The Collection (40 page)
"Charlie," I said, "I wrote a story."
'
When?
"
"Just now."
"
I didn
'
t see you.
"
"
I blurred," I said.
"
But
you weren
'
t looking.
"
I was back sitting on the bed. I don
'
t remember
getting there.
"Charlie,
"
I said,
"
it
'
s
wonderful.
"
"
What
'
s wonderful?
"
"
Everything. Life. Birdies in the trees.
Pretzels. A story in less than a second! One second a week I have to work from
now on. No more school, no more books, no more teacher
'
s sassy
looks! Charlie, it's
wonderful!"
He seemed to wake up. He said,
"
Hank, you
'
re
just
beginning
to see the possibilities. They
'
re almost
endless, for any profession. Almost
anything.
"
"
Except,
"
I said sadly,
"
Lili
St. Cyr and Esther Williams.
"
"
You
'
ve
got a one-track mind.
"
"
Two-track,
"
I said.
"
I
'
d
settle for either. Charlie, are you
positive—
"
Wearily, "Yes." Or that was what he meant to say;
it came out
"
Mesh.
"
"
Charlie," I said.
"
You
'
ve
been drinking. Care if I
try?
"
"Shoot yourself."
"
Huh? Oh, you mean suit yourself. O.K., then
I'll—
"
"
Thass what I shaid,
"
Charlie said.
"
Suit yourshelf.
"
"
You did not."
"What did I shay, then?"
I said,
"
You shaid—I mean said: `Shoot
yourself.
'"
Even Jove nods.
Only Jove doesn
'
t wear a headband like the one I
still had on. Or maybe, come to think of it, he does. It would explain a lot of
things.
I must have nodded, because there was the sound of a shot. I
let out a yell and jumped up, and Charlie jumped up too. He looked sober.
He said,
"
Hank, you had that thing on. Are
you—?
"
I was looking down at myself and there wasn
'
t any
blood on the front of my shirt. Nor any pain anywhere. Nor anything. I quit
shaking. I looked at Charlie; he wasn
'
t shot either. I said,
"
But
who—? What—?
"
"
Hank,
"
he said.
"
That
shot wasn
'
t in this room at all. It was outside, in the hallway, or
on the stair.
"
"
On the
stair?
"
Something
prickled at the back of my mind. What about a stair?
I saw a man upon the
stair, a little man who was not there. He was not there again today. Gee, I
wish he
'
d go away.
"
Charlie,
"
I said.
"
It
was Yehudi!
He shot himself because I said `shoot yourself' and the
pendulum swung. You were wrong about it being an—an automatonic autosuggestive
whatzit. It was Yehudi doing it all the time. It was—
"
"
Shut up,
"
he said.
But he went over and opened the door and I followed him and
we went out in the hallway.
There was a decided smell of burnt powder. It seemed to come
from about halfway up the stairs because it got stronger as we neared that
point.
"
Nobody there,
"
Charlie said,
shakily.
In an awed voice I said,
"
He was not
there again today. Gee, I wish—
"
"
Shut up,
"
said Charlie
sharply.
We went back into my room.
"
Sit down,
"
Charlie said.
"
We
got to figure this out. You said,
`
Shoot yourself,
'
and
either nodded or swayed forward. But you didn't shoot yourself. The shot came
from—" He shook his head, trying to clear it.
"Let
'
s have some coffee,
"
he
suggested.
"
Some hot, black coffee. Have you got— Hey, you
'
re
still wearing that headband. Get us some, but for Heaven
'
s sake be
careful.
"
I said, "Bring us two cups of hot black coffee.
"
And I nodded, but it didn
'
t work. Somehow I
'
d known it
wouldn
'
t.
Charlie grabbed the band off my head. He put it on and tried
it himself.
I said,
"
Yehudi
'
s dead. He shot
himself. That thing
'
s no good anymore. So I'll make the coffee.
"
I put the kettle on the hot plate. "Charlie,
"
I said,
"
look, suppose it
was
Yehudi doing that stuff.
Well, how do you know what his limitations were? Look, maybe he
could
have
brought us Lili—"
"
Shut up,
"
said Charlie.
"
I
'
m
trying to think.
"
I shut up and let him think.
And by the time I had the coffee made, I realized how silly
I
'
d been talking.
I brought the coffee. By that time, Charlie had the lid off
the pillbox affair and was examining its innards. I could see the little
pendulum that worked the switch, and a lot of wires.
He said,
"
I
don
'
t
understand it. There
'
s nothing broken."
"
Maybe the battery,
"
I
suggested.
I got out my flashlight and we used its bulb to test the
little dry cell. The bulb burned brightly.
"
I
don
'
t understand
it," Charlie said.
Then I suggested,
"
Let
'
s start
from the beginning, Charlie. It
did
work. It got us stuff for drinks. It
mixed one pair of drinks. It— Say—"
"
I
was just thinking of that,
"
Charlie said.
'
When you said, `Blow me down,
'
and bent
over to pick up the drink, what happened?"
"A current of air. It blew me down, Charlie, literally.
How
could
I have done that myself? And notice the difference in
pronouns. I said, `Blow me down,
'
then but later I said, `Shoot
yourself.
