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MR. HOSKIN’S HEEL

1

Albert Hoskin’s seminar in Medieval Backgrounds had only four members, but Albert was used to that. He had long ago reconciled himself to the unhappy realization that even a large university with hundreds of graduate students moving down its intellectual assembly lines seldom produced a degree candidate who had an honest interest in the middle ages.

Donald Futzel, a prematurely bald young man who was on leave from Eastern State Teachers College for the purpose of getting the doctor’s degree that would enable an enlightened administration to promote him to associate professor, was reading a paper on medieval sorcery. As usual, the report was a hodgepodge of poorly digested paragraphs selected almost at random from three or four books and altered only enough to spare him the embarrassment of being admonished for plagiarism.

“And this,” said Futzel listlessly as he chalked a figure on the board, “is a pentagon.”

Albert could restrain himself no longer. “A potent name, Mr. Futzel, and a potent figure. But I’m afraid the two don’t go together. I believe the term you want is pentagram.”

“Okay,” said Futzel, “it’s a pentagram. Anyway…” His voice droned on and on and Albert, after setting his ear to catch any particularly gross error, retired to a consideration of his own troubles.

In spite of being a recognized authority on the Cotton manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Mr. Hoskin had troubles in plenty. Production time was coming around and though he had assiduously mined the dissertation that had won him his Ph. D. and was published in the most respectable of scholarly journals, the department grapevine had it that he was about to be passed over in favor of a tweedy young man from Harvard named Lippencott who wrote articles for the little magazines.

To make matters worse, Lippencott seemed to be getting the inside track with Priscilla Yergut, a comely, though some what emaciated, teacher of Freshman English whom Albert had been escorting to the annual English Department tea for the past several years.

Something that Futzel was saying tripped a relay and Albert started listening actively rather than passively.

“…then the magician would take this brass rod and stick it in the fire and—”

“One moment please,” said Albert. “Are you referring to the piece of magical apparatus that was commonly known as a ‘blasting rod’?”

“Sure,” said Futzel. “Why?”

“It’s a matter of minor importance. But just to avoid any misconceptions I had better point out that blasting rods were made of ash with a metal tip at each end. You may proceed.”

Futzel didn’t. Instead he stuck out his jaw pugnaciously and said, “They were so brass rods. I saw a picture of one. It was brass all the way. It looked like a curtain rod.”

“And where did you see this picture?”

“In a book. I got it right here. The librarian got it out of the locked case in the library for me.”

Unzipping his briefcase, he produced a small vellum-bound volume, and handed it over triumphantly. Albert opened it, took one casual look, and then whistled. It wasn’t too early—the title page said 1607 which explained why Futzel was able to read it—but it was evidently a copy of a much earlier manuscript work on black magic. Just then the bell rang and, with a sigh of relief, the class began to wriggle around in its chairs.

“My apologies, Mr. Futzel,” said Albert. “Would you mind if I kept this overnight? It’s a work that is new to me.”

“Help yourself,” said the other generously.

Albert dropped the small black book into his own briefcase and started across the campus toward the apartment he shared with his Aunt Agatha. He walked faster than usual because half way through the class hour he had left a luridly jacketed copy of The Big Kill in plain sight on the coffee table right beside his facsimile edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Aunt Agatha did not approve of a private investigator who went around shooting lovely ladies in the stomach on little or no provocation, and she was not a person whose likes and dislikes could be lightly disregarded.

He was panting slightly from his unaccustomed exercise when he reached up to the ledge over the apartment door to see if the key was still there. He gave a slight exclamation of pleasure when his fingers encountered it. Aunt Agatha wasn’t home yet.

He put the key in the lock and turned, but the mechanism stuck a little, as usual. As he struggled with the refractory lock, he sternly resolved for the hundredth time to write a stiff letter of protest to his ancient enemy, the janitor. An uncouth and hairy individual who paraded around all day in a dirty undershirt and smoked a vile-smelling pipe, he could at least attend to a rusty lock.

“Having trouble, Mac?”

Startled, Albert swung around. A hard-faced gentleman with the build of a mature gorilla was standing in the shadows watching him.

“Why, yes,” said Albert. “The key, it sticks.”

“Your name Hoskin?”

Albert nodded.

“Good,” grunted the burly stranger and hit him on the head with a blunt object.

When Albert woke up again he was tied to a chair in a dusty apartment that didn’t have that lived-in look. A second stranger, somewhat gone to fat, but even bigger and uglier than the first, stood looking down at him.

“So you’re the creep that’s giving us all the trouble.”

“Beg pardon?” said Albert.

“I shouldn’t have had to send Gutsy after you. Your school spirit should have fixed things up before we had to step in.”

“That’s right,” Gutsy sternly. “Cosmo shouldn’t a had to send me after you.”

