MY NEPHEW NORVELL

Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only

The wind will listen.

I‘M NOT asking any favors from anybody, and I don’t want any more trouble … not even with that beagle-beaked cashier at the First National Bank. I’m a brokenhearted guy, and all I want is to be left alone. I don’t want to listen to any more cracks about crystal balls or tea-leaves or Ouija boards, and Mrs. McGill can go whistle up a rain-spout for her three weeks’ room-rent. I’ve made up my mind what I’m going to do, and as soon as I can get a refund from the E-Z Payment Gemme Shoppe, I’ll be on my way. Only it does hurt, because there’ll never be another girl but Winifred for me, and I did think the boys at the plant liked me.

But that’s water over the dam now, so don’t get the idea I’m bellyaching. I just want to put my side of the story on the record, that’s all. If, after hearing the true facts, people still want to say it was my fault instead of my nephew Norvell’s, well …

To begin with, I’ve never been much of a family man. I had high hopes, it is true, of becoming one in the reasonably near future, with Winifred and myself as parties of the first and second part, respectively, and to that end I had contracted with the E-Z Payment Gemme Shoppe to pay too many turnips for a sliver of a carat set in what judging by the price must have been U-235. But I’ve never been one to cuddle up to sundry kith and kin. Which is why I was more or less surprised when my landlady, Mrs. McGill, met me at the door as I came home from work one evening, skewered me with a brace of bifocaled gimlets, and said, “Mr. Grady—”

“Mrs. McGill,” I told her, “for once in your errorless life you’re wrong. Go look at your calendar. Today is only the 22nd. My rent is not due.”

“I know that,” said she grimly. “It’s not due till a week from next Friday … at which time I’d admire to have it all, if you please; not half of it and half an excuse. What I wanted to tell you is, your nephew is here.”

“That’s fine.” I said. “That’s just wonder— What? My who is where?”

“Your nephew,” she repeated, “is here.”

“Mrs. McGill,” I said firmly, “it might interest you to learn that I have no nephew.”

“He said he was your nephew,” declared Mrs. McGill, her jaw clamping stubbornly. “And there was every reason for believing him. He acted very peculiar.”

“In such ways,” I suggested, “as picking locks? Or trying on my suits? Did you happen to point out to him my piggy-bank? It’s nice to be helpful, you know.”

“He said—” began Mrs. McGill. But I was on my way upstairs, taking the steps four at a time. Primed to grapple with a sneak thief, I burst into the reconverted linen closet laughingly known as my boudoir … then stopped dead. The room was as empty as a politician’s Fourth of July oration!

Except for one thing. There was a white oblong lying on my bureau. A visiting-card. On it appeared in neat, precise handwriting the cryptic words:

Dear Uncle Joseph;

Sorry I can’t wait. Power running low. Must refill stellium cartridge. Will return later. Affectionately,

Your nephew, Norvell

And on the obverse of the card was the name:

Mr. Norvell Grady Carson

For a full two minutes I stood and stared at the card without grasping its meaning. Then, when I did try to make some sense out of it, I just got more and more confused.

In the first place, being an only child I could not possibly be anyone’s uncle. So far, so good. But granting a mistake had been made, and that this Norvell Carson character had blundered into my digs by accident, there remained a pair of king-sized question-marks. What in blazes did the cockeyed message mean? And how in the ditto of the same conflagration had anyone left my rooming-house without running the gantlet of Mrs. McGill’s omniscient eye?

For she had not seen him leave. That point she made very clear when I confronted her for further information and for explanation.

“Where is he?” she countered my query. “Why, up in your room, of course. Where else would he be? He said—”

“—he was my nephew,” I finished fretfully. “Yes, I know. But he isn’t, and he’s not. Are you sure you didn’t see him leave, Mrs. McGill?”

“Positive!” she said flatly. “I’ve been downstairs all afternoon. I can guarantee he didn’t.—”

“Perhaps the back door?” I suggested.

“He did not leave by the back door,” she declared, “nor by the front door, nor by the coal chute or any window.” She glared at me as if she were beginning to wonder where I’d hidden the body. “Mr. Grady, I want no funny business around here, if you please. I operate a respectable rooming-house for genteel people.”

“The operation,” I told her disgustedly, “was a success. But the patient died. Very well, Mrs. McGill. He didn’t go. He’s upstairs sleeping in my shoebag. Let’s skip it.”

And I went back upstairs to dress for dinner and my regular Wednesday wooing session with Winifred.

But my date with Winifred that night was a sales-booster for the aspirin cartel. We went to a movie, and in the newsreel saw the latest on the strike situation. That set me off and, innocently enough, on the way home I started yapping about my own grandiose plans for the future of Joe Grady.

I blew off a lot of steam about working for others, and about how some day I was going to branch out and work for myself—on a project or projects unspecified for the simple reason that I had nothing particular in mind. I was just iffing, you understand; just playing a little game of isn’t-it-going-to-be-wonderful-when?

But I caught Winifred in an oh-so-you-think-more-of-your-own-selfish-self-than-of-me mood, and before I knew what was going on, my chatty little monologue became a discussion and the discussion turned into a redhot argument.

Of course it ended up with me explaining that I hadn’t meant a word I said, and Winifred sobbing spots into the lapel of my blue serge suit, and me putting the ring back on her finger again, and her goodnight kisses were something out of this world even if they were a bit salty. But I was definitely in the glumps when I got home. And things were not improved by the presence of Mrs. McGill downstairs awaiting my entry.

