Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello yourself.”

  “They found the diamond.”

  “I know. Go away.”

  Larry moved around in front of her and put his hands on her bare shoulders. They were cold to his touch.

  “Let me get you a wrap,” he said. “You’ll catch cold out here.”

  “Never mind. I’m going up to my room now. Good night.”

  “Please don’t go,” Larry said desperately. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

  “I am not interested,” Gloria said in a small voice. Her lower lip was trembling. “Take your hands off me. I’m going.”

  Larry sighed. “All right,” he said, dropping his hands to his side. “Go ahead.”

  A metallic snap broke the quietness. Gloria looked up at him suddenly, a startled, half-frightened expression on her face. She had been leaning against a veranda post and now she straightened up, a funny, scared look in her eyes.

  “Larry,” she said, “I—”

  “You were going to your room,” Larry reminded her coldly. “Please do not let me keep you.”

  She leaned back, her arms behind her, around the post.

  “What were you going to tell me?” she asked.

  “I forget. Are you going or aren’t you?”

  “I can’t,” she said in a muffled voice. “You can’t? You’re being silly.

  What’s keeping you?”

  “These.” She turned slightly and Larry’s eyes widened in surprise as he saw that her slender wrists were securely handcuffed behind the post.

  And sitting on the veranda railing, legs crossed, was Tim.

  “Did you do this?” Larry demanded. Tim nodded. “I had to do something to keep her from leaving. Do your stuff.”

  The angry glint in Larry’s eyes faded slowly. There was good sense in what Tim said.

  “Scat, chum,” he said. “I can take over from here.”

  Tim moved away. “I found Pat and Mike, by the way.”

  “Where?”

  “In the garden.” Tim shook his head sadly. “A woodpecker got ’em.”

  “Excellent,” Larry said contentedly. He took the girl in his arms.

  “This is a terrible advantage to take,” he smiled, “but there’s nothing much you can do about it.”

  He kissed her soundly and was not too surprised that she kissed him back. She closed her eyes and sighed.

  “It’s too bad all prisoners aren’t treated as nicely,” she murmured.

  “We’ll have those cuffs off in a jiffy,” Larry said, “I want to trade them for a smaller size that comes in the single model for the third finger, left hand.”

  “Darling!” Gloria cried.

  She was silent a moment for the excellent reason that her lips were engaged in another pastime. Finally she said, “Darling, who were you talking to a moment ago?”

  Larry grinned at her. “One of my puppets.”

  She laughed merrily.

  “You say the funniest things, darling.”

  THE MAN WHO CRIED “WEREWOLF”

  First published in the March 1943 issue of Fantastic Adventures.

  Strange things come to pass when man meddles with the science of demonology!

  I WAS sitting at the bar of the Drakes’ club enjoying a reflective scotch and soda when I happened to glance up and see Marmaduke van Milton standing in the doorway.

  I lowered my eyes and hoped fervently that he would go away without seeing me. There is nothing essentially wrong with Marmaduke, but he has a quality of vacant cheerfulness about him that I find very depressing. Also, if he has a brain, it is not of the normal type. Marmaduke is one of those amiable, pointless, disjointed souls that wander through life without rhyme or reason, equipped with an elfin innocence that, strangely enough, is frequently more effective than the most cynical shrewdness.

  I risked another glance in the mirror and saw that he was still standing in the doorway with a vague look on his face, as if he were wondering how he had gotten there. Marmaduke is tall and pale with mild blue eyes and yellow hair. The habitually vacant expression on his face would be difficult to classify, so I won’t try.

  Suddenly his eyes met mine in the mirror. He waved a limp hand at me and started slowly across the floor, a bright smile on his face.

  “Simply wonderful to see you again,” he said, climbing onto a stool beside me. “Where have you been hiding?”

  I had had dinner with him the evening before, but apparently he had forgotten.

  “I’ve been around. Have a drink?” I asked without enthusiasm.

  “Glad to, glad to,” Marmaduke said heartily.