Albert looked up at them in honest confusion. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about.”

“The game Saturday, what else? You got a kid named Martinelli in one of your classes, haven’t you?”

Albert gave a puzzled nod.

“Well, word’s come down the grapevine that you turned in a flunk for him. That makes him ineligible for Saturday’s game. And with him out, State doesn’t stand a chance. Do you get me?”

Albert didn’t. He was busy trying to think of a protest that wouldn’t give too much offense.

“Listen, knucklehead,” said Cosmo angrily. “There’s people in this town with a lot of money down on State at eight to five. They can’t sit back and take a loss. So they asked me to talk to you about changing Martinelli’s grade so he’ll be able to play.” His jaw went out “So you’re going to pass this cookie—or else!”

“Are you suggesting that I falsify a grade report?” asked Albert in a horrified voice.

“Or else,” continued the big man as if he hadn’t heard Albert’s protest. “I personally am going to bust you in the snoot so hard you’ll be breathing through a hole the shape of my fist the rest of your life!”

He paused and then said softly.

“My friends wouldn’t like it if I had to tell them you refused to cooperate. So… I’m not going to.” He reached down suddenly, grabbed Albert by his lapels, and jerked him roughly into the air, chair and all. “Am I?”

“I’d be sorry to cause any discord between you and your friends.” said Albert bravely, “but—”

He never finished the sentence. Something hit him. Hard. His head snapped back, his chair hit the floor with a thump and a small trickle of blood started at one corner of his mouth. He recoiled as he saw Cosmo pull back his fist again. He was frightened, frightened sick, but from somewhere within himself he dredged up enough strength to shake his head. Cosmo shrugged and went to work.

“You try for a while,” he panted to the gentleman known as Gutsy. “I’m plumb fagged out.”

“Me, too,” said Gutsy a half hour later. “For a scrawny little son-of-a-gun like that he sure can take it.”

It was an overstatement. For twenty-five of the thirty minutes the pounding hadn’t been bothering Albert. He had been out cold.

A hurried council of war was held that didn’t get anywhere until Gutsy had a sudden flash of inspiration.

“Look,” he exclaimed, “in the third grade the teacher is telling us about a character named Achilles.”

“So?”

“He was top man with the Greeks because he was bulletproof. They’d open up on him, and the slugs would just bounce off. That was because when he was just a kid his old lady went and dunked him in something that made him like he was covered with armor-plate.”

“You find what it was, I’ll buy it,” said Cosmo, who was a practical man with an eye to the future.

“There was a catch to it. When his old lady dunked him in that stuff, the part of his foot where she was hanging on to him didn’t get covered. So some character finds out about it and let’s him have it where it hurts—in the heel.”

“So how’s shooting a guy in the heel going to pull down the curtains for him?”

Gutsy shrugged. “Maybe they put something on the slug that gave him blood poisoning. Anyway, they got him.”

“So they got him, so they got him,” said Cosmo in exasperation. “What’s that got to do with cracking the Prof?”

“So maybe he’s got a soft spot, too. You put pressure on there and he gives. All we got to do is find out where it is and then we got him.”

“You find out, it’s your idea.”

Gutsy went over and shook Albert until he had partially regained consciousness, pulled back one ham-like fist, and aimed it at his midriff. Albert fainted.

“We got to think of something different,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” said Cosmo sarcastically, “we sure got to.”

He looked at Gutsy and Gutsy looked at him and then they both got the same idea at the same time.

“MacGruder!” they breathed in unison.

Cosmo was the first to snap back to reality. “If we can get him sobered up in time, that is.”

“You get him and I’ll go hit the old doc up for some bennies,” said Gutsy. “Seventh sons of seventh sons what was born with cauls just don’t grow on trees.”

2

There was nothing about Rick MacGruder that would suggest he had any special psychic powers. He was a small weedy man with a large thirst, and a perpetually wistful expression that was due in part to the fact that at stated intervals he wasn’t able to do anything about it. MacGruder was a periodic drinker.

Every six months or so he would be seized by a sudden compulsion that would paralyze his will and find himself on the wagon in spite of himself. For two or three weeks he would wander around white-faced and shaking, unable to touch a drop, a pariah in the warm convivial world in which he ordinarily lived. In spite of all this, however, he was the seventh son of a seventh son and he had been born with a caul.

“Maybe I’d better have just another one to lubricate my powers,” he said hopefully, gazing greedily at the bottle that stood upon the rickety kitchen table.

“Afterward,” said Cosmo “We got a job to do and we don’t want you popping out in the middle of it. Let’s go, we ain’t got all day.”

“O.K.,” said MacGruder unhappily, “but first you got to get the shades down and douse that glim. The chief don’t like a lot of light.”

