Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “Had my eye on that fellow for some time,” Botts was saying loudly. “He’s got a fishy eye, never did trust him. I was ready to spring a trap of my own, if you two hadn’t—”

  He stopped suddenly, noticing that Ann and Oscar were not listening very closely. His pink face wreathed in a sly smile.

  “Perhaps,” he coughed discreetly, “you two would rather talk things over alone.”

  He bestowed a paternal wink on Oscar that said plainly in any language, “Go to it, you chump!”

  Then with a rumbling chuckle he waddled out of the room, closing the door safely behind him.

  “Oh, darling,” Ann burst out, “I’ve been so miserable since I gave you back your ring! I know now what a terrible mistake I made. It’s you I love, Oscar!” Oscar listened, his heart filling with happiness. But with a flash of intuition, he realized that if he forgave her too quickly, he would be back in the same rut as before. Things, he decided, were going to be different.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” he said casually. “Glad you do.”

  “Oscar,” Ann’s voice was shocked, “do you mean you don’t care any more?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Oscar said offhandedly.

  He rubbed his fingernails vigorously on his sleeve, looked at them critically.

  “I think you’re a nice enough girl, Ann.”

  “Oh, Oscar!” Ann cried, “Something has happened to you. You’ve never talked to me like this before.”

  She looked at him, a new respect in her eyes.

  “I know what I’m going to do,” she said decisively. “I’m going to marry you right away! We’re not going to wait another instant. Someone has got to look after you, Oscar Doolittle, and when we’re married I’m not going to let you out of my sight a minute.”

  Oscar smiled, a lingering secretive smile. He knew then that he never need worry about becoming a hen-pecked, jealously watched husband. Not while the secret formula that made him vanish held out. Even if it didn’t produce a brand-new miracle cosmetic to bolster up flabby muscles on the horsey features of nose-tilted society matrons.

  Oscar smiled even more secretively, because the strange buzzing noise had started up again.

  “Don’t be too sure about that,” he said slyly to Ann. “I mean, about your keeping a careful eye on me all the time. I might up and disappear, you know.”

  The buzzing grew louder in his ears.

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Ann said stoutly. “Not while I’m around.”

  She looked at Oscar fondly. Oscar—wasn’t there.

  “Oh, good heavens!” Ann wailed. “I’m engaged to a phantom!”

  [*] While it would hardly seem possible that vanishing cream could make anyone disappear, it is conceivable that Oscar’s special secret formula, which he mixed with the ordinary vanishing cream, contained an infiltrating property which was absorbed through his skin. It reacted by neutralizing skin, hair, eye and lip pigmentation and coloring, in a cycle of set periods. Therefore at definite intervals, Oscar became “invisible”—because changes within his system, influenced by the special formula, made him colorless, while at the same time impairing none of his faculties.

  THE DYNAMOUSE

  First published in the January 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures.

  Nellie was only a playful mouse, but she had the power to utterly destroy all of Chicago!

  MY City Editor—I shag a news beat for the Chicago Blade—crooked a finger at my desk one fine autumnal morning, and bellowed coyly in my direction.

  “Hoskins!” he screamed. “C’mere!”

  Much against my will, I took my feet down off the desk and came. “Okay, Boss,” I said rubbing the sleep from my baby blue eyes, “what’s on the fire?”

  “That old nut on Lake Street, Professor What’s-iz-name,” my Hero began.

  “Professor Waldo?” I suggested.

  “Yeah, Professor Waldo, the old goof who’s been blowing the roof off his Lake Street lab with monotonous regularity,” said my Charming Chieftain. “He just called.”

  “Well,” I said cheerfully, “that’s decent of him. Was it a social call, or strictly for fun?”

  My Master ignored the last remark. “He just called,” he went on, “to tell me that he wants a reporter over at his lab, pronto. Says he’s got some hot news for us.”

  “Possibly he’s discovered a way to blow the roof off the Tribune Tower,” I suggested hopefully.

  The Leader didn’t even smile. “G’wan over there,” he growled.

  I departed.