  The bartender set him up a scotch and soda which Marmaduke drank in one long breath. He ordered another.

  “Fine to see you again,” he said, between drinks.

  “Then take a good look,” I said. “I’m going into the air corps in two weeks.”

  “Are you, now?” Marmaduke cried, apparently delighted at the news.

  “How wonderful!”

  He lifted his drink to his lips and then set it down. There was a troubled look on his face. He regarded me soberly.

  “But old fellow,” he said, “you can’t fly one of those things, can you?”

  “No, but they’ll teach me.”

  “Oh,” he said. His frown cleared and a smile broke through. “They teach you, do they?”

  “Yes,” I said patiently. “They figured it’d be more interesting for the boys if they knew how to fly when they took the planes up.”

  “Shrewd of them,” Marmaduke said, nodding his head thoughtfully. “I mean, if a fellow’s going to go dashing around the clouds in a plane, he’d be in a bad way not knowing how to fly.” Marmaduke pronounced this deliberate judgment as if it were the last conclusion of the Einstein theory.

  I began to experience the desperate trapped feeling that too much of Marmaduke’s company inevitably brought about.

  “Lots of the old crowd going into the service,” Marmaduke said, as if that were some deep mystery. He glanced moodily about the deserted bar. “Won’t be any of the chaps left at this rate.” He swallowed another sip of scotch and shook his head. “Have a devil of time finding a badminton partner these days. Can’t tell where it’s all going to end.”

  I looked sidewise at him. “Well, that’s war,” I said.

  I DIDN’T ask him how he stood in the draft, for I was certain that would unloose a deluge of vacant, rambling remarks which would leave me completely bewildered. I wasn’t interested anyway. When and if the army gets Marmaduke I don’t want to know about it. It won’t help my morale any. “As you say, that’s war,” Marmaduke echoed hollowly. You’d think from his doleful voice that the British fleet had just been destroyed and sunk.

  “Pretty grim, isn’t it?” I said. “Dashed grim,” Marmaduke said, sipping his drink thoughtfully.

  “Well,” I said philosophically, “there won’t be much doing around here anyway, with the crowd gone. We’re about the last left, as it is. Danny Malloy left and so have Buckets and Stoop and Billy Pointdexter—”

  “Pointdexter hasn’t gone,” Marmaduke said unexpectedly.

  “No? I haven’t seen him around for a couple of months. Where is he?”

  “Dashed if I know,” Marmaduke said. “He was rejected by the Army. Took it pretty hard too. But I don’t know where the blighter is now.”

  “This is news to me,” I said. Marmaduke ordered another drink. “Saw him about a month ago.” He frowned and looked down at the bar. “Might’ve been longer than that though. Never did have much of a head for dates. He was in a bad way. I tried to help him out, but I wasn’t much good, I guess. Anyway I smashed all of his deuced apparatus. That was the only way I could think to get him out into the fresh air.”

  “What are you babbling about?” I demanded.

  Marmaduke looked surprised. “Didn’t I tell you about Pointdexter? Really, the whole thing is quite mysterious. I thought I told you.
But maybe it was my Uncle Freddie.”

  “Organize that thing you call a mind and start making sense, will you?” I said irritably. “You haven’t said a word to me about Pointdexter.”

  “Well,” Marmaduke said, “I shall tell you the whole story immediately. It’s really frightfully interesting.”

  “Well get on with it,” I said. “Righto.”

  He finished his drink and set the glass down on the bar.

  “Do you know anything about werewolves?” he asked.

  I started slightly. This sudden and silly digression was typical of Marmaduke but his casual tone was disturbing.

  “No I don’t,” I snapped.

  “Well never mind,” Marmaduke said, smiling. “But it is an interesting subject.”

  “Get on with Pointdexter,” I said.

  “Righto,” he said. He waved to the bartender for another round of drinks and twisted around to face me, his long horsy features beaming vacantly.

  IT ALL started (Marmaduke said cheerfully) about two or three months ago when I bumped into Billy Pointdexter when he was leaving the club, rather latish one evening.

