Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  What was the uninhibited Mr. Muddle, his other personality, doing now? Mr. Muddle didn’t really want to know. He felt sick enough as it was.

  MR. MUDDLE’S moody misgivings were still with him by the time the luncheon chimes had sounded in the offices of Lock, Stock & Barrel. And by the time Muddle had wandered morosely to the elevator and had been carried down to the lobby of the building, these misgivings had congealed, so to speak, into a frozen, stupefied horror.

  It was the first time in fourteen years that Muddle had not brought his lunch to work in a paper bag. Nellie had always gotten it ready for him. But this morning, of course, there had been no Nell.

  Consequently, feeling the need for food to solace his wounded heart, he was forced to head toward the streets in an effort to locate a suitable restaurant.

  He had just stepped out onto the curbstone in front of the building—and was looking aimlessly in either direction—when it happened. A blasting, blatant, thunderous, “BEEEEEE-POOOP!”

  Muddle leaped hastily back to the safety of the sidewalk, his heart zooming to his throat. Some fool in an automobile—And even before he had a chance to think further, Muddle saw the cause of the tooting horn. His other self—the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle—had just rolled up in front of the building in an automobile!

  And what an automobile!

  Cream colored, sleek, streamlined, with a maze of chromium fixtures and do-dads, and a top that was yellow and could be folded back, and which was, as a matter of fact, now folded back.

  Mr. Muddle had seen these cars advertised, of course, and he gasped at the thought of how much they sold for. The Uninhibited Mr. Muddle was behind the wheel, lounging nonchalantly on plush leather upholstery. A cigarette in an incredibly long holder dangled from the corner of his grinning mouth.

  Mr. Muddle saw all this through a haze of confused and bewildering emotions. And then he saw the Uninhibited Muddle’s friends.

  Lady friends, they were. And such an assortment of classy feminine pulchritude as Mr. Muddle had never seen in all his life—even in advertisements. There must have been at least eight of them. Blondes, brunettes, redheads. The Uninhibited Mr. Muddle apparently like variety. Four of the cuddlesome cuties were nestling in the spacious front seat beside the Uninhibited Muddle, and the other four lounged in the back of the car giggling and crying shrilly to their driver in front!

  Mr. Muddle saw all this and desperately fought off the swoon he felt approaching. The Uninhibited Muddle was shouting above the clamor of the girls.

  “Hiya, Muddle,” he yelled. “Howya like the bus? Whatcha think of the dollies? Climb in, chum. We’ve come to take you to lunch!”

  Mr. Muddle was trying to back away, trying to make his knees move with sufficient strength to get him away from there instanter. But the shock had left him momentarily paralyzed. People were gathering on the sidewalk behind him. Already there were envious ooohs and ahhhs coming from the growing crowd. Through it all, Muddle felt a wave of sickening premonition. Supposing his employer, Mr. Barrel, should see him in such a situation?

  But Muddle had no chance for flight. He had just been moved sufficiently to turn, and was trying to figure out a way to push through the crowd, when he heard the giggles grow louder behind him, smelled perfume in the air, and heard the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle shout:

  “That’s it, girls. Go after him. Don’t let him get away. We want to take him to lunch.”

  A SPLIT second later, Mr. Muddle was seized by soft arms, and almost hurled under the four lovely wenches who’d climbed out from the back seat of the glittering phaeton. He had no chance to struggle, no chance to protest. The crowd on the sidewalk was convulsed in gales of laughter as the four young ladies propelled Muddle into the back seat of the car, squealing and protesting feebly.

  Then, with a great gnashing of gears and a thundering reverberation from the motor, the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle swung the sleek automobile out into the middle of traffic, while the damsels in the back continued to detain Mr. Muddle.

  It must have been fully five minutes later by the time Muddle was able to emerge from the pile-up of pulchritude. Five minutes in which he felt the machine lurching this way and that while the claxon horn blasted deafeningly at odd intervals and the tires screeched in protest with every forty seconds. Mr. Muddle, beneath his beautiful young abductresses, had had the impression that the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle was wheeling the car along at breakneck speed, and with little or no regard for any laws of caution.

