As You Were Page 3

  He paused and drank coffee fiercely.

  “Are you sure there wasn’t any important mail?” Owen asked in a distracted voice. “I’d better go look. Maybe you missed something.”

  “Sit down, sir! Do you take me for a fool like you?”

  “Ah,” Dr. Krafft murmured placatingly. “Lovely morning, lovely morning. Last night, gentlemen, I had a most interesting dream—”

  “Hum!” Uncle Edmund said abruptly. “That reminds me. So did I. Most interesting.” He regarded a piece of toast in his hand, sneered at it and hurled it into his mouth. Speaking around it, he went on. “This morning I am more inclined to give Dr. Krafft’s theories special credence. I myself had an odd, yet thoroughly convincing dream. Prescient, perhaps. I had a bird’s-eye view, as it were, of what Dr. Krafft might call the temporal plenum. It is spherical.”

  “Ah,” Dr. Krafft said noncommittally.

  “It is spherical,” Stumm repeated in a firm voice. “Like the celestial sphere. I was surprised, in my dream, to see what I took to be a wooden shoe come sailing toward me. In this vessel I observed a party of time-travelers from the distant future who were visiting this day and age to see with their own eyes the man whose name must have gone ringing down the corridors of time to their own era—namely, me.” He paused. “C. Edmund Stumm,” he murmured, smiling to himself, like a man pouring cream over his own ego.

  “Curious thing,” he added presently. “Their anchor. Something odd about it.”

  “What?” Owen inquired in an urgent voice. “Did you see it?”

  * * *

  Stumm gave him an angry glance. “None of your business,” he said. Then a look of yet deeper bliss stole across his features as he regarded his nephew. He touched his coat pocket with a loving hand. Paper crackled.

  “By the way, Peter,” he said suddenly. “I’ve had an offer from Metro for Lady Pantagruel. They’ll pay five thousand more than your termagant friend offered me yesterday. I just thought you’d be interested.” He cleared his throat slightly. “In spite of Miss Bishop’s vile temper and worse manners,” he said, “I might just possibly reconsider my decision, if she can meet Metro’s generous price. Think it over, my boy.”

  Owen looked at his uncle searchingly. In which now had he lied? Which tale was the true one? What ought he to do next? He was still debating the question when Dr. Krafft said in a gentle drone,

  “My dream was much like yours, Edmund. Yes, you have guessed it. A schooner filled with time-travelers. Curious, eh? Essentially the same, though colored by our different personalities and interpretations. I dreamed that my tesseract-projection experiments were rising like bubbles to the surface of the paratemporal plenum, attracting the attention of our friends, the travelers. You know, the anchor intrigued me, too. Now that I think of it, the anchor seemed to be swinging to and fro, like a pendulum. Of course it could swing no farther than twelve hours.”

  Dr. Krafft paused, pondering. “Why of course?” he asked himself in a murmur. “Why did I say that? Part of the dream, no doubt. Time and space get confused so easily.” Here he sighed. “Dear Maxl,” he said. “With Maxl, I could work out the whys and wherefores. Without Maxl—” He shook his white head, a gentle scowl darkening his features. “In my last tesseract-projective session,” he said, “I am almost certain I penetrated through to the next adjacent temporal dimension. A most interesting new chain of ideas hovered at the very verge of my mind. Oh, Maxl, where are you!”

  “Forget about Maxl,” Stumm said shortly. “You waste enough time on your experiments as it is. Remember, I have only three more weeks to get the rough draft of the new play finished. I’ll want your close attention this morning, Sigmund. Yesterday you spent the whole day nose to nose with that idiotic stone frog. Today we have something more important to consider—Act Three.”

  “But the anchor!” Owen said plaintively. “I wish one of you could remember what it looked like. I wonder if—”

  “The voice of the oatmeal,” Uncle Edmund said unpleasantly.

  “Maxl!” Dr. Krafft exclaimed in a sudden, high voice. He leaped to his feet, his aged face illuminated with joy. “Yes, I have guessed it! I remember where I left Maxl! In your library, Edmund! Excuse me, I must go to Maxl!”

  In a rapid shuffle he hastened across the room toward the library door. The beam of his own delighted face seemed to precede him like the beam of a flashlight. Stumm watched with a certain sardonic expression on his cormorant features that Owen found rather baffling.