The unshaded fly-specked bulb that hung from the ceiling was turned out and the dark window blinds pulled down. Except for a faint trickle of light from around their edges that made MacGruder’s face dimly visible, the room was in darkness. Albert was given a few slaps for the purpose of clearing his head and plunked down on a chair.

“Now everybody grab hold of the other guy’s hand and we’ll get this show on the road.”

Albert’s right hand was taken by Gutsy and his left by the gang chief. They in turn each took one of MacGruder’s.

“Here goes,” said the little man and started to croon.

“Oh spirits! Oh dwellers in that great beyond whence all dwellers on this mortal coil must someday wend, listen to my call.”

“Pretty classy patter, ain’t it?” whispered Gutsy. “Just to look at him you’d never know that a bum like that could talk so good.”

“You want conversation?” said MacGruder. “All right, go ahead make conversation. When you’ve said all you got to say, let me know so I can go ahead with this here séance.”

Cosmo said a few choice words that had the effect of reducing Gutsy to speechlessness and then the little man continued.

“Oh, spirits, bear from us a plea to Chief Whooping Water that he come from his happy hunting ground to give us light and guidance.” There was a long silence and then MacGruder jerked convulsively. His head came stiffly forward and his eyes opened and stared blindly around the table. As the others watched in the dim light, his features seemed to change as if an inward force were molding them. His nose assumed a hawk-like shape and his cheekbones seemed to become more prominent. Albert began to be impressed in spite of himself.

MacGruder’s mouth opened and a strange guttural voice came forth.

From the land of sky blue waters

Comes the chieftain Whooping Water

Comes across the vasty darkness

Comes to speak through Rick MacGruder

Left his tepee and papooses

Left his squaw and council fires

Came to answer to the calling

Left the braves and mighty warriors

Left the council of the chieftains

Left the forest and the woodlands

Left the mink and beaver playing

Left the tom-toms and—

What else was left was never known because Gutsy suddenly interrupted.

“How’s Bosworth? Is he still sore at me for what I done?”

“Bosworth heap hot,” grunted Whooping Water enigmatically, irritated by the interruption.

Left the mink and beaver playing

Left the tom-toms and—

This time Cosmo broke in.

“Excuse the interruption, chief,” he said apologetically, “it isn’t that we aren’t interested in where you came from, but MacGruder isn’t good for much longer and there’s something we go to find out.”

MacGruder obviously wasn’t good for much longer. He had a faint white froth on his lips and he seemed to be having trouble breathing.

Gutsy leaned over and whispered to Albert.

“Ya don’t bust in, ya never find out nothing. That ‘mink and beaver’ routine of his can keep going all night.”

“What I want to know is just this,” continued Cosmo. “We got a guy from the U that…”

“Throw some water on him,” said Cosmo.

Gutsy did and MacGruder came to with a start.

“Did he come through?” he asked groggily.

“He sure did, boy, he sure did. We found this Hoskin character’s heel,” said Cosmo triumphantly. “It’s a tomato named Priscilla Yergut what teaches over at the University. I’m sending Gutsy over to put the snatch on her.”

MacGruder reached out automatically for the bottle that was sitting in front of him and then recoiled as if it had suddenly become red hot.

“Oh, no!” he whispered, his face a mask of horror.

“No what?” asked Gutsy.

“No nothing for two whole weeks!” said MacGruder brokenly. “One of my periodicals just hit me!”

Without a backward glance he pulled himself to his feet and staggered from the room.

3

“Albert!” shrieked Priscilla as Gutsy dragged her into the room, “What have they been doing to you?”

Before Albert could answer, Cosmo cut in. “What’s been done to him, lady, ain’t nothing to what’s going to be done to you unless he starts doing like he’s told.”

Albert blanched, and for the first time that day he felt his resolution slipping. “Don’t you dare touch her!”

“I ain’t,” said Cosmo, “Gutsy here is the boy that’ll handle the job. Take off your shirt, Gutsy, and show the lady what a real man looks like.”

He grinned. “Take it off.”

Bashfully, Gutsy did. He had a torso like a gorilla and just as much hair. Albert took one look and shuddered in revulsion. Priscilla shuddered too, but with something else.

“Make your choice, Prof. Either you walk out of here with your lady friend on your arm or Gutsy gets her.”

Gutsy, rather pleased at the second prospect, threw out his chest, and clenching his fists, held out his arms to exhibit his biceps.

Priscilla gasped again and then she let out a little whinny. She looked at Albert sagging in his chair and then back at Gutsy strutting up and down like a bull ape in mating season.

“Albert,” she said in sudden decision, “I don’t know what they want you to do, but whatever it is, remember that your integrity must come first.”