  To tell you the truth, I wasn’t terribly concerned as I hopped into a cab—at the Blade’s expense—and gave the driver a Lake Street address. I had been to old Professor Waldo’s laboratory no less than six times in the last two weeks. Times when the old zaney had literally blasted the roof off his laboratory while fiddling around with some experiment. It had made good copy, but it was beginning to lose its zest.

  However, the old duck must have taken a liking to me, or to the sheet. For when the other papers had made him look pretty silly, the Blade had given him a break. I’d written the yarns. Maybe that was why, when he thought he had some hot news, he’d call us first, and ask for me.

  I was pretty certain, nevertheless, that this news wasn’t going to be much news.

  Five minutes after I’d hopped into the cab, I was punching the doorbell of Waldo’s Lake Street lab, still certain that the whole thing was going to be pretty dull.

  The Professor himself let me in. I’ve told you what he looks like. Thin, with rapidly disappearing white hair, stoop-shoulders and a vague look in his watery eyes.

  “Come in,” he said. “Come right in, Mr. Hoskins.”

  I stepped into the lab, slightly flattered that he’d remembered my monicker, and tossed my fedora on a nearby table.

  “Well, Prof,” I began, “what’s the sensational disclosure?”

  “My experiment,” Waldo said excitedly, “has been completed!”

  “Well,” I declared. “Well!”

  “If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” he continued, obviously in a dither of excitement, “I’ll just step into the back for a minute.” Then he darted through a door leading to the rear of the lab, and I found myself alone, wondering what this was going to be about.

  FISHING for a cigarette, I rested my chassis on one of the laboratory tables, looking around the place as I did. As I said, I’d been here six times before. Aside from patches in the ceiling, the place hadn’t been altered any. Tables, gadgets, tubes, and a cage with two white mice in it in the corner.

  I’d mentioned the white mice in my story of the previous lab explosions. Mentioned the old duck’s attachment to them, and the fact that he had names for them both—Nellie and Nicky.

  So I climbed off the table and moved over in front of the cage. They were cute little devils, and Nellie seemed almost human. I’d be willing to swear that there was recognition in her pink eyes as I stood before the cage.

  “Hi, Nellie,” I said by way of greeting. And she put her forepaws against the door of the cage in response. Nicky moved over to a corner of the cage, jealously sulking.

  “How’s the kid?” I inquired, and Nellie arched her tail to show me she felt fine.

  I turned from the cage. Old Waldo usually ate his lunches right in the laboratory, and maybe there would be some scraps lying around. Nellie went for scraps.

  There didn’t seem to be any, and I was turning back to the cage in disappointment, when my eye caught exactly what I, or Nellie, wanted—a piece of cheese.

  It was lying on a black board beneath a series of bulbs and wires. Not a big piece of cheese. Maybe half the size of an ice cube. Waldo must have been munching it while he tinkered with his machines. However, cheese was cheese, and if I wanted to please a lady mouse I’d have to feed her.

  “Here, kid,” I said a moment later, lifting the door of her cage, “have a bite on me.” I put the piece of cheese of the floor in front of the door, and Ne
llie moved forward to nibble it.

  That was another thing about Waldo’s mice. They were so tame they were darned near domestic. You could open the cage door any time you wanted to, and they’d stay put. Never thought to make a break for it. Probably never wanted to.

  So Nellie was half out of her cage, munching her cheese and looking up gratefully at me every so often.

  At which time, Professor Waldo flurried back into the room.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Hoskins,” he said. “There were several phone calls I had to make. However, I’ve finished them and—”

  “That’s okay,” I broke in. “Nellie was entertaining me in your absence.”

  Professor Waldo broke into a fond smile, like a father who’s been told his idiot son is in line for a Pulitzer Award.

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “Nellie. A fine mouse, Nellie. So very intelligent.” Then his brow clouded. “But what was it that we were talking about?” He put a thin finger to his long nose.

  “Your news tip, Professor,” I reminded him. “You said that you’d completed your experiment.”

  “Ahhhh,” his face broke into excited wrinkles. “Of course, Mr. Hoskins. Of course! My experiment. I have completed it. Sit down, sir. Sit down, and I’ll tell you.”