  He looked decidedly glum. There was a bitter scowl on his dark face and a very unsociable gleam in his eyes. If ever a man appeared to need a bit of the old cheering up it was Pointdexter that night.

  As a true-blue friend and fellow club member I felt that the job was one I couldn’t shirk.

  “What ho!” I said, by way of greeting.

  He looked at me with disgust.

  “Please go away,” he said.

  I laughed heartily. Pointdexter’s sense of humor always rolls me in the aisle.

  “Why the gloomy phiz?” I asked. “You look as if you’ve lost your last lump of sugar.”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he muttered gloomily.

  We were standing in front of the club and it was raining nastily. He was waiting for a cab. I was just waiting.

  “That’s not the right spirit,” I said. I could see he was in a bad way. He was staring darkly at the wet pavement and he seemed oblivious to the crowds hurrying past. Occasionally he would glance up and look wearily at the traffic for a cab.

  “Please go away, Marmaduke,” he said. “I am not in the mood for company.”

  “Now look here old fellow,” I said, taking his arm. “If you think I’m going to walk out, on you, you’ve got another guess coming. I’m not going to desert you, so cheer up.”

  He looked at me with despair in his eyes.

  “No,” he said bitterly, “you wouldn’t desert me. The way my luck’s running that would be too much to hope for.”

  “That’s the way to look at it,” I said, slapping him on the back. I could see already that I was helping him out of the doldrums. “What say we have a quick drink?” I suggested. “You can tell me all about it. What’s her name?”

  “It’s not a ‘her’,” he said. “Something serious, then?” I said, patting him on the shoulder.

  “Yes, it’s serious,” he said, shaking my hand from his shoulder, “and for God’s sake I wish you’d let me die in peace. Good bye.”

  A cab had pulled up and before I could say another word he was opening the door and shouting an address to the driver. I was still standing there with my mouth open when the cab shot away from the curb and disappeared around the corner.

  “Poor chap must be in a hurry,” I thought.

  I realized then that I was getting wet. I couldn’t remember right off the bat why I’d left the club, so I turned around and went back in. I had a few drinks but I couldn’t get poor Pointdexter off my mind.

  The chap had really been in a stew. I shook my head sadly. I knew how he felt. When a man’s in a mess of trouble himself, he can sympathize with another bloke’s hard luck.

  Of course I was in real trouble. For the past week I’d been trying to find a good badminton racket, but there just weren’t any available. And the club tournament was only a month or so away. It was a simply hellish spot to be in but I’d been carrying on as well as I could, keeping the old top lip stiff and smiling when it hurt.

  That’s why I was able to understand poor Pointdexter’s condition.

  And I decided that I simply couldn’t forsake the chap. I’d look him up, find out what was troubling him and give him a good old-fashioned fight talk.

  But I didn’t get around to it for a couple of weeks. I had worries of my own and it wasn’t until I found a decent racket that I was able to put my mind to anything. Then, of course, I thought of Pointdexter right away.

  A couple of weeks had passed and he hadn’t been at the club in that time. No one had seen him around at any of his old haunts, so one morning I grabbed a cab and drove out to his home, which is one of those big rambling brownstone mansions on the Lake Shore Drive.

  The butler opened the door.

  “What say?” I said, tossing him my hat.

  “Good morning, sir,” he said. He was a white haired old fellow, named Mudkins. He opened the door hesitantly. “Won’t you come in?”

  THE hallway was gloomy and dark and there was a peculiar odor in the air. From the hallway I could see the vast drawing room to my right, with its heavy black furniture and through the high archway of this room the library was visible, looking just too deuced intellectual for my taste, with its dusty old leather-bound books reaching from floor to ceiling.

  I never liked Pointdexter’s home. I couldn’t figure out why he lived in the creepy old place, when he could afford a snappy penthouse overlooking the Lake.

  Mudkins was looking at me rather nervously.

  “Is the old boy at home?” I asked.