Cosmo didn’t like the way things were going. “Get her out of here,” he shouted to Gutsy. When she was gone he turned ferociously to Albert. “It ain’t as simple as you think,” he growled. “First he’s going to…”

When he had finished with his enumeration, Albert was white-faced.

“Think it over, punk,” said Cosmo. “I’m giving you exactly half an hour to make up your mind.”

As he headed for the door he gave Albert’s briefcase a kick that sent it sailing into the far corner. As the lock on the door clicked behind him, Albert slumped down and buried his face in his hands. Then he straightened up again. The pressure of his palms on his swollen cheeks hurt too much.

“Got to think,” he muttered to himself. “I’ve got to think fast.”

His thoughts led him in a weird direction. When he finished them he found himself with a small black vellum-bound volume in one hand and his watch in the other. He kept looking back and forth from one to the other.

He didn’t believe in the supernatural. No intelligent young Middle-English teacher did. But after his experience with MacGruder he found himself filled with serious doubts.

Twenty-four minutes left. There wasn’t any use in prolonging Priscilla’s agony. He dragged himself to his feet again and tottered toward the door. But… He looked at the book again.

On page 87 he found something he thought might work.

Chalk he had of course. The janitors were supposed to see that each class room had plenty, but they were all secret drinkers and never did. Albert was a man who was tongue-tied without a blackboard to doodle on, and as a result he always kept a private stock in his pockets. He fished out the longest and chalked a pentagram on the floor, feeling rather foolish as he did so.

All that was left after that was the fire and the blasting rod. The fire was easy to provide. Albert didn’t smoke but he always carried matches for the benefit of full professors who did. Taking off his undershirt—which fortunately was rather frayed anyway—he tore it into little strips and crumpled them in an old glass ashtray which he placed in the middle of the floor.

A piece of the tubular brass from which the curtains hung was taken down to serve as a blasting rod and he was finally ready to go. He ran through the incantation he had selected from the little black book until he was satisfied he had it letter perfect, and then touched a match to the scraps of undershirt.

Staring intently into the little pile of smoldering rags that served as his fire, he whispered: “Aglon, Tetragram, vaycheon stimulamaton ezpahers retragrammaton olyaram irion esytion existion eryona onera orasym mozm messias soter Emanuel Sabaoth Adonay, te adora, et te invoco!”

With that he spit into the fire.

“Venite, Venite, Submiritillor Lucifuge, or eternal torment shall overwhelm thee, by the great power of this blasting rod.”

Grabbing the brass tube firmly in both hands, he waved it over the smoldering rags and waited. He didn’t have to wait long.

There was a sudden popping sound and a small brown figure materialized in the middle of the room. His eyes were closed and he was swaying back and forth as he chanted:

From the land of sky blue waters

Comes the chieftain Whopping Water

Comes across the vasty darkness

Comes to speak to—

“Oh, no!” moaned Albert.

The little Indian slowly opened his eyes. “Great White Father has look on face like brave who dial wrong number on talking machine.”

Albert looked down at the black book and then back at Whooping Water.

The little Indian followed his glance and then snorted. “That thing! That’s a pirated edition. Both the editor and the compositor were illiterate idiots. You would be lucky to raise a ninth order elemental with anything in there. I wouldn’t be here myself if I weren’t bored still with just sitting around the office waiting for a call. The one from MacGruder was the first this week. What’s happened over on this side? The D.A. been closing up all the joints?”

Albert sat silent for a moment, trying to adjust to the new reality.

“Then none of this hocus-pocus really works?” he asked finally.

“Well,” said Whooping Water slowly, “you did open the gate. But that can be done in a dozen different ways.”

“What about this?” said Albert, picking up the blasting rod and jamming it suddenly into the smoldering rags of his little fire.

Whooping Water let out a sudden yell, and leaping to his feet, clapped both hands to his posterior.

Albert jerked the rod out of the fire. “Sorry,” he said. “I was just trying to find out if I had any control over you.”

“Next time you want to find out something, ask!” said the little Indian bitterly. “Now I’m here, what do you want?”

“Out,” said Albert briefly.

“How?” asked the Indian with equal brevity.

Albert thought for a moment.

“I suppose the easiest way would be for you to transport Priscilla and me to the nearest police station.”

Whooping Water shook his head. “Wish I could, old man, but I’m just not up to it. The only person I can directly affect is the one who calls me up—and even then my powers are extremely limited.”

Albert took a quick look at his watch. He didn’t have too much time left.

“Then what can you do?”

“I might temporarily superimpose a new character on your old one. Alexander, Napoleon, Julius Caesar—anybody at all.”

“People get shock therapy for that in this world,” said Albert. “What’s the point?”

