softly. “He was a kind, though dishonest, man. Who would want to kill him? I have to find out what happened to all the stuff that was taken out of his pockets and then disappeared. I have to find out what poison was used, and why the other people at the Party Without Walls were not poisoned. We need an oracle.”

  “Aw, c'mon, guys, I'm a good oracle,” Mary Mondo said.

  “I have find out how the gravel stones got into the room and the amethyst stones got out,” Austro said. “We need a second oracle for my case.”

  “You've got a second oracle,” police detective Rattigan said. “He is the great Rocky McCrocky of the great Rocky McCrocky comic strip. He can solve anything.”

  “But I make up Rocky McCrocky,” Austro said. Several of them hooted at that.

  “You don't get down half of what he does,” Selene said. “There's a lot of his adventures that you don't even know about. Other people are beginning to tell Rocky McCrocky stories, you know, and some of them would be way over your fuzzy head.”

  “Rocky could solve these little cases easy,” Rattigan said. “I bet the solutions will be in the Rocky McCrocky strips pretty soon.”

  “It'll be at least three weeks,” Austro said. “I have this week's and next week's strips already chipped out.”

  Rocky McCrocky was the hero of the comic strip that Austro put out once a week. Instead of drawing it, for he couldn't draw, Austro chiseled it out on those flat rocks and sent copies of it all around that part of town. It vas good. It was real stone-age comic art.

  “You, Austro, are only the unworthy instrument by which Rocky McCrocky expresses a very small part of his adventures,” Selene said. “And I have the feeling that the best ones are not done by you at all. Your chisel doesn't even touch the stone of the good ones. They are burned into those flat rocks by sky lightning.”

  Austro jumped a foot when Selene said that, and he appeared frightened. Selene's guess had been too close. How about all those times when he had been knocked out by lightning and he had come to and found a strip completed? He had thought that he had completed them when in a daze.

  “You guys had better tune that girl Mary in,” Rattigan said. “She could give you the answers now, not in three weeks.”

  “Oh all right,” Roy said. He uncovered an amplifier and fired it up.

  “She still squeaks though, no matter how you amplify her,” Roy said.

  “I like her,” the detective Rat Rattigan stubbornly maintained.

  “I am the oracle!” said the amplified Mary Mondo. “Play oracle music to set the mood, and then play trumpet blasts for my entrance.”

  Roy Mega played the things as ordered.

  “Find out whether the corpse had an objectively fuzzy outline like Selene here has,” Mary said. (Trumpet blast followed this.)

  “Find out how much poison counts for ‘real poison’ at a Party Without Walls,” Mary said. (Trumpet blast.)

  “Find out how the police already knew who the dead man was when his identifications were missing,” Mary said. (Trumpet blast.)

  “Find out why that grackle bird is named Rusty.” (Trumpet blast.)

  “You mean Dusty?” George Artless asked uncertainly.

  “No. Rusty,” Mary Mondo said. (Half blast from trumpet on that one.)

  “Find out when George Artless guessed that Selene's dead man was the man he
had sold one hundred amethysts to,” Mondo the Great oracled. (Trumpet blast.)

  “It's all there. Support your local detective agency,” Mary Mondo signed off. (Three mighty trumpet blasts.)

  And then silence—

  —silence and, after a bit, the soft whisper of wings.

  The grackle bird named Rusty was on the table in front of them. He set a red gemstone in front of Austro, but Austro was gazing into the fireplace.

  “That red ruby is one of the stones stolen from me previously,” George Artless said. “I'd know it anywhere.”

  “How'd Rusty get in here?” Selene asked, “the doors and windows being shut?”

  “And where did he get the name of Rusty?” Roy Mega demanded. “That's one of the things that the Great Mondo suggested we find out.”

  Austro rubbed his hand over Rusty's feathers and then showed it. It was covered with rusty fireplace soot.

