David Wright O’Brien

The Collected Short Stories

Multibook

Warsaw 2020

Contents

The Beauty and the Beasties

Beyond the Time Door

Ferdinand Finknodle's Perfect Day

Fish Men of Venus

The Floating Robot

The Living Manikins

The Man Who Lived Next Week

Pegasus Plays Priorities

Return of Joan of Arc

Secret of the Lost Planet

Skidmore's Strange Experiment

Spook for Yourself

Squadron of the Damned

The Strange Voyage of Hector Squinch

Suicide Squadrons of Space

Ten Seconds from Nowhere

Trapped on Titan

Treasure Trove in Time

Truth Is a Plague!

Dibble Dabbles in Death

Till Death Do Us Part

Wings Above Warsaw

Bill of Rights, 5000 A.D

Blitzkrieg in the Past

Hammer of the Gods

The Last Analysis

The Man the World Forgot

The Man Who Changed History

Miracle at Dunkirk

Murder in the Past

Nicolbee's Nightmare

Rats in the Belfry

Sergeant Shane of the Space Marines

The Thought Robot

Twenty-Four Terrible Hours

Progress Is a Headache

Afraid to Live

Cupid Takes a Holiday

Flight from Farisha

Lord of the Crystal Bow

The Man Who Murdered Himself

Mystery of the Mummy

Pepper Pot Planet

Problem on Mars

Q-Ship of Space

Rayhouse in Space

Twenty-Fifth Century Sherlock

Direct Wire

Madagascar Ghost

The Incredible Antique

The Beauty and the Beasties

I TOLD Saki–he’s my oriental screwball houseboy–not to bother going to the door. I let Charlie Bright in personally.

“Hello palsie-walsie,” he smirked.

“Everything all set?”

I wanted to punch him in his pimpled face. That was Charlie Bright. He didn’t even have the decency to drop his irritating air of jauntiness when out collecting blackmail.

“I have the money.” I said. “Ten thousand in cash.”

Charlie Bright threw his loudly-tailored self into my favorite overstuffed chair. He fished into into his pocket and drew forth a gold cigarette case from which he extracted a long, gold-tipped fag on which the initials C.B. were inscribed in gold. He didn’t offer me one, and stuffed the case back into his pocket.

“The girl here?” he demanded. “The one you’re going to marry tomorrow, I mean?”

I shook my head.

“She doesn’t know a thing about this,” I said, “and she never will. Understand?”

“Sure, sure,” said Charlie Bright. “Trust your pal Charlie.” He let his beady eyes sweep swiftly over the apartment. “Any devices around?” he demanded.

“I don’t get you.”

“Dictaphones,” said Charlie Bright. “‘Cause if there are, you’re a damned chump. They’ll only make you more trouble than you bargained for. Then all the Corwin dirty linen will come out in the wash, and your little bride-to-be, Wendy Corwin, will be a pretty miserable kid.”

“Leave her name out of this!” I wasn’t kidding, as melodramatic as it sounded. Then I said, “You needn’t worry, there are no dictaphones concealed in the apartment.”

“How about the dough?” demanded my visitor. He scratched the fingers of one clawlike paw in the palm of the other. “Fork over.”

“Where is the record?” I demanded, countering. I had the cash in my pocket. But it wasn’t going to leave my pocket until I had the stolen, time worn, prison record Bright was holding me up for. The prison record of Wendy’s father, old Cornelius Corwin.

Wendy’s father, a respected and well-loved local figure, had been dead five years now. But Charlie Bright, cunning ferret that he was, had gone back fifty years into the old man’s past and dug up the fact that he had escaped from a Colorado prison farm in his youth.

Now Bright was threatening to break the news–on the day of our wedding–that Wendy was the daughter of an ex- convict. The fact that old Cornelius Corwin had been as honest and decent a citizen as New York had ever seen, and had been a model of the straight and narrow ever since his first and only youthful misdemeanor, didn’t influence Charlie Bright. Things like that never did.

“Let’s see that dough,” Charlie Bright repeated nasally.

But the ten grand Bright wanted in exchange for the only existing record was worth it to me. Worth it to save Wendy the shame and suffering and humiliation that Bright’s rotten nationally-syndicated column could cause her. And Bright had been shrewd enough to guess as much.

“You have the record with you?” I demanded again.

At this point Saki took it upon himself to thrust his brown and grinning presence into the room.

“Allo,” Saki beamed. “Boss Duane have guest?”

Charlie Bright looked at me sharply.

“I thought we were alone.”

“Just my houseboy, Saki,” I said. “He doesn’t matter.”

Saki grinned and bowed briefly.

“Saki fix ’em dlink for gentlemens,”

I started to protest. Bright could have my dough but not my hospitality. But Saki had darted back into the kitchen and I could hear cabinet doors slamming as he searched for the mixings. Charlie Bright was grinning.

“That’s real hospitable of you, palsie-walsie,” he smirked.

“Don’t call me palsie-walsie. Where is the record?” I grated.

“Time enough for that,” Bright said, “after we have a friendly little drink. Then you can get rid of your houseboy. I don’t want anyone around when the actual transfer is made.”

I WANTED to wring his neck. But until I got my hands on that record there was nothing I could do. I slouched down on a divan and irritably reached for a cigarette. Saki–still grinning like the utterly benighted ass that he is–brought the drinks in five minutes later. He put them down on a center table.

