If I Were You (Stories from the Golden Age) Page 6

  “Ladees an’ gennulmen! Whatevah may happen in a circus, the show must go on! And it gives me pleasure to present to you, for your entertainment, an attraction which we have brought to you at great expense.”

  It was Tommy the Showman, Tommy at his best, doing what he had longed to do, realizing the ambition that had burned all these years in his frail but valiant little body.

  Tommy was glowing, vivid, terrifically alive—and happier than he had ever been in all his life.

  Maizie’s breath caught in her throat. Suppose that happiness should be taken from him! Suppose he lost it now, in the moment that fulfilled his long-cherished dream! It would break his heart if—

  Bewildered by the turn of events, Maizie looked from Tommy to Mrs. Johnson, across the hoople. But Mrs. Johnson was looking at five thousand spectators whose attention was riveted upon a minute figure by the mike, a figure whose voice even more than his bravery, whose handsomeness even more than his smallness, commanded their every faculty!

  And Mrs. Johnson, gazing back at Little Tom Little, had a look upon her face which clearly wondered why nobody had ever thought of this before. She saw Maizie, then, with questioning eyes upon her. And to Maizie Mrs. Johnson smiled and very slowly nodded her much wiser old head. . . .

  The Last Drop

  The Last Drop

  EUCLID O’BRIEN’S assistant, Harry McLeod, looked at the bottle on the bar with the air of a man who has just received a dare.

  Mac was no ordinary bartender—at least in his own eyes if not in those of the saloon’s customers—and it had been his private dream for years to invent a cocktail which would burn itself upon the pages of history. So far his concoctions only burned gastronomically.

  Euclid had dismissed the importance of this bottle as a native curiosity, for it had been sent from Borneo by Euclid’s brother, Aristotle. Perhaps Euclid had dismissed the bottle because it made him think of how badly he himself wanted to go to Borneo.

  Mac, however, had not dismissed it. Surreptitiously Mac pulled the cork and sniffed. Then, with determination, he began to throw together random ingredients—whiskey, yolk of an egg, lemon and a pony of this syrup Euclid’s brother had sent.

  Mac shook it up.

  Mac drank it down.

  “Hey,” said Euclid belatedly. “Watcha doin’?”

  “Mmmmm,” said Mac, eyeing the three customers and Euclid, “that is what I call a real cocktail! Whiskey, egg yolk, lemon, one pony of syrup. Here”—he began to throw together another one—“try it!”

  “No!” chorused the customers.

  Mac looked hurt.

  “Gosh, you took an awful chance,” said Euclid. “I never know what Aristotle will dig up next. He said to go easy on that syrup because the natives said it did funny things. He says the native name, translated, means swello.”

  “It’s swell all right,” said Mac. Guckenheimer, one of the customers, looked at him glumly.

  “Well,” snapped Mac, “I ain’t dead yet.”

  Guckenheimer continued to look at him. Mac looked at the quartet.

  “Hell, even if I do die, I ain’t giving you the satisfaction of a free show.” And he grabbed his hat and walked out.

  Euclid looked after him. “I hope he don’t get sick.”

  Guckenheimer looked at the cocktail Mac had made and shook his head in distrust.

  Suddenly Guckenheimer gaped, gasped and then wildly gesticulated. “Look! Oh, my God, look!”

  A fly had lighted upon the rim of the glass and had imbibed. And now, before their eyes, the fly expanded, doubled in size, trebled, quadrupled . . .

  Euclid stared in horror at this monster, now the size of a small dog, which feebly fluttered and flopped about on shaking legs. It was getting bigger!

  Euclid threw a bung starter with sure aim. Guckenheimer and the other two customers beat it down with chairs. A few seconds later they began to breathe once more.

  Euclid started to drag the fly toward the garbage can and then stopped in horror. “M-Mac drank some of that stuff!”

  Guckenheimer sighed. “Probably dead by now then.”

  “But we can’t let him wander around like that! Swelling up all over town! Call the cops! Call somebody! Find him!”

  Guckenheimer went to the phone, and Euclid halted in rapid concentration before his tools of trade.

  “I gotta do something. I gotta do something,” he gibbered.

