Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction Read online

  “The who family?” said Foltz.

  “The Carter family,” said Weems. “George, Nancy, and their children, Eunice and Robert.” He pointed over his shoulder at a mirror behind him. “I put them all through that mirror there a year and a quarter ago.”

  “I thought you just specialized in rich widows,” said Foltz.

  “I thought that’s what you specialized in,” said Weems. “That’s all you asked about—rich widows.”

  “So you put a family through, too?” said Foltz.

  “Several of them,” said Weems. “I suppose you want the exact number. I can’t give you that number off the top of my head. I’ll have to check my files.”

  “They had bad futures, sick futures,” said Foltz, “these families you—uh—put through?”

  “In terms of life on this side of the glass?” said Weems. “No—not really. But there were far better futures to be had on the other side. No danger of war, for one thing—a much lower cost of living, for another.”

  “Um,” said Foltz. “And when they went through, they left all their money with you. Right?”

  “They took it with them,” said Weems, “all of it, with the exception of my fee, which is a flat hundred dollars a head.”

  “It’s too bad they can’t hear you yell,” said Foltz. “I’d sure like to talk to some of these people, hear about all the nice things that have been happening to them.”

  “Look in any mirror, and see what a long, complicated corridor my voice has to carry down,” said Weems.

  “Guess it’s up to you to put on the demonstration, then,” said Foltz.

  “I told you,” said Weems, very uneasy now, “I am very reluctant to do it.”

  “You’re afraid the trick won’t work?” said Foltz.

  “Oh, it’ll work all right,” said Weems. “It’s likely to work too well, is all. If I get on the other side of the glass, I’m going to want to stay on the other side. I always do.”

  Foltz laughed. “If it’s so heavenly on the other side,” he said, “what could keep you here?”

  Weems closed his eyes, massaged the bridge of his nose. “The same thing that makes you an excellent policeman,” he said. He opened his eyes. “A sense of duty.” He did not smile.

  “And what is it this duty of yours makes you do?” said Foltz. He asked the question mockingly. His air of being dazed, of being in Weems’s power, had dropped away.

  Weems, seeing the transformation, became in turn a small and wretched man. “It makes me stay here, on this side,” he said emptily, “because I am the only one I know of who can help others pass through.” He shook his head. “You aren’t hypnotized, are you?” he said.

  “Hell no,” said Foltz. “And neither is he.”

  Carney relaxed, shuddered, smiled.

  “If it makes you feel any better,” said Foltz, taking his handcuffs from his hip pocket, “it’s a couple of brother hypnotists who are taking you in. That’s how we got this assignment. Carney and I’ve both played with it some. Compared to you, we’re mere amateurs, of course. Come on, Weems—Rumpelstiltskin—hold out your wrists like a good boy.”

  “This was a trap, then?” said Weems.

  “Right,” said Foltz. “We wanted to get you to talk, and you certainly did. The only problem now is to find the bodies. What did you plan to do with Carney and me—get us to shoot each other?”

  “No,” said Weems simply.

  “I’ll tell you this,” said Foltz, “we respected hypnotism enough not to take any chances. There’s another detective right outside the door.”

  Weems had not yet held out his thin wrists like a good boy. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

  “Fred!” Foltz called to the detective on the staircase outside. “Come on in, so Rumpelstiltskin can believe in you.”

  In came the third detective, a pale, moonfaced, huge, young Swede. Carney and Foltz were elated and smug. The man named Fred didn’t share their delight. He was worried and watchful, had his gun drawn.

  “Please,” Weems said to Foltz, “tell him to put his gun away.”

  “Put your gun away, Fred,” said Foltz.

  “You guys are really all right?” said Fred.

  Carney and Foltz laughed.

  “Fooled you, too, eh?” said Foltz.

  Fred didn’t laugh. “Yeah—you sure did,” he said. He looked closely at Carney and Foltz, did it impersonally, as though they were department store dummies. And Carney and Foltz, in their moment of triumph, really did look like dummies—stiff, waxen, with mortuary smiles.

