Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  D’Artagnan glanced about the large, desk-filled room.

  “What kind of work is done here?” he asked. He was obviously not impressed with the surroundings.

  “We add figures,” Phillip explained apologetically.

  “All day?” D’Artagnan demanded. “Do you mean that grown men spend their days in this airless coop doing nothing but adding figures. It is incredible.”

  Phillip Poincare had always known subconsciously that his work was dull and unimportant, but somehow hearing it from D’Artagnan’s lips brought it home with vivid force.

  But he didn’t have time to think of that any longer for, from the corner of his eye, he saw the portly, red-faced form of Mr. Harker steaming across the floor toward his desk.

  “This is my superior,” he explained nervously to the musketeers. “W—we musn’t do anything to anger him.”

  “Reminds me of an innkeeper I knew in Gascony,” Athos observed thoughtfully. “I remember very well the day they hung him. Horse thieving, I think.”

  Mr. Harker came to an impressive stop before Phillip’s desk.

  “Good morning, Mr. Harker,” Phillip said. “I’m sorry I was late.”

  Mr. Harker ignored the apology. His outraged gaze raked over the nonchalant musketeers and swung hotly back to Phillip.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. His voice was cold and angry. “This is a business office, not a minstrel show. Who are these men?”

  “—er—friends of mine,” Phillip answered. “I—I just wanted to show them the office. They’re from—out-of town.”

  “They look like they’re from an asylum,” Harker said witheringly. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers and his abdomen protruded belligerently. “Get them out of here at once,” he snapped. “I’ll talk to you about this later.”

  Athos tapped Mr. Harker on the shoulder.

  “Have you ever been in Gascony?” he asked.

  “What? No, of course not.”

  “Uncommon resemblance,” Athos muttered. He shook his head thoughtfully.

  “Resemblance to whom?” Harker demanded. He seemed slightly confused by the sudden twist in the conversation.

  “You have an amazing likeness to a horse thief I saw hung there recently,” Athos said. He peered closely, suspiciously at Harker. “Are you sure you’ve never been in Gascony?” he persisted.

  Harker’s face reddened in rage. The veins at his temples throbbed visibly.

  “A wise guy, eh?” he shouted.

  Aramis had quietly drawn his sword while Athos was talking to Harker. There was a puckish, mischievous twinkle in his eyes as he gently laid the flat of the blade against Harker’s protruding stomach. Harker was so convulsed with apopletic rage that he was unaware of the sword’s pressure against his vest.

  “You’ll suffer for this, Poincare,” he shouted. “It might cost you your job. This is no laughing matter.”

  AS HE finished speaking Aramis flicked his sword downward and two buttons from Harker’s vest dropped to the floor.

  His vest spread open and a tuft of white shirt emerged.

  Harker glared angrily at his exposed shirt and then hastily shoved it back into place.

  “You—you young whippersnapper!” he cried. “I’ll have the law on you for this.”

  D’Artagnan chuckled and leaned back against Phillip’s desk, while Athos slapped a hand against his thigh and smilingly regarded Harker’s outburst.

  “It is only a prank,” D’Artagnan said grinning.

  “You aren’t going to beg off that easily,” Harker fumed. “I’ll have the whole lot of you locked up.” He glared contemptuously at their costumes and a sarcastic smile touched his full lips. “It’s about the sort of thing one would expect from wearers of those uniforms. The Frenchmen were too busy with schoolboy pranks to fight the Nazis. They’re fine for wearing uniforms and swords but they leave the fighting to men. Well, I think I’ll make an example of you. This prank won’t seem so funny when you’re behind bars.”

  Aramis smiled at D’Artagnan and Athos.

  “Methinks I see the shadow of the Bastille in the distance,” he murmured

  D’Artagnan’s face was white with anger.

  “Methinks I hear the braying of an ass,” he said, looking at Harker.

  Harker wheeled on Phillip.

  “If you want your job Poincare you’d better have a plausible explanation ready for this when I talk to you tonight. I’ve been altogether too decent with you. I can see now that I am going to have to take disciplinary measures.”

