Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “Damn, I almost forgot,” Albert said snapping his fingers. Then he stepped swiftly over to the bathroom door and opened it very, very carefully so that too much light wouldn’t stream into its darkened interior. The management of the Tennis and Topper Club, not to mention that worthy organization’s board of directors, would have been extremely shocked—not to mention angered—to know that young Albert Addin had turned the luxurious sunken bathroom of his suite into a photographic darkroom!

  And now, with the door closed safely behind him, Albert turned on the faint light in his combination bathroom-darkroom, and gazed lovingly down into the washbowl at the photographic prints he’d left soaking. The photography bug in Albert had been too strong to allow him to pop off for a weekend while developing fluid ate away the artistry he’d caught in his latest camera efforts.

  There were some special shots he’d taken—still life—of tables and oranges and bowls in his rooms, and now Albert was eagerly curious to see how they’d turned out. He’d been using a new technique picked up in a photography guide—infra red film filtering on still life shots.

  Tenderly, Albert removed the prints from the fluid. Lovingly, he peered at them. Delightedly, he whistled. They weren’t bad at all, which, for Albert, was a major triumph in camera lore.

  “This shot of the apple on the table beside the couch is rather fine,” he told himself exultantly. “Salon stuff, that’s what it is!”

  “Yes, indeed,” Albert continued aloud, gazing at the print, “it’s a duezzy, it’s—”

  Suddenly a frown broke out on Albert’s face.

  Something was screwy, definitely.

  For, beside the apple on the table there was something else!

  “Why,” Albert gasped in astonishment, “that’s an ancient oriental lamp, there!” He pursed his lips in bewilderment, for he was certain that when he’d photographed the apple there hadn’t been any lamp on the table. The table had been bare but for the apple. He’d been shooting “simple, artistic” stuff, not cluttered tables!

  AS ALBERT looked again, the lamp was still there in the print. Rubbing his finger across it didn’t make it go away. He frowned, and still carrying the print, stepped swiftly out of his bathroom laboratory. Albert stepped across his bedroom and into his drawing room. There, in the corner, was the table. Beside it was the couch.

  The table was the one he’d used in the shot. As a matter of fact, the apple was still on the table—with a piece bitten out of it—just as he’d left it the night before. Just as he’d left it after finishing his photographic efforts.

  But there was no lamp there, and the realization of this seemed to reassure Albert. After all, if he’d photographed a lamp he would have been aware of it wouldn’t he?

  “Of course I would,” Albert declared. “I most certainly would have been aware of a lamp, if one had been there!”

  But when he looked quickly at the print in his hand, Albert was again shaken. There was a lamp, directly beside the apple on the table! But another glance at the actual table showed that there couldn’t be.

  “We’ll see about this,” Albert muttered resolutely stepping over to the table.

  Albert put his hand down on the table, moving it slowly along the smooth wood surface. Then, suddenly, his hand stopped, sweat broke out on his forehead, and he gulped. Something was there beside the apple!

  Something that he could feel, but couldn’t see!

  Carefully Albert allowed his hand to caress the object. It was rather small, pitcher shaped, metallic. Albert gulped again, and sweat broke out anew.

  “And I haven’t had a drop,” Albert muttered. “Not a drop in three days!”

  Gingerly, Albert lifted the invisible something-or-other, his hand trembling badly. Frantically, he strained his eyes, as if the very effort of their peering would bring this invisible thing-ama-jig into view.

  And then, quite suddenly, as his hand trembled more than before, the invisible whatzit slipped from his clammy fingers, thudding onto the floor.

  Instinctively, Albert’s eyes followed the invisible drop. And at the instant his ears heard the “thunk” of the object hitting the floor, Albert’s eyes widened in startled incredulity. The thing was now visible![*]

  It was as if the jar had shaken off its cloak of invisibility. And Albert, pop-eyed in astonishment, gazed down at the same oriental lamp that was seen on the print he held in his trembling hand!

  “Presto,” Albert gasped. “First I didn’t see it, now I do!”

