Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (282 page)

“I thought it was all arbitrary.”

He gave me a reproachful look. “Arbitrary and predetermined are not synonymous, Hodgins, nor does either rule out artistry. Mindless artistry, of course, like that of the snowflake or crystal. And how artistic this development is! You will go on to become a professor yourself and construct iron maidens for promising students who might become your competitors. You will write learned histories, for you are—haven’t I said this before?—the spectator type. The part written for you does not call for you to be a participant, an instrument for—apparently— influencing events. Hence it is proper that you report them so that future generations may get the illusion they aren’t puppets.”

He grinned at me. At another time I would have been delighted to pounce on the assortment of inconsistencies he had just offered; at the moment I could think of nothing but my failure to mention the Confederate agent’s visit. It almost seemed his mechanist notions were valid and I was destined always to be the ungrateful recipient of kindness.

“All right,” he said, swallowing the last of his bread and half-raw meat, “so long as your sentimentality impels you to respect obligations I can find work for you. Those boxes over there go upstairs. Pondible’s bringing a van around for them this afternoon.”

I’ve heard the assumption that working in a bookstore must be light and pleasant. Many times during the years with Roger Tyss I had reason to be thankful for my strength and farm training. The boxes were deceptively small but so heavy they could only have been solidly packed with paper. Even with Tyss carrying box for box with me I was vastly relieved when I had to quit to run an errand.

When I got back he went out to make an offer on someone’s library. “There are only four left. The last two are paper wrapped; didn’t have enough boxes.”

It was characteristic of him to leave the lighter packages for me. I ran up the stairs with one of the two remaining wooden containers. Returning, I tripped on the lowest step and sprawled forward. Reflexively I threw out my hands and landed on one of the paper parcels. The tightstretched covering cracked and split under the impact; the contents—neatly tied rectangular bundles—spilled out.

I had learned enough of the printing trade to recognize the brightly colored oblongs as lithographs, and I wondered as I stooped over to gather them up why such a job should have been given Tyss rather than a shop specializing in this work. Even under the gaslight the colors were hard and vigorous.

Then I really looked at the bundle I was holding. ESPANA was enscrolled across the top; below it was the picture of a man with a long nose and jutting underlip, flanked by two ornate figure fives, and beneath them the legend, CINCO PESETAS, Spanish Empire banknotes. Bundles and bundles of them.

I needed neither expert knowledge nor minute scrutiny to tell me there was a fortune here in counterfeit money. The purpose in forging Spanish currency I could not see; that it was no private undertaking of Tyss’s but an activity of the Grand Army I was certain. Puzzled and worried, I rewrapped the bundles of notes into as neat an imitation of the original package as I could contrive.

The rest of the day I spent casting uneasy glances at the mound of boxes and watching with apprehension the movement of anyone toward them. Death was the penalty for counterfeiting United States coins; I had no idea of the punishment for doing the same with foreign paper, but I was sure even so minor an accessory as myself would be in a sad way if some officious customer should stumble against one of the packages.

Tyss in no way acted like a guilty man, or even one with an important secret. He seemed unaware of any peril; doubtless he was daily in similar situations. Only chance and my own lack of observation had prevented my discovering this earlier.

Nor did he show anxiety when Pondible failed to arrive. Darkness came and the gas lamps went on in the streets. The heavy press of traffic outside dwindled, but the incriminating boxes remained undisturbed near the door. At last there was the sound of uncertain wheels slowing up outside and Pondible’s voice admonishing, “Wh-Whoa!”

I rushed out just as he was dismounting with slow dignity. “Who goes?” he asked. “ ’Vance and give a countersign.”

“It’s Hodge,” I said. “Let me help you.”

“Hodge! Old friend, not seen long time!” (He had been in the store only the day before.) “Terrible ’sfortune, Hodge. Dr-driving wagon. Fell off. Fell off wagon I mean. See?”

“Sure, I see. Let me hitch the horse for you. Mr. Tyss is waiting.”

