Fredrick Brown - Night of the Jabberwock

Smiley had a couple of other customers and was waiting on them, and I wasn't in any mood to wait for Smiley so I went around behind the bar and got the Old Henderson bottle and two glasses and took them to a table for Pete and myself. Smiley and I know one another well enough so it's always all right for me to help myself, any time it's convenient and settle with him afterward.

I poured drinks for Pete and me. We drank and Pete said, "Well, that's that for another week, Doc."

I wondered how many times he'd said that in the ten years he'd worked for me, and then I got to wondering how many times I'd thought it, which would be—

"How much is fifty-two times twenty-three, Pete?" I asked him.

"Huh? A hell of a lot. Why?"

I figured it myself. "Fifty times twenty-three is — one thousand one hundred and fifty; twice twenty-three more makes eleven ninety-six. Pete, eleven hundred and ninety six times have I put that paper to bed on a Thursday night and never once was there a really big hot news story in it."

"This isn't Chicago, Doe. What do you expect, a murder?"

"I'd love a murder," I told him.

It would have been funny if Pete had said, "Doc, how'd you like three in one night?"

But he didn't, of course. In a way, though, he said something that was even funnier. He said, "But suppose it was a friend of yours? Your best friend, say. Carl Trenholm. Would you want him killed just to give the Clarion a story?"

"Of course not," I said. "Preferably somebody I don't know at all — if there is anybody in Carmel City I don't know at all. Let's make it Yehudi."

"Who's Yehudi?" Pete asked.

I looked at Pete to see if he was kidding me, and apparently he wasn't, so I explained: "The little man who wasn't there. Don't you remember the rhyme?

I saw a man upon the stair,

A little man who was not there.

He was not there again today;

Gee, I wish he'd go away."

Pete laughed. "Doc, you get crazier every day. Is that Alice in Wonderland, too, like all the other stuff you quote when you get drinking?"

"This time, no. But who says I quote Lewis Carroll only when I'm drinking? I can quote him now, and I've hardly started drinking for tonight — why, as the Red Queen said to Alice, `One has to do this much drinking to stay in the same place.' But listen and I'll quote you something that's really something:

Pete stood up. "Jabberwocky, from Alice Through the Looking-Glass," he said. "If you've recited that to me once, Doc, it's been a hundred times. I damn near know it myself. But I got to go, Doc. Thanks for the drink."

"Okay, Pete, but don't forget one thing."

"What's that?"

I said:

Smiley was calling to me, "Hey, Doc!" from over beside the telephone and I remembered now that I'd heard it ring half a minute before. Smiley yelled, "Telephone for you, Doc," and laughed as though that was the funniest thing that had happened in a long time.

I stood up and started for the phone, telling Pete good night en route.

I picked up the phone and said "Hello" to it and it said "Hello" back at me. Then it said, "Doc?" and I said, "Yes."

Then it said, "Clyde Andrews speaking, Doc." His voice sounded quite calm. "This is murder."

Pete must be almost to the door by now; that was my first thought. I said, "Just a second, Clyde," and then jammed my hand over the mouthpiece while I yelled, "Hey, Pete!"

He was at the door; but he turned.

"Don't go," I yelled at him, the length of the bar. "There's a murder story breaking. We got to remake!"

I could feel the sudden silence in Smiley's Bar. The conversation between the two other customers stopped in the middle of a word and they turned to look at me. Pete, from the door, looked at me. Smiley, a bottle in his hand, turned to look at me — and he didn't even smile. In fact, just as I turned back to the phone, the bottle dropped out of his hand and hit the floor with a noise that made me jump and close my mouth quickly to keep my heart from jumping from it. That bottle crashing on the floor had sounded — for a second — just like a revolver shot.

I waited until I felt that I could talk again without stammering and then I took my hand off the mouthpiece of the phone and said calmly, or almost calmly, "Okay, Clyde, go ahead."

"You've gone to press, haven't you, Doc?" Clyde's voice said. "You must have because I tried phoning you at the office first and then somebody told me if you weren't there, you'd be at Smiley's, but that'd mean you were through for the—"

"That's all right," I said. "Get on with it."

"I know it's murder, Doc, to ask you to change a story when you've already got the paper ready to run and have left the office, but — well, that rummage sale we were going to have Tuesday; it's been called off. Can you still kill the article? Otherwise a lot of people will read about it and come around to the church Tuesday night and be disappointed."

"Sure, Clyde," I said. "I'll take care of it."

I hung up. I went over to the table and sat down. I poured myself a drink of whisky and when Pete came over I poured him one.

He asked me what the call had been and I told him.

Smiley and his two other customers were still staring at me, but I didn't say anything until Smiley called out, "What happened, Doc? Didn't you say something about a murder?"

I said, "I was just kidding, Smiley." He laughed.

I drank my drink and Pete drank his: He said, "I knew there was a catch about getting through early tonight. Now we got a nine-inch hole in the front page all over again. What are we going to put in it?"

"Damned if I know," I told him. "But the hell with it for tonight. I'll get down when you do in the morning and figure something out then."

Pete said, "That's what you say now, Doc. But if you don't get down at eight o'clock, what'll I do with that hole in the page?"

"Your lack of faith horrifies me, Pete. If I say I'll be down in the morning, I will be. Probably."

"But if you're not?"

I sighed. "Do anything you want." I knew Pete would fix it up somehow if I didn't get down. He'd drag something from a back page and plug the back page with filler items or a subscription ad. It was going to be lousy because we had one sub ad in already and too damn much filler; you know, those little items that tell you the number of board feet in a sequoia and the current rate of mullet manufacture in the Euphrates valley. All right in small doses, but when you run the stuff by the column—

Pete said he'd better go, and this time he did. I watched him go, envying him a little. Pete Corey is a good printer and I pay him just about what I make myself. We put in about the same number of hours, but I'm the one who has to worry whenever there's any worrying to be done, which is most of the time.

Smiley's other customers left, just after Pete, and I didn't want to sit alone at the table, so I took my bottle over to the bar.

"Smiley," I said, "do you want to buy a paper?"

"Huh?" Then he laughed. "You're kidding me, Doc. It isn't off the press till tomorrow noon, is it?"

"It isn't," I told him. "But it'll be well worth waiting for this week. Watch for it, Smiley. But that isn't what I meant."

"Huh? Oh, you mean do I want to buy the paper. I don't think so, Doc. I don't think I'd be very good at running a paper. I can't spell very good, for one thing. But look, you were telling me the other night Clyde Andrews wanted to buy it from you. Whyn't you sell it to him, if you want to sell it?"