Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  Ferdie patted his shoulder. There was a fine hammy film of, moisture in his eyes. “Never mind, Reggie. I’ve become a silly ass, boring my friends with old stories. A joke, a fool, a tiresome old twaddle-monger.” He shook his head. “I didn’t plan it this way.”

  And with that he wandered off in the direction of the pool room, sticking Reggie for eight gin slings.

  But that didn’t bother Reggie. He had an enormous problem on his mind, and this mind of his was not constructed to deal with problems of any sort. He looked cautiously around the oak-paneled bar room. Empty. Good, he thought warily. No one around to toss voices about like bean-bags.

  Then the voice said clearly, “I told you there would be no stories about Uncle Sisyphus. You had better get used to believing me, my friend.”

  “Now see here, who are you?” Reggie demanded.

  The bartender looked up at him without much interest. Young Reggie was, in his opinion, a likeable idiot whose normal, everyday behavior would have thrown a psychiatric convention into a tizzy. He wasn’t a bit surprised that Reggie was talking to himself. It figures, he thought, and went back to his racing form.

  “Who are you?” Reggie demanded again.

  “I am Der.”

  “Where?” Reggie looked around the empty room and scratched his head. The pronunciation of the last word had a Brooklyn aroma, but he didn’t see how that would help solve his problem. Reggie knew no one from Brooklyn. He didn’t know where Brooklyn was, as a matter of fact.

  “Der is my name,” the voice said sharply.

  Reggie studied the walls, the floor, the top of the bar.

  “Sorry, old bean, but I don’t see it,” he said. This was a clever way to handle it, he thought. Get the chap on the run.

  “Stop acting like a fool,” the voice said. “My name is spelled D E R.”

  “Oh, I get it now,” Reggie said, “I thought you were saying ‘there’.” He slapped his palm on the bar and giggled uncontrollably. “You see, old chap, I thought that—”

  “I know what you thought, you tittering half-wit,” the voice said.

  Reggie was undisturbed by this boorish comment. “Well, we have it all straightened out, at any rate,” he said. “But there’s one thing puzzling me. Where in the deuce are you?”

  “I am inside your head,” the voice said.

  Reggie thought this over, chewing pensively on his lip. It was an intriguing idea. Bloke inside his head, chatting away to him as if they were at a cocktail party.

  “Well, well,” he said. “You comfortable in there?”

  “It’s roomy and drafty. You have a fifth, no, a tenth-rate sort of mind, even by Earth standards.”

  “Clear out if you don’t like it,” Reggie said.

  “I can’t, for a time,” the voice said. “Now listen to me closely. I’ve been inside your consciousness for three weeks. In one more week I must leave. And you must take me to the place from which I will depart. Do you understand?”

  “Where do you have to go?”

  “I do not know yet. I will tell you in good time.”

  “I see.” Reggie thought everything over again, then shrugged. And this bloke, in spite of his bad manners, didn’t seem like a bad egg. After all, he’d put in three weeks upstairs without sounding off, and this showed character. Reggie knew his own mind pretty well, and it was no place he liked to be cooped up in for very long.

  “Okay, Der,” he said. “But how’d you get in, and all the rest of it? Pretty good trick, I’d say.”

  “I am from Mars.”

  “Oh, that tips the old hand. Simple for a Martian, eh?”

  “Quite simple,” Der said. There was a definite strain in his voice now, as if he were maintaining his calm with a mighty effort of will. “You are not surprised? None of this dumbfounds you, explodes your previous insular concepts?”

  “No, I take people pretty much as they come,” Reggie said modestly. He glanced at his watch. “Look, old bean, I’ve got to dash along. You’ll come, of course?”

  “Of course,” Der said. “I must go with you, don’t you understand?”

  “Oh, I get your point. Rum thing. I’m meeting an awful fathead. Just pay no attention to him. But there’s a lovely girl you may enjoy.”

  “I’m not interested in our friends or activities,” Der said, returning to his cold and haughty manner. “I shall retire into silence until I have use for you.”

  “Righto. Nestle down in the old sponge and make yourself comfortable.”

  Reggie started to leave, strangely buoyed up by this marvelous development, but his secret was too juicy to keep under wraps. He winked at the bartender, and beckoned him to come closer.