“Mr. Grady,” she began without preamble, “I am what is known as a long-suffering woman—”

“Insufferable,” I corrected, “is the adjective. But leave us not quibble. You were saying?”

“I am an insufferable and honest woman, and I run a respectable rooming-house for genteel people—”

“So far,” I said, “the script is familiar. Get to the point, Mrs. McGill.”

“The point,” she stated coldly, “is that man. Your nephew. He’s still here.”

I sighed. “Mrs. McGill, I told you before that I have no nephew. Moreover, if he’s in my room it must be again … not still. He was not there this evening when you told me—”

“He was,” declared my landlady blandly. “You yourself admitted he was sleeping in your shoebag—though how on earth a body can be comfortable in a shoebag, I don’t know. But that’s no affair of mine. What concerns me is that there is another lodger under this roof paying no rent. I’ll thank you to remember that your room is rented on the basis of single occupancy. If anyone shares it with you, your rent will be raised accordingly … and at once. Furthermore—”

I hit the staircase on the double. My room was at the head of the stairs. There was a crack of light showing under the door, and I had not left a light on when I left before sundown. It was obvious, therefore, that someone was in the room, but when I turned the knob I found the door securely locked. This was a puzzler because I had the only key to that lock, Mrs. McGill having lost hers many months before. With increasing wonderment I inserted my key, opened the door, and stepped into the room. As I did so, a young man turned from my work, table, stared at me with friendly, happy eyes, then hurried forward to greet me with outstretched hand.

“Uncle Joe!” he cried. “Uncle Joe, I’m glad to meet you at last!”

Now, I know what you’re going to say I should have done at this point. When a guy enters a locked room to find there an utter stranger who claims to be someone who couldn’t possibly exist, there are only two possibilities open to him. He should shout for either (a) the bobbies, or (b) the booby-hatch.

But I did neither of these. I was too numb at first. And by the time the initial shock had worn off, I was surprised to find myself liking this guy!

That’s right … liking him! Don’t ask me why; I’m a stranger here myself. He just appealed to me, that’s all. 1 had a weird sort of feeling about him. He reminded me of someone I knew, or at least someone I’d seen before. Of course, there’s nothing strange about that. Lots of people: look like lots of people; in fact, anybody who doesn’t look like somebody isn’t much of a person.

Anyhow, I took an instant and instinctive liking to this kid. In view of which it wasn’t so much a matter of getting him out of there as it was of finding out how he got in, who he was, where he came from, and what this was all about.

As soon as I could reclaim my rapidly-being-mangled paw, I shot these questions at him. He took them all grinning, and answered in his own way. Which was, I might mention, only a shade less confusing than archaic Choctaw as spoken by a tongue tied Swede through an alum-soaked gaff.

“Who am I?” he chuckled. “Why, I’m your nephew, of course. Your nephew Norvell.”

“That,” I conceded cautiously, “is fine. Just fine. And your—uh—your mother? How’s she?”

“Oh, fine, fine!” he said heartily. “Of course she had her usual cold this winter. Bit of lunar laryngitis, you know. We tried to talk her into taking the Martian waters, but she’s a bit old-fashioned. She will go to the moon every season, though nobody who is anybody goes there any more. It’s become so second-rate, you know—”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I agreed, edging away from him a trifle. “Very old hat, the moon; that’s what I always say.”

Norvcll nodded. “Oh, very! But, Uncle Joe, I must say I’m surprised to find you in these—” He glanced around the room in obvious bewilderment mingled with a touch of distaste—“in these surroundings? I had quite a time locating you. Wore out three stelliums, not to mention blowing a diatemporic right in the middle of the Restoration. Why are you living here? Where are your mansions?”

“Mansions?” I repeated dazedly.

“Why, yes. The one on Long Island, the one out west in —what was the name of that old State? Oh, yes, now I remember!—California. And the one in Bermuda?”

“Oh, my mansions!” I laughed feebly, backing toward the door. “You mean my mansions? For a moment I thought you said—uh—mansions! Why, I left them in an old safe-deposit box somewhere, and mislaid the key. Very careless of me … very. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go look for it—”

But he was younger than I, and moved faster. He stepped between me and my avenue of escape, and eyed me with a worried frown.

“Now, wait a minute,” he said thoughtfully. “There must be some mistake. You are Joe Grady, aren’t you?”

“Well, I thought I was. But we won’t make an issue of it. If there’s someone else you’d rather have me be—”

“Joseph T. Grady? Born November 26th, 1916, in New Haven, Connecticut?”

“Guilty as charged, Your Hon—I mean, yes. That’s right.”

“Educated at Public School Number 131, eight years; Woodrow Wilson High School, four years; M.I.T., four years?”

“Check, check, check.”

“Employed by General Engineering Corporation, 1938; volunteered, Army of the United States, 1940?”

“Check, check.”

“Honorably discharged from Army and returned to occupation, 1945? Married in Sandusky, Ohio, 1947?”

“Check,” I began, “ch—” Then the doubletake hit me. “Hey, wait a minute! What’s that again? Married where? When?”

“Sandusky,” he repeated, “Ohio. April 19th, 1947?” He glanced at me anxiously. “Why? Is there something wrong? I tried to be very careful—”

“Oh, no!” I moaned. “Everything’s perfectly ducky. Except for a few minor details.”