“A rather obvious one. Suppose you wanted to play the stock market. I could give you the attitudes and responses of an Insull or a Rothschild. By following the imposed set of impulses you’d know just what to do and when.”

“I don’t want to play the market,” said Albert plaintively. “All that I want to do is rescue Priscilla before it’s too late!”

“Then think of somebody who was an expert at the rescuing business.”

“Well…” said Albert, and then suddenly smashed his right fist into his left palm in the most virile gesture he’d made in years. “Sir Gawain!”

“Beg pardon?” said Whooping Water with a start.

“Sir Gawain. He was King Arthur’s nephew and one of the greatest knights of the Round Table.”

There was a strange expression on Whooping Water’s face as he shook his head vigorously. “You’d be making a terrible mistake,” he said. “You see, actually the popular image of Gawain doesn’t correspond at all to the real man. In fact—”

“For your information,” interrupted Albert stiffly, “the Gawain myths happen to be my special field of study. In the first place, he had no actual existence. He was a folk hero who embodied all the characteristics of the ideal knight. And in the second—” He stopped suddenly as he realized that he was automatically swinging into the Gawain lecture that he always gave during the first week of his survey course.

“And in the second,” he snapped, “I’m giving orders around here. You will go immediately to my apartment and skim through the manuscript that is sitting on the coffee table. That will give you an excellent picture of Gawain’s character.”

“But…”

“Get going!”

Whooping Water got.

Ten seconds later he was back. His face was perfectly blank but there seemed to be a look of secret amusement in his eyes.

“Mission completed,” he said. “All set?” Albert nodded nervously.

“Go ahead,” he said.

The little Indian held two fingers up to his forehead like horns and pointed them at Albert. They wriggled slightly and then a fat green spark jumped from each of them. Albert winced as a sudden convulsive shock ran through him.

“I hope I made the right choice,” he muttered as he waited for the change.

“You didn’t,” said Whooping Water cheerfully, “so I took the liberty of making another selection.”

Before Albert could answer, the change hit him. He felt himself being swept by surges of strange raw emotion such as he had never felt before. There were gongs beating inside his head and he wanted to smash somebody—hard. The part of him that was still Albert fought desperately for control.

“I’m not turning into Gawain!” he gasped.

Whooping Water grinned. “Heap sorry, boss. But I got reasons. Good reasons.”

The air around the small Indian suddenly turned opaque.

4

When it cleared Whooping Water was gone and in his place stood a skinny and buck-toothed young man whose first words betrayed his English origin.

“Never did like that get-up,” he said. “But for some reason or other most of the local mediums demand Indians. Anyway, the reason I was so set against your patterning yourself on Sir Gawain was that”—his voice dropped to a confidential whisper—“I am, or at least I was the one and original Gawain. And frankly, old man, I’m the last person in the world I’d recommend to a man in your predicament as a model.”

“You’re the Sir Gawain?” whispered Albert. “The one who triumphed over the Green Knight.”

“I’m the Sir Gawain all right, but I didn’t do any triumphing. That’s just a bit of propaganda Uncle Arthur put out after I got my head whacked off. What happened was that one night when we were all at dinner a drunk wearing green armor came staggering in looking for a fight.

“He was so old and feeble that the king didn’t feel right about matching him with any of the regulars so he picked on me. I’d had a couple of drinks myself or I’d never have gone through with it.

“As it was, I didn’t go very far. It was the shortest fight in the history of the Round Table. The old boy let fly with his battle axe and I ducked. Wasn’t fast enough. The head that came off was mine. Arthur hushed things up as best he could for the sake of the family name, and then a couple of years later when he got news that the Green Knight had lost the decision in a bout with the D.T.s, he had one of his bards cook up a story that didn’t make me look so silly.

“Anyway, after taking a quick look at that manuscript I decided you needed somebody else, so I used the guy in the other book.”

“What other book?” demanded Albert, a horrifying suspicion forming inside his head.

“Something called The Big Kill. That Hammer chap was quite a lad. He got himself out of worse spots than this in every other chapter.”

“Turn me back,” gasped Albert. “That character is a moral cesspool.”

“Why not just give him a try?”

Albert felt himself being more and more lost in the new growling stranger who was taking over his body.

“I’ll take care of you later!” he snarled. “Right now I’m going to smoke out some of the vermin that have been lousing up my city!”

Swinging the brass curtain rod like a war club, he stalked purposefully to the door and began to pound on it. A moment later Gutsy’s voice was heard on the other side.

“What’s going on in there?”

“Open up and you’ll find out,” growled Albert.

“Are you ready to talk business?”

“Yeah!”

There was a sound of a key turning and a little popping came from behind Albert as Whooping Water prudently removed himself from sight. Then the door swung open and Gutsy stepped in. There was an expression of deep disappointment on his face. He had been looking forward to his intimidation session with Priscilla with a great deal of anticipation.