  “Look, don’t spread this around, but I’ve got a Martian in my head,” he said, beaming proudly. “Keep it mum, eh? Want to tell Ferdie about it myself.”

  The bartender nodded slowly. “You put an ice pack on your head, that’ll get rid of that Martian. They hate the cold.”

  “Hate the cold, eh? Is that a fact?”

  “Fact,” the bartender said, and returned to his racing form. He stared at the paper for a few moments, his lips moving slowly, and then he crumpled it up and threw it on the floor. Then he beat his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Martian in his head,” he muttered. “Is any job worth it?” he said, staring at Reggie’s slender figure as it moved gracefully through the corridor that led to the street.

  REGGIE caught a cab in front of the club and was ringing Sari’s doorbell ten minutes later. He was whistling cheerily now, tapping out an accompaniment to the melody with the toe of a glossy black Oxford, his mood sunny and benign. It had been a jolly kind of day, all things considered. Lots of good talk with Ferdie, a few bracing drinks and now Sari. There’d been something else too, something rather exciting, but Reggie couldn’t remember what it had been. Well, no mind. . .

  Sari opened the door and he kissed her fondly on the forehead. She was an amazingly pretty girl with red hair, gray-green eyes, and a lovely figure.

  “I can’t believe you’re on time,” she said. “It’s just not like you.”

  Reggie waved a hand modestly. “Blokes at the club call me steady Reggie now,” he said. “Responsible fellow, they say. Good chap to ask about investments and what to do with wild younger sons.”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” Sari said, smiling at him. “Well, do come in. I want you to meet my Uncle Ed. He’s all the family I’ve got, so I want you two to get along beautifully.”

  Uncle Ed was standing by the fireplace in Sari’s elegantly furnished living room. He was a lean, whipcordish man in his middle fifties, with weather-roughened features and cold, stormy gray eyes.

  “Glad to meet Sari’s lucky young man,” he cried, wringing Reggie’s hand and pounding him on the back with sledge-hammer blows. He laughed heartily. “You make her happy, or you’ll have me to reckon with, you young buck.”

  “Is she unhappy?” Reggie said, glancing anxiously at Sari. “Something upset you today?”

  Sari—who knew Reggie very well—smiled and said, “Let’s have a drink, shall we?”

  At this moment, she didn’t want to expose her Uncle to Reggie’s curious logic.

  They all had a drink. Uncle Ed delivered a toast in ringing tones, and then settled down to what was obviously his chief passion in life—talking about himself. He had been a military man for thirty years, he told Reggie, as he strode back and forth before the fireplace as if he were on guard duty in a dangerous jungle outpost. The only life for a man, he claimed. Keeping the flag up and the beggars down, the flash of cold steel in foreign lands, the. tramp of foot soldiers, the thunder of artillery—these were the totems he had revered for thirty years. And now it was over. The old soldier was back to rest at the hearthside. A bayonet wound from Tobruk had been acting up, and he couldn’t fight anymore. This wound, he implied with a total lack of subtlety, was all that had kept him from straightening out the situation in Korea in jig time.

  Finally, he sto
pped and looked at Reggie. “Well, how about yourself?” he asked in his hearty, barracks-room voice. “Army?”

  “Well, no.” Reggie said.

  “Navy?”

  Reggie shook his head.

  “Ah, the Marines, eh?” Uncle Ed said, rubbing his hands. “They were a damned fine bunch of fighting men.”

  “I was in the Coast Guard,” Reggie said.

  “Coast Guard?” Uncle Ed’s voice left no doubt as to what he thought of that. “Well, well,” he said.

  “That’s right. I was an orderly to a Commander.”

  Uncle Ed strangled on his drink. “An orderly?” he said, at last.

  “Yes, he was an awfully good chap,” Reggie said. “The commander, I mean.” He sensed in his woolly way that he was making a bad impression on Uncle Ed. What in the devil did the man want? Victor McLaglen?

  “I see,” Uncle Ed said, peering into his glass. His expression was that of a man who had seen a bug floating there.