  “For the love of God,” Weems said to Foltz, “tell him to put his gun away.”

  “For the love of God,” said Foltz, “put the gun away, Fred.”

  Fred didn’t do it. “I—I don’t think you guys know what you’re doing,” he said.

  “That’s the funniest thing I ever heard,” said Weems.

  Carney and Foltz burst out laughing. They laughed so hard and long that their bellies ached and their weeping eyes bugged, and they gasped for air.

  “That’s enough,” said Weems, and they stopped laughing instantly, became department store dummies again.

  “They are hypnotized!” said Fred, backing away.

  “Certainly,” said Weems. “You’ve got to understand what sort of a house you’re in. Nothing is seen, said, felt, or done here that I don’t want seen, said, felt, or done.”

  “Come on—” said Fred queasily, waving his gun, “wake ’em up.”

  “Straighten your tie,” said Weems.

  “I said wake ’em up,” said Fred.

  “Straighten your tie,” said Weems.

  Fred straightened his tie.

  “Thank you,” said Weems. “Now, I’m afraid I have rather frightening news for you—for all of you.”

  Consternation filled every face.

  “A tornado is coming,” said Weems. “It will blow you all away unless you handcuff your left hands to that steam radiator.”

  The three detectives, clumsy with terror, handcuffed themselves to the radiator.

  “Throw your keys away, or you’ll be struck by lightning!” said Weems.

  Keys flew across the room.

  “The tornado missed you,” said Weems. “You’re safe now.”

  The three detectives wept at their miraculous deliverance. “Pull yourselves together, gentlemen,” said Weems. “I have an announcement to make.” The three were avid for the news.

  “I’m going to leave you,” said Weems. “In fact, I’m going to leave everything about this existence behind.” He went to a mirror, tapped it with his knuckles. “I’m going to step through this mirror in a moment. You will see me and my reflection meet and blend, shrink to the size of a pinhead. The pinhead will grow again, not as me and my reflection, but as my reflection alone. You will then see my reflection walk away from you, down the long, long corridor. See the corridor I’m going to walk down?”

  The three nodded.

  “You will see me pass through the mirror,” said Weems, “when I say the words ‘Black magic.’ When I say the words ‘White magic,’ you will see me reappear in every mirror in this room. You will shoot at each of those images, until every mirror is broken. And when I say, ‘Good-bye, gentlemen,’ you will shoot each other down.” Weems strolled to the attic door. Nobody watched him do it. All eyes were on the mirror he’d said he was going to pass through.

  “Black magic,” said Weems softly.

  “There he goes!” cried Foltz.

  “Like going through a door!” said Carney.

  “God help us!” said Fred.

  Weems stepped out of the ballroom and onto the stairs. He left the door open a crack. “White magic,” he said. “There he is!” said Foltz. “All around us!” said Carney. “Get him!” said Fred.

  There was a pandemonium of shots and yells and shattering glass.

  Weems waited for the silence that would tell him that all mirrors had been broken, that it was time at last to say g
ood-bye.

  The farewell was poised on his lips when bullets ripped through him and the door against which he leaned.

  Weems sank dying to the staircase, about to roll all the way down it. He was not thinking of the lifeless roll to come. He was remembering too late—that on the other side of the ballroom door had been a mirror.

  THE NICE

  LITTLE PEOPLE

  It was a hot, dry, glaring July day that made Lowell Swift feel as though every germ and sin in him were being baked out forever. He was riding home on a bus from his job as a linoleum salesman in a department store. The day marked the end of his seventh year of marriage to Madelaine, who had the car, and who, in fact, owned it. He carried red roses in a long green box under his arm.

  The bus was crowded, but no women were standing, so Lowell’s conscience was unencumbered. He sat back in his seat and crackled his knuckles absently, and thought pleasant things about his wife.