“Such as?”

“Well, merely that I’ve never set foot in Sandusky, Ohio, in my life … that I’m not married yet … and it won’t be April 1947, until sometime next spring.”

He stared at me, a flush of the most abject humiliation climbing slowly to his cheeks. He murmured, “Oh, no! What a frightful boner! The transtemporal locator; it must have short-circuited.”

“Check,” I said caustically, “and double-check.” I was beginning to get just a little irked with his screwball lingo. “Also the hutsut must have r awl stoned on the rill era! Would you mind getting down to facts, chum? Who are you, and where did you come from?”

“Who?” he repeated despondently. “Why, I’m just who I said I was, your nephew Norvell … and I’ve come to visit you from the year 2003, A.D.”

Opportunity, the maxim books tell us, only knocks once. That’s a blatant falsehood. In my case, opportunity whaled the living daylights out of my portals twice … and I didn’t have the sense to respond.

Not that I’m bellyaching, you understand. I’m just trying to explain how I stumbled into this mess. I don’t expect the police to believe me, and Winifred has made her view painfully clear. But I want to make someone believe I didn’t commit forgery, and I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles I did not at any time sneak a look at the company’s research records.

I missed my first chance to keep my nose clean when I failed to holler for the law the minute I caught my alleged nephew in my room. I gave Opportunity its second boot in the puss when, upon hearing his whacky claim of having originated from the Twenty-first Century, I didn’t catch on. Those boys down at the plant are great practical jokers, but you’d think they would come through with an explanation when the gag went haywire, wouldn’t you?

The stinkers! And I’m a trusting soul …

Yes, I’m a trusting soul. When my visitor gave out with his declaration about having come to me from the year 2003, I didn’t make the obvious retort, “Oh, yeah? Wait here a minute, chum. I’ve got to see a doc about some manacles.” No, I just stood there with my jowls drooping while my nephew Norvell proceeded to drive home his fantastic premise.

“I know it’s hard to believe, Uncle Joe,” he understated, “but it’s the truth. I am your nephew. Great-grandnephew, to be more accurate. And I did come back here out of what is to you the future. But I felt sure you’d understand, being the genius you are. I couldn’t write the biography without your help. And of course our family owes its present fame and fortune—everything it possesses—to you.”

I found words at last. Two words remembered from a childhood love for H. G. Wells’ futuristic novels.

“Time travel!” I croaked. “Time travel!”

“That’s right,” beamed Norvell. “I’m the first man to accomplish it … though it seems my experiment has been only a modified success. I meant to meet you some years from now. About 1955 or so. Right at the height of your success.” And he smiled shyly. “I hoped you would be proud of me, Uncle Joe.”

“Oh, I am!” I said hastily. “I am! Nice going, my boy. But what’s all this about my genius creating the family fame and fortune? Mansions, vacations to the moon—”

“Eh? Why, your inventions, of course!”

“My … inventions?”

“Yes. The Hertzian modifier, the countergrav tube, the hypatomic motor … all those things that made spaceflight possible.” He stared at me in some dismay. “Don’t tell me you haven’t started working on your inventions yet?”

I said feebly, “Don’t look now, my delirium nephew, but you’re barking up the wrong tremens. Not only have I not started working on those polysyllabic monstrosities you prate of, but I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re raving about. I wouldn’t know a Hertzian modifier if I saw one walking down Fifth Avenue in a cutaway coat. What is it, anyway?”

“Why, it’s this,” he said, taking from his pocket a slim, stylus-like pen, and with it scribbling a diagram on a scrap of paper as he talked. “An instrument to convert the long and short communication-band waves into the even shorter Hertzian wave range, making possible inter planetary conversation with normal radio equipment.” He tossed me the scrap of paper. “It’s very simple, really. Any schoolchild can build one. But I suppose all great inventions look simple once they’ve been discovered.”

I stared at his schematic with mounting excitement. He was right. It was a fantastically simple instrument he had diagrammed. Yet in its very simplicity lay its cunning. Its basic concept, was a radical departure from every line of current thought and research. I could see where engineers working along more orthodox lines might knock themselves out for decades without finding this preposterously easy solution. So simple, yet so obscure, was the mystery of the wheel to primitive man … the power latent in steam to the alchemists of the Middle Ages … electronics to Victorian savants.

I said, “Hey, this thing should work!”

“Should work?” repeated my nephew Norvell. “But of course it works. We use it all the time. It, and the dozens of related instruments derived from it. That’s what, made our family rich, you know. Royalties.”

“And I’m supposed to have invented this?”

“Certainly. It’s well known that you did … or will … or—”

He looked a bit bewildered, and no wonder.

“It’s very confusing,” he said plaintively. “I expected to meet you some years from now, after you had become famous for your inventions. I wanted some data on your life. For the biography I’m writing, you know? It’s rather awkward to talk to you about things you haven’t even done yet.”

That’s when the Great Idea, struck me … darn it! Anyway, I thought at the time it was a Great Idea. Looking back on it, I realize I must have been out of my mind, or slightly drunk or both, because I was taking this lunk’s doubletalk seriously. Okay, okay … I know! I should have suspected the fine hand of those jokers at the plant right away. But I didn’t. I swallowed the whole silly story hook, line and sinker, and gave birth to my magnificent brainstorm.

“Norvell,” I said breathlessly, “how do you know it wasn’t meant to be this way?”