'
If I
'
d said, `Shoot me,
'
why maybe—
"
There was that prickle down my spine again.
Charlie looked dazed. He said,
"
But I worked
it out on scientific principles, Hank. It wasn
'
t just an accident. I
couldn
'
t be wrong. You mean you think that—It
'
s utterly silly!
"
I'd been thinking just that, again. But differently.
"
Look,
"
I said,
"
let
'
s concede that your apparatus set up a
field that had an effect upon the brain, but just for argument let's assume you
misunderstood the nature of the field. Suppose it enabled you to
project a
thought.
And you were thinking about Yehudi; you must have been because you
jokingly called it the Yehudi principle, and so Yehudi—"
"
That
'
s silly,
"
said Charlie.
"
Give me a better one.
He went over to the hot plate for another cup of coffee.
And I remembered something then, and went over to the
typewriter table. I picked up the story, shuffling the pages as I picked them
up so the first page would come out on top, and I started to read.
I heard Charlie
'
s voice say,
"
Is
it a good story, Hank?
"
I said, "G-g-g-g-g-g—"
Charlie took a look at my face and sprinted across the room
to read over my shoulder. I handed him the first page. The title on it was THE
YEHUDI PRINCIPLE.
The story started:
"
I
am going crazy.
"
Charlie Swann is going crazy, too. Maybe
more than I am, because it was his dingbat. I mean, he made it and he thought
he knew what it was and how it worked.
"
As I read page after page I handed them to Charlie and he
read them too. Yes, it was
this
story. The story you
'
re
reading right now, including this part of it that I
'
m telling right
now. Written before the last part of it happened.
Charlie was sitting down when he finished, and so was I. He
looked at me and I looked at him.
He opened his mouth a few times and closed it again twice
before he could get anything out. Finally he said,
"
T-time,
Hank.
It had something to do with
time
too. It wrote in advance just
what—Hank, I'll make it work again. I
got
to. It's something big. It's—
"
"
It
'
s colossal,
"
I said.
"
But it
'
ll never work again. Yehudi
'
s
dead. He shot himself upon the stair."
"
You
'
re crazy,
"
said Charlie.
"
Not yet,
"
I told him. I
looked down at the manuscript he
'
d handed back to me and read:
"
I
am going crazy.
"
I
am
going crazy.
He had known it, somehow, when he had awakened that morning.
I to knew it more surely now, staring out of the editorial room window into the
early afternoon sunlight slanting down among the buildings to cast a pattern of
light and shadow. He knew that soon, perhaps even today, something important
was going to happen. Whether good or bad he did not know, but he darkly
suspected. And with reason; there are few good things that may unexpectedly
happen to a man, things, that is, of lasting importance. Disaster can strike
from innumerable directions, in amazingly diverse ways.
A voice said, "Hey, Mr. Vine," and he turned away
from the window, slowly. That in itself was strange for it was not his manner
to move slowly; he was a small, volatile man, almost cat-like in the quickness
of his reactions and his movements.
But this time something made him turn slowly from the
window, almost as though he never again expected to see that chiaroscuro of an
early afternoon.
He said, "Hi, Red."
The freckled copy boy said, "His Nibs wants to see ya.”
"
Now?"
"Naw. Atcher convenience. Sometime next week, maybe. If
yer busy, give him an apperntment.
"
He put his fist against
Red's chin and shoved, and the copy boy staggerd back in assumed distress.
He got up out of his chair and went over to the water
cooler. He pressed his thumb on the button and water gurgled into the paper
cup.
Harry Wheeler sauntered over and said,
"
Hiya,
Nappy. What
'
s up? Going on the carpet?
"
He said, "Sure, for a raise.
"
He drank and crumpled the cup, tossing it into the waste
basket. He went over to the door marked Private and went through it.
Walter J. Candler, the managing editor, looked up from the
work on his desk and said affably, "Sit down, Vine. Be with you in a moment,
"
and then looked down again.
He slid into the chair opposite Candler, worried a cigarette
out of his shirt pocket and lighted it. He studied the back of the sheet of
paper of which the managing editor was reading the front. There wasn
'
t
anything on the back of it.
The M. E. put the paper down and looked at him.
"
Vine,
I've got a screwy one. You
'
re good on screwy ones.
"
He grinned slowly at the M. E. He said,
"
If
that
'
s a compliment, thanks.
"
"It
'
s a compliment, all right. You
'
ve
done some pretty tough things for us. This one
'
s different. I've
never yet asked a reporter to do anything I wouldn
'
t do myself. I
wouldn
'
t do this, so I'm not asking you to."
The M. E. picked up the paper he'd been reading and then put
it down again without even looking at it. "Ever hear of Ellsworth Joyce
Randolph?"
"Head of the asylum? Hell yes, I
'
ve met him.
Casually."
"How'd he impress you?"
He was aware that the managing editor was staring at him
intently, that it wasn
'
t too casual a question. He parried.
"What do you mean: In what way? You mean is he a good Joe, is he a good
politician, has he got a good bedside manner for a psychiatrist, or what?
"
"
I mean, how sane do you think he is?"