Уильям Макгиверн: Collected Fiction: 1940-1963

“What’s happened to me? My body...!” cried the frock-coated figure wildly.

“Everything’s all right, Mr. Throckmorton,” Mr. Darnell said, his face pale with anxiety. “I’ve sent for a ladder. It’s coming directly.”

“But I’m not Mr. Throckmorton,” he protested wildly. “I’m John Brown.” Mr. Darnell tried to smile understandingly, but only succeeded in looking very bewildered. “Of course, Mr. Throckmorton. You’re a little shocked. Terrible experience to go through.”

“Stop calling me Throckmorton,” John Brown said hysterically. “I just look like him. This is his body, but I’m really me.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Darnell, “you’re you. You’re Mr. Throckmorton.” He pointed to the machine. “There’s Mr. Brown.”

John Brown looked and found himself looking at himself. Not as he was now, but as he should be. Baggy brown suit. Thin brown hair. Weak blue eyes. John Brown closed his eyes and counted to ten. It didn’t help. And John Brown abruptly realized the truth.

“We’ve changed bodies — somehow!” he said to himself in an amazed, hoarse whisper.

The figure on the floor was still rubbing his eyes and shaking his head. “Help me up,” he shouted. “Try and kill a man and then refuse to help him, eh? I tell you, Brown, you’ll regret this day as long as you live. You can’t trifle with a Throckmorton and get away scot free.”

John Brown stooped over and helped him to his feet. “I’m sorry,” he began, breathless with unaccustomed effort, but the other cut him off.

“Sorry!” he exploded. “A fine thing to tell a man after you’ve nearly killed him. I...” His mouth fell open. His eyes bulged out until they looked like huge marbles. He opened and closed his mouth soundlessly once — twice — then fainted quietly away.

Someone was sliding a ladder into the machine and in a few seconds Mr. Darnell and two of the uniformed maintenance men were descending into the washer.

“Terrible experience,” said Mr. Darnell. “But everything’s all right now.”

John Brown stared at his strange fat body and heaved a terrified sigh. As the brisk men in uniform picked up his limp and sagging body, he felt like crying.

“Everything is all wrong,” he said unhappily.

“Terrible experience,” said Mr. Darnell for the third time. “Mr. Brown will be all right I’m sure. They’re taking him to the employees’ washroom for first aid.”

“They can’t do that,” John Brown cried, suddenly horrified.

“It’s a pleasant enough washroom,” Mr. Darnell said timidly. “Couch, first aid—”

“You’d better take him to his office.”

“But, Mr. Throckmorton, Mr. Brown has no office.”

John Brown stared strangely at his new body again, then made a sudden decision.

“But of course,” he amended. “For a moment I didn’t think. Have Mr. Brown brought to my office.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else?”

In all of John Brown’s drab, colorless forty-three years of existence no one had ever called him “sir” and waited expectantly and diffidently for another order. It was a heady intoxicating feeling. Like strong wine. John Brown took a deep breath, fingered his heavy gold watch chain.

“One more thing.”

“Yes.”

“Be quick about it.”

“Oh yes, sir.” Mr. Darnell bobbed his head and ducked off down the aisle.

John Brown watched him hurry off and there was a strange speculative light in his eye. It was the first time in his life that he had ever known the thrill of power.

In spite of the delightful feeling of importance that his new presence gave him John Brown was glad to see his old body being carried into Mr. Throckmorton’s office. He turned to the curious crowd in the doorway and fixed them with a cold stare.

They melted away.

He instructed the attendants to stretch their burden on a comfortable daybed that was placed against the wall and then dismissed them.

He surveyed the luxurious surroundings with satisfaction. Not half bad. He seated himself at Mr. Throckmorton’s gleaming mahogany desk and waited for the president to come around. It was a very odd situation.

It was more than odd. It was unbelievable, incredible, amazing and unimaginable. Still it had happened.

He, John Brown, was J. Thaddeus Throckmorton and the pompous department store head was now an ordinary wash machine salesman. Poetic justice, that’s what it was!

John Brown opened a teak wood humidor and selected a fat perfecto cigar. He was just touching the flame from the silver desk lighter to it, when the figure on the couch groaned, and struggled to a sitting position. Throckmorton, in John Brown’s body, stared blankly about the room for an instant, then leaped to his feet. He looked down at himself, felt his face and then rushed to the desk.

“It’s some kind of a trick,” he shouted. “Get away from my desk, you impostor.”

“It’s no trick,” John Brown said. “Something happened to us in the washer. We switched bodies.”

“That doesn’t give you any right to sit there smoking my dollar cigars. I am J. Thaddeus Throckmorton. Nothing can change that.”

“Sure,” John Brown admitted. “You’re Throckmorton. I’m Brown. But only two people in the world know that. If I wanted to I could call the building police and have you thrown out of my office. If you kept insisting that you were me they’d lock you up in the booby hatch. I don’t like this any better than you do, but we’ll have to make the best of it until something straightens us out.”

Throckmorton collapsed in a chair as if his legs were suddenly filled with water. “But what am I going to do?”

John Brown blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling before answering. “There’s a job in the washing machine department that needs a good man. You can have that. You see, I don’t need it any more.” He leaned back in the cushioned swivel chair and smiled complacently. “I seem to have been promoted a little.”

Mr. Throckmorton was gazing at John Brown with a sort of dawning apprehension. When at last he found his voice he spoke in a husky whisper. “You, you mean you’re going to let this continue?” he gasped.

John Brown folded his thick hands over his new stomach and gazed benignly at the figure he used to be. “Why not?” he inquired with cold matter-of-factness. “What is there that we can possibly do about it?” Then he smiled thoughtfully. “Besides, with the exception of my rather absurd new body, I think I rather like what has happened. I’m a lot wealthier, have a lot more power at this minute than I had fifteen minutes ago.”

Mr. Throckmorton, from his new but very drab body, could only sputter in futile rage. “What,” he managed to blurt after a moment, “is wrong with my body?”

“Which,” asked John Brown with devilish amusement, “your new body, or the one I’m wearing at present?”

“My own, my honest-to-goodness, genuine body!” spat Mr. Throckmorton. “What’s wrong with it, I say?”

Mr. John Brown looked thoughtfully at his portly new figure. “Well,” he said after a moment, “it’s horribly fat to begin with. Then, you’re not the handsomest devil in the world, y’know.” He held up a warning hand as Mr. Throckmorton began to protest. “And your taste in clothes is much too loud, too pretentious. You dress, if you’ll pardon my candor, in a more or less hideous fashion.”

“Damn you, Brown,” snarled the store owner, “I resent your remarks. I ought to fire you!”

“Tsk,” admonished John Brown. “Remember your new station, Mr. Throckmorton. You are now a washing machine salesman. If there’s any firing to be done, I’ll take care of it. I’m president, remember.”