  HANDLING the lamp carefully, Albert turned it over in a sort of stupefied curiosity. His mind was frantically trying to change gears, to adjust itself to the realization that here was an object which a moment before hadn’t been visible for the naked eye to view. An object which he had unwittingly photographed, even though he hadn’t been able to see it at the time.

  Albert shook his head. An oriental lamp whose properties of remaining unseen had been destroyed by its fall to the floor. But the camera had seen it, even though he himself hadn’t. Suddenly the furrows in Albert’s brows lessened somewhat, and he almost grinned triumphantly at what he considered to be a swiftly arrived at solution.

  “The infra-red film filter I had on the camera,” he said aloud. “That’s what did it!” Hazily, he had a mental vision of infra-red cutting through invisible cloaks like a classroom diagram. It was simple. The special filter, about which Albert knew absolutely nothing, had revealed an invisible object, about which he knew absolutely nothing. The two things had much in common, in that he knew nothing about either of them. Q.E.D. The infra-red film had penetrated the invisibility of the oriental lamp, and when the lamp fell to the floor, the shock had destroyed its invisibility.

  The shock was gone, now, and Albert was left with only a vast pride at the clever way in which he had arrived at the nub of mystery.

  “Pip, pip,” he told himself. “Took a bit of clever thinking, eh wot?”

  And suddenly, as he looked again at the lamp in his hand, Albert was struck by another staggeringly clever thought.

  “This lamp,” he declared brightly to the silence, “will make a tremendous hit with Margot’s Aunt Annabelle. If I remember correctly, she collects old junk along this line.”

  So saying, Albert returned to the bedroom, stuffed the lamp into one of his bags, and turned to get his hat and coat. If there was any question in the back of his brain as to the origin of the lamp, or as to why it had been invisible, he wasn’t concerned with such small matters at the moment. The thing had been invisible, now it wasn’t. Aunt Annabelle would be delighted with it, and—besides, he’d have to hurry to catch his train.

  CHAPTER II

  Albert Has a Visitor

  MARGOT MASTIFF, looking blond, demure, and lovely in the white tennis costume she was wearing, met Albert at the railroad station of the little village several miles from Mastiff Manor.

  They were jouncing along in the station wagon which Margot piloted with much daring and little skill, some twenty minutes later. Having made his greetings, congratulated his loved one on her finesse in smoothing the troubled waters, and commented on the weather, Albert was now sitting back smoking a cigarette and watching the outlines of Mastiff Manor rise in the distance.

  “Got a present for your Aunt Annabelle,” Albert said in a sudden surge of recollection, as Margot narrowly missed running down a chicken which had tried to cross the dusty country road. “A little antique, a mere bauble, which I’m certain she’ll go for.”

  “Oh, Albert, that’s marvelous!” Margot turned to give him a glance of breathless admiration, almost running the car off the road. “She’ll be so pleased.”

  “Don’t doubt it, old girl. But can’t you watch where we’re going a little more closely?” Albert was about to launch into a recounting of the mysterious circumstances under which he gained possession of the oriental oddity, but gave up the idea on the realization that the tale might end up with Margot’s driving them into a ditch. Time enough for that later. Besides,
the tale would make fine conversational fodder at the dinner table.

  Then they were turning up the long drive leading into the estate of Mastiff Manor. The Manor was exactly as Albert remembered it. Huge, rambling, stone, a wing here and a wing there. The place was bedded in a vast sward of green lawn, and the lawn was spotted with tall, shade-giving oak trees. The largest of these trees, a gigantic one just off the porch and closest to the

  Manor, Albert remembered as being Major Mastiff’s favorite shade spot.

  “Ahhh,” Albert breathed deep of the keen country air. “The old Mastiff Oak, eh? Brings back recollections.”

  Yes,” Margot nodded pleasantly, narrowly missing a hedge on the side of the gravel drive. “Father will probably be out there sitting under it, waiting for us. He’s had a stone bench built beneath it since the last time you were here.”

  Major Mastiff was, indeed, sitting on the stone bench beneath the Mastiff Oak, holding a tall, cool glass in his hand and waiting for them after they’d parked the station wagon.

