Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “Did you call the police?” I asked.

  “Heavens no!” Barton exclaimed. “I couldn’t stand that kind of publicity. It would absolutely ruin me.”

  I heard a shrill wailing siren in the distance and I smiled at Barton.

  “Consider yourself ruined,” I said.

  “The strong arm of the law will soon be rapping at your door.” I shuddered as I said that last word.

  INSTINCTIVELY I glanced toward the revolving door.

  “Let’s find another exit,” I said, “and meet the law when it arrives.”

  Barton nodded wordlessly and motioned me to follow him. As I turned I noticed a high-domed salesman standing before a ribbon counter which was almost directly in front of the revolving doors. He wore dark, drab clothing and perched on his bony nose were huge horn-rimmed glasses. Why I noticed him I couldn’t say. Maybe it was because he was wearing a satisfied smile on his face. The only smile I had seen in the entire store that morning. Naturally it would stand out.

  I hurried after Barton. He left the store by a side exit and by the time we walked around to the main entrance on State street, three black police cars were pulling to the curb. I almost swallowed my cud when I saw the Commissioner himself climb out of the first car and stride toward the revolving door.

  “Hold it, Commish,” I yelled. “Don’t go in there.”

  “Why not?” he bellowed back at me.

  I caught up with him and grabbed his arm.

  “Funny business is going on inside,” I said.

  “That’s why I’m here,” the Commissioner snapped, “we’ve received about two hundred calls so far from hysterical wives and mothers and fathers. All with the same story. A loved one has disappeared without a trace in the Barton store. What do you know about things here, Lansing?”

  “I don’t,” I said, “except that this revolving door here Is a very peculiar piece of business. People go in one side of it, but don’t come out the other.”

  “You—”

  “I have not been drinking,” I said, beating him to it, “but unless some one explains this thing to me in words of one syllable, every night will be New Year’s eve with me from this date onward.”

  The Commissioner gave me a look of intense disgust.

  “I might have known it would be some crackpot crank nonsense,” he fumed.

  “This deal,” I said with great distinctness, “is no nonsense.”

  “Nonsense,” bellowed the Commissioner. “I’ll bet you a new hat I’ll walk through that door as I’ve done a dozen times before.”

  “Don’t do it,” I pleaded. “You don’t know what you’re up against.”

  Without deigning to answer me, he wheeled and strode toward the door. His stout, bluecoated figure was visible for an instant as he shoved the panel, then he was gone. The doors revolved idly, but the Commissioner had disappeared, vanished like a puff of smoke in a breeze.

  AN angry, unbelieving exclamation rose from the officers and policemen who had arrived with the commissioner. A few surged forward but I got in front of them and did my best to herd them off.

  “Take my word for it,” I said desperately to a sergeant, “you can’t lick that door. Nobody’s returned from it yet and nobody’s gotten through yet. Be smart and throw a rope around this section. It’s the only thing you can do.”

  The sergeant hesitated for an instant, then he barked the necessary orders. In a few minutes a rope cordon had been formed, completely blocking off the main entrance of the Barton store.

  “This is a terrible thing to happen,”

  Barton wailed, “especially on the first day of my big sale.”

  “Isn’t it though?” I murmured.

  I hurried back into the store and made my way to the main entrance again. This was where the nub of the mystery was located, I was sure. The doors continued to disturb me. Something was wrong with the light that streamed through them.

  I saw the smiling salesman again, too. He was standing in front of his counter, which, it seemed, was doing little business, and gazing at the revolving doors. His smile was more than satisfied. It was fond and proud and paternal all at once. He even shook his head, as if he were admiring something rare and precious, which ordinary mortals could not perceive.

  I shook my head and forgot him. I had enough to do to get some sort of a story out of this mess without wasting my time worrying about peculiar salesmen with idiotic smiles adorning their pans.