  He was in such a state, I saw, that his hands were trembling. I think, too, that his eyes were even more moisty than usual. Pride, I guess. Probably I was the first person in whom he was confiding his big secret.

  “Mr. Hoskins,” he said shakily, when I’d sprawled into a straight chair. “Mr. Hoskins, I’ve harnessed U-235!”

  I SPRAWLED out of the chair and onto my feet in one explosive movement.

  “Whaaaat!”

  Waldo’s face was shining, and his words were tumbling forth a mile a minute. “That’s what I was working on. But I couldn’t tell a soul. That’s why I was so grateful when you and your newspaper didn’t sneer at me the way the others did. I was trying to harness the most explosive, the most tremendous force man has ever known!”

  “Good Lord, Professor!” My hand was digging futilely into my inner coat pocket in search for a pencil and paper. And as usual, I had neither. I could see, from the gleam in the old man’s watery eyes, that this was no pipe dream. He was, after all, a fairly reputable figure in science.

  “All other scientists have been trying to harness U-235 in natural elements,” he babbled on. “I tried that for some time, finally giving it up. I turned to chemical harnessing. Tried all sorts of combinations. But, as incredible as it sounds, I stumbled on the solution through sheer accident. It happened one afternoon, when I was eating lunch,”

  I’d picked up a pencil and scratch pad from one of Waldo’s tables, and was trying to get it down with all the excited drama that he was unconsciously putting into it.

  “Part of my lunch fell into a chemical vat, in which I’d been exploding neutrons. That gave me my solution, as I was fishing it out . . .”

  There was more, detailed, and scientific, and I got most of it down. Then: “Not only was I able to harness U-235,” Waldo went on, “but I found that I’d added another power to the stuff. I’d conceived an explosive so great, so powerful, that one gram of it would destroy an entire city!”

  “Good Lord, Prof,” I burst forth. “This is tremendous! What in the dev—”

  He cut me short. “You’d never believe the substance in which I harnessed this incredible explosive force. Harnessed no less than four grams of my solution! You’d never believe it.” His eyes gleamed.

  “What?” My curiosity and excitement was eating me alive.

  “In cheese!” He stood up, raising his arm dramatically, and swinging to point to a machine. A machine which was a series of bulbs and wires above a black board. “In the tiny scrap of cheese you see on that board!”

  Even as my eyes followed his gesture, taking in the machine and the empty board, my stomach did a series of swift, horribly unpleasant flip-flops. The cheese to which he thought he was pointing, the tiny little morsel of food containing enough explosive force to tear apart four vast cities, was the tidbit I had placed in front of Nellie’s cage!

  “GLUG!”I managed to get out.

  “Glug!” And I wheeled in frantic terror to face the mouse cage.

  Waldo’s rheumy gaze had finally focused on the board, and he was now aware that the cheese was no longer resting there. In a voice that was a combination croak and squeal he screeched, “The cheese—it’s gone!” Somehow, I was able to speak. Or I might say that, somehow, I heard my voice making sounds. For I was looking at the cage. The cage with one mouse, Nicky, and an open door—and no cheese!

  “I fed it to Nellie,” I burbled, “and she’s gone!”

  Waldo had grabbed my arm, and was looking up at me with an expression of stark terror. “No,” he gasped. “This is a joke. You didn’t!”

  Then, from the equally frenzied mask on my pan, he must have gotten his answer—that it wasn’t any joke, and that Nellie had eaten the cheese, for he said, “Ohhhhhhh!” in a hysterically helpless way.

  “Where did Nellie go?” I asked, knowing perfectly well that he had no more idea than I did. And then, in the next instant, I caught sight of Nell—or rather of her white tail. For she had just darted out the half-opened door of the laboratory!

  “There she is!” Waldo and I screamed simultaneously, and we dove together, sprawling over on the floor as we both tried to dash in the same direction at the same time.

  Somehow we picked ourselves up from the floor, realizing that Nellie had gained a precious head start on us, and dashed through the laboratory door.