  Now, as he sat up and looked wildly about, Mr. Muddle saw that this was indeed a fact. The Uninhibited Mr. Muddle had the machine hitting close to eighty-five. And they were still in the crowded business sector. The very sight of the street ahead, rushing up to them while red lights blinked futilely from corner posts and cops shrilled whistles in purple fury, was enough to turn Muddle’s stomach upside down and force him to bury his head in his hands.

  But the other passengers, including the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle, were taking it all with bland—though somewhat hilarious unconcern. The four vixens in the back, for example, seemed much more concerned with efforts to embrace the shivering Muddle than they were with his uninhibited counterpart’s driving. Squealing delightedly, they took turns trying to see who could smear the most lipstick over the cowering Muddle’s face.

  But Muddle kept his head in his hands, not through any sense of virtue, but because of the terror he felt. This, his numbed brain reasoned, was no time for romance—however tempting.

  Finally, with a wild shriek of brakes enthusiastically applied, the luxurious vehicle lurched to a stop. Muddle counted to ten before he opened his eyes. He counted five more—just for the hell of it—before he took his hands from his head and looked up.

  They had halted in a slightly more quiet section of town. Halted before a huge canopy that ran from the curb up to an elaborately façaded building. Muddle had seen this building advertised in the papers. It was—in brief—the swankiest and most expensive night spot in town. It was—to be explicit—the “Chez Cutie.”

  The girls were squealing again, this time in gleeful delight at the realization of where they were to dine. The Uninhibited Mr. Muddle had piled out of the car and now came around beneath the canopy, while a uniformed doorman, grinning widely, assisted the girls and the shaking Muddle out of the car.

  THE Uninhibited Mr. Muddle had dropped behind the eight girls, who had dashed pell mell up the carpeted steps to the door, and sauntered cheerfully beside Mr. Muddle.

  “Well, well. Good place to eat,” he remarked gaily. “You’ll love it. Howja like the girls? See any number in particular thatja want to pass the time with?” He grinned. “I can get rid of the others, if you have any preference.”

  Mr. Muddle managed a rasping croak.

  “I’d better leave. This place is much too expensive. It’s for people with lots and lots of money. I can’t afford it. Let me leave, please!” His voice ended on a note of pathetic supplication.

  “Skip it, chum.” The Uninhibited Muddle’s wave was careless. “We’ve got plenty of cash. Of course the car ran pretty high—but it’s on time. Whatsa time payment amount to, anyway. What’s money amount to, come to think of it. Just green stuff, chum. Just green stuff.” He laughed heartily at this observation and slapped Muddle on the back, almost knocking him on his face.

  Muddle and his counterpart entered the Chez Cutie, and found that the girls had already taken seats at the side of the dance floor. Much to Muddle’s amazement, the place had an orchestra for noontime. It was incredible. Muddle had always presumed that people always confined their music to evenings.

  And then they were at the table, and while Muddle tried—with gradually weakening resistance—to battle the efforts of the girls to kiss him, the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle gave their orders to a grinning waiter. Then the orchestra was playing, drowning out all conversation. But the girls kept shouting and the Uninhibited Muddle kept laughing, and nobody seemed to mind much.

  There were drinks then.
Strange things in tall, cool glasses. Mr. Muddle had never had much more than an occasional sip of light wine at the dinner table—had never permitted Nellie to serve anything else—but now he found himself joining the others in their efforts to see how rapidly they could consume the delightful liquids.

  There was food, too. Such repasts as Muddle had never before imagined. Dainty, weird, elaborate, and expensive. But Mr. Muddle had somehow ceased to care about the expensiveness of his surroundings. His uninhibited counterpart had money. Where he’d gotten it, Muddle was unable to imagine. But he had it. That was sufficient for the moment.

  Muddle danced, too. Not that he had wanted to. But it had just sort of happened. The Uninhibited Mr. Muddle was returning from the floor with one of the blondes, and he’d stuffed her in Muddle’s arms and pushed them both out onto the narrow surface together. Muddle was enjoying it thoroughly by the time the music ended, and he was exceptionally piqued when it stopped. There was nothing to do, then, but to return to the table and have more of those exceptionally fine drinks his counterpart was buying.