His eyebrows questioned me politely. “I’m not sure I know what you mean, Uncle Joe.”

“Simply this,” I explained. “In spite of what your history books tell you, I’m no genius. I’m just a plain, ordinary, run-of-the-mill mechanical engineer with an average education, a fair I.Q., and ambition.

“Left to my own resources, I couldn’t have invented the Hertzian modifier in a million years. But with this diagram as a clue—” I jabbed a finger at his schematic—“and with foreknowledge that it will work, I can make one. And so far as the world of 1946 is concerned, I’ll be its inventor!”

Some of my excitement brushed off on my nephew, and his eyes opened wide.

“You mean it’s a sort of a circle? A closed circle in time? In the year 2003, I will always come to you in 1946 with the details on the inventions which are to make you famous in later years?”

“Exactly!”

“But that’s impossible!” said Norvell wildly. “In that case, who invented the modifier … and when? It couldn’t be you, because you didn’t know about it until I described it to you. And it couldn’t have been anyone else, because in my time you are known as its inventor.”

“I don’t know about that,” I laughed happily, “and I don’t care. It’s the chicken and the egg problem all over again … but this time the yoke’s on mankind. All I’m sure of is that if we work this right everything happens according to plan.

“Now,” I continued, “let’s get down to brass tacks. Can you get me blueprints of this gadget you’ve sketched?”

“Why … I suppose so. Yes, I know I can.”

“And of the other things you mentioned? The things I’m supposed to have invented?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I told him. “Then that’s it. You get them for me. I’ll build working models and have them patented, and the Grady career will be launched. And don’t think,” I added gleefully, “I won’t be on deck to bust the traditional bottle of champagne! Exclusive Scoop Number One for your biography, nephew, can be the bona fide report that upon the occasion of your Uncle Joe’s first patent application he got stiffer than a bluebird’s bill in a blizzard.”

Norvell said a bit thoughtfully, “It might work. I can’t think of any reason why it shouldn’t.”

“Of course you can’t,” I reasoned, “because it did work, or you wouldn’t be who and what you are in your era.”

“But that doesn’t make sense, Uncle Joe,” he demurred. “I never did this before. I’d remember having done it. Yet if I didn’t do it, you couldn’t have invented—”

“Give it up, lad,” I advised him. “Your forehead’s beginning to look like a corrugated washboard. We’re not interested in theories, anyhow. What we want is results. Is it going to take you very long to get the data I need?”

He shook his head. “No. That is, it will take me several hours to collect the blueprints, but those hours will not enter into your life at all. With my time travel device, I can shuttle back and forth at will between our eras, coming to you on any given date. In fact, if you’d like me to, I can hop forward to my century, collect the blueprints, and return here yesterday.”

“That won’t be necessary,” I decided hastily. “I’m confused enough as it is. But you can get back here?”

“Oh, yes.” My nephew Norvell was smugly confident. “I had a bit of trouble at first with the diatemporic and the stellium supercharger, but I have them under control now … I think. Shall I come back tonight?”

“Tomorrow evening would be better. I’m as eager as you to get my career started. But I’m tired now, and I’d like to attack the project with a fresh mind.

“Besides,” I remembered, “my landlady’s on her high horse already. She’d raise merry blue blazes if she heard us gabbing here into the wee hours. And the fewer people we let into this secret the better off we are. Right?”

“Right!” agreed Norvell. “Well, Uncle—” He held out his hand and grinned at me. I couldn’t help thinking how very much he looked like someone I knew. Someone to whom for the life of me I could give no name. “This is— what is that quaint expression of your age? Oh, yes—this is too long.”

“So long,” I corrected abstractedly, and slipped to the door, opened it a crack to make sure the coast was clear. “Okay, Norvell. She’s gone to bed. I guess you can—”

But there was no answer. My nephew was gone.

I’m not bellyaching, you understand. I buttered my bread, and I’ll lie in it. Even if the boys at the plant aren’t men enough to stand up and confess their part in this, I hope that some day when it has all blown over they’ll tell me how their stooge spirited himself from my room while I wasn’t looking.

I was standing in the only doorway. He didn’t hide in the closet or under the bed or anywhere else, because I searched that room high and low for him. It is true the window was open. But it’s a thirty foot drop to a concrete sidewalk and a twenty foot leap to the roof. Whatever other strange attributes my visitor may have had, I’m sure he had no cat blood in him.

Curiously enough, I slept well that night. I slept, in fact, exceptionally well. All my dreams were extra-special deluxe jobs, surrounded by little pink clouds and embellished with dollar signs rampant on a field of gold.

The next day I carried my good humor to the office and broadcast it so offensively that even the hired help took notice. Doris Chandler, who does the stenographic chores for our department, commented on it when she came in with my morning mail.

“What on earth has happened to you, Joe?” she asked. “You look like a Kentucky colonel in a mint-julep patch. An unknown uncle die and leave you the Standard Oil Company?”

“Close,” I chuckled. “Close, my comrade in thralldom. In case your bonny blue eyes fail to penetrate the disguise, you are gazing upon a stag who is on the eve of bursting his shackles with a rousing yoicks! and an equally noisy tally-ho!”

“This stag,” queried Doris shrewdly, “didn’t by any chance drink his fill last eve?”

“You do me,” I told her reproachfully, “a gross injustice. Such sentiments come rudely from such lovely lips.”