  Like the Mastiff Oak, Major Mastiff hadn’t changed perceptibly since the last time Albert had seen him. Like the oak, he might have been a little bit more gnarled around the trunk, but otherwise he seemed the same. His blue eyes, hiding behind triplet pouches, were just as cold, just as blue, just as frostily appraising as they had been before. His white hair and well-trimmed white moustache still gave him an air of dignified, iron-fisted authority. Even the fact that he possessed a vast middle and waddled slightly as he rose to meet them, didn’t detract from patrician austerity of Major Mastiff’s appearance.

  ALBERT extended his hand and smiled cheerfully, unable to still the pounding of his heart. He could never face the major without feeling that he was being examined by a Star Chamber tyrant.

  “Hah,” Major Mastiff said unyieldingly, ignoring young Addin’s hand. “Hah, I see you’re here, Addin!”

  Albert gulped.

  “Yes, arrived pronto, eh wot? Deuced nice of you to ask me up, Major. Especially after—”

  Albert was about to say, “after what happened,” but a nasty kick on the side of his shin from Margot warned him that there was no sense in probing old wounds. So he reddened uncomfortably and finished lamely, “Deuced nice and all that!”

  Major Mastiff, after nodding and muttering something about persons with limited vocabularies, returned to his stone bench under the shade tree with the attitude of a man who has completed an unpleasant duty. Margot’s tug on Albert’s arm told him that the first encounter was at an end.

  “Father’s still a little touchy about you, Albert,” Margot explained as they entered Mastiff Manor. “But you’ll win him over completely before you leave. I’m sure you will.”

  Albert gulped.

  “I can try, pet. I can only try.”

  They had paused in the center of the hallway of the Manor, and were immediately conscious of a shrill voice coming from atop a staircase to their left.

  “Margot, Margot?”

  Albert’s recollection of Aunt Annabelle’s buzz-saw tones gave him a sudden additional uncomfortable twinge, and unconsciously he braced himself.

  “Yes Aunt Annabelle?” Margot trilled in reply.

  “Have you been to the station to pick up that, that, that, pusillanimous pup yet?” Aunt Annabelle’s voice came down.

  “Aunt Annabelle!” Margot said sharply, face reddening. “Albert is here. He’s with me now.”

  “Oh,” Aunt Annabelle’s voice floated back. There was no confusion or apology in her tone. Just the grim satisfaction of one who has made her position clear.

  “He’s brought you something that you’ll like especially well, Aunt Annabelle,” Margot said quickly.

  “Bring it up!”

  “His bags aren’t unpacked yet, Aunt Annabelle. He’ll give it to you at luncheon,” Margot said, after Albert whispered to her, pointing to his still unpacked luggage.

  Albert gulped deeply, running his finger beneath his now moist collar band. All told, his reception wasn’t quite what he had expected it to be. However, old Major Mastiff hadn’t turned an elephant gun on him as yet, and Aunt Annabelle didn’t quite pour boiling oil down the staircase to greet his arrival. There was still life, so obviously there was room for hope.

  Albert turned a wan face toward Margot.

  “Heh,” he observed, “they both seem to be a little frigid.”

  Margot beamed.

  “Don’t worry about Aunt Annabelle, darling. Once she has her hands on your present, she’ll thaw out completely.” Then, reverting to her role of hostess, Margot said: “It’s eleven o’clock, now, and we’ll be lunching pretty shortly. You’d better get up to your room so you’ll have time to wash and unpack.”

  “Righto, pet. We’ll take to the battle as soon as I’m shipshape,” Albert answered, planting an affectionate and somewhat damp kiss on her cheek. But as he trudged up the staircase toward the room Margot had told him he was to occupy, Albert Addin felt anything but jaunty. There was a queasy sensation in the pit of his stomach. A sensation caused not so much by the hostile attitude of Margot’s kin, as by a peculiar premonition that hung over him like a gloomy pall. He couldn’t explain this premonition to himself. The best he could do was endure it.

  ALBERT ADDIN had unpacked, changed his travelworn attire, and shaved by the time he got around to bringing forth Aunt Annabelle’s gift from the grip in which he’d carried it. Now, gazing at it admiringly as he sat on the edge of the bed, Albert saw that it would make an even more delightful present to the old girl than he had first imagined.

