If I Were You (8 page)

And there came Schmidt, all unawed by the scenes which had gone before, having in tow two John Laws, men without imagination or a sense of the fitness of things.

“There he is,” said Schmidt, pointing at Tommy. “He almost got away, but—” Then, seeing what Tommy had in his hands, Schmidt, always quick, snatched at them so swiftly that Tommy was forced to let go. “Now take him,” said Schmidt. “What he has done just now has no bearing on—”

“Give me that book and that letter!” shrilled Tommy.

Schmidt shoved him off and the two John Laws made a grab at him.

“Give me that book,” cried Tommy, “or . . . or I’ll tear your heart out!”

Schmidt was on the verge of laughing. But a sharp-toed little boot squarely in the shins turned the laughter into a yelp and a curse. Schmidt grabbed his injured limb and hopped for an instant. Again the John Laws made a snatch. But Tommy wasn’t in the space where their hands met.

Tommy wasn’t there. He was up on Schmidt’s chest like a steeplejack, and he had two thumbs which stabbed into Schmidt’s eyes like hot pokers. Schmidt knocked him off.

Tommy lit like a rubber ball, bellowing his battle cry, “Give me that book!” And again he was upon Schmidt.

Perhaps he had learned something from the tigers, or perhaps Schmidt looked small compared to a lion. Anyway, small fists, correctly placed, and small boots stabbing sharp, and a small target which moves faster than the eye can follow will always be superior to slow and heavy brawn. The John Laws gaped in amazement and got in each other’s way.

Unwittingly, Schmidt allowed himself to be backed by the attack up to the treacherous hoop which had already done its work. And, stumbling on its low rim, Schmidt tottered and went down. It was no accident that Tommy lit with both feet upon Schmidt’s solar plexus.

Schmidt gave an agonized wheeze and tried to fend him off. But Tommy had learned well from the tigers. And though he might weigh but a few pounds and stand but a few inches high, the point to remember was never to give ground.

And Schmidt, the third time the boots landed in his midriff, rolled his eyes whitely back into his head and went out cold.

Now that he was quiet, Tommy was able to retrieve the bankbook and the letter. One John Law had withdrawn so that the other could get their game, but now the other got a bitten hand and felt himself burned from the rear. He whirled and leaped away from the torch in Maizie’s hands.

Tommy handed book and letter to Mrs. Johnson. She could not understand immediately and did not really get the idea until Tommy roared, “All right, you two fumbling pachyderms! If you can get
anything
through your thick skulls,
that’s
the man you want—Hermann Schmidt!”

Mrs. Johnson looked from book and letter to the recumbent Schmidt, and then, as he was beginning to come around, she booted the red waistcoat once more.

“Get up, you thief! Get up! And as for you two, get that man out of here before I finish what Tommy started. Do you hear?”

Maizie was gazing at Tommy so hungrily that she almost missed the arena door. As he helped her through, she said in a choked voice, “I knew when you were
you,
Tommy. I
knew.
And when you jumped in through the bars—”

“Forget it,” said Tommy with a grin. “You were right and I was wrong. But I was right, too, you see, because . . . because . . . well, if the ghost of the Professor is around, I’ll bet he’s plenty disappointed. He did me a favor, Maizie. He showed me that I was a selfish fool, a coward. I’m ashamed of myself. I didn’t think of you at all when I started this. I won’t ever do it again, Maizie. Never . . . I promise!”

Maizie’s eyes were very bright.

“And you’ll come back and be satisfied to be—a freak?”

“No!” cried Tommy. “Who said anything about going back? Look up there, Maizie!”

She saw that they stood under the mike platform. She felt a movement at her side and, startled, saw Tommy run up the steps. She saw him tip over the mike so that he could get it down to his height and then, brazenly from the speakers, she heard his best spieling voice.

“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

E
UCLID
O’B
RIEN’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.

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.