Albert took one step forward and let loose a sudden swing of the blasting rod that caught Gutsy square on top of the head. Then he stepped back quickly and waited for the giant figure to go crashing to the floor. It didn’t. It just shook its head and said plaintively, “Now what did you want to go and do that for?”

Albert let out a snarl of rage as the gongs in his head suddenly crescendoed and let loose a right hook that smashed Gutsy full in the face. There was a splintering—but not of teeth. Albert howled in pain and began to hop up and down, cupping his broken knuckles in his left hand.

“You keep that up, you’re going to hurt yourself,” said Gutsy.

“Get out of here before I—” The other suddenly stopped as the part of him that was still Albert realized that there wasn’t anything he could do.

“Before you what?” asked Gutsy curiously.

“Oh, nothing,” said Albert. “Just go away. I got some thinking to do.”

“Then you don’t want to talk to Cosmo?”

“No!”

“O.K.!” said Gutsy as he lumbered out the door. “But remember that you only got ten minutes before that tomato of yours starts to get it.”

As the lock clicked shut on the door again, Albert turned toward the center of the room and growled.

“All right, punk, turn yourself on again.”

Whooping Water materialized. Only this time he was back in his Indian form again.

Albert picked up his blasting rod and advanced purposefully toward him. “I feel like bashing somebody!” he snarled, “and it might as well be you.”

The little Indian took one good look at the advancing figure of wrath, jerked his hands up to his head, and wriggled them in a reverse direction. Albert stumbled to a stop as the alien character who had been controlling his nerve ends suddenly vanished.

“Easy does it,” said Whooping Water consolingly. “It’s all my fault and I apologize. I forgot that a disposition like Hammer’s needed more beef to back it up than you’ve got. If you were up against a couple of amateurs, they’d run screaming. I’ve got another idea, though. How about this—”

“Shut up!” said Albert in a most un-Albertish voice. “I’ve got some thinking to do.”

The Indian opened his mouth to protest but a threatening twitch of the blasting rod closed it again.

“I’m getting something,” said Albert at last, “but I’m haying trouble pinning it down.” He ruminated in silence for a moment and then asked suddenly. “Who was that Bosworth that Gutsy was asking bout during the séance?”

“An old pal who got the inside track with a woman Gutsy wanted. He got part of his head taken off with a .45 slug.”

“Got it!” exclaimed Albert.

“Got what?”

Albert explained and the little Indian let out a whistle of admiration.

5

Once Gutsy was safely tucked away in the closet, his hands and feet tied with strips torn from the curtains and a crude but effective gag in his mouth, they were ready for Cosmo. Whooping Water licked out of sight and then materialized as a large block of dripping and barnacle-encrusted concrete. Albert started toward the door but just as he got to it, it swung open and Cosmo came storming in.

“Where in the hell’s Gutsy?” he demanded. “And what’s that?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Albert. “One minute it wasn’t and the next minute it was. It talks.”

“You’re crazy!” snorted Cosmo.

“Maybe so, but just go up to it and listen.”

Cosmo approached the dripping block cautiously and bent over it.

“Let me out,” said a muffled voice.

Cosmo jumped back in fright and then suddenly turned to Albert.

“Funny guy, eh? Trying to make like a ventriloquist, eh? Well, I don’t scare punk.”

“It’s not me,” protested Albert. “Listen.”

A chanting voice came from within the block.

Got a clock to fix,

Got a watch to stop,

Got a bone to pick,

Got a floor to mop.

Going to break some bones,

Going to suck some blood,

Going to spill some guts,

Someone’s name is mud.

Before the gang chief could make another accusation of ventriloquism, the block began to rock back and forth like a gigantic Mexican jumping bean. Then, as Cosmo watched wide-eyed, there was a splitting, sound and a large fissure opened. A scrabbling sound came from inside and then slowly a hand appeared, a hand with swollen purple fingers that plucked at the edges of the split as if they were trying to force it open wider.

Cosmo had long prided himself on being a man of action. Now, if ever, action was called for.

“I’m getting out of here,” he said.

“Not yet, my friend.”

A soft voice from inside the block of cement froze him in his tracks. As he stood paralyzed, there was a sudden splintering crash and the whole block disintegrated into a pile of jagged shards.

Something moved in the debris, moved and then slowly squirmed out toward the shaking gangster. It was a man, a long dead man with his hands and feet wired together.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Cosmo,” it croaked. “I’ve been waiting for you a long, long time.”

Cosmo tried to raise the .45 that his reflexes had pulled out of its shoulder holster, but it hung limply from nerveless fingers.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you why you went and did it, pal. Me that gave you your start and was like a father to you. It weren’t friendly-like to sap an old pal and put him in a box of wet concrete while he was still alive and then toss him in the bay. It weren’t friendly-like at all. That’s why I’ve come to take you back with me.”

