Grab Bag Read online

  “Bloody beggar wanted five hundred thousand pounds to hush it up,” whined Lord Ditherby-Stoat, from whom the mien of rank and dignity seemed already to be falling.

  “To continue my painful narrative,” Fox went on, “the true Lord Ditherby-Stoat, though fully aware of his rights, was astute enough to realize he had no real hope of succeeding to the position that should have been his. However, the blood of the Ditherby-Stoats ran high in his veins. Rather than bring scandal upon the family by forcing himself, the grandson of a publican, into the public eye as the rightful claimant, he took the nobler course of dedicating himself to its service. Using a false name, he engaged himself to the household as boot boy and worked his way steadily up through the ranks until his obviously superior qualifications earned him, young as he was, the exalted position of butler and confidant to His False Lordship. Inspired by her brother’s example and aided by his increasing influence with the family, Percival’s younger sister also anonymously obtained a post here, as companion to that elderly dowager whose malign influence over her sons had been a primary factor in preventing Cedric from securing the rights of his own legitimate offspring. Entitled though she is to the dignity of a family member, she has meekly and dutifully endured the scorn and ignominy of a lowly paid companion. Miss Twiddle, I salute you.”

  “How did you fathom my secret?” gasped the erstwhile drab and mousy underling.

  “Elementary, my dear Miss Ditherby-Stoat, for thus I must henceforth style you. I noted the tearstains on your well-worn copy of Oroonoko, of the Royal Slave. Immediately, all was clear to me.”

  It was clear to A. Lysander Hellespont, too. A new light dawning in his eyes, he bent low over Miss Ditherby-Stoat’s formerly careworn hand.

  “But there is more,” said Fox. “Shall I go on, Lady Ditherby-Stoat?”

  “You must, must you not?”

  “Yes, I must. I believe the next chapter in our saga must have taken place when Lady Honoria, fourth daughter of the Earl of Cantilever, already betrothed to Lord Ditherby-Stoat, visited Haverings with her parents and the soi-disant Figgleton announced their arrival.”

  “We exchanged but one glance,” said Lady Ditherby-Stoat in a gentle, wistful tone nobody had ever heard her use before, “and we knew. Later, under pretense of visiting the ladies’ cloakroom, I tiptoed down to the butler’s pantry. There I learned that Figgleton was the true Lord Ditherby-Stoat. There we plighted our troth. There we planned what was clearly the only thing to be done. The following day, under pretext of visiting my old nanny, I slipped away to a tiny church in an unfashionable street and married my darling Percival.”

  “And after that you had the gall to marry me?” cried Lord Ditherby-Stoat.

  “Ours has been no true marriage. You went through the ceremony under a false title and false pretensions. And I kept my fingers crossed as I said my vows.”

  “And you had a terrible headache on the wedding night,” Ditherby-Stoat added bitterly. “And you’ve had one ever since. I’ve always wondered how we managed to come up with Ermentine.”

  “You had nothing to do with Ermentine’s birth. She is the legitimate daughter of my beloved late husband, Percival Ditherby-Stoat. As such, she is now also the true heiress to Haverings.”

  “Then where does that leave me? Honoria, what shall I do?”

  “Obviously, Edmund, there is only one thing for you to do.” She opened her evening bag and handed him a small, pearl-handled revolver such as might properly be carried by the fourth daughter of any nobleman. “I suggest the library, and you might take a footman with you this time. One does get so weary of ringing bells.”

  A Snatch in Time

  THIS WAS NOT ONLY my first story about James Carter-Harrison and his colleague Bill Williams, but also the first story I ever had published in a national magazine. Yankee ran it in the December 1963 issue as “Falling in Love with Arabella.”

  I never did feel really comfortable with Carter-Harrison. I just wasn’t in his class. I mean, I’m a Fellow in Gastroenterology and my mother thinks I’m the Mayo brothers, but actually I’m just one of the boys. Fellows, I mean. But Carter-Harrison is a Brain.