  “Uncle Edmund,” he said.

  “Well?” This was an impatient snarl.

  “I don’t believe Miss Bishop’s backers will raise their price again. But the sale could be closed at their top price if I could get her back today.”

  “Edmund!” Dr. Krafft’s horrified cry from the library brought both men to their feet in alarm. “Edmund! Robbers! Thieves! Oh, my poor Maxl!”

  CHAPTER IV

  Time for Patience

  The library was indeed a dreadful sight. Glass from a broken french door glittered on the carpet. Rain had soaked the curtains and shapeless smears of mud led across the wet rug toward a shattered wall-cabinet. Once it had been glass-fronted. Once it had held a singularly uninteresting collection of gold coins, property of C. Edmund Stumm. It was empty now.

  Stumm’s breath hissed dramatically through his teeth. “My coins!” he said, and rushed across the room toward the looted cabinet.

  “Maxl!” the Doctor cried again in a distrait voice, rushing after him. But he went only as far as the huge desk, where he bent to pat an empty corner of that vast bare surface tenderly. “There he sat, last night. Now I remember. Oh, my poor Maxl, stolen! Edmund, we must get Maxl back or I am a ruined man!”

  “Nonsense,” Stumm said, staring at the cabinet. “My coins are gone—thousands of dollars’ worth.” He was grossly exaggerating though the collection did have some intrinsic worth and was heavily insured. “What would burglars want with a stone frog? Had he any real value, like my coins?”

  “Only to me,” Krafft told him sadly. “But I know he sat here last night. I remember clearly now. The burglars must have taken him, and I shall never think again.”

  “Peter,” Stumm said coldly. “Hand me the phone.”

  “But Uncle Edmund,” Owen said, glancing, at the wall behind the desk, where a medium-sized safe exhibited a steel circle let into the panels, “hadn’t you better check up on everything first? Maybe the burglars took more than the coins. Shall I open the safe?”

  “I said hand me the phone,” Stumm repeated even more coldly. “No shilly-shallying, young man. For every moment we delay the burglars may be drawing farther away, beyond the reach of the police. Let that safe alone! You’d like to learn the combination, wouldn’t you, my clever young friend? It may disappoint you to know there’s nothing of any value in it—only papers. Now will you hand me the telephone, or must I fling up the window and shout for the police myself?”

  Owen handed the instrument over in silence. There was a certain fierce satisfaction in Stumm’s voice as he gave the mayor’s number.

  “Now we’ll see,” he muttered, waiting. “Now that great lummox of a Police Chief will—hello, hello! Is that you, James? C. Edmund Stumm speaking. My house has been robbed.”

  The telephone sputtered excitedly at this dramatic announcement.

  “Chief Egan did it,” Uncle Edmund said in a firm voice. “Oh, I’m not accusing him personally. I don’t say he robbed me with his own butter-fingered hands. But crime has been running riot too long in Las Ondas, James, and this is the last straw. You know the trouble I’ve been having with that man. Egan has got to go!”

  The telephone again sputtered.

  “I don’t care if he has six dozen children,” Uncle Edmund snapped. “As Mayor of Las Ondas your job’s to protect the citizenry. This place is rapidly degenerating into a new Casbah. I refuse to let my name be connected with a dive as noisesome as the lowest quarters of Port Said.”

&nbs
p; Expostulation from the telephone.

  “No,” Stumm said finally, “Egan goes or I go, and that’s final. I warn you, James, I’m seriously thinking of moving. Choose between us. Egan’s persecuted me to the last ditch, and here I take my stand. Who sent a policeman to make trouble at four o’clock in the morning only last week, when I was giving a party? Egan. Who put a ticket on my windshield last night? Who tried to make me move along Sunday when I was parked in the middle of Main Street signing autographs? I tell you, James, it’s Egan or me. Take your choice.”

  Firmly he banged the telephone down. When he met Owen’s anxious gaze he was beaming with unwonted geniality.