There were six drinks on the tray. I had never been able to drum it into Saki’s thick skull that a cocktail set of six pieces doesn’t necessarily have to be used completely each time. But Saki never savvied. Six glasses in set, six drinks every time–no matter how many guests I had, two or eight.

Charlie Bright reached out and helped himself, downing the first drink in a gulp and promptly taking a second. I picked up one and sipped it slowly.

Saki stood there, grinning happily from Bright to me and back again. He was like a bowery waiter in a clip joint hovering about for a tip.

“All right, Saki,” I said. “You can beat it. Take the night off. See your Mott Street girl friend.”

Charlie Bright had finished his second drink. There seemed to be a peculiar expression on his features. Saki was still grinning like a Bhudda who’s just overeaten pleasurably.

I finished my drink and put it down a little irritably.

“All right, Saki,” I repeated. “You heard what I said. Scram please.”

Saki shook his head.

“No, Boss Duane, must watch.” His button eyes were fixed unwaveringly on Charlie Bright.

“Saki,” I demanded, “what in the devil’s eating you?” I turned to look at Charlie Bright.

Charlie Bright was gone!

Before I could catch my breath, Saki was smilingly explaining to me.

“Saki tell you no like pimple fella. Saki tell him is bad. Saki know he come bothel you–try stop wedding malliage tomorrow. Saki fix him ancest’lial dlink–old lecipie.”

I was on my feet.

“Saki!” I managed. “What in the name of all that’s unholy have you done?”

Saki grinned reassuringly and stepped over to my armchair. He pushed it back. There, squeaking hysterically beneath it, was a black scrawny rat!

“See, Boss Duane. Is Chollie Blight!” Saki pointed happily at the frantically squeaking rat.

In times like that you don’t stop to reason things out.

“What?” I screamed. “Charlie Bright–that rat?”

Saki nodded, pointing to the cocktail tray.

“Is flum dlink I mix ‘em,” he explained proudly.

To my dazed senses this much was becoming clear. Saki was insisting that from some ancient recipe he had mixed Charlie Bright a drink that had turned him into a rat!

“Saki!” I said, recoiling in horror at the thought of what he’d done,

“Is nothing,” Saki said with becoming modesty.

“Nothing!” I began hysterically.

But Saki’s jaw suddenly went foolishly slack, and he clapped one round palm to his brown brow in horror. He was the picture of sudden consternation.

“Oh woe!” Saki shrieked. “Oh gleat double and anguish!” His button eyes were now fixed on me with despair.

“Wha–” I began.

“Saki fo’get. Is tellible. Saki fo’get!” he moaned.

“Forget what?” I demanded harshly-

“Saki fo’get that Boss Duane dlink cockeltail tooooooo!” he wailed forlornly, his trembling finger pointing in my direction. “Is awful!”

Saki was suddenly much taller than I was. In fact I had to crane my neck to look up at his troubled oriental countenance. For I was down on the floor on all fours. Down on the floor and wagging my tail hysterically. I was a dog!

WHEN you become a dog, especially unexpectedly, there are plenty of adjustments that have to be made as quickly as possible. If you don’t think so, try it some time. I was down on the floor and wagging my tail and looking up at the anguished moon face of Saki, and going a little bit loony from the shock of it all.

I guess I did a lot of wild running around in circles, snapping at Saki’s fat ankles–possibly prompted by revenge and anger at his super-colossal stupidity. I remember vaguely that Charlie Bright, now in the form of a rat, was squeaking around the vicinity with about the same amount of hysteria.

Saki, however, filled with the remorse and resignation that only an Oriental can adopt, teetered brokenly out into the kitchen where he seized on the nearest bottle and began to drive away the anguish and sorrow of his blunder in drink.

Finally I stopped barking and running around. I left Saki, already well on his way to completely blissfully stupor, crouched atop the kitchen table, weeping copiously and muttering drunkenly, “Is bad. Is so velly bad. Is most awful than that!”

I went back into the living room to look for Charlie Bright. He was squeaking indignantly still, and crouched trembling near a rat-hole–possibly to use as an avenue of escape should I light out after him.

“Stop squeaking and snivelling!” I told him, and my voice was a bark of course.

It wasn’t particularly amazing that I could understand his squeaks with the same ease that I’d formerly listened to his normal conversation. After what Saki had done to us, nothing was surprising.

“Why in the hell did you do this to me?” Charlie Bright squeaked in terror. “Just so you could take advantage of your superior size as a dog?”

“Don’t be an ass,” I barked. “What happened to you was Saki’s idea. What happened to me was an accident. If I’d wanted to take advantage of superior size I could have beaten you up when we were both normal. Incidentally, what sort of a dog am I?”

“You’re a collie,” Charlie Bright squeaked, still hovering near the safety exit of his rat hole. “But what difference does that make?”

“Well if I have to be a dog,” I answered, “I’d certainly like to know a little something about what kind of a dog I am. Glad to know I’m a thoroughbred,” I concluded.

“What’s that got to do with it?” Charlie Bright squeaked in rat-like suspicion.

“It just occurred to me,” I replied, “that’s Saki’s cocktails had varying effects on each of us. I became a dog. You became a rat.”

“So what?” squeaked Charlie Bright.

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