Fredric Brown - The Short Happy Lives of Eustace Weaver

His taxi got tangled in a jam on the freeway so he didn’t get to the track at Santa Anita until the first race was over but he was in time to read the winner’s number on the tote board and to check it on his dope sheet. He watched five more races, not betting but checking the winner of each race and decided not to bother with the last race. He left the grandstand and walked around behind and under it, a secluded spot where no one could see him. He set the dial of his time machine two hours back, and pressed the stud.

But nothing happened. He tried again with the same result and then a voice behind him said, “It won’t work. It’s in a deactivating field.”

He whirled around and there standing right behind him were two tall, slender young men, one blond and the other dark, and each of them with a hand in one pocket as though holding a weapon.

“We are Time Police,” the blond one said, “from the twenty-fifth century. We have come to punish you for illegal use of a time machine.”

“B-b-but,” Weaver sputtered, “h-how could I have known that racing was—” His voice got a little stronger. “Besides I haven’t made any bets yet.”

“That is true,” the blond young man said. “And when we find any inventor of a time machine using it to win at any form of gambling, we give him warning the first time. But we’ve traced you back and find out your very first use of the time machine was to steal money from a store. And that is a crime in any century.” He pulled from his pocket something that looked vaguely like a pistol.

Eustace Weaver took a step backward. “Y-you don’t mean—”

“I do mean,” said the blond young man, and he pulled the trigger. And this time, with the machine deactivated, it was the end for Eustace Weaver.