Fredrick Brown - Night of the Jabberwock

Smith nodded. "If he comes, we'll see."

He glanced at his empty glass and I took the hint and filled it and my own. Again I watched the incredible manner of his drinking it, fascinated. I'd swear that, this time the glass came no closer than six inches from his lips. Definitely it was a trick I'd have to learn myself. If for no other reason than that I don't really like the taste of whisky, much as I enjoy the effects of it. With his way of drinking, it didn't seem that he had the slightest chance of tasting the stuff. It was there, in the glass, and then it was gone. His Adam's apple didn't seem to work and if he was talking at the time he drank there was scarcely an interruption in what he was saying.

The phone rang. I excused myself and answered it.

"Doc," said Clyde Andrews' voice, "this is Clyde Andrews."

"Fine," I said, "I suppose you realize that you sabotaged my this week's issue by canceling a story on my front page. What's called off this time?"

"I'm sorry about that, Doc, if it really inconvenienced you, but with the sale called off, I thought you wouldn't want to run the story and have people coming around to—"

"Of course," I interrupted him. I was impatient to get back to my conversation with Yehudi Smith. "That's all right, Clyde. But what do you want now?"

"I want to know if you've decided whether or not you want to sell the Clarion."

For a second I was unreasonably angry. I said, "God damn it, Clyde, you interrupt the only really interesting conversation I've had in years to ask me that, when we've been talking about it for months, off and on? I don't know. I do and I don't want to sell it."

"Sorry for heckling you, Doc, but I just got a special delivery letter from my brother in Ohio. He's got an offer out West. Says he'd rather come to Carmel City on the proposition I'd made him — contingent on your deciding to sell me the Clarion, of course. But he's got to accept the other offer right away — within a day or so, that is — if he's going to accept it at all.

"So, you see that makes it different, Doc. I've got to know right away. Not tonight, necessarily; it isn't in that much of a rush. But I've got to know by tomorrow sometime, so I thought I'd call you right away so you could start coming to a decision."

I nodded and then realized that he couldn't see me nod so I said, "Sure, Clyde, I get it. I'm sorry for popping off. All right, I'll make up my mind by tomorrow morning. I'll let you know one way or the other by then. Okay?"

"Fine," he said. "That'll be plenty of time. Oh, by the way, there's an item of news for you if it's not too late to put it in. Or have you already got it?"

"Got what?"

"About the escaped maniac. I don't know the details, but a friend of mine just drove over from Neilsville and he says they're stopping cars and watching the roads both sides of the county asylum. Guess you can get the details if you call the asylum."

"Thanks, Clyde," I said.

I put the phone back down in its cradle and looked at Yehudi Smith. I wondered why, with all the fantastic things he'd said, I hadn't already guessed.

I felt a hell of a letdown. Oh, not that I'd really quite believed in the Vorpal Blades or that we were going to a haunted house to conjure up a Jabberwock or whatever we'd have done there.

But it had been exciting even to think about it, just as one can get excited over a chess game even though he knows that the kings and queens on the board aren't real entities and that when a bishop slays a knight no real blood is shed. I guess it had been that kind of excitement, the vicarious kind, that I'd felt about the things Yehudi Smith had promised. Or maybe a better comparison would be that it had been like reading an exciting fiction story that one knows isn't true but which one can believe in for as long as the story lasts.

Now there wasn't even that. Across from me, I realized with keen disappointment, was only a man who'd escaped from an insane asylum. Yehudi, the little man who wasn't there — mentally.

The funny part of it was that I still liked him. He was a nice little guy and he'd given me a fascinating half hour, up to now. I hated the fact that I'd have to turn him over to the asylum guards and have him put back where he came from.

Well, I thought, at least it would give me a news story to fill that nine inch hole in the front page of the Clarion. He said, "I hope the call wasn't anything that will spoil our plans, Doctor."

It had spoiled more than that, but of course I couldn't tell him so, any more than I could have told Clyde Andrews over the phone, in Smith's presence, to call the asylum and tell them to drop around to my house if they wanted to collect their bolted nut.

So I shook my head while I figured out an angle to get out of the house and to put in the phone call from next door.

I stood up. Perhaps I was a bit more drunk than I'd thought, for I had to catch my balance. I remember how crystal clear my mind seemed to be — but of course nothing seems more crystal clear than a prism that makes you see around corners.

I said, "No, the call won't interrupt our plans except for a few minutes. I've got to give a message to the man next door. Excuse me — and help yourself to the whisky."

I went through the kitchen and outside into the black night. There were lights in the houses on either side of me, and I wondered which of my neighbors to bother. And then I wondered why I was in such a hurry to bother either of them.

Surely, I thought, the man who called himself Yehudi Smith wasn't dangerous. And, crazy or not, he was the most interesting man I'd met in years. He did seem to know something about Lewis Carroll. And I remembered again that he'd known about my obscure brochure and equally obscure magazine article. How?

So, come to think of it, why shouldn't I stall making that phone call for another hour or so, and relax and enjoy myself? Now that I was over the first disappointment of learning that he was insane, why wouldn't I find talk about that delusion of his almost as interesting as though it was factual.

Interesting in a different way, of course. Often I had thought I'd like the chance to talk to a paranoiac about his delusions — neither arguing with him nor agreeing with him, just trying to find out what made him tick.

And the evening was still a pup; it couldn't be later than about half past eight so my neighbors would be up at least another hour or two.

So why was I in a hurry to make that call? I wasn't.

Of course I had to kill enough time outside to make it reasonable to believe that I'd actually gone next door and delivered a message, so I stood there at the bottom of my back steps, looking up at the black velvet sky, star-studded but moonless, and wondering what was behind it and why madmen were mad. And how strange it would be if one of them was right and all the rest of us were crazy instead.

Then I went back inside and I was cowardly enough to do a ridiculous thing. From the kitchen I went into my bedroom and to my closet. In a shoebox on the top shelf was a short-barreled thirty-eight caliber revolver, one of the compact, lightweight models they call a Banker's Special. I'd never shot at anything with it and hoped that I never would — and I wasn't sure I could hit anything smaller than an elephant or farther away than a couple of yards. I don't even like guns. I hadn't bought this one; an acquaintance had once borrowed twenty bucks from me and had insisted on my taking the pistol for security. And later he'd wanted another five and said if I gave it to him I could keep the gun. I hadn't wanted it, but he'd needed the five pretty badly and I'd given it to him.