  Mentally, he patted himself on the back for having gotten the inspiration to bring it here. As a curio, Albert sensed, it was definitely something to look at. The scroll worked around the base of the lamp obviously bore ancient Arabian script.

  Albert had seen pictures of these old lamps, but never the real McCoy. Consequently, he spent considerable time just sitting there, turning it over in his hands, and examining it. Vaguely, in the back of his brain, he was beginning to arrive at an explanation for its presence on the table in his suite at the Topper and Tennis Club. He recalled that a visiting East Indian rug salesman of no little wealth had occupied his suite before he moved in. Undoubtedly, the rug salesman had left it behind, although Albert could think of no reason for his doing so.

  “Possibly,” Albert mused, “he forgot to pack it when he left because it was invisible.”

  That seemed like a logical enough reason to Albert’s extremely adaptable mind, so he let it go at that, continuing his study of the lamp. It was then that he noticed a slight scratch and a tiny smudge on the metallic surface of the curiosity. These flaws were obviously the result of Albert’s having dropped it while it was still invisible.

  Considering that it wouldn’t be right not to give it to Aunt Annabelle looking—so to speak—at its best, Albert’s hand automatically reached into his pocket and pulled forth a handkerchief. Wetting the handkerchief slightly with the tip of his tongue, Albert applied a little elbow grease, a bit of deft polishing, to the tainted spots on the surface.

  And precisely five seconds later, the room seemed to explode in one vast blinding splash of lightning!

  ALBERT’S next awareness came as he looked dazedly around the bedroom from the position on the floor to which he had been hurled. His ears were ringing wildly, and the lamp was no longer in his grasp. Someone was helping him to his feet.

  “Didn’t hurtcha none, did I? a voice was saying. “I ain’t in practice on my entrances, but I’ll get back in form on ’em pretty quick.”

  Albert looked up dazedly into the face of the speaker, into the face of the creature who was helping him to his feet. He saw, foggily, a huge, towering, hulking monstrosity of a man—a creature clad in what appeared to be the remnants of filthy, silken, yellow bedcovers. And as Albert gulped, too stunned to be amazed, he shook his head desperately to clear it of the faint pinwheels which were yet cluttering up his vision.

  His eyes coul
d focus, now the creature stepped back, giving Albert his first full view of him. And now Albert let out his first yelp of surprise.

  The creature had an earnest, if somewhat vacant, face, his nose mashed like that of a pug who hadn’t ducked soon or often enough. Albert suspected that the fellow’s ears, which were hidden now beneath an incredible ragged and dirty turban, were probably cauliflowers. His arms were long, almost apelike, and his fingers dangled from his great hands like big bunches of bananas.

  “Huuuullo,” the monstrosity said, his voice having all the musical qualities of falling hardware.

  Albert Addin took a deep breath. “Who,” he managed to say at last, “are you?”

  The creature scratched his head. “George,” he answered a bit sheepishly. “My name is George, and I yam a genie.” He smiled, then, in a friendly, though somewhat punchdrunk manner.

  “George, a genie!” Albert was incredulously indignant. “Don’t get wise, my man. Don’t pull that stuff around here. Think you can come into people’s rooms, bopping them on the back of the head and stealing valuable antiques, and get away with it all by the casual explanation that you’re a genie? Oh no you don’t. Albert Addin isn’t a sucker. Never has been. Come clean, now, who in the devil are you, and what do you mean by coming bed-sheeted into my room this way?”

  The big fellow squirmed uncomfortably, and the trickle of a large tear started in the corner of one eye. “I yam what I yam. I can’t help it none if I’m a genie, can I? And besides, yuh called me, didn’cha?”

  The big fellow’s attitude made it instantly apparent to Albert’s shaken senses that, come what may, he could be talked out of any mayhem if handled with enough firmness.

  “Don’t slobber,” Albert said, summoning all the brisk authority he could command. “I can’t stand slobbering criminals!”

  “But I yain’t a criminal,” George’s husky voice was pleading. He shuffled his big feet frightenedly. “I yam just a genie, trying to do what I yam tolt tuh do. Yuh called me, an’here I yam!”