  Chivvis, a learned customer, said, “If that stuff made Mac swell up, it might make him shrink too. If he used lemon for his, he got an acid reaction. Maybe if you used limewater for yours, you would get an alkaline reaction.”

  Euclid’s paunch shook with his activity. Larkin, the third customer, caught a fly and applied it to the swello cocktail. The fly rapidly began to get very big. Euclid picked up the loathsome object and dunked its proboscis in some of his limewater cocktail. Like a plane fading into the distance, it grew small.

  “It works!” cried Euclid. “Any sign of Mac?”

  “Nobody has seen anything yet,” said Guckenheimer. “If anything does happen to him and he dies, the cops will probably want you for murder, Euclid.”

  “Murder? Me? Oh! I shoulda left this business years ago. I shoulda got out of New York while the going was good. I shoulda done what I always wanted and gone to Borneo! Guckenheimer, you don’t think they’ll pin it on me if anything happens to Mac?”

  Guckenheimer suddenly decided not to say anything. Chivvis and Larkin, likewise, stopped talking to each other. A man had entered the bar—a man who wore a Panama hat and a shoulder-padded suit of the latest Broadway design, a man who had a narrow, evil face.

  Frankie Guanella sat down at the bar and beckoned commandingly to Euclid.

  “Okay, O’Brien,” said Guanella, “this is the first of the month.”

  O’Brien had longed for Borneo for more reasons than one, but that one was big enough—Frankie Guanella, absolute monarch of the local corner gang, who exacted his tribute with regularity.

  “I ain’t got any dough,” said O’Brien, made truculent by Mac’s possible trouble.

  “No?” said Guanella. “O’Brien, we been very reasonable. The las’ guy who wouldn’t pay out a policy got awful boint when his jernt boined down.”

  And just to show his aplomb, Guanella reached out and tossed off one of the cocktails which had been used on the flies.

  In paralyzed horror the four stared at Guanella, wondering if he would go up or shrink.

  “Hey, who’s the funny guy?” said Guanella, snatching off his hat, his voice getting shriller. He looked at the band. “No, it’s got my ’nitials.” He clapped it back on and it fell over his face.

  With a squeal of alarm he tumbled off the stool. Whatever he intended to do, he was floundering around the floor in clothes twice too big for him. Shrill, mouselike squeaks issued from the pile of clothing. Chivvis and Larkin and Guckenheimer looked around bug-eyed. Presently the Panama detached itself from the pile of clothes and began to run around the room on a pair of small bare legs.

  A customer had just come in, and had started to climb a stool. He looked long and carefully at the hat. Then he began tiptoeing out. Before he reached the door, the hat started toward the door also. The customer went out with an audible swish, the hat scuttling after him.

  “Oh, my!” said O’Brien. “He won’t like that. No, sir! He’s sensitive about his size anyway. We better do something before he brings his whole mob back. Will you telephone again, Mr. Guckenheimer?”

  As Guckenheimer moved to do so, O’Brien went into furious action to make another shrinko cocktail. He was just about to add the syrup when the shaker skidded out of his trembling hands and smashed on the floor. O’Brien took a few seconds of hard breathing to get himself under control. Then he hunted up another shaker and began over again. If Mac’s swello cocktail had contained a pony of syrup, an equal amount in the shrinko cocktail ought to just reverse the effect. He made a triple quantity just to be on the safe side.
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  Guckenheimer waddled back from the booth.

  “They found him!” he cried. “He’s down by the McGraw-Hill building, hanging on to the side. He says he doesn’t dare let go for fear his legs will break under his weight!”

  “That’s right,” said Chivvis. “It accords with the square-cube law. The cross-sectional area, and hence the strength in compression, of his leg bones would not increase in proportion to his mass—”

  “Oh, forget it, Chivvis!” snapped Larkin. “If we don’t hurry—”

  “—he’ll be dead before we can help him,” finished Guckenheimer.

  O’Brien was hunting for a thermos bottle he remembered having seen. He found it, and had just poured the shrinko cocktail into it and screwed the cap on when three men entered the Hole in the Wall. One of them carried Frankie Guanella in the crook of his arm. Guanella, now a foot tall, had a handkerchief tied diaperwise around himself. The three diners, now the only customers in the place, started to rise.