  He was a tall, straight man, with a thin, sandy mustache and a longing to be a British colonel. At a distance, it appeared that his longing had been answered in every respect save for a uniform. He seemed distinguished and purposeful. But his eyes were those of a wistful panhandler, lost, baffled, inordinately agreeable. He was intelligent and healthy, but decent to a point that crippled him as master of his home or an accumulator of wealth.

  Madelaine had once characterized him as standing on the edge of the mainstream of life, smiling and saying, “Pardon me,” “After you,” and “No, thank you.”

  Madelaine was a real estate saleswoman, and made far more money than Lowell did. Sometimes she joked with him about it. He could only smile amiably, and say that he had never, at any rate, made any enemies, and that, after all, God had made him, even as he had made Madelaine—presumably with some good end in mind.

  Madelaine was a beautiful woman, and Lowell had never loved anyone else. He would have been lost without her. Some days, as he rode home on the bus, he felt dull and ineffectual, tired, and afraid Madelaine would leave him—and not blaming her for wanting to.

  This day, however, wasn’t one of them. He felt marvelous. It was, in addition to being his wedding anniversary, a day spiced with mystery. The mystery was in no way ominous, as far as Lowell could see, but it was puzzling enough to make him feel as though he were involved in a small adventure. It would give him and Madelaine a few minutes of titillating speculation. While he’d been waiting for the bus, someone had thrown a paper knife to him.

  It had come, he thought, from a passing car or from one of the offices in the building across the street. He hadn’t seen it until it clattered to the sidewalk by the pointed black toes of his shoes. He’d glanced around quickly without seeing who’d thrown it; had picked it up gingerly, and found that it was warm and remarkably light. It was bluish silver in color, oval in cross section, and very modern in design. It was a single piece of metal, seemingly hollow, sharply pointed at one end and blunt at the other, with only a small, pearl-like stone at its midpoint to mark off the hilt from the blade.

  Lowell had identified it instantly as a paper knife because he had often noticed something like it in a cutlery window he passed every day on his way to and from the bus stop downtown. He’d made an effort to locate the knife’s owner by holding it over his head, and looking from car to car and from office window to office window, but no one had looked back at him as though to claim it. So he had put it in his pocket.

  Lowell looked out of the bus window, and saw that the bus was going down the quiet, elm-shaded boulevard on which he and Madelaine lived. The mansions on either side, though now divided into expensive apartments, were still mansions outside, magnificent. Without Madelaine’s income, it would have been impossible for them to live in such a place.

  The next stop was his, where the colonnaded white colonial stood. Madelaine would be watching the bus approach, looking down from the third-story apartment that had once been a ballroom. As excited as any high school boy in love, he pulled the signal cord, and looked up for her face in the glossy green ivy that grew around the gable. She wasn’t there, and he supposed happily that she was mixing anniversary cocktails.

  “Lowell:” said the note in the hall mirror. “Am taking a prospect for the Finletter property to supper. Cross your fingers.—Madelaine.”

  Smiling wistfully, Lowell laid his roses on the table, and crossed his fingers.

  The apartment was very still, and disorderly. Madelaine had left in a hurry. He picked up the afternoon paper, which was spread over the floor along with a pastepot and scrap-book, and read tatters that Madelaine had left whole, items that had nothing to do with real estate.

  There was a quick hiss in his pocket, like the sound of a perfunctory kiss or the opening of a can of vacuum-packed coffee.

  Lowell thrust his hand into his pocket and brought forth the paper knife. The little stone at its midpoint had come out of its setting, leaving a round hole.

  Lowell laid the knife on the cushion beside him, and searched his pocket for the missing bauble. When he found it, he was disappointed to discover that it wasn’t a pearl at all, but a hollow hemisphere of what he supposed to be plastic.

  When he returned his attention to the knife, he was swept with a wave of revulsion. A black insect a quarter of an inch long was worming out through the hole. Then came another and another—until there were six, huddled together in a pit in the cushion, a pit made a moment before by Lowell’s elbow. The insects’ movements were sluggish and clumsy, as though they were shaken and dazed. Now they seemed to fall asleep in their shallow refuge.