“We’ll leave my lips out of this,” said Doris, “for the time being. If there’s anything I can do in the bromo or aspirin line, speak now. You’d better not let the boss catch you in this condition.”

“The boss!” I sniffed. “I smile; I lear; I smirk!”

“So you do. But don’t forget—where there’s smirk there’s fire. Or maybe you’ve decided to enlist in the great Army of Unemployment?”

“Maybe,” I grinned. Then, mysteriously, “Doris, can you keep a secret?”

She met my gaze squarely, speculatively, for a long moment, a curious sort of half-smile on her lips. “I believe so. Why?”

“What would you say,” I asked, “if I told you I was quitting the company to go out on my own?”

Surprise widened her eyes and jolted the half smile from her lips. “Joe!” she gasped. “You’re joking!”

“The way Mr. Bell joked,” I countered, “when he horsed around with a little contraption called the telephone. Well? Am I crazy? What do you think of the idea?”

“Oh, Joe,” she cried, “I think it’s wonderful. I know you can make a go of it. I’ve always thought—” She stopped abruptly. Then in a more cautious tone, “And your fiancee? What does she say?”

“She’ll be delighted, of course. This means we can get married at once. You won’t spill this, will you? I don’t want to tell the boss about it just yet.”

“You mean … she doesn’t know?”

“She?” I frowned. “The boss?”

“Your fiancee. Miss Overton.”

“Oh, Winifred? No. I’m going to tell her tonight.”

“I see,” she said slowly. “Well, Joe, all I can do is wish you the very best of luck.”

“Thanks, kid,” I said. “I’m going to need it.”

“That you are,” said Doris strangely. “That you are, indeed.” She started toward the door, hesitated, turned. “I hope—” she began, then stopped again.

“Yes?” I prompted. “Something else, Doris?”

“Just one thing, Joe. Just one more thing. Please don’t forget … a good cigar is a smoke.”

On which perplexing note she turned and fled. The door slammed behind her. Women are the strangest creatures …

I was all set for Mrs. McGill when I went home that evening. As I expected, she was waiting in the hallway. As I also expected, she was still watering her plaints with tears.

“That man, Mr. Grady,” she sniveled. “That man is still sharing your room.”

“Oh, really?”

“I don’t know his name. But whatever it is, I want more room rent. I’m a very poor woman—”

“You’re a very poor housekeeper.”

“—and I can’t afford to let my lodgers run roughshod over me by taking in their friends and relatives. Moreover, I don’t intend to let you get away with it. Mr. Grady, I know my legal rights—”

I left her floundering in a sea of ergoes, to-wits and whereases, and hurried to my room. But once again my nephew Norvell was conspicuous by his absence. However, he had been there. Upon my work table lay two items. One was a note:

Dear Uncle Joe:

Having a little trouble. Transtemporal still acting up. Am experiencing difficulty in contacting your era, then can’t stay long when I get through.

Also having problem finding blueprints. May take a little time (by your standards as well as mine). However, will contact you as soon as successful.

Affectionately, Norvell

P. S. In view of your present circumstances, thought you might be able to use this till I get through with desired data.

“This”—the second item—was a magnificently hand-tooled saddle-leather billfold. It was a piece worthy of admiration in its own right … but it never got the appreciation it deserved. For when I picked it up I discovered its plump little belly to be stuffed with luscious legal tender of the United States of America.

And such bills! The big, juicy figures in the corners scorned pecuniary bachelordom; they all proudly flaunted one or two opulent zeroes. Fifties … hundreds … it was enough to make a guy greedy. For the first time in my life I understood why they call it “legal tender.” This was the tenderest legal stuff I’ve ever seen.

All told, my nephew’s contribution to the Joseph T. Grady Fund for Aged and Decrepit Joseph T. Grady was $12,000. Twelve thousand smackers! That’s a thousand a month. Almost two-fifty per, every Monday on the Monday, for a year.

Small wonder I went slightly off my wavelength for a while. I bathed in tepid water churned to a boil by my own racing pulse, dressed in a gray pinstripe fog with necktie to match, and floated downstairs. Mrs. McGill was still holding forth to herself on the subject of my moral turpitude. 1 stunned her into silence with my first words.

“Mrs. McGill,” I said, “you are absolutely right. I have acted most unfairly.”

“It’s a lie!” she began staunchly. “Ask anyone who knows me … What? What did you say?”

“I have used you,” I conceded, “almost as poorly as you use the dustpan and broom. I have been sharing my room. And the other occupant is my nephew.”

“Ah-hah!” she snorted. “So your conscience got the better of you after all, eh? And how long has he been here? When did he come?”

“In twenty-oh-three—” I began, then stopped. She would never understand the truth, I realized. I shifted abruptly to more reasonable, if less accurate, figures. “He moved in,” I amended, “about twenty days ago. Three weeks.”

“Three weeks!” she exclaimed starkly. “Three weeks at eight dollars a week … that’s twenty-four. And another eight in advance … that’s put down your two and carry one … thirty-two! Not to mention extras for water, heat and light—”

“Mrs. McGill,” I said grandly, “I’m sorry I deceived you. To prove it, here’s a little something to even the account.” I peeled a crisp one hundred dollar bill off the top of my roll and pressed it into her palm. “Never mind the change. Go buy yourself a new set of uppers.”