  My eyes flicked about the floor, from counter to counter and noticed the universal worry and fear that was stamped on the faces of the clerks. Fear can grip a crowd and spread from person to person faster than any other emotion. While I was thinking this, a peculiar thought occurred to me. There was funny pattern to this whole thing but I couldn’t make any sense out of it. The cogs didn’t mesh together. I always ask myself questions; and my eyes were just swinging past the smiling, professor-like salesman when I asked myself the question, “Why?”

  Why indeed?

  I sauntered across the aisle until I stood beside him. He was certainly harmless enough looking, with thin, stooped shoulders and spindly arms. My little question was still bothering me though.

  “Why so happy?” I asked him abruptly.

  My voice startled him. He turned suddenly, looking pathetic now instead of happy.

  “I—I’m sorry, officer,” he stuttered breathlessly, “I—I shouldn’t be day dreaming like that, but I just couldn’t help it. I—I’m kinda excited.”

  “Why?” I asked coldly. All I needed was a whip to play Simon Legree. But as long as he thought I was an officer I decided to take advantage of it.

  “Oh,” he said vaguely, “just because.”

  “What do you think of the way things have been going around here this morning?” I asked him. I had already given him up as a dead duck.

  His eyes brightened.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because,” he said happily, “with the main exit closed there’s no traffic past my counter. I’m not so busy now. I can take things easy like all the other fellows do.”

  His enormous eyes burned brightly into mine. “It isn’t fair for one fellow to be stuck always in the busiest spots with never a chance to take a slow breath. That’s why I changed it.”

  “You changed it?” I asked cautiously.

  HE looked down miserably at his shoes.

  “I might as well confess,” he said unhappily. “I was going to hold out longer than this but I might as well give myself up now as later.”

  “Give yourself up?” I asked. “What for?”

  “I’m responsible,” he said earnestly, “for the confusion and mystery surrounding the revolving door at this exit. I didn’t hurt anyone, but that does not mitigate or extenuate my guilt. You may take me into custody.”

  This is typical Lansing luck. Four million people in Chicago, but I have to pick a crackpot to get suspicious of.

  “Forget it, kid,” I said. “The excitement’s got you down.”

  “Please, officer,” he said, “you’ve got to believe me. You’ve simply got to.”

  I started to turn away but something stopped me. I guess it was the sincerity in the kid’s voice.

  “Spill,” I said, “but make it good. And just to keep the record straight I’m no copper.”

  “In the first place,” the kid said eagerly, “that revolving door really isn’t a door at all.”

  “Oh, oh,” I said, backing away, “school’s over. Pick up your marbles and go home.”

  He only smiled.

  “It’s not a door but a geometrical figure which physicists call a tesseract. A tesseract,” he added, “is the visual concept of what we call the fourth dimension.”[*]

  “Lovely,” I said, “but where does that bring us?”

  “That revolving door,” he confided in a whisper, “is really a time machine. The principle is my own idea. A tesseract shows us the fourth dimension which is actua
lly time itself. By constructing a tesseract which will turn as this one does, it is possible to bend the dimensions and time so that a passage may be effected from the third dimension into time. Do you understand?”

  I didn’t. I didn’t have the foggiest notion of what the kid was driving at. So does this sound too silly?—I believed he was handing me the straight dope.

  “You did all this,” I asked uneasily, “to keep the main flow of traffic away from your counter?”

  “Well, why else?” he asked surprised. His burning eyes peered into mine intently. “You don’t know what it means to have the time to think and ponder.”

  I felt very old and helpless. I wanted a drink too.

  “Look, Voltaire,” I said, “supposing, just supposing everything you say is true. Where are the people who went in that door?”

  “They’re there,” he answered readily.

  “They’re—where?” I asked.

  “In the door.”

  “Oh,” I said, and studied the floor. Things were getting a bit too deep for me. I wished heartily that I had kept my mouth shut.