  “Mark this day in red,” he commanded metaphorically. “My triumph over that oafish lumpkin is achieved at last.” He glanced at the gently mourning Krafft. “Nor can I feel too grief-stricken at Maxl’s departure. He took too much valuable time, far better devoted to me. I feel in fine fettle, Peter. It’s a beautiful day, the lark’s on the wing and I might even consider letting your Miss Bishop have my play, if she catches me in a good mood and controls her vicious temper. Are you sure those backers of hers have the actual cash ready to hand over?”

  “Positive,” Owen declared, almost carolling. “Shall I telephone her?”

  “If you like,” Uncle Edmund said graciously. “And if you think it worth while. When she crashed out of here yesterday I seem to recall a few ill-chosen remarks about preferring death to the role of Lady Pantagruel. Still, I feel kindly toward all the world today. Do as you think best. And Peter—make sure she brings a certified check.”

  * * *

  Chief Egan, a minor though in his way an important figure in the tale of Peter Owen, was large, pink-faced, kind-hearted and perhaps not too efficient. When Las Ondas was a wide place in the beach highway, he sufficed the town well enough. But his ways were still small-town ways. And he insisted quite irrationally on enforcing the laws of Las Ondas even on Las Ondas’ most illustrious citizen.

  Peter Owen met him at the door. Followed by three officers, almost the entire police force of Las Ondas, the chief came in awkwardly. Embarrassment seemed to strike him pink and helpless whenever he came within range of C. Edmund Stumm. He grinned anxiously at Owen.

  “Hello, Pete,” he said with a sigh of relief. “Thought Mr. Stumm might answer the door. What’s the trouble?”

  “Burglars,” Owen said succinctly. “Come along, Chief—this way.”

  The library door was closed. Chief Egan turned the knob, found it recalcitrant, murmured, “Stuck, is it? Rain last night must have made the wood swell,” and after an instant’s tussle threw his mighty shoulder in a heave against the door, which shot wide open with the accompaniment of a sharp crack and a thud. A howl of rage followed instantly.

  Through the open door the form of C. Edmund Stumm was revealed flat on his back, a notebook clutched in his hand and a frightful expression on his narrow face.

  “Oh, golly,” Owen said, hurrying past to lift his uncle from the carpet.

  “Gosh,” Egan gulped, turning very pink indeed. “I—uh—I’m sorry, Mr. Stumm. Were you coming out?”

  “Yes,” Stumm said after a long pause. He allowed Owen to help him to his feet in deep silence, while his face turned redder and redder with a sort of luxuriant fury. “Yes, Chief Egan,” he said meticulously, brushing at his trousers, “I was coming out I had hoped to avoid all possible irritations today and concentrate on my work. In order to shun the very sight of your incompetent jowls, I decided to get my notes and clear out before you lurched into my library.” Here he shook the notebook wildly in midair. Words temporarily failed him.

  The cormorant glare shifted to Owen.

  “And as for you,” he said ferociously, suddenly shifting his attack, “if that termagant Bishop woman so much as sets her toe inside my house today I’ll have her arrested for breaking and entering. The very prospect of hearing her loathsome voice makes me froth at the ears. I shall close the deal with Metro this very morning. Shut up, sir! Give this brainless buffalo what information he pretends to need. It won’t do the slightest good. As for Miss Bishop, we will not discuss the matter. A man can endure just so much. After being assaulted with a door and flung halfway across my study—why, the man’s no better than a murderer! Out of my sight, both of you! And take your Gestapo with you. Quick, before I lose my temper!”

  Hastily Owen drew the policeman into the library and closed the door. From the hall extension he could hear Uncle Edmund’s voice acidly demanding Long Distance. Chief Egan, crimson-eared, lumbered forward to examine the looted cabinet, but Owen had little attention to spare. He was listening to Uncle Edmund rapidly putting his call through, getting his man and saying loudly, for the benefit of any eavesdropping ears,

  “So it’s a deal, Louis, Lady Pantagruel is yours. You can send your lawyer down this afternoon with the papers.”

  Peter Owen laughed wildly.

  “That’s what you think, C. Edmund Stumm,” he said aloud.

  The blue enamel clock was in his pocket. He took it out and turned the minute hand back. . . .

  * * *

  “Hello, Pete,” Chief Egan said with an anxious glance past Owen into the hall. “Thought Mr. Stumm might answer the door. What’s the trouble?”