  “My client Rusty,” said Austro, “(for of course, the red ruby serves for earnest money and by its payment Rusty becomes my client) got his name because he likes to go down chimneys and out of fireplaces and visit people in their houses. And even the blackest soot looks rusty colored on a glossy purple grackle. Well, I guess that wraps it up. Pay me one cent, Mr. Artless. And, Selene, you pay Roy Mega four dollars and ninety-eight cents. And remember that the Big Star Detective Agency is here to combat crime and serve its clients.”

  “Just a minute,” George Artless cried out. “You not only pocketed a ruby that belongs to me, but you haven't found out what happened to the rest of my stolen jewels.”

  “Sure I have. My client Rusty stole them. That's what happened to them.”

  “But where are they now?”

  “I guess the police have them. They were in one of the safety deposit boxes that the dead man Jack Daw had the key in his pocket to. All you have to do is prove ownership to the police. But you had already guessed that Selene's dead man was the customer for the one hundred amethysts. So he took you for a stone-dealer's hundred which is a hundred-and-seven. And he hasn't finished taking you. Rusty here did odd jobs for Daw. He came through fireplaces to make acquisitions in different buildings. He always told himself that it wasn't stealing if he left another stone of equal weight. I will have to set my new client straight on several matters of ethics.”

  “How could the police have the keys and stuff?” Selene asked. “They disappeared from my table when I had them spread out.”

  “A mere detail,” Austro said, “and my client Rusty has already taken care of that detail. And the poison that John Daw took was Bang Crystals (dexahexakrex) that everybody takes at a Party Without Walls. Oh sure, it will test as a poison on a tester, but sometimes a person will live for a year or more after he starts taking it. There isn't any malice to it. The death was probably an accident.”

  “And the crystals sure add a bang to the drinks,” Selene said, and she counted out four dollars and ninety-eight cents to Roy Mega. “So it might be found that the man died by accident, and the cloud over my apartment will be lifted. But the police couldn't have the keys and stuff because they disappeared.”

  “But we do have them,” detective Rat Rattigan contradicted. “They were all back in the dead man's pockets when we picked him up.”

  “Do you have a fireplace in your apartment, Selene?” Austro asked.

  “Sure I have. You didn't think I was some not-with-it person without a fireplace, did you? Oh, I see what you mean. Rusty, who worked for the dead man, came in by my chimney and fireplace.”

  “And put everything back in the pockets where it all belonged,” Roy Mega said. “Well, that wraps it up.”

  “All but the final wrapping,” said police detective Rattigan. “We're all going downtown to the klinker. A few days there will do wonders for your perspectives.”

  “What for?” they cried in five voices.

  “Austro and Roy Mega for running a detective agency without a license. Selene O'Keene is going in for failure to report a suspicious death, and also on complaints of neighbors for running too noisy a party. George Artless is going in on a number of old jewel-theft counts. We have a precept down at the station that ninety-four percent of jewels stolen are stolen from other jewel-thiefs. Rusty is going in for illegal entering and loitering.”

  Yeah, Rat Rattigan took them all in, and he got them committed too. And five sorrowful citizens, Austro, Roy Mega, Selene O'Keene, George Artless, and the grackle Rusty were in the klinker without a dong. And they would not come out of that jailhouse until they had paid their last farthing in some species or other.

  Loose ends left over? What loose ends? Did John Daw really die of fair play or foul?

  Will Rusty, with Austro representing him, be able to get custody of Daw's stashed jewelry on the basis of being the surviving partner in a sly-jewel operation?

  Where did the continuing Party Without Walls go when it left Selene's place?

  What was the real relationship between the she-grackle Dusty (who drew attention outside the windows while Rusty was rifling things inside) and Rusty himself? Will their relationship be regularized if Rusty indeed comes into the chips? And if she was in cahoots with Rusty in criminal thefts, why wasn't she in the klinker with him now?

  Oh, that kind of loose ends.

  You might find the answers to some of them in the ‘Full Disclosure Issue’ of the Rocky McCrocky comic strip that will be out in about three weeks.

  Be looking for it.