  And then they were singing, and everytime the waiters would gather round the table and applaud, the Uninhibited Muddle would laugh gaily and write them out a check for their appreciation. It was all very grand. Very hilarious. Mr. Muddle envied his uninhibited counterpart’s ability to write checks, just like that, and hand them to the gaily applauding waiters. When he said as much, after a while, the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle laughed and spilled a drink and told him: “Why don’t you write some, then? Our signatures are just the same. Go ahead, chum!”

  SO Muddle wrote checks along with his counterpart, and drank, and ate, and sang, and enjoyed the enthusiastic kisses of the girls. Until he remembered.

  Muddle sprang up, knocking over his chair, sobering enough to feel hideously ill.

  “Goodness,” he squealed. “What time is it?”

  The Uninhibited Muddle looked at his watch. “Three o’clock. Sit down. We’re a little early for dinner, but we can wait.”

  But Muddle didn’t hear him. He was weaving sickly back and forth over the table, moaning softly. Three o’clock. He was supposed to be back in the offices of Lock, Stock & Barrel by one! What would they do? What would they think? This was terrible.

  “I have to get back to work,” Muddle moaned, grabbing his chortling counterpart by the shoulder and shaking him. “Please, take me back. This is terrible! I have to get back. Oooooh, I’ll probably be fired!”

  The Uninhibited Muddle looked at him like a father to an idiot child. He shrugged.

  “Okay, spoilsport, okay!”

  With a wave of his hand, the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle summoned a waiter.

  “The check!” he demanded. “Wet-blanket, here,” he jerked a thumb at Muddle, “has to get back to work.” The waiter gave Muddle a withering glance, as though the very suggestion that he wanted to return to a tomb of toil was sickening. In a moment the chap returned. He had a card on a silver plate, and gave it to the uninhibited counterpart of Muddle.

  The Uninhibited Muddle drew forth a wallet of such dimensions that it would choke a boa-constrictor. Muddle gaped, then gasped. He wondered, with a sudden burning envy, where his counterpart had ever amassed such a wad.

  “Hmmmm,” mused the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle, glancing at the check. “Hmmmm.” He gave the waiter a searching glance.

  “I hope,” said the waiter, suddenly going frigid, “that there is nothing wrong, Sir.”

  “Five hundred dollars,” the Uninhibited Muddle said aloud. He glanced at the waiter again. “You tried to gyp us, left out the cost of our champagne. That, alone, should add another seventy-five bucks to our bill. Put it on, and make it snappy!”

  The waiter took a grip on himself, and babbling and beaming, dashed to the cashier. Mr. Muddle was astounded. He gulped.

  “They try to trick you, sometimes,” the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle confided with a wink. “Have to be sharp.” Muddle watched in wordless astonishment as the waiter came back and was paid off by the debonair counterpart Then they were moving out of the club. The girls had gone ahead of them and were waiting in the sleek car as they stepped out under the canopy.

  “WE’D better hurry,” Muddle said, his old fear suddenly returning. “If I don’t get back I’ll surely lose my job!”

  “Whatsa job!” Muddle’s counterpart made an appropriate snap of his fingers. “Such a dull job at that.” They were standing in front of the car.

  “I,” glared Muddle, suddenly resentful of his other half’s good fortune, “must work for a living. I can’t afford to throw money around in the sinful fashion that you do!”

  “Boy—I suppose close to six hundred bananas isn’t money. I suppose this crate was put together in some kid’s basement.” He pointed with pride to the sleek phaeton. “What do you call that, if you don’t call it spending dough?”

  A horrible premonition was creeping over Merton Muddle. A sudden weakness assailed his knees. Cold sweat came out on his forehead. He managed to croak:

  “But I didn’t buy this car. I didn’t pay that check. I didn’t hand out money to the waiters!”

  The Uninhibited Mr. Muddle laughed.

  “Who do you imagine did?” He was chortling again. “Santa Claus, maybe?”

  Muddle was screeching.

  “You mean that you bought that car in my name, with the money we’ve saved in the bank? You mean that you’re using all the rest of it to throw around on wine, and women, and—” he struggled for air.