  Phillip had done a little thinking since Harker had started railing at the musketeers. He had thought of himself and his job and the mental humiliation he endured in keeping it. And he felt suddenly sick of himself.

  “I have no explanation, Mr. Harker,” he said. “Not for you at least. These men are my friends, and that is sufficient explanation for their actions as far as I’m concerned.”

  “That’s dangerous talk, Poincare,” Harker said warningly.

  Phillip studied Harker for a moment and he seemed to see him for the first time as he was—a fat, bullying coward with his heel on the neck of those who couldn’t fight back. Phillip smiled. For some reason he felt a wonderful sense of release and elation. He realized, with a touch of wonder, that slavery was not only a thing of chains and fetters and that freedom meant more than mere physical freedom. Mental and spiritual freedom were the important things to any man who was worthy of that title.

  His smiling silence brought a flush of blood to Harker’s cheeks.

  “Wipe that smile off your face,” he snarled. He advanced threateningly toward Phillip; his meaty fists clenched.

  Phillip’s first reaction was to retreat. He took a step backward, not through fear but rather uncertainty. At that instant his eyes met D’Artagnan’s and he saw the musketeer was regarding him sadly, pityingly.

  Phillip stopped and squared his shoulders. He knew what he had to do and he realized he should have done it years ago.

  Harker took another step forward and Phillip doubled up his fist and drove it squarely into his soft, protruding midriff.

  Harker gasped. His face turned a sickly white, then a dull, spotted green. He staggered back and doubled up, his hands clutching at his stomach.

  D’Artagnan slapped Phillip on the back. “Well done,” he said.

  Harker collapsed into a chair and his flabby face was damp with perspiration. “You’re through, Poincare,” he said in a strangling voice. “You’re fired. Do you hear? Get out!”

  “You’re a little late,” Phillip said. “I quit ten seconds ago!”

  Outside in the street a few minutes later Phillip found his new-found confidence waning. After all, a man had to do something to keep body and soul together.

  “Well, what now?” D’Artagnan asked.

  “That’s just what I was wondering.” Phillip answered, frowning. He glanced at the musketeer’s picturesque uniforms. “The first thing we have to do is to get you some less conspicuous clothes. Then we’ll go back to the apartment and talk this thing over.”

  CHAPTER VI

  WHEN they reached Phillip’s apartment a few hours later, the musketeers carried bulky packages containing their uniforms under their arms and they were attired in the more conventional, but less picturesque attire of the twentieth century.

  D’Artagnan had chosen a soft tweed and it fitted his lean supple figure with careless ease. Except for his long, curling brown hair he could have passed for a successful advertising executive. Athos wore a classic pin stripe in black, but Aramis, for some reason, had selected a gaudy plaid that fitted his round body without a wrinkle.

  Phillip opened the door and stepped into his room. The first thing he noticed was that the radio was on full blast, but the second fact that struck him almost took his breath away.

  The room was empty.

  Porthos was gone!

  “Well,” he said, weakly.

  D’Artagna
n glanced about the room worriedly. He looked into the closets and bathroom but there was no sign of the huge musketeer whom they had left a few hours before.

  “Where could he have gone?” D’Artagnan asked.

  “Just a minute,” Phillip said. He picked up the phone and dialed Central station. When the desk sergeant’s voice came over the wire, Phillip cleared his throat nervously.

  “I want to report a missing person,” he explained. “He’s a—er—stranger in the city and I’m afraid he might be lost. He’s a big fellow and he’s wearing a rather strange costume.”

  “Go on!” the sergeant’s voice was suddenly interested. “What kind of a costume?”

  “An early French outfit,” Phillip said. “Cloak and sword, high boots and baldric. You won’t be able to miss him.”

  “HI say we won’t,” the sergeant’s voice sounded grim. “He’s behind bars this minute, where he belongs.”

  “What!” gasped Phillip. “What’s the charge?”

  “Disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, intoxication, resisting arrest—shall I go on?”