  Lowell took a magazine from the coffee table, rolled it up, and prepared to smash the nasty little beasts before they could lay their eggs and infest Madelaine’s apartment.

  It was then he saw that the insects were three men and three women, perfectly proportioned, and clad in glistening black tights.

  On the telephone table in the front hall, Madelaine had taped a list of telephone numbers: the numbers of her office, Bud Stafford—her boss, her lawyer, her broker, her doctor, her dentist, her hairdresser, the police, the fire department, and the department store at which Lowell worked.

  Lowell was running his finger down the list for the tenth time, looking for the number of the proper person to tell about the arrival on earth of six little people a quarter of an inch high.

  He wished Madelaine would come home.

  Tentatively, he dialed the number of the police.

  “Seventh precin’t. Sergeant Cahoon speakin’.”

  The voice was coarse, and Lowell was appalled by the image of Cahoon that appeared in his mind: gross and clumsy, slab-footed, with room for fifty little people in each yawning chamber of his service revolver.

  Lowell returned the telephone to its cradle without saying a word to Cahoon. Cahoon was not the man.

  Everything about the world suddenly seemed preposterously huge and brutal to Lowell. He lugged out the massive telephone book, and opened it to “United States Government.” “Agriculture Department … Justice Department … Treasury Department”—everything had the sound of crashing giants. Lowell closed the book helplessly.

  He wondered when Madelaine was coming home.

  He glanced nervously at the couch, and saw that the little people, who had been motionless for half an hour, were beginning to stir, to explore the slick, plum-colored terrain and flora of tufts in the cushion. They were soon brought up short by the walls of a glass bell jar Lowell had taken from Madelaine’s antique clock on the mantelpiece and lowered over them.

  “Brave, brave little devils,” said Lowell to himself, wonderingly. He congratulated himself on his calm, his reasonableness with respect to the little people. He hadn’t panicked, hadn’t killed them or called for help. He doubted that many people would have had the imagination to admit that the little people really were explorers from another world, and that the seeming knife was really a spaceship.

  “Guess you picked the right man to come and see,” he murmured to
them from a distance, “but darned if I know what to do with you. If word got out about you, it’d be murder.” He could imagine the panic and the mobs outside the apartment.

  As Lowell approached the little people for another look, crossing the carpet silently, there came a ticking from the bell jar, as one of the men circled inside it again and again, tapping with some sort of tool, seeking an opening. The others were engrossed with a bit of tobacco one had pulled out from under a tuft.

  Lowell lifted the jar. “Hello, there,” he said gently.

  The little people shrieked, making sounds like the high notes of a music box, and scrambled toward the cleft where the cushion met the back of the couch.

  “No, no, no, no,” said Lowell. “Don’t be afraid, little people.” He held out a fingertip to stop one of the women. To his horror, a spark snapped from his finger, striking her down in a little heap the size of a morning-glory seed.

  The others had tumbled out of sight behind the cushion.

  “Dear God, what have I done, what have I done?” said Lowell heartbrokenly.

  He ran to get a magnifying glass from Madelaine’s desk, and then peered through it at the tiny, still body. “Dear, dear, oh, dear,” he murmured.

  He was more upset than ever when he saw how beautiful the woman was. She bore a slight resemblance to a girl he had known before he met Madelaine.

  Her eyelids trembled and opened. “Thank heaven,” he said. She looked up at him with terror.

  “Well, now,” said Lowell briskly, “that’s more like it. I’m your friend. I don’t want to hurt you. Lord knows I don’t.” He smiled and rubbed his hands together. “We’ll have a welcome to earth banquet. What would you like? What do you little people eat, eh? I’ll find something.”

  He hurried to the kitchen, where dirty dishes and silverware cluttered the countertops. He chuckled to himself as he loaded a tray with bottles and jars and cans that now seemed enormous to him, literal mountains of food.

  Whistling a festive air, Lowell brought the tray into the living room and set it on the coffee table. The little woman was no longer on the cushion.