  One of the newcomers pointed a pistol at them, and said conversationally, “Sit down, gents. And keep your hands on the table. Thass right.”

  “Whatchgonnado?” said O’Brien, going pale under his ruddiness.

  “Don’t get excited, Jack. You got an office in back, ain’tcha? We’ll use it for the fight.”

  “Fight?”

  “Yep. Frankie says nothing will satisfy him but a dool. He’s sensitive about his size, poor little guy.”

  “But—”

  “I know. You’re gonna say it wouldn’t be fair, you being so much bigger’n him. But we’ll fix that. You make some more of that poison you gave him, so you’ll both be the same size.”

  “But I haven’t any more of the stuff!”

  “Too bad, Jack. Then I guess we’ll just have to let you have it. We was going to give you a sporting chance, too.” And he raised the gun.

  “No!” cried O’Brien. “You can’t—”

  “What’s he got in that thermos bottle?” piped Frankie. “Make him show it. He just poured it outa that glass and it smells the same!”

  “Don’t!” yelped O’Brien. He grabbed at the bottle of Borneo syrup and the thermos in the vain hope of beating his way out. But too many hands were reaching for him.

  And then came catastrophe! The zealous henchmen, in their tackle, sent both syrup and thermos flying against the beer taps. The splinter of glass was music in O’Brien’s ears. The syrup was splattered beyond retrieve, for most of it had gone down the drain. But O’Brien had no more than started to breathe when he realized that only the syrup bottle had broken. The thermos, no matter how jammed up inside, still contained the shrinko cocktail.

  What would happen now? If he drank that shrinko he might never, never, never again be able to get any syrup to swell up again!

  One of the gangsters, having vaulted the bar, was unscrewing the thermos for Frankie’s inspection. Smelling of it, Frankie announced that it was the right stuff, all right, all right. Another gangster came over the bar.

  And then O’Brien was upon his back on the duckboards and a dose of shrinko was being forcibly administered. He gagged and choked and swore, but it went on down just the same.

  “There,” said one of the men in a satisfied voice. “Now shrink, damn you.”

  He put the cap back on the bottle and the bottle on the bar, mentally listing a number of persons who might benefit from a dose.

  The first thing O’Brien noticed was the looseness of his clothes. He instinctively reached for his belt to tighten it, but he knew it would do no permanent good.

  “Come on in the office, all of you,” said the gangster lieutenant. He prodded the three customers and O’Brien ahead of him. O’Brien tripped over his drooping pants. As he reached the office door he fell sprawling. A gangster booted him and he slid across the floor, leaving most of his clothes behind him. The remaining garments fell off when he struggled to his feet. The walls and ceiling were receding. The men and the furniture were both receding and growing to terrifying size.

  He was shivering with cold, though the late-May air was warm. And he felt marvelously light. He jumped up, feeling as active as a terrier despite his paunch. He was sure he could jump to twice his own height.

  “Watch the door, Vic,” said the head gangster. His voice sounded to O’Brien like a cavernous rumble. One of his companions opened the door a little and stood with his face near the crack. The head gangster put down Guanella, who was now O’Brien’s own size. Guanella had a weapon that looked to O’Brien like an enormous battle-ax, until he realized that it consisted of an unshaped pencil split lengthwise, with a razor blade inserted in the cleft, and the whole tied fast with string. Guanella swung his ponderous-looking weapon as if it were a feather.

  The head gangster said, “Frankie couldn’t pull a trigger no more, so he figured this out all by himself. He’s smott.”

  Guanella advanced across the floor toward O’Brien. He was smiling, and there was death in his sparkling black eyes. No weapon had been produced for O’Brien, but then he did not really expect one. This was a gangster’s idea of a sporting chance.

  Guanella leaped forward and swung. The razor-ax went swish, but O’Brien had jumped back just before it arrived. His agility surprised both himself and Guanella, who had never fought under these grasshoppery conditions. Guanella rushed again with an overhead swing. O’Brien jumped to one side like a large pink cricket. Guanella swung across. O’Brien, with a mighty leap, sailed clear over Guanella’s head. He fell when he landed, but bounced to his feet without appreciable effort.