  The afternoon drew to a close. Sari was seeing her feminine friends that evening, so Reggie was dismissed for the day with instructions to report the following morning. She came with him to the door and kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t mind Uncle Ed,” she said. “He’s an old fire-eater, and he’s got the idea—from God knows what bad movie—that his mission in life is to protect helpless females. Don’t worry about him, please.”

  “Maybe he’ll be drafted,” Reggie said hopefully. “Well, ta, ta.”

  CABBING to his apartment Reggie was in a gloomy mood. Sari was a delightful girl and he longed to settle down with her in a cozy billet for two. But the prospect of having a trumpeting ass like Uncle Ed around was distinctly bleak. Well, we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it, he decided philosophically.

  Then the voice inside his head sounded once more.

  “You are completely right,” Der said. “This uncle is a real staggering idiot.”

  Reggie was cheered to find this unexpected support. It increased his good opinion of Der. “I knew you’d think so,” he said warmly.

  At home, Reggie felt much better. His man, Clive, made him a nourishing drink, and Reggie settled down in a deep chair with a sigh of contentment.

  “Clive, old bean,” he said, “a dashed funny thing happened to me today.”

  “Yes, sir?” Clive was a tall, balding man with the manners of an earl. He raised his eyebrows and regarded his young master (whom he knew to be an imbecile) with an expression blended of interest and suspicion. He had learned to be wary of the ‘funny’ things that happened to Reggie.

  “It’s difficult to explain,” Reggie went on in a musing tone. “But the fact is I’ve got a Martian inside my head. Not a bad chap, either. Sound, you know.”

  “Yes, sir,” Clive said, after a short pause.

  Reggie felt a burst of affection for the man. There were blokes you could count on, and Clive was one of them. Also the bartender at the club. You gave them a bit of out-of-the-way news and they took it like men. No, ‘Good Gods’ or ‘I says!’ Steady types, that’s what they were. He wondered how Uncle Ed would take news like that. Probably want to shoot the Martian, or hack him to bits. Brag about it afterwards in his club, the bounder.

  “Will that be all?” Clive said.

  “Carry on,” Reggie said, with a languid wave of his hand.

  Reggie’s spirits stayed high until after dinner. And then something occurred which plunged them down to his boots. The door bell sounded, and Clive announced Sari’s Uncle Ed.

  Uncle Ed had two pigskin grips with him, which Clive relieved him of with some hauteur, and Reggie immediately feared the worst.

  And his fears were not groundless.

  “I thought you might put me up until after the wedding,” Uncle Ed said, stripping off his gloves. “Nice little spot you’ve got here, I must say.”

  “Must you?” Reggie muttered.

  Uncle Ed fixed a cold and stormy eye on him. Then he put his hands on his hips. “Sari has told me that your marriage plans have been cancelled unexpectedly on several occasions in the past. She is an innocent and lovable young woman, and doesn’t have my knowledge of the world. She regards these defections of yours as something—ah—whimsical and unimportant. However, I don’t. And I will say this to you now, Reggie. You will marry Sari Saturday morning, as per plan, or you will have me to reckon with. Do you understand?”

  “But of course I’m marrying her,” Reggie protested.

  “Precisely.” Uncle Ed swung his gloves into his open palm and they made an emphatic report in the silence. “I’ve handled things like this before, if I may say so. In less tender spots in the world. We have ways to enforce compliance, we old soldiers. There’s the stake-out on an ant-hill, for one. You wouldn’t like it, Reggie.”

  “Well, of course I wouldn’t,” Reggie said nervously.

  “We’ll say no more about it then,” Uncle Ed said. “Now, please ask your man to show me to my room. I’ll be here to keep an eye on you, remember.”

  Clive took Uncle Ed off and returned a few moments later to find Reggie sunk in a morass of gloom. Clive cleared his throat delicately and said, “If you’ll forgive my saying so, sir, your prospective relative-in-law is not likely to creep into my heart.”

  “Well put,” Reggie said listlessly.

  “He’s a soldier, I gather?”

  “Regular old fire-horse. Held the bridle of Hannibal’s elephant, to hear him tell it. Ghastly fellow.”

  “Hmmmn,” Clive said. “Old soldier, eh?” There was a thoughtful look on his long, intelligent face.