  Everybody knew it from the day he entered the Research Center. Nobody could tell anybody what he was working on, but we were sure that when he finally published, it would be something big. So I suppose I was flattered when he started walking from the lab to the subway with me after work. Not that we had much in common, but we were the only two who didn’t have cars, and I guess even a Brain needs some sort of human companionship.

  He was a lot older than I. Almost forty, I’d say. When a man gets that old in Boston without forming a meaningful relationship with somebody or other, you can bet there’s something askew somewhere. In his case, I think it was just preoccupation with his work. He didn’t seem to have any social life whatever except what he got from our nightly strolls. When I realized this, I began trying to make them as interesting as I could. Had I but known, I’d have kept my mouth shut.

  The hospital we work out of is in a pretty crummy section. “It’s hard to believe,” I remarked one night in early December as we passed a Southern Fried Pizzeria, “that this was once the classiest residential area in the city.”

  “Was it?” said Carter-Harrison with a polite imitation of interest.

  “Yes, and not so long ago, either. This old guy I was running a GI series on once told me he used to be coachman to a rich family who lived here. The place was so exclusive they had big iron gates at the head of the street that used to be locked every night to keep the rabble out.”

  “They left them open once too often,” snarled the Brain as a grubby kid on roller skates slammed into him and tried to pick his pocket. “That’s interesting. Really interesting.”

  This was the first time he’d shown any genuine enthusiasm for a remark of mine. I embroidered the theme. “Don’t you wish you could see the place as it was then, with the carriages hauling up to the doors and the girls swishing downstairs in their bustles?”

  “It was an entirely different way of life, certainly. A gracious, ordered existence where a man could do his work without being under constant pressure to produce results.”

  He practically snorted those last words. I was surprised. Nobody had been pressuring him as far as I knew, but maybe I didn’t know. Anyway, he got off on some train of thought and didn’t speak again all the way to the station.

  In fact, that was the last I saw of him for a week. He hung a Busy sign on his door and just stayed inside. I wouldn’t bust in on a Brain, of course, but I did wonder what he was up to. Then White Fang, my department head, started wondering what I was up to, so I buckled down to my ulcers and more or less forgot about him.

  It was the following Tuesday night when he finally emerged. He stuck his head in at my door around half-past five, said, “Coming, Williams?” just as usual, and I came. He didn’t say much else until we’d got to where the avenue makes a sort of circle with a fenced-in lot full of beer bottles and wastepaper in the middle. Then he stopped and looked at me in a funny sort of way.

  “Do you recall what we talked about when we were last here?”

  “Sure.” I combed my gray matter frantically. “Oh, you mean about this being such a swanky place once.”

  “Yes, and you said you wished you could see it as it used to be.”

  “So?”

  “Here.” He pulled a little box out of his pocket. It had something like half a jumprope attached to each side. “Take a handle.”

  “What’s this?”

  “Did you ever read The Time Machine?”

  “Oh brother,” I said with my usual tact and savoir-faire.

  “It’s perfectly safe,” he said earnestly. “I tested it on myself last night. It won’t put us back more than seventy years or so, and the effect wears off in half an hour. Just keep hold of that handle and you’ll be fine.”

  I wasn’t scared, you understand. I merely assumed all that gray matter had jelled
. Better humor him, I thought, so I grabbed the handle. “Okay, I’ll swing, you jump.”

  He grasped the other handle. The box swung between us, suspended by its two wires, and began to buzz. I braced myself for a shock, but not for the one I got. As I stood there feeling like a nut, my eyes suddenly blurred. I blinked, and opened them in another world.

  Another Boston, anyway. The chainlink fence around the traffic island had vanished. It really was a little park now, and the avenue was cobblestoned instead of blacktopped. The houses all looked spruce, the shops were gone. And sure enough, a barouche with a pair of matched brown horses was pulling up in front of us. When the coachman jumped down to open the door, he almost knocked me over.

  “Hey, watch it,” I said, but he paid no attention.

  “That man can’t hear you,” said Carter-Harrison, “or see you either. We haven’t materialized.”