  “No,” Phillip said weakly. “I get the general idea.”

  “If you say you know him,” the sergeant said, “You’d better get down here right away.”

  “I’ll be right down,” Phillip said. He hung up the phone slowly. He was stunned.

  “What is the trouble?” demanded D’Artagnan.

  “Porthos has managed to get himself in trouble with the police,” Phillip explained worriedly.

  “Ah! the gendarmes!” Athos cried. “Comrades, we will need our swords for this task. We must rescue Porthos.”

  “No,” Phillip said. “Swords won’t help. I’ll get him out. You wait here. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  “I had better come, too,” D’Artagnan said. “Maybe I can be of help.”

  “All right,” Phillip said. “Come along.” He turned to Athos and Aramis. “Don’t leave here until we return.”

  With D’Artagnan at his heels he hurried down the steps.

  At the Central Police station they found the desk-sergeant grim-faced and unpleasant.

  “So you’re the friends of that big nut, are you?” the sergeant snapped, glaring from D’Artagnan to Phillip. “He put six of our men on the sick list for the next two weeks when they tried to bring him in. It took two riot squads to calm him down. What the hell is the matter with him anyway?”

  Phillip mopped his brow and glanced fleetingly at D’Artagnan.

  “I’m not quite sure, sergeant,” he said. “Can we see him and talk to him for a moment?”

  “O.K. He’s quieted down now.”

  “Where did you pick him up?” Phillip asked.

  “At the main studio of the Federated Broadcasting Company.”

  “Federated Broad—” Phillips’ voice trailed off weakly. “What was he doing there?”

  “Trying to tear the place down,” the sergeant answered, laconically. “I tell you he’s nuttier than a fruit cake.”

  PHILLIP swallowed and glanced nervously at D’Artagnan. What had gotten into the huge Porthos he couldn’t even imagine, but there didn’t seem to be any point to asking more questions of the sergeant.

  A turnkey led them to the lockup. Porthos was standing at the door of a cell, his huge hands gripping the bars and there was a bewildered, confused expression on his broad, homely face. One of his eyes was a gorgeous purple and his lower lip was split. His baldric and cloak were ripped in a number of places. The sword that hung at his waist was gone.

  “You got about ten minutes,” the turnkey said, leaving.

  D’Artagnan stepped close to the barred door.

  “Don’t worry, Comrade,” he whispered. “We’ll get you out of here if we have to tear the building down.” Porthos looked at D’Artagnan and Phillip with sad, mournful eyes, but he said nothing.

  Phillip asked the question he had been dreading.

  “What happened, Porthos?”

  Porthos shrugged his massive shoulders and his eyes were downcast. “I am not quite sure,” he answered, rubbing one hand over his forehead. He looked up suddenly and his eyes were flashing. “But I only did what any gentleman of honor would have done under the circumstances. And for that the gendarmes come in swarms and swarms and drag me off here in a screeching tumbrill. Mon Dieu, I have never seen so many gendarmes.”

  “But what did you do?” Phillip persisted.

  “It was not my fault,” Porthos said stiffly. “I have learned that I acted hastily, that I acted, perhaps, foolishly, but how was I to know?”

  “How were you to know what?” Phillip asked.

  “That it was all make-believe,” Porthos said moodily.

  “Start at the beginning,” Phillip said. He wished frantically that Porthos would tell his story and tell it quickly, so that he could start figuring on how to get him out of jail, if that were at all possible.

  “When you left I turned on the little box that makes music,” Porthos said.

  “You mean after we left the apartment this morning you turned on the radio?” Phillip asked. He was bewildered by Porthos’ irrelevant digression. He had demonstrated the radio to the musketeers the previous evening, but . . .

  “I turned on the little box that makes the music,” Porthos repeated, glowering.

  “Yes, go on,” Phillip said helplessly. He realized that Porthos was grimly determined to tell his story in his own way.