  “You see,” the horn-rimmed wonder said, “those people are in the fourth dimension. Every one of them is instantaneously repeating the action of stepping to the door, slipping into the fourth dimension, stepping to the door, slipping into the fourth dimension, etc. No time passes because they are returned through the fourth dimension to the exact second in time when they stepped to the door in the first place.”

  “Like chain smoking,” I muttered for no reason in the world.

  “When they step out of the revolving door,” he continued avidly, “they will be under the impression that they merely stepped through the door. Not one of them will realize that anything unusual has happened to him.”

  IT was just about this time that Barton pulled up beside us, wringing his hands unhappily.

  “It’s terrible, absolute—”

  “Forget it,” I said. “Your worries are over. Almost anyway.”

  “What do you mean?” he said sharply.

  I pointed to Hornrims.

  “This young man can extricate you from the nasty situation in which you find yourself.”

  “Oh, thank the Good Lord,” Barton breathed fervently.

  “I don’t see why I should,” Hornrims said sulkily.

  “What?” Barton demanded hysterically.

  Hornrims studied his nails with magnificent nonchalance.

  “It will create a great deal of inconvenience for me,” he said casually. “All sorts of traffic rushing by again.” Hornrims shook his head unenthusiastically. “Not much point to it, really.”

  Brixby Barton had not attained his present position without the aid of sharp, shrewd bargaining. My respect for the man went up a notch as he tugged thoughtfully at his lower lip.

  “Tell you what,” he said reluctantly, “since there will be all this business and traffic back when you open the main entrance, I’ll do the handsome thing for you.” Mr. Barton beamed broadly, the picture of a man distributing largesse to faithful retainers. “I’ll put you on a commission basis so you can take advantage of it.”

  Hornrims grabbed Mr. Barton’s hand and pumped it enthusiastically. He streaked away then and came back in seconds with a ladder under his arms. Like a human squirrel he went up over the rungs and climbed off on top of the revolving doors. I don’t know what he did to them, but then I haven’t the foggiest idea of what he did to them in the first place. I only know what happened after he got through puttering.

  Human beings of every sort and description came pouring through the door, looking like the human version of the exodus from Noah’s ark.

  Last to emerge was the stout, overcoated figure of the Commissioner. His face was wreathed in a broad, happy smile.

  “You can just buy me a hat,” he said triumphantly. “I told you I’d walk right through and that’s just what I did. I wasn’t delayed a second.”

  “I’ll buy the hat,” I said, “but doesn’t it occur to you that I made pretty good time to get inside the store before you did? You left me standing on the sidewalk y’know?”

  The expression on the Commissioner’s face was some compensation for the five bucks I spent on his new hat a week later.

  [*] A tesseract is constructed by assuming a point (on paper for a visual concept if you wish) and moving it a short distance so as to form a line. Then the whole line is moved in a plane at right angles to form a square. The square surface thus achieved (which is where you’ll have to leave your paper) is in turn moved at right angles through the third dimension. Now, theoretically, the next movement of your resulting figure, which is a cube, is at right angles to all lines of the cube (the fourth dimension) so as to form the figure in question, a tesseract. This figure, purely imaginary, is used to demonstrate that unknown place called the “fourth dimension.”

  MR. MUDDLE DOES AS HE PLEASES

  First published in the August 1941 issue of Amazing Stories.

  We have inhibitions that keep us from enjoying true freedom. But Merton Muddle lost his, and boy oh boy, did he kick over the traces!

  MERTON MUDDLE clutched his slightly moth-eaten dressing robe close about his scrawny frame and listened apprehensively. Encouraged by the deep silence, he crept cautiously past his wife’s bedroom and began a furtive descent of the winding stairs that led to the first floor of his modest home.

  Halfway down, a step creaked under his foot. Instantly he froze into immobility—all except his knees which continued to quaver. If his wife discovered him now—Mr. Muddle closed his eyes and swallowed nervously. The mere thought of this was enough to start icy fingers tickling his spine.

  But there was no sound from his wife’s room, and Muddle gave a shuddery sigh of relief as he realized she hadn’t heard the betraying board. He continued down the steps.