“Avoidable,” he muttered, “nuvoidable, voidable. Fell off.”

Tyss took him by the arm. “You come with me and rest awhile. Hodgins, you better start loading up; you’ll have to do the delivering now.”

Rebellious refusal formed in my mind. Why should I be still further involved? He had no right to demand it of me; in self-protection I was bound to refuse. “Mr. Tyss…”

“Yes?”

Two weeks would see me free of him, but nothing could wipe out the debt I owed him. “Nothing. Nothing,” I murmured, and picked up one of the boxes.

VIII.

IN VIOLENT TIMES

He gave me an address on Twenty-sixth Street. “Sprovis is the name.”

“All right,” I said as stolidly as I could.

“Let them do the unloading. I see there’s a full feed bag in the van; that’ll be a good time to give it to the horse.”

“Yes.”

“They’ll load up another consignment and drive with you to the destination. Take the van back to the livery stable. Here’s money for your supper and trainfare back here.”

He thinks of everything, I reflected bitterly. Except that I don’t want to have anything to do with this.

Driving slackly through the almost empty streets my resentment continued to rise, drowning, at least partly, my fear of being for some unfathomable reason stopped by a police officer and apprehended. Why should I be stopped? Why should the Grand Army counterfeit pesetas?

The address, which I had trouble finding on the poorly lit thoroughfare, was one of those four-story stuccos at least a century old, showing few signs of recent repair. Mr. Sprovis, who occupied the basement, had one ear distinctly larger than the other, an anomaly I could not help attributing to a trick of constantly pulling on the lobe. He, like the others who came out with him to unload the van, wore the Grand Army beard.

“I had to come instead of Pon—”

“No names,” he growled. “Hear? No names.”

“All right. I was told you’d unload and load up again.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I slipped the strap of the feed bag over the horse’s ear and started toward Eighth Avenue.

“Hey! Where you going?”

“To get something to eat. Anything wrong with that?”

I felt him peering suspiciously at me. “Guess not. But don’t keep us waiting, see? We’ll be ready to go in twenty minutes.”

I did not like Mr. Sprovis. In the automatic lunchroom where the dishes were delivered by a clever clockwork device as coins were deposited in the right slots, I gorged on fish and potatoes, but my pleasure at getting away for once from the unvarying bread and heart was spoiled by the thought of him. And I was at best no more than half through with the night’s adventure. What freight Sprovis and his companions were now loading in the van I had no idea. Except that it was nothing innocent.

When I turned the corner into Twenty-sixth Street again, the shadowy mass of the horse and van was gone from its place by the curb. Alarmed, I broke into a run and discovered it turning in the middle of the block. I jumped and caught hold of the dash, pulling myself aboard. “What’s the idea?”

A fist caught me in the shoulder, almost knocking me back into the street. Zigzags of shock ran down my arm, terminating in numbing pain. Desperately I clung to the dash.

“Hold it,” someone rumbled; “it’s the punk who came with. Let him in.”

Another voice, evidently belonging to the man who’d hit me, admonished, “Want to watch yourself, chum. Not go jumping like that without warning. I might of stuck a shiv in your ribs instead of my hand.”

I could only repeat, “What’s the idea of trying to run off with the van? I’m responsible for it.”

“He’s responsible, see,” mocked another voice from the body of the van.

“Ain’t polite not to wait on him.”

I was wedged between the driver and my assailant; my shoulder ached and I was beginning to be really frightened now my first anger had passed. These were “action” members of the Grand Army; men who regularly committed battery, mayhem, arson, robbery, and murder. I had been both foolhardy and lucky; realizing this it seemed diplomatic not to try for possession of the reins.

I could hear the breathing and mumbling of others in back, but it didn’t need this to tell me the van was overloaded. We turned north on Sixth Avenue; the streetlights showed Sprovis driving. “Gidap, gidap,” he urged, “get going!”

“That’s a horse,” I protested, “not a locomotive.”

“What do you know?” came from behind; “And we thought we was on the Erie.”