  Hurtling down the laboratory steps leading to the street, I saw with a shock that the door at the bottom of the stairs had also been left ajar, and that Nellie was no longer visible.

  “She must be out on the street!” Waldo gasped right behind my ear. Then we were out the door, on the sidewalk, looking up and down Lake Street, while a street car clanged by, trying to catch a glimpse of Nellie.

  The traffic was heavy, and the very noise of it made me cringe, thinking of Nellie, who might at that moment be darting around under the wheels of trucks. Darting around with enough explosives to knock the sides out of the Grand Canyon.

  Then Waldo shouted, and I turned, looking in the direction of his pointing finger. There was Nellie again, perhaps thirty feet down the sidewalk!

  “Nellie!” I croaked.

  “Nellie!” Waldo rasped in echo.

  And at that moment, as we dashed after her, someone opened a door from the inside—a door just off the sidewalk beside Nellie, a saloon door.

  Before I could even gasp, Nellie had darted into the saloon, narrowly missing the swing of the door as it closed on her.

  BY the time Waldo and I had barged into the saloon, the place was in an uproar. Four women stood atop tables, and two clung to their bar stools, screaming their lungs out. Nellie’s entrance had not gone unnoticed.

  Somehow I found a split second in which to wonder what their reactions would be if they knew the cargo Nellie carried in her pink tummy. And then we were pushing through the melee in the barroom, screaming at people to stand back.

  A big, beefy red-faced man had come out from behind the bar, bellowing lustily and carrying a bung-starter in his hand. His apron spotted him as the barkeep.

  “Get that damned animal!” he shouted. “I’ll bash its brains out.” Then he saw us and wheeled. “Do you own that blank-blank rat?” he thundered.

  “No, you damned fool, we’re just out for exercise!” I shouted back. Nellie, who had taken a swift, devious course under the tables, was headed for an open trap door, leading into a sort of cellar.

  The barkeep swore roundly as we plowed by him. Nellie was now definitely flipping down the steps into the cellar. We were right behind, and from the noise on the steps the barkeep was right behind us.

  Someone had flicked a button upstairs, for the blackness of the cellar was suddenly illuminated, and we were looking down on rows of casks. Th
e place was a wine cellar.

  Then we were all down in the cellar, the barkeep, still thundering challenges to Nellie, behind us. “I’ll get that blank, blank rat, blast his hide!”

  “He’s not a him, he’s a her!” I snapped, “and if you don’t get the devil back upstairs, we’ll never be able to coax her out.” By “out” I meant that Nellie had now crawled far back behind some vast casks in the corner of the cellar, and was no longer visible.

  Waldo was standing in front of these casks, cooing, “Nell, Nellie. Ohhhhhhh, Nellie. Come out, come out, wherever you are!” It sounded so foolish that I almost forgot about the explosives still resting in her tummy. For a moment I started to laugh. But then the bartender barged past me, waving his bung-starter like a club.

  And before I could open my mouth, he had pushed Waldo aside and was trying to climb over the barrels of wine in an effort to smash Nellie’s brains out—and incidentally blow all of us, and over three million others, into eternity.

  It was more than I could stand. Realizing that I wouldn’t look well in pieces, I grabbed the nearest thing I could, an iron funnel, and moved up behind the beefy barkeep.

  Once down on his thick skull was all that was necessary to calm him for a bit. He rolled, totally out, off the casks over which he’d been trying to clamber.

  “Like a light,” I muttered in satisfaction, then peered over the casks, Waldo once more at my shoulder, in an effort to see Nellie.

  “Good Lord!” Waldo gasped, taking the sentiments, slightly censored, out of my mouth. For there was Nellie, at a dripping spigot on a cask just beyond us—sopping up whiskey!

  SHE was standing on her hind legs, her forepaws clasped affectionately around the head of the spigot, and her tail swaying back and forth in drunken happiness!

  “Nellie!” I shouted. “Get away from that tap!”

  She turned her head slightly, looking owlishly with her pink eyes. And I swear to this day, believe it or not, that she winked at us! Then her front paws dropped, and she staggered back tipsily—still tantalizingly out of reach.