  In the hallway at the foot of the stairs, he paused, debating whether to get the key to the mailbox first, or to see if the package had arrived. He opened the door, peering out onto the porch.

  There it was.

  A small, plain brown package about four inches square. Just as the advertisement had described it. It was too bulky to fit in the mail box so the postman had deposited it on top of the mail box. There was a letter sticking in the slot of the mail box.

  But Merton Z. Muddle was paying no attention to anything except the precious brown box. It contained pills. Not just ordinary pills but very special pills. Mr. Muddle trembled with anticipation as he recalled the text of the intriguing advertisement.

  PEPPER’S PITUITARY PILLS

  PROMOTE PERSONALITY!!

  There was more of it. The pills, Mr. Pepper promised solemnly, would rejuvenate tired tissues, reanimate flagging personalities, release their users from inhibitions and restrictions—in short make a new man out of any and all who had recourse to their efficacious and miraculous properties. This was followed by a string of endorsements from a collection of alert, energetic gentlemen who all swore by Pepper’s Pills.

  Mr. Muddle on reading this ad had eagerly clipped the coupon, enclosed a dollar in an envelope and mailed it soon as possible.

  Which was not exactly an unusual procedure for Mr. Muddle. He always answered advertisements. He could no more resist clipping coupons and sending for merchandise than an opium fiend could resist a drag at his pipe. It was an affliction, a mania that amounted to an obsession.

  His basement was crammed to the walls with exercise sets, patented carburetors, rowing machines, sets of books, hair removers, and his latest acquisition, three hundred feet of barbed wire fencing.

  It was the barbed wire fencing that had topped the climax. His wife, Nellie, had almost left him when she discovered the wire in the basement. Mr. Muddle shivered remembering that day. She had solemnly sworn that the next time he answered an advertisement she would leave him forever.

  MR. MUDDLE peeked cautiously up the stairs. He had been on the wagon for weeks, had not answered a single advertisement, but
Pepper’s Pituitary Pills had affected him like a bar rag waved under the nose of an incorrigible drunkard. He had broken his promise to his wife, but she would never know it. That was why he had gotten up early enough to meet the mailman, hide his package and still have plenty of time left to climb back in bed for another nap before leaving for work.

  And now Mr. Muddle tip-toed onto the porch, closing the screen door carefully behind him. In two steps he reached the mail box and then his hands were holding the eagerly awaited package. He was aware of his breath coming faster as he ripped off the first layer of brown paper and by the time the cardboard box was visible his heart was pounding against his ribs like a pile driver.

  Inside the box nestled a small bottle filled with twelve pills. A year’s supply. One pill a month and in a year he would be a new man. It was exhilarating. He removed the bottle and then his curiosity got the better of him. He unscrewed the cap and poured the pills into the palm of his hand. He shook his head admiringly. It was amazing how they could pack all that power into these little pills.

  He stood there, dreaming of the New Merton Muddle, when his ears caught a tiny noise in the house.

  His wife! A clammy sweat broke out on him, poured down his trembling legs. A wild hysteria gripped him, holding him motionless.

  For a terrible, sickening instant he remained frozen rigidly and then recovering his senses, he peered guiltily about. He must get rid of the evidence. He hurled the box over the porch rail, kicked the brown paper down the steps with a speed and craftiness born of desperation. But the pills—they were still in his moist hand, damning and condemning him with their presence.

  He glared desperately about the porch. There was nothing to conceal them in. In another second it would be too late. Without thinking, Mr. Muddle, opened his mouth, tilted his head and swallowed the twelve incriminating pills.

  Then he grabbed the letter from the mail box and hurried back inside the house trying his best to act like a man who had just stepped out for the mail.

  He even hummed a bit to strike the correct note of nonchalant indifference. To his surprise and relief the hallway was empty and so, he discovered after a quick peak, were the downstairs rooms.