  “What?” I said stupidly. I could see the Brain all right, looking just as weedy as ever with a sticky handprint still on his coat where that kid had tried to pick his pocket. “What is this, hypnotism?”

  “Oh no. We’ve actually been transported back in time, as it’s popularly called. I’d have to get involved with what might be termed paranormal phenomenology to explain the situation. You could say we’re sharing a dream if it makes you feel any better.”

  “Did you ever see a dream walking?” I did. She was getting out of the carriage. She was wearing a blue velvet coat and a hat freighted with a full cargo of white ostrich plumes. I wished I had my Chicken Inspector badge on.

  Even the Brain was goggling. Looking back, I believe this must have been the first time he’d ever thought to take a good, close look at a woman. Nor was it pure scientific interest I saw gleaming in his eye.

  “Come on!”

  Dragging me by our strange umbilical cord, he loped up the stairs after her. A housemaid in a white cap and apron opened the door. We crowded in so close behind her we practically stepped on her skirt, but neither she nor the maid seemed to be aware of us. We found ourselves in a gaslit miasma of polished mahogany and aspidistras, with our fetching period piece peeling off her gloves and asking the maid was Uncle John home yet?

  “Yes, Miss Arabella, and Mr. Martin with him. Will you be wanting Mary to help you dress for dinner?”

  Arabella said she supposed so, and headed upstairs. Carter-Harrison charged after her as Teddy Roosevelt probably hadn’t yet charged at San Juan Hill. Not caring to strain the wire and blow a fuse among all these beaded lambrequins, I had to charge, too.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I panted, as if I didn’t know. “We can’t go barging into her bedroom.”

  “Why not? She won’t know.”

  “What if we materialize?”

  “We can’t. I haven’t figured out how.”

  “Are you planning to?”

  “I’ve got us this far, haven’t I?”

  At that moment, Arabella slammed the heavy paneled door in our faces.

  “I dare you to open it,” I said.

  “I can’t,” he replied sadly. “We have no physical strength.”

  “Then how about if we just ooze through?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Luckily—or not, depending on how you figure it—another white-capped maid came along and again we squeezed in after her. Don’t ask me what Arabella’s bedroom was like. I’m no good at describing anything but gastric juice. It’s bright emerald green, if you want to know. Anyway, there was a lot of furniture and stuff, and Arabella was sitting in front of a dressing table with her head on a pincushion, having a good cry.

  I’m no more comfortable around a weeping woman than the next man. My first thought was to get out of there fast. My second thought was, “How?” The door was shut again and Carter-Harrison wouldn’t have budged anyway. He just stood there looking. Obviously this was one field in which he’d never done any research.

  The maid started fluttering around with smelling salts. “Now Miss Arabella, don’t go making your pretty eyes all red.”

  “I don’t care. I wish I were hideous.”

  “Miss Arabella, you don’t mean that.”

  “Yes I do. If I were an ugly old frump, that horrible Mr. Martin wouldn’t be hanging around.”

  “Lots of girls would be glad of a rich beau like Mr. Martin.”

  “With that red face and fat stomach? I can’t stand him. Honestly, if Uncle John makes me marry that man, I’ll stab him on the wedding night. With my buttonhook, I think.”

  “Now Miss Arabella, it’s wicked to talk like that.” Mary unpinned the ostrich plumes and started taking down Arabella’s hair. I heard Carter-Harrison catch his breath as it came tumbling down her back.

  I remember my grandmother boasting that she could sit on her hair when she was a girl. Arabella could have sat on hers, I guess, but she didn’t. She just sat there sniffing and mopping her adorable face with a little lace handkerchief while the maid brushed out that cascade of light brown curls. Finally she sighed and stood up. The maid began unfastening her dress. It had about a million little hooks an eyes down the back. Every time another one let go, I felt a degree more fidgety.

  I sneaked a look at the Brain to see what effect they were having on him. Believe it or not, he was blushing. He caught my eye and blushed even more deeply. “Damn it, Williams, I feel like a cad.”

  I have never before encountered anybody who felt like a cad. The only response I could think of was, “This was your idea.”