  The razor-ax went swish, but O’Brien had jumped back just before it arrived. His agility surprised both himself and Guanella, who had never fought under these grasshoppery conditions.

  Around they went. O’Brien, despite his chill, did not feel at all tired, though a corresponding amount of exercise would have laid him up if he had been his normal size. The laughter of the men thundered through the room. O’Brien thought unhappily that as soon as they became bored with this spectacle they would tie a weight to him to make him easier game for their man.

  Then a reflection caught his eye. It was a silvery spike lying in a crack of the floor. He snatched it up. It was an ordinary pin, not at all sharp, to his vision, but it would do for a dagger.

  Guanella approached, balancing his ax. The minute he raised it, O’Brien leaped at him, stabbing. The point bounced back from Guanella’s hide, which seemed much tougher than ordinary human skin had a right to be. Down they went. Their mutual efforts buffeted O’Brien about so that he hardly knew what he was doing. But he got a glimpse of Guanella’s arm flat on the floor, the handle—the eraser end—of the ax gripped in his fist. With both hands O’Brien drove the point of his pin into the arm. It went in and through and into the wood. Guanella shouted. O’Brien caught up the ax and raced for the door.

  He moved so quickly, compared to his normal ponderousness, that the gangsters were caught flat-footed. O’Brien slashed with the rear edge at the ankle of the man at the door. He saw the sock peel down, and the oozing skin after it. Vic roared and jumped, almost stepping on O’Brien, who dashed through and out.

  He raced to the bar; a mighty jump took him to the top of a stool, and thence he jumped to the bar-top. He gathered the thermos bottle under his arm. It was a small thermos bottle, but it was still almost as big as he was. But he had no time to ponder on the wonders of size. There was a thunderous explosion behind him, and a bullet ripped along the bar, throwing splinters large enough to bowl him over. He hopped off onto a stool, and thence to the floor, and raced out. He zigzagged, and the shots that followed him went wide.

  Outside, he yelled, “Orson!”

  Orson Crow, O’Brien’s favorite hackman, looked up from his tabloid. Seeing O’Brien bearing down on him, he muttered something about seeing things, and trod on the starter.

  “Wait!” shouted O’Brien. “It’s me, Obie! Let me in, quick! Quick, I say!”

  He pounded on the door of the
cab. Crow still did not recognize him, but at that minute a gangster with a pistol appeared at the door of the Hole in the Wall. Crow at least understood that this animated billiken was being pursued with felonious intent. So he threw open the door, almost knocking O’Brien over. O’Brien leaped in.

  “McGraw-Hill building, quick!” he gasped. Crow automatically started to obey the order. As the cab roared down Eighth Avenue, O’Brien explained what he could to the bewildered driver.

  “Well, now,” he said, “have you got a handkerchief?” When Crow produced one, not exactly clean, O’Brien tied it diaperwise around his middle.

  When they reached the McGraw-Hill building, they did not have to ask where McLeod was. There was a huge crowd, and many firemen and policemen in evidence. Some men were trying to rig up a derrick. A searchlight on a firetruck played on the unfortunate McLeod, whose fingers clutched the twenty-first story of the building, and whose feet rested on the pavement. He had had difficulty in the matter of clothes similar to that experienced by O’Brien and Guanella, except that he had, of course, grown out of his clothes instead of shrinking out from under them. Around his waist was wound several turns of rope, and through this in front was thrust an uprooted tree, roots up.

  A cop stopped the cab. “You can’t go no closer.”

  “But—” said Crow.

  “Gawan, I says you can’t go no closer.”

  O’Brien said, “Meet me on the south side of the building, Orson. And open this damn door first.”

  Crow opened the door. O’Brien scuttled out with his thermos bottle. He scurried through the darkness. The first cop did not even see him. The other persons who saw him did not have a chance to investigate, and assumed that they had suffered a brief illusion. In a few minutes he had dodged around the crowd to the front doors of the building. A fireman saw him coming, but watched him, popeyed, without trying to stop him as he raced through the front door. He kept on through the green-walled corridors until he found a stairway, and started up.