“He’s tired,” I persisted, “and he’s pulling too much weight.”

“Shut up,” ordered Sprovis quietly. “Shut up.” The quietness was not deceptive; it was ominous. I shut up.

Speed was stupid on several counts. For one thing it called attention to the van at a time when most commercial vehicles had been stabled for the night and the traffic was almost entirely carriages, buggies, hacks, and minibiles. I visualized the suspicious crowd which would gather immediately if our horse dropped from exhaustion. There was no hope that consciousness of an innocuous cargo made Sprovis bold; whatever we carried was bound to be as incriminating as the counterfeit notes.

Disconnected scraps of conversation drifted from Sprovis’s companions. “I says, ‘Look here, you’re making a nice profit from selling abroad. Either you…’”

“And, of course, he put it all on a twenty-dollar ticket, even though…”

“‘…my taxes,’ he says. ‘You worry about your taxes,’ I says; ‘I’m worried about your contributions.’”

A monotonous chuffing close behind us forced itself into my consciousness; when we turned eastward in the Forties, I exclaimed, “There’s a minibile following us!”

Even as I spoke the trackless engine pulled alongside and then darted ahead to pocket us by nosing diagonally toward the curb. The horse must have been too weak to shy; he simply stopped short, and I heard the curses of the felled passengers behind me.

“Not the cops, anyway!”

“Cons, for a nickel!”

“Only half a block from—”

“Quick, break out the guns—”

“Not those guns; one bang and we’re through. Air pistols, if anybody’s got one. Hands or knives. Get them all!”

They piled out swiftly past me; I remained alone on the seat, an audience of one, properly ensconced. A few blocks away was the small park where Tirzah used to meet me. It was not believable that this was happening in one of New York’s quietest residential districts in the year 1942.

An uneven, distorting light emphasized the abnormal speed of the incident that followed, making the action seem jumpy, as though the participants were caught at static moments, changing their attitudes between flashes of visibility. The tempo was so swift any possible spectators in the bordering windows or on the sidewalks wouldn’t have had time to realize what was going on before it was all over.

Four men from the minibile were met by five from the van. The odds were not too unequal, for the attackers had a discipline which Sprovis’s force lacked. Their leader attempted to parley during one of those seconds of apparent inaction. “Hay, you men—we got nothing against you. They’s a thousand dollars apiece in it for you—”

A fist smacked into his mouth. The light caught his face as he was jolted back, but I hardly needed its revelation to confirm my recognition of Colonel Tolliburr’s voice.

The Confederate agents had brass knuckles and blackjacks, Colonel Tolliburr had a swordcane which he unsheathed with a glinting flourish. The Grand Army men flashed knives; no one seemed to be using air pistols or spring-powered guns.

Both sides were intent on keeping the clash as quiet and inconspicuous as possible; no one shouted with anger or screamed in pain. This muffled intensity made the struggle more gruesome; the contenders fought their natural impulses as well as each other. I heard the impact of blows, the grunts of effort, the choked-back cries, the scraping of shoes on pavement, and the thud of falls. One of the defenders fell, and two of the attackers, before the two remaining Southrons gave up the battle and attempted escape.

With united impulse they started for the minibile, evidently realized they wouldn’t have time to get up power, and began running down the street. Their moment of indecision did for them. As the four Grand Army men closed in I saw the Confederates raise their arms in the traditional gesture of surrender. Then they were struck down.

I crept noiselessly down on the off side of the van and hastened quietly away in the protection of the shadows.

IX.

BARBARA

For the next few days reading was pure pretense. I used the opened book to mask my privacy while I trembled not so much with fear as with horror. I had been brought up in a harsh enough world, and murder was no novelty in New York; I had seen slain men before, but this was the first time I had been confronted with naked, merciless savagery. Though I believed Sprovis would have had no qualms about dispatching an inconvenient witness if I had stayed on the van, I had no particular fear for my own safety, for my knowledge of what had happened became less dangerous daily. The terror of the deed itself, however, remained constant.