  “Burglars,” Owen said, as before. “Come in. But be careful. Here, let me go first.”

  The library door was closed. Also, it had stuck slightly. Fending off the chief’s clumsy offers to break it down, Owen knocked meticulously.

  “Uncle Edmund,” he called. “Chief Egan’s here.”

  “Bring him in, bring him in,” the voice of Uncle Edmund said testily.

  “Stand back,” Owen called. “The door’s stuck.”

  Egan burst the recalcitrant door open. Stumm, clutching his notebook, glared at Egan and appeared to steam slightly.

  “Morning, Mr. Stumm,” Egan said, blushing. “Hear you had a little trouble last night.”

  “I had no trouble,” Stumm observed acidly. “Nor do I expect to. That’s what insurance companies are for.”

  “Those coins of yours, eh?” Egan said, his gaze searching the room. “That all that’s missing? What about the safe?”

  “I have just checked it, thank you,” Stumm told him with lofty disdain. “Credit, me with a modicum of good sense in handling my own affairs. The contents—papers valueless to anyone but me—are untouched. In my opinion the burglars were the veriest amateurs, since they made no discernible attempt on the safe. But even an amateur is perfectly safe in committing the vilest depredations under your nose, sir!”

  So saying, he swung up his notebook and pointed accusingly at the chief, who stumbled backward, blundered into a corner of the desk and knocked a fluorescent lamp crashing to the floor.

  Stumm’s shriek of fury faded away into a long, diminishing wail as Owen snatched out his clock again and set the minute hand back. . . .

  * * *

  This time a full ten minutes elapsed before Egan trod heavily on Stumm’s toe as they stood together examining the cabinet. The outraged playwright was screaming for arnica, X-rays and a bone specialist as Owen, sighing deeply, erased him.

  But he did not set the clock back a mere five minutes. For he saw now that the odds against a peaceful outcome to this particular set-up were hopeless. Stumm and Egan simply could not occupy the same house for longer than a few minutes without flying into conflict. It just wasn’t worth the effort of trying to anticipate trouble before it burst out between them.

  Nor could Egan be sidetracked, so long as there was a burglary to solve. The answer seemed obvious. Sometime during the night’s storm, burglars had broken in the french door, looted Uncle Edmund’s coin collection and presumably made off with Maxl at the same time. All Owen had to do to make everyone concerned happy—except, of course, the thieves—was to slip backward in time, discover the hour of the crime, and thwart it. Wishing he had thought of this sooner, he reached for the knob of the clock. At the moment it declared
a rather tentative ten o’clock in the morning. Recklessly Owen twirled the hands backward. . . .

  Jolt.

  The knob would turn no more. Owen paused, chiefly because he could no longer see the face of the clock. It was not ten of a sunny morning any more. It was somewhere in the dark of a stormy night. He stood in total darkness, listening to the drum of rain and the distant sounds of Prokofieff’s Scythian Suite from the music-room. A gust of wet, chill air blew in his face out of the darkness. Fearing the worst, he groped across the library to the fluorescent desk-lamp, and in the rather ghastly blue daylight of its illumination saw that he had come too late.

  Under cover of the storm, the burglars had come and gone. The windows lay shattered on the carpet, mud splotched the wet floor and the glass-fronted cabinet was broken and empty. No Maxl squatted on the desk. Clearly the burglars had swiped dear little Maxl along with the coins.

  The blue clock in his hand assured Owen with a bland-faced stare that it was ten in the evening. He shook it slightly and tried the knob again, wondering why it had stuck. He could move the minute hand back, but no more than about fifteen seconds. The only result was to plunge the library into darkness again and backspace the Scythian Suite a dozen bars.

  Patiently Owen turned on the fluorescent once more and considered the clock. “So you won’t turn back past ten,” he said thoughtfully. “Why?”

  * * *

  Then something Dr. Krafft had remarked during one of this morning’s breakfasts returned to him from infinitely far away. “The anchor,” Dr. Krafft had said, “seemed to be swinging to and fro, like a pendulum. Of course it could swing no farther than twelve hours.”

  “Anchor?” Owen demanded, shaking the clock again. “Are you an anchor? A pendulum? And twelve hours is your limit, I suppose.”