  Ewe Lamb

  “Than-Q,” said the girl in the ticket booth. “Hurry up,” said Little Herby. “We have to ride the big wheel.”

  “They won't start it till they sell a few more tickets.”

  “But we can sit in the seats till they start.”

  “In a minute, Herby, in a minute.”

  A girl in yellow and a girl in white bought tickets.

  “Than-Q,” said the girl in the booth.

  Kids were setting off fireworks. It was Splash Day, and all the concessions on the pier were going full force. A lady and a little blonde girl bought tickets.

  “Than-Q,” said the girl in the booth.

  “I think they're almost ready to start,” said Little Herby.

  A fellow and his girl bought tickets.

  “Than-Q,” said the girl in the booth.

  The banners along the top of the pavilion were popping like firecrackers in the sea wind. Herbert J. Brisco threw away his cigar and went up to buy tickets on the big wheel for himself and for his grandson Little Herby.

  “Two, please, miss,” he said. And then they looked at each other, or at least he looked at her. “What's the matter, miss? Isn't that the right change?”

  But she did not take his money nor did she give him the tickets, though it seemed as if she leaned forward to do so. She didn't even say “Than-Q.”

  “Ah, so that's the way it is,” said Herbert J. Brisco. He was a man of commanding eye and imposing gesture. He turned, caught the eye of a beach policeman thirty yards away, and crooked one finger. Then he said to the girl “You have a smudge on your forehead, miss,” though he knew that she could not hear him. And the policeman came at a fast walk.

  “What is it, sir.”

  “The young lady, I believe, is dead. A cordon around the area, perhaps, is called for, and as quickly as possible.”

  The cordon was set up rapidly and quietly. An Out-of-Order sign was put on the Big Wheel, and the front of the ticket booth shuttered. Those who had already bought tickets were shuttled off into one group along with the wheel operator. The rides on either side, the Kiddie Kars and the Red Rocket, were likewise closed down.

  Foot traffic was diverted around the section, and groups of persons transported away. Pictures were quickly taken and time and date noted. And then one more person (if one is still a person when dead) was removed. And Splash Day continued on beach, pier, and boulevard.

  “The thing is absolutely impossible,” said Lieutenant Withers. “In the thirty years I've been on
the force we've had about that many impossible cases,” said Captain Johns. “None of them gave us much trouble.”

  “I can hardly believe that you've had no unsolved murders.”

  “A few dozen, but they weren't the impossible ones. They weren't even the difficult ones. They were all obvious and open, with leads all over the place.

  “Ah, it just happened that we were never able to put our hands on the proper collars. In the obvious and open cases you look for obvious and open people. There are so many of them always! In the impossible cases you have only to look for impossible persons. There are so few of them always!”

  “I don't see how this will be easy, Captain. There was nothing within ten feet of the little booth, and it was observable from all sides. She was selling tickets every ten or fifteen seconds, and we have established the sequence of buyers. And she was shot from the front, in the forehead, with small caliber pistol, and nobody knew a thing about it.

  “She sold tickets to Chester Barnweller and his girl Agatha Ott. And ten seconds later (or less, by Brisco's estimate) she was dead with a hole in her head, and she seemed still in the act of slumping forward. And he states that nobody passed between himself and the booth in that period. He's sure of that.”

  “Brisco seems sure of everything, Withers. How sure are we of him?”

  “He arrived in town this morning with his son and daughter-in-law and grandson Little Herby. They are down here from Kansas City. He says he's never been here before. At any rate, he has not been off his job for two years until two days ago when they started on this vacation. He is fifty-seven and a widower. The girl is eighteen and a native here. It's hard to see any connection.

  “Moreover, from the rambling (but I believe valid) testimony of seven-year-old Little Herby, Brisco wanted to go to the Marine Exhibit. It was Little Herby who drug him to the Pleasure Pier and the Big Wheel. Brisco tells a straight story, volunteering to take the detector test and to submit to hypnosis on the chance that it would cause him to recall some movement or person that had not registered directly on his consciousness. We ran him through both. Nothing.”