  “Song?” the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle finished. “Yeeup, I guess that’s right. Of course, you don’t have but three grand in the bank. The car cost darned near that. There wasn’t much left, so I had to borrow a few grand from a loan outfit. Swell chaps at the loan joint. Talked them out of four more grand—and only at thirty percent interest. Intend to go back, when I’ve run out.”

  Mr. Muddle was teetering on the brink of hysteria.

  “You mean,” he shrieked, “that you signed my name to those, those loans?”

  “Our name,” his counterpart corrected. “However,” he gave Muddle an encouraging grin, “tourjours gai!”

  Mr. Muddle was unable to wait for his counterpart’s translation of the last phrase. He fainted dead away . . .

  TIME was but a vague blot to Mr. Muddle when he again opened his eyes. He was stretched out in the back seat of the luxurious phaeton, quite alone. Sitting up, he looked wildly around. The car was parked. Where the girls and the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle had gone was a mystery. And then, looking to the right, Muddle saw that the car was parked directly in front of his office building.

  His head was splitting, and his tongue felt like a doormat. The liquor had completely worn off—but the hangover lingered on, as though it intended to stick around for quite some time.

  A quick glance at the clock on the dashboard told Muddle that it was five o’clock. With sickening swiftness, he remembered that it had been three o’clock when he’d last insisted that his counterpart take him back to the office.

  The faint—that was it. The faint and the culmination of those tall, cool drinks. He’d been out cold for two hours. Muddle’s stomach quickly turned to ice, as he realized that this luxurious wagon, all the money that the Uninhibited Muddle was tossing about, everything, in fact, was mounting against him. The ice became dry ice with the next realization—he was also out of a job. But definitely.

  By now, his employer, Bludgeon Barrel had undoubtedly written his name off the lists of employees!

  And just as Muddle was certain that these factors were enough to make the strongest of men seek a noose or a gas-filled room, the tall cool drinks began to demand their fiddler’s fee. He was suddenly overcome by a hideous physical nausea in the pit of his stomach.

  It was while Muddle was leaning over the side of the sleek machine, giving vent to the promptings of an angry stomach, that he heard the voice behind him. The voice of the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle, cheerfully triumphant.

  “What ho!�
� cried the Uninhibited Muddle. “Pip pip, and all that!” He climbed into the front of the car, behind the wheel.

  Muddle turned a pea-green face to him.

  “Glug,” he said.

  “Sick, eh?” the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle said. “That’s the price you dampers have to pay. If you’d been decently accustomed to a few drinks, as any gentleman should, this would never have happened.”

  Muddle pulled himself back into the car.

  “Where have you been?” he managed to ask.

  “Upstairs.” The uninhibited counterpart pointed to Muddle’s office building. “Upstairs, giving the old you-know-what to one Bludgeon Barrel, the slave who employed you.”

  Muddle clutched at the straw of hope.

  “You went up there? You took my place? I’m not fired? You talked him out of it?” He felt a sudden surge of gratitude toward this other half of him.

  “Hold on, hold on!” The Uninhibited Muddle held up his hand. “Don’t get ahead of me. I merely said I went up there. Thought I might take your place. Got rid of the girls and saw that you were in no condition to do so. Played Boy Scout, that’s what I did.” He suddenly broke into gales of laughter.

  Muddle was puzzled, and anxious.

  “What’s so funny?” he demanded.

  “I was thinking of Bludgeon Barrel,” said the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle, “you needn’t worry about him any more!”

  Muddle was almost ecstatic.

  “Then you did talk him into giving me my job back?”

  “Not quite. The silly old goat started to belabor me. Couldn’t stand for that sort of thing, y’know. Impossible old fossil.”

  Muddle’s elation was a momentary spark that now faded. Once again he was left with nothing but a vacant, rather terrifying, premonition. But the Uninhibited Muddle was chattering on.

  “Stood just about fifty-five seconds of it,” the Uninhibited Mr. Muddle continued, “and then I let him have it, both barrels.” He paused to chortle. “Pun, huh, let Barrel have it—both barrels.”