  “Yes, Master William is in his room,” Mudkins said, “but he hasn’t been seeing anyone for the past few weeks. I’m not sure—”

  “He’ll see me,” I said, slipping out of my topcoat. “I just won’t stand for any nonsense. What does he mean shutting himself away from his friends like this? It’s not healthy. I’ll drag him down to the club for a bit of a work-out. Do him good.”

  “I do hope you can,” Mudkins said worriedly. “I’ll go up and tell him you’re here.”

  “Don’t bother, I know my way around.”

  I trotted up the wide steps to the second floor. The hall was dark and gloomy and the framed ancestors of the Pointdexter clan frowned down on me from the wall as I strode along to Billy’s room. The funny odor was stronger now and I didn’t like it. I decided Mudkins must be having liver and onions for breakfast.

  I reached Pointdexter’s room and rapped briskly on the solid oak door. There was no sound from inside for several minutes. Then his voice sounded irritably.

  “Who is it?”

  “Open up, old fellow,” I called out. “You’re in for a pleasant surprise. It’s Marmaduke.”

  He evidently didn’t catch my name for he shouted, “for God’s sake go away!”

  “Tut! Tut!” I said reprovingly.

  “Where are the gracious old Pointdexter manners?” I rapped again.

  Finally I heard his footsteps and then the door was jerked open.

  “What do you want?” he cried.

  I was slightly startled at his appearance. He was wearing an old stained smoking jacket and his shirt looked as if he hadn’t changed it in days. There was a three or four day growth of beard on his face and his hair was hanging in his eyes. And I didn’t like the light in his eye. Too feverish.

  “Greetings,” I said. “You look a mess, old chap. If you’re trying to look picturesque you’re overdoing it.”

  He glared at me.

  “What difference does it make what I look like?”

  I shook my head sadly. Pointdexter had once been the nattiest member of our group. We were always trying to steal his ties. This breakdown was disillusioning.

  “Come, come now,” I said, “one can’t just let one’s self go to seed, can one? One has one’s appearance to think of, hasn’t one? One must—”

  “For God’s sake,” Pointdexter cried
, “stop babbling about ‘one’ this and ‘one’ that. What do you want, anyway?”

  His tone was a bit sharp. I decided I would have to deal firmly with him. After all it was for his good.

  “I want to talk to you,” I said, fixing him with a cool steady gaze.

  He misinterpreted my expression. “Stop goggling like a fish and go away. I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Yes you do,” I said. “You just don’t know your own bind.”

  He stared warily at me for an instant and then he ran a hand distractedly through his hair. His shoulders slumped wearily.

  “Come on in,” he muttered and opened the door wide.

  I walked into his room. The shutters were drawn and the only light was streaming from a pair of wall sockets. There was a huge desk in one corner piled high with thick books bound in black leather. And then I saw what was causing the unpleasant odor. There was a bunsen burner on the desk and above it hung a cauldron from which a murky yellow smoke streamed upward.

  The smoke was harsh, bitter and sulphurous. It hung about the room in gloomy clouds. I coughed and peered at Pointdexter.

  “Why don’t you open a window?” I asked.

  “If you find it unpleasant here you can always leave,” he said.

  THAT was true and it made me feel better.

  I glanced around. Against one wall there was a lab bench covered with sheets of paper on which were scrawled strange characters and designs. Another bunsen burner was blazing brightly there under a small porcelain beaker filled with a burbling green mess. The whole set-up was gloomy and mysterious.

  I waved a hand at the books and chemical apparatus.

  “What goes?” I asked. “Are you studying to be a mad scientist?”

  Pointdexter had slumped down in a deep chair and he was lighting a stubby black pipe. He stared at me through the swirling drifts of smoke.

  “Perhaps I am,” he said quietly. There was a queer look in his eyes.

  “Pull yourself together, old chap,” I said sharply. “You’re letting yourself go to pot. It won’t do at all. What you need is a good dose of sunshine and fresh air. After all,” I said cheerfully, “things are never as black as they look. Supposing you tell your Uncle Marmaduke all about this trouble of yours.”