The bloated fingers curled around the gangster’s ankles. He tried to raise his automatic again but it slipped from his fingers and went crashing to the floor. Then something snapped inside him. He let out a high-pitched scream and, kicking loose the clutching hands, dashed whimpering out of the room.

The swollen-faced man looked up at Albert and grinned.

Albert pointedly looked the other way.

“If you don’t mind,” he said. “Your Bosworth was bad enough, but this one—ugh!”

“All clear,” said Sir Whooping Water Gawain.

Albert turned and greeted the sight of the little brown Indian with a sigh of relief.

“Thanks a million!”

“Really wasn’t anything, old man,” said Whooping Water with a depreciating gesture. “What time is it?”

Albert glanced at his watch. “Two forty-five. We made it with three minutes to spare.”

“It’s later than I thought,” said the other. “Now that I’ve got all your troubles straightened out, I guess I might as well toddle on back. I’m due to go off shift at three.”

Albert’s momentary feeling of elation vanished. “What do you mean, ‘all straightened out’? I’m no better off than I was this morning.” Unable to restrain himself, he launched into a long narration of his woes.

“I don’t get it,” said Whooping Water when he had finally finished. “You let those thugs beat you unconscious rather than give up, but over at the University you let everybody and his brother shove you around.”

“I just can’t help it,” said Albert miserably. “It’s not that I’m a coward. It’s just the way my glands work. Every time I start to stand up for myself, something triggers them off and they all let loose at once. I get so much adrenalin in my blood that all I can do is stand there and shake. And so I’m losing my girl and there isn’t anything I can do about it.”

Whooping Water looked dreamily at the ceiling. “You know,” he said at last, “Mike Hammer’s glands let loose too, but he knows how to use them. And against a couple of amateurs…”

Albert let out a sudden squawk of protest but he was too late. Two fat green sparks came arcing across and caught him square in the middle of the forehead…

For some strange reason Priscilla wasn’t so thrilled at being rescued as might have been expected. The look of eager anticipation that was on her face as the door opened was replaced by one of annoyance when she saw who had opened it.

“It took you long enough,” she snapped pettishly as Albert undid the ropes that bound her to the chair. The old Albert would have quailed and began to stutter apologies, but this wasn’t the old Albert.

When he dropped her off at her home she was breathing hard and there was a strange new look in her eyes.

“Won’t you come up?” she whispered. “There’s nobody home.”

Albert wanted to but Hammer wouldn’t let him.

“Got a couple of rats to take care of first,” he growled. “After that…” He ran his hand up and down her back and she melted against him. He gave her a sudden shove.

“Beat it, kid. I got work to do…

When Albert swaggered into his office, Lippencott was in the middle of the fifteenth reading of his latest essay in TENSION, A Quarterly Journal of New Criticism.

“Easy does it, old man,” he said lazily as the door crashed shut. “I take it that Dr. Quimbat finally broke the news to you about the switch in courses.”

“What switch?” growled Albert.

“Next fall I’ll be giving a seminar in the New Criticism and a graduate course in James. I’m afraid that means that you are going to have to take over my two sections of Freshman English. Tough luck, old man, but I know that when you think it over you’ll realize that it’s for the good of the department. And now if you’ll excuse me. I’d better be taking off. Priscilla and I are going out tonight and I have a bit of work at home I want to get out of the way first.”

“Not just yet, junior.” Albert turned and clicked the lock on the door behind him. “You and I got a little talking to do first. For one thing, I ain’t giving up my seminar or my Chaucer course for you or nobody else. And for another, you go woofing around the department head any more, sticking knives in my back, and you’re going to find out all of a sudden your ears ain’t mates!”

Lippencott grinned and blew a puff of tobacco smoke in Albert’s face.

“Anything more, little man?”

“Yeah,” said Albert in a soft voice. “I got Priscilla staked out. You come poaching and you’re going to end up minus a head, not that you’d miss it none.”

Lippencott stood up and flexed his muscles. “Albert,” he said, “I’ve been wanting to paste you for a long time. But my conscience wouldn’t let me because you were too little and too weak. But now I can do it with no regrets.”

Proudly conscious of his beautifully muscled body, he stalked toward Albert.

“Put ’em up,” he said, assuming the stance that had made him runner-up for the base middleweight championship during his wartime tour of duty as P.T. officer at Smutney Field.

Albert didn’t cooperate. Instead one hand suddenly snaked out and grabbed an empty coke bottle that was sitting on the window sill. With a practiced twist of the wrist he smashed it against the floor.