  About then, Mary reached the last hook. Carter-Harrison turned around and shut his eyes. Not wishing to be thought a cad, I did the same. Then I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. There we were, conducting what must surely be the most amazing technical experiment of our age, standing in a woman’s bedroom with our eyes shut. I was still laughing when the timer shut off and we found ourselves back on the sidewalk outside Madame LaFifi’s Beauty Garden with traffic snarled all over the avenue and 1963 looking crummier than ever.

  Carter-Harrison wound the two wires around the box, stuck it back in his pocket, and started walking toward the subway. I fell in beside him. His car came first. He said, “See you tomorrow,” climbed aboard, and that was that.

  Well, you can imagine the state I was in for the rest of the evening. I poured a drink, but it didn’t have any kick in it. I tried a paperback thriller, but it failed to thrill. I even tried to study, but my head wouldn’t work. At last I went out and bowled until I was tired enough to go home and sleep.

  I had a particularly interesting batch of gastric juice the next day, which kept me from thinking much about Carter-Harrison and his time machine until he stopped by my lab just at closing time. When we got outside, I asked him, “Did you bring the jumprope?”

  “Oh yes,” he said perfectly deadpan. “It’s in my pocket.”

  I didn’t ask him anything else because he set such a pace I needed my breath to keep up. We made it to Madame LaFifi’s in three minutes flat. Then darned if he didn’t stop, pull out his box, and give me one of the handles.

  “Here we go again,” I remarked tritely, and sure enough we did. There was the park, there were the prosperous-looking brownstones with their lace curtains and Christmas wreaths, but no barouche this time. We stood there dithering on the cobblestones until I fancied a Keystone cop with a hard helmet and a walrus mustache was giving us the hard eye, but nobody went in or out of Arabella’s house.

  I’d have liked to stroll around and see more of the neighborhood, but the Brain wouldn’t budge. First he’d look down the street, then he’d look up at the house, then he’d look over toward the iron gates, then he’d begin again. He got tangled up in the wires from turning around so much, but that was all the excitement we had for a while. Finally, Arabella peeked out from around the parlor curtains. She didn’t see us, of course. That was a pity. It might have cheered her up to see Carter-Harrison with his beat-up hat pressed to his scraggy bosom and his mouth half open in silent worship.r />
  “I wonder if Martin’s coming to dinner again tonight,” I speculated. “She sure looks down about something.”

  “Damn him!” The venom in the Brain’s voice startled me so I broke the connection by dropping my handle.

  “Oh hell, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It would have run out in another minute or so anyway,” he muttered. “I’ll have to boost the—” something or other.

  “So you can devote your full time to standing around on Arabella’s sidewalk.” I wanted to say it, but I didn’t. After all, it was his time machine. And, for that matter, his time. “Could you project us into another period?” I asked instead.

  “No I couldn’t.” He sounded quite peeved at the notion. “Not with this machine, anyway,” he added grudgingly. “It’s still very crude, you know.”

  “It’s a fantastic achievement already,” I said. “Are you going to publish?”

  “Not yet. I want to spend some time working out the problems. You haven’t told anyone?”

  “I have not,” I assured him. “They’d think I was either drunk or crazy.”

  The Brain snorted. “Very likely. A few years ago, space travel was strictly science fiction stuff. Some day we’ll move freely back and forth in both space and time. If I hadn’t done this, somebody else would, sooner or later.”

  The thought was staggering, but the evidence was irrefutable. It could be done. I’d been there.

  “When the time comes,” he went on, “you’ll get full credit for your share in the experiment. Until then, I must ask for your absolute silence.”

  “You’ll have it,” I said. “I haven’t done anything but go along for the ride, anyway.”

  “You gave me the idea. That’s all it takes, really. An idea.”

  He fell into another of his brown studies. I did some thinking then, myself. To conquer all-conquering time! I was rising to heights of poetry. “Try that on your balalaika, Nikita!” I exulted inwardly. James Carter-Harrison was the Yuri Gagarin of time, and I was both the Strelka and the Bjelka.