She gaped at the banknote, running the rainbow from flabbergasted green to embarrassed crimson. At last she found her voice. “Why, Mr. Grady, sir!” she gasped, “Thank you, sir! I knew you were only teasing me all the time, sir. I always did say you were the finest gentleman lodger in this house.”

“Sir?” I suggested.

“Sir,” she said. “But your nephew … poor dear! He can’t be very comfortable. Your room has only a single bed.”

“Oh, he gets by,” I answered vaguely. “Some nights he sleeps in the top bureau drawer; some he hangs himself up in the clothes closet. He’s not a bit choosy. But now—if you’ll stop licking my hand, Mrs. McGill?—I’m afraid I must run along. I have a date tonight.”

And I left, the echoes of her undying affection and pledges to “make things more comfortable for that lovely boy” still ringing pleasantly in my ears.

My ears rang again, but with another kind of music, when I broached the subject of my new venture to Winifred.

She stared at me as if I had just announced the acquisition of a third arm.

“You’re doing what?” she gasped. “Leaving the company! Have you lost your senses?”

“I never had it,” I grinned. “The Government takes it every ten years.” Then, rather lamely, as the light of my life failed to laugh with me, “It’s a joke, sugar. You know, senses… census?”

“Joke! How can you joke at a time like this? It’s no laughing matter. Giving up a good job and a steady income to become a … a wildcat inventor!”

“Not me, baby,” I said, still struggling to keep it on the light side. “I wouldn’t invent a wildcat. What fur?”

But Winifred was in no mood for gags. She threw me a look that was ten below zero Centigrade.

“The poor man’s Thomas Edison!” she sniffed. “What makes you think you’re clever enough to earn a living by your wits?”

I had the answer to that. Two of ‘em in fact. One in the history books yet to be written, the other a fat green roll in my pocket. But I didn’t want to tell her—or anyone else—about my nephew Norvell. Not yet.

“Well, I could earn half a living,” I tried feebly. “After all, honeybunch, a guy’s got to gamble once in a while if he ever wants to get anywhere. I can work for the company for a hundred and forty-two years, and all I’ll get out of it will be a testimonial dinner and a gold-filled watch.

“This way, I’ve got a chance to make a name for myself. I’m young and ambitious and reasonably bright, and I’ve got some good ideas—”

“Such as—?” she demanded.

“Well,” I temporized, “such as a gimmick to convert long and short communication-band waves into the even shorter Hertzian wave range. A sort of modifier, you know—”

“I don’t know. And it sounds absurd. What good is it? What would it do?”

“It would make possible interplanetary conversation with normal radio equipment.”

“Interplanetary conversa—” Winifred’s tone turned acid. “Oh, that’s marvelous! Simply marvelous! Such a useful thing! Every home will need one. I can hardly wait till you put it on the market. Just think … I can speak to all my friends on Mars and Venus.”

“That’s not as ridiculous as you think,” I told her soberly. “This is a new era we’re entering. Controlled atomic power is almost here, and spaceflight is just around the corner. I have some ideas on that subject, too. Someone’s got to invent a gadget to provide spacecraft with artificial gravity so the passengers won’t be swimming around in thin air, and it might as well be me. Someone’s got to perfect a deflector to shield spaceships from stray meteors, and it might as well be me—”

“Someone’s got to bring to an end this idiotic discussion,” said Winifred coldly, “and it might as well be me.” It was the first time I’d ever seen her lips like that. Thin as a razor, and just about as friendly. She looked just like her mother. “Are you determined to go through with this madcap scheme, Joseph?”

I don’t like being called “Joseph,” particularly in that tone of voice. I started dripping a few icicles myself.

“I am.”

“Nothing will alter your decision?”

“Nothing.”

“Very well.” She tugged at her ring finger angrily and handed me the fruits of her endeavor. “Under the circumstances, you can hardly expect me to continue wearing this.”

“I suppose not,” I said, and took the ring. But it would have taken a superman to resist the impulse that seized me. “There’s just one more thing—” I said casually.

“There’s nothing more,” she said. “Goodbye.”

“There’s just one more thing,” I repeated. “You’re apparently worried about my financial future. Well, you can stop worrying. I have nothing to fear on that account.”

Nonchalantly I riffled before her startled eyes the bankroll with which I had hoped to surprise her in a very different way.

She gasped, “Joseph! Where did you get that?”

“From a friend,” I replied airily. “Merely an advance on some information he expects to get from me later. Maybe I am crazy, my love, but there are a few other fools around who believe in me. Well … toodle-oo!”

My round, that was, and I should have been gay about the whole thing. But I wasn’t. I was miserable and blue, because no matter what her faults, Winifred is the only girl in the world for me. Now that I’ve lost her, I’ll never marry. Never!

I was miserable, so I sought company. Hiram Walker and I holed out in a booth in the back room of Mike Clancy’s taproom, and the mere fact that he was in a bottle and I was not didn’t disturb our friendship. As a matter of fact, in a remarkably short time he had taken up new quarters closer to the seat of my affections, and I …

And I? Well, to be disgustingly candid about it, I don’t remember the events of that evening too well. I have some hazy recollection of first requesting, then insisting, and finally demanding forcibly that everyone in the taproom drink with me, on me. I remember flipping bills at Mike with contemptuous abandon, ordering him to “keep the change,” and bragging that there were millions more where this pitiful chickenfeed came from. There was something about offering to match thousand dollar bills with any man in the house … something else about taking everyone to the moon for the weekend … something else about … oh, I forget. It’s all mixed up.