  “But I do not hear the music,” Porthos said. “Instead I hear voices. I listen carefully. One voice is that of a woman and the other is that of a man. They are arguing. The woman has jewels and the man wants her to give them to him. He is a scoundrel. I could tell it from his voice.” Porthos’ eyes were stormy as his mind flashed back to the villainy of that voice from the ether. “I shouted at her not to give him the jewels,” he continued, “but she could not hear me. Anyway, she did not need my advice. She knew the man for the scoundrel he was and ordered him away. But he would not leave. They were alone. She was helpless.” Porthos’ voice trembled with rage. “He took them from her by force and left her bound and helpless in a closet. And the river waters were rising,” Porthos cried darkly, his voice breaking with the heat of his emotion.

  “What river?” Phillip asked.

  “I don’t know,” Porthos shrugged. “They didn’t say. But the water was rising on the bamboo foundations of the little hut and this poor girl was helpless. The scoundrel had taken leave with the jewels.”

  D’Artagnan had followed Porthos’ narrative with tense interest.

  “What happened then, Comrade?” he demanded.

  “Another voice came from the little box,” Porthos said, frowning.

  “And what did this new voice say?”

  “I didn’t understand. It was all about soap,” Porthos said.

  “Soap?”

  “Yes,” Porthos nodded. “This new voice talked interminably about a soap he called sleezy-suds, that’s all I could make out.”

  “But the girl!” D’Artagnan cried. “She will be dead by this time.”

  PHILLIP put a hand to his forehead wearily. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He suspected that he might do both.

  “Go on with your story, Porthos,” he said quietly.

  “While this man talks about soap,” Porthos continued, “I buckle on my sword. My blood is stirred. I cannot stand idle while villainy goes unpunished and damsels need the protection of my blade.”

  “Well spoken!” D’Artagnan cried. “Go on,” said Phillip.

  “The voice suddenly stops talking about soap.” Porthos said excitedly. “The voice exclaims, ‘who will save Mary Malloy?’ I draw my sword,” Porthos cried, gripping the bars in his excitement. “I say, ‘I will. Where can I find this villain?’ ”

  “Yes?” D’Artagnan breathed.

  “The voice,” Porthos said, “answers me. It says, ‘This adventure took place in the central studios of the Federated Broadcasting Co., the corners of La
ke and Michigan.’ ”

  “I think I know the rest,” Phillip said. “You went down to the Federated studios to rescue Mary Malloy, didn’t you?”

  “But of course,” Porthos said. “It was what any red-blooded son of France would have done.”

  “And things didn’t turn out so well, did they?”

  “No,” Porthos said, shaking his big head sadly, “things did not turn out well at all. No one seemed to understand what I was talking about. A man laughed at me. I drew my sword. And then the gendarmes came, by the dozens.” Porthos sighed. “I have learned since that the whole thing was a make-believe play.”

  Phillip patted his shoulder gently. “I’ll talk to the sergeant,” he said. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “It is all so confusing,” Porthos said wearily. “I wish I were back in my quiet France.”

  Phillip went to look for the sergeant. He didn’t know what he was going to say, but he knew he couldn’t tell the truth of the matter. If he tried to explain that Porthos, a musketeer from the eighteenth century, had gone berserk listening to the fictional tribulations of a heroine in a radio soap drama, he would wind up behind bars himself.

  He found the sergeant at his desk, grimly studying his reports.

  “Well,” he said, looking up, “you’ve seen your friend now. Maybe you’d be good enough to tell me what’s wrong with him.”

  “Er—he’s very sorry about the trouble he caused,” Phillip said.

  “Well that’s fine,” the sergeant said sarcastically. “He’s sorry so we’ll just open the doors and let him go, we will not!”

  “He lost his head. You see,” Phillip said, thinking desperately, “he’s a radio actor.”

  “I thought there was something wrong with him,” the sergeant muttered.

  “And he forgot himself. Actors are like that sometimes. They become so absorbed in their parts that they just aren’t themselves at all.”

  “That’s no excuse for a man behaving like Tarzan of the Apes,” the sergeant said. “But as long as it wasn’t anything criminal he did, we can set bail for him. Are you willing to take him into your custody until his case comes up?”