  The wedding was set for Saturday morning at eleven o’clock. Reggie was up at nine, ate a hearty breakfast and then showered and adorned himself in a cutaway jacket, striped trousers and spats. He was in a very jolly mood. After the wedding there would be no need for Uncle Ed’s jailer-like presence, and they would send the old fool packing. He was putting a carnation in his lapel when a knock sounded on his door.

  It was Uncle Ed, impeccably turned out, his mustaches waxed to fine needle-points.

  “Ah, the happy day,” he said, taking a stroll about the room. “I’m glad you’re ready bright and early. We can leave for the church anytime you say.”

  Reggie perceived that Uncle Ed was going to stick to him like a mustard plaster until the jolly old knot was spliced.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Good. I’ll be with you until the ceremony. Moral support, and all that.” He laughed insincerely.

  It was then the blow fell. Der—who had been silent for so long that Reggie had forgotten about him—said in a firm voice, “It is time for you take me to my place of departure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s that?” Uncle Ed asked, looking at Reggie oddly.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,”

  Reggie said. “I’ve got somebody else in my mind.”

  “On your mind, you mean,” Uncle Ed said.

  “No—yes,” Reggie said.

  “We must leave,” Der said. “We have a long trip to make. I have received the coordinates. Our destination is California.” Reggie started nervously. “I say, that’s impossible,” he said.

  “You would prevent me from returning home?”

  “Well, that’s pretty sticky,” Reggie said sympathetically. “You want to go home, eh?”

  “I’m staying right here,” Uncle Ed cried in his parade ground voice. “What gave you the idea I’m going home?”

  “Don’t bother talking to this idiot,” Der said. “You’ll only confuse matters. Now listen carefully: we must leave immediately. Unless you cooperate I will have to be disagreeable. For instance—”

  The voice trailed off and Reggie felt a sudden splitting pressure growing inside his head. “I say!” he cried.

  “Just a sample,” Der said. “Now unless you want your skull plastered about the walls you had better cooperate.”

  The pressure eased inside Reggie’s head, and he put his hands tenderly to his
temples. The old noggin felt like an over-ripe squash, he thought nervously. Uncle Ed was studying him with a frozen little smile. “You’re behaving very curiously,” he said. Still smiling he put a foot on to a chair, rolled up his trouser cuff and removed a thin gleaming knife from a scabbard that was strapped to his leg.

  “Handy gadget,” he said softly, and sauntered toward Reggie. Twirling the deadly little knife in his fingers, he stared clinically at Reggie’s adam’s apple. “Let me make myself perfectly clear,” he said. “Unless you go through with this marriage I shall be forced to cut you into small strips. Do you understand? I don’t approve of men who trifle with the affections of an innocent girl.”

  “Nor do I,” Reggie said stoutly.

  “Let us go,” Der said. “Otherwise I’ll blow your skull open. Quickly now.”

  It was a pretty sour pickle he was in, Reggie thought. If he went on and married Sari he would be the first headless bridegroom in history. But if he tried to take Der to California Uncle Ed would be on him with that frightful pig sticker. It was a decided mess.

  And he had to make up his mind in a hurry. Fortunately, Reggie wasn’t quite bright enough to be afraid. He regarded the prospects of having his head popped open and his throat cut with a sort of whimsical resignation. Had there been no other factors involved, he would have flipped a coin to settle the issue. But there was another factor. The simple business of loyalty. Reggie liked Der and he didn’t like Uncle Ed. Also, Der was a long way from home, a stranger in town, and in a sense he was Reggie’s guest. You just couldn’t be cold to a bloke under those circumstances.

  “I SAY, put that thing away,” Reggie said to Uncle Ed. “I’m planning to marry Sari. Let’s be off to the church, eh?”

  “That’s a wise idea,” Uncle Ed said, bending to replace the stiletto.

  Reggie calmly picked up a heavy silver-backed hair-brush from his dresser and slugged Uncle Ed at the base of the skull. Uncle Ed went down in an unsoldierly sprawl; his body stiffened at once into the posture of attention and held it.

  “Very neat,” Der said. “Now let’s be on your way.”

  “Righto. California, eh? Longish trip, what?”