I’m under the impression that at some time or other during the evening I must have visited the Automat and played slot-machine with the little food cotes, because next morning I found in my pockets six dollars and thirty-five cents, all in nickels; a cup custard and a dish of cole slaw. I guess that was after I took all my buddies home from Clancy’s place in a rented hearse, and probably before I went to the office, because I remember blotting my letter of resignation, written at the boss’ desk despite the protests of an indignant nightwatchman, with a slightly frayed pancake. I think I gave the pancake to Mrs. McGill.

There may have been other adventures, too. I don’t know. I keep hearing things daily …

An alarm bell, driving redhot rivets into my skull, woke me the next morning. I threw the alarm clock out of the window, but the bell kept, ringing, so I staggered out of bed, crawled across the floor on my hands and knees, and snarled a fuzzy, ‘Yeah?” into the telephone.

It was Doris calling, and she sounded worried.

“Joe? Are you all right?”

“He doesn’t live here,” I said. “Thissee Ah Sung’s Chinee laundly.”

And I hung up, but the phone jangled again before I could decide which of the three beds to head for.

“Joe—” said Doris.

“No spikka da Inglis—” I began.

“Joe, listen to me! You’ve got to get down here right away. Things are in an awful mess!”

“You’re telling me? Go ‘way!” I said to the little green man trundling his wheelbarrow up and down my right leg. “Things are in a mess here, too. Mrs. McGill has installed a revolving ceiling—”

“You’ve got to tell them you didn’t do it,” she insisted, “and that precious fiancee of yours is telling everything she knows to the police, and Clancy swears he’ll prosecute, and if you did do it, Joe, you’d better get out of town before they blockade the highways—”

“Wait a minute!” I bawled. “Do what? What’s Winifred telling? And why should Clancy want to prosecute? What am I charged with?”

“They haven’t finished the list yet,” Doris moaned. “They’re only on page three. So far they’ve mentioned fraud, embezzlement, forgery, illegal entry, counterfeiting, assault and battery, grand and petty larceny—”

“Great day in the morning!” I cried, “I sound like a one man crime wave! Hold everything; I’ll be right down!”

“Joe, if you did do it, don’t come! Skip town till the heat’s off. I’ll keep in touch with you—”

“Pish!” I said. “Also tush! You’ve been reading whodunits again. I’ll be there in two shakes.”

And I dug my clothes out from under the carpet.

Doris certainly had not overstated the case. Things were in a mess at the office. The joint was alive with characters, some of whom I knew, others whom I’d never seen before in my life.

My boss was there, and Doris, and a pinchnosed guy with hair combed sidewise across a billiard-ball noggin. Mike Clancy was there, and the nightwatchman, two cops, and a man with a face ten feet longer than the Hudson Tunnel. Winifred was on deck, and a lot of other people named anonymous.

When I entered, they all Hinged at me as if it were feeding time at the zoo and I the table d’hote. The bobbies reached me first, and as they wrestled for my wrist one of them bellowed, “Anything you say may be used against you. Why did you do it?”

I said, “Put the jewelry away, stupid, and get your nose out of my mouth! What did I do? And who says so?”

Winifred cried plaintively from the corner, “Don’t antagonize them, Joseph. Confession is your only hope. Make a clean breast of it and they may be easy on you.”

“Clean breast of what? What’s this all about?”

“You see, officer?” said my boss. “A hardened desperado, brazening it out. You might as well—”

“You, too? Good Lord!” I shouted. “Don’t tell me a guy can be arrested for quitting this company?”

“I suppose,” snarled my late boss, “you’re going to pretend you didn’t break in here last night and—”

“I walked in.”

“He broke in!” bleated the watchman. “He busted in ragin’ drunk, an’ assault-an’-battered me into submission.”

“I walked in,” I repeated indignantly, “and wrote a letter of resignation. It’s true I’d had a short beer or so, but—”

“You went into my office?”

“That’s right.”

“And sat at my desk?”

“I did.”

“And opened my private files?”

“I took a sheet of paper out of the upper right hand drawer, if that’s what you mean. I didn’t see anything ‘private’ … unless you mean that picture of you and an overripe blonde playing pretzel on the beach at Coney Island.”

“Never mind that! The point is, you admit you had access to the confidential records of this company?”

“If you want to put it that way,” I admitted, “yes. I suppose I did. So what?”

“You see, officer? Hard as nails. I suspected all along that he was the criminal type.”

“Joe!” cried Doris. “Joe, don’t talk.. Let me get you a lawyer—”

“Quiet, young lady!” snapped the boss. “Now, Grady … since you’ve gone this far, will you admit the rest? Will you confess to having stolen company plans and sold them to outside interests?”

I stared at him numbly. “Are you crazy? I never stole anything in my life! Or sold any information.”

“Oh, no? Is it not true that you showed this young lady—” he designated Winifred with a nod—“a considerable sum of money, and confided to her that it was an advance from a friend for some information you were to supply him later?”

I cried, “But, for Pete’s sake—” Then I stopped dead, realizing with despair how fantastic must sound any explanation I could offer. Who would ever believe my story about Norvell? “But, for P-Pete’s sake—” I faltered.

“Okay!” grunted one of the cops. “Okay, pal, let’s get going! Looks like you’re going to have plenty of time in hinkey to think these things over—what with this affair and a counterfeiting rap.”

“A counterfeiting rap? Did I do that, too?”

Clancy spoke up mournfully. “You shouldn’t have done me that way, Mr. Grady. I always thought me an’ you was good friends, so I did. It was a dirty trick, it was, an’ me acccptin’ your money like it was good as gold. Why did you do it? To me, I mean?”

I said carefully, “Look, gentlemen … I have already blundered into one misunderstanding that threatens to deprive me of life, liberty, and the pursuit of further sappiness. I do not, however, have the faintest idea what lies behind this new complaint. If there is any sanity left in this mob, will someone please explain what this is all about?”

The man with the long face looked at the bald-headed man. “You tell him, Mr. Squeers. It was your bank that discovered the forgery.”

Squeers nodded.

“Has he any more of the money on him?” he asked the policemen.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Get your hand out of my—”

“Here you are, Mr. Squeers.” The cop tossed him my bankroll. The cashier inspected it swiftly, nodded.

“Yes. Just like the rest. A most inept job; most! Obviously the work of a rank amateur.”

“Meaning—?” I demanded.

“Meaning, Mr. Grady, that you made an inconceivably stupid blunder when you forged these counterfeit bills. I’ve seen a great deal of what you underworld characters call—uh—wallpaper. But never have I seen such excellent engraving utterly ruined by such carelessness.”

“Talk sense, man! What’s wrong with that money?”

He smiled thinly. “Nothing, Mr. Grady. Except that it’s signed by two persons who never held public office … and that the series designated will not be issued for another decade!”

He passed me a bill, and I studied it with mounting despair. There’s no doubt about it, it’s always best to read the small print. The notes my nephew Norvell had so thoughtfully sent me were signed by T. M. Cordovan, Treasurer of the United States, and Walter B. Gurk, Secretary of the Treasury. And above the second signature was the legend: Series 1956 B …

Well … that’s about all. The rest is routine stuff that wouldn’t interest you. How they tossed me in the clink, and I got the bright idea of asking Mrs. McGill to testify on my behalf, and it turned out she was suing me, too, for three weeks’ room rent. How Doris went to the boys at the plant and begged them to explain that it had all been a practical joke, and those stinkers let on they didn’t know anything about it. How the newspapers got wind of the story and played it up big for laughs, and Winifred’s father pledged to kick me out if I ever entered his house again… and how the E-Z Payment Gemme Shoppe refused to give me a refund on the engagement ring I turned back to them.

It was Doris who wound up the whole mess, I guess. Anyhow, it was she who soft-talked the boss into dropping the company’s charges against me after he found behind the filing cabinet the plans he said I’d stolen. And it was Doris who got Clancy, the bank, and the rest of my victims to withdraw their suits on the condition I make good their financial losses. Finally, it was Doris who pointed out to the coppers that they really had no case against me until they proved I’d deliberately manufactured and passed those phony bills—with intent to defraud—so after a while, for lack of evidence, they let me go.

So it all just sort of petered out. There wasn’t a happy ending, like in a story. There just wasn’t any ending … except that I’m getting out of this burg as soon as I’ve tied up a few loose ends. And good riddance! I stepped into this mess with my eyes open, and I’ll take my medicine. But Doris agrees with me that I got a kicking around for being a trusting soul.

Of course I had to tell Doris the whole story when she was trying to help me. Nice girl, Doris. She’ll make some guy a good wife some day. A guy who likes women, that is. Me, I’m brokenhearted. There’ll never be another love for me …

But you’ve got to hand it to Doris. She’s right in there. She listened to my story and didn’t bat an eyelash. Except once. That was when I mentioned Sandusky.

“Sandusky?” she repeated oddly. “Sandusky, Ohio?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said, “except that I just happened to think … my mother and dad live there. It’s a pretty place. Quiet, too.” She hesitated, casting me a thoughtful, sidelong glance. “Joe, after this affair is all cleaned up, do you still want to do what you said? I mean go into business for yourself? Inventing, and all that?”

“I do,” I declared firmly. “Even if my nephew Norvell was a phony he gave me some good ideas. Why?”

“Well, why don’t you come home to Sandusky with me? Dad has a toolshed behind the house. It could be converted into a laboratory in no time at all, at practically no expense. He’d be glad to let you use it till you get on your feet again.”

“For free? I’m dead broke, you know.”

“That doesn’t matter. Dad’s a gambler.” She smiled at me, that funny little half smile again. “We’re all gamblers in our family. But we know a good thing when we see it.”

A strange kid, Doris. I don’t understand her half the time, but she’s okay. I nodded.

“All right. Then that’s the ticket. Sure is funny how things work out, isn’t it? When that smart aleck ‘nephew’ of mine gave me that doubletalk about Sandusky I’ll bet he never dreamed I’d be moving there within a month.”

So, as I said when I started, I’m not asking favors from anybody, and I don’t want any more trouble. I know what I’m going to do, and as soon as I straighten matters out with the E-Z Payment Gemme Shoppe, I’ll be on my way.

Only it does hurt, because of course there’ll never be another girl but Winifred for me, and I did think the boys at the plant liked me. And some day I would like to find out who that guy was—the one who pretended to be my nephew Norvell, I mean—and I’d also like to know how he got out of my room that night.

He was a nice guy. I liked him from the start. He looked an awful lot like someone I know. But I can’t for the life of me figure out who it is … except that when he smiled, it was a funny little half smile. Sort of like Doris …

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