“Pretty boy,” he hissed as he advanced slowly forward, the jagged edges held at ready, “you ain’t going to be any longer.”

Lippencott stood his ground, but not very long. “Listen, Albert,” he said nervously as he recoiled a step. “You’re not acting like a gentleman.”

“There’s a good reason for that,” said Albert, sliding closer with a horrible grin on his face. “I ain’t no gentleman.”

Without warning, his arm flashed out. It was only by grace of excellent reflexes and a great deal of luck that Lippencott was able to preserve his nose. It was too much. He let out a frightened howl and turned to run, but there wasn’t any place to run to. The door was locked and Albert had him backed into a corner.

“You touch me and I’ll report you to the administration,” he whimpered as the jagged edges of the broken bottle came closer and closer to his face.

Albert chuckled. “Who’d believe you? Everybody knows what a mouse of a guy I am.”

That did it. Lippencott cracked completely and sobbed promise after promise. Albert waited until he’d heard the words he wanted and then tossed the bottle end crashing against the wall.

“Just don’t forget.” He said as he swaggered out. “There’s a coke machine in every building on the campus.”

6

When Albert came into the English office, the gongs were still beating inside his head. He was informed by the secretary that the chairman was in conference—which meant that he was taking his daily two-hour nap on the rather bumpy divan he had brought back from his student quarters at Oxford. Albert didn’t say anything, he just slapped her attractive posterior in a flattering way and, as she stood gasping, barreled into the inner sanctum and slammed the door behind him.

Ten minutes passed before he emerged. When he did the secretary was waiting for him with a melting smile. He gave her another spank and gestured toward the inner office.

“Boss man wants to see you, kiddo. He’s got a few memos to dictate. He’s changed his mind about dropping my Middle English courses. The one I want you to get right out, though, is the recommendation for promotion.” He flicked again and she ran squealing into Dr. Quimbat’s office.

Dr. Quimbat was somewhat the worse for wear. He started to babble something about a coke bottle but then regained enough of his senses to think better of it and dictate what had to be dictated.

There was company waiting for him in Albert’s own office. As soon as the door was shut, Whooping Water gave the little finger wiggle that was necessary to banish Mike Hammer.

“Want another shot before your date tonight? Mike’s been doing all right by you so far.”

Albert shuddered and shook his head. “No thanks! Every time she cuddles up to me I start getting ideas.”

“What’s wrong with that? You’re a big boy now, and she isn’t exactly a spring chicken.”

“It’s not that I’m objecting to. These ideas involve an erotic transference from the usual areas to her stomach. And that isn’t all. I keep wanting to go out and buy a big .45.”

“I see what you mean,” said Whooping Water.

“So, thanks for everything. I’m going to be needing your help later today but there’s no use your hanging around here until then.”

“I’m dismissed?”

“You’re dismissed.”

When Whooping Water disappeared this time, he did it by slow stages. First his epidermis became transparent, and then bit by bit the rest of him faded out until there was nothing left but a stomach, a pair of lungs, and an intricately coiled large intestine, all hanging motionless in mid-air.

Without Hammer to back him up, Albert found himself growing nauseated. “Please,” he gulped. “I’ve had about all I can take for one day.”

The lungs contracted and a little snicker came from the air above them. Then slowly, much too slowly, the viscera faded from sight.

Albert had just put his feet up on his desk for the first time in his academic career when there was a knock on the door and Dick Martinelli, State’s star quarterback, came diffidently in.

“No!” said Albert before the football player could get in a word.

“Wait a minute, doc,” protested the other in an injured voice. “I ain’t asking for no free ride. I just want one of them there retests.”

“You want what!”

“A re-test. I went and read the book.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Well, I did. I’m going over to the drugstore to see if there’s any new Spillane in, but there ain’t. And while I’m looking over the pocket book rack to see if there’s anything else that looks interesting, I sees a picture on a cover that makes me damn near drop my teeth. So I grabs it, and you know what?”

“What?” said Albert obediently.

“When I gets home I find I went and bought a copy of this here Canterbury Tales which I’m supposed to be reading for your course but don’t because I take a look the first day and it’s full of funny words. Only this time I start looking through to see if I can find the part they got the picture on the cover from and WOW!”

“Wow?”

“Yeah, WOW!” Martinelli sniggered. ‘There’s stuff in there that I don’t see how they let it get printed. Like for example there’s one place where a guy climbs up a ladder to try and make a gal whose husband is supposed to be out of town and—”

“I have a certain familiarity with the story in question,” said Albert. “Suppose you let me ask the questions.”

“Sure thing, doc. Shoot!”

“Give me a precis of ‘The Reeve’s Tale.’”

Martinelli gulped. “A what?”

“A precis—an abstract, a summary, a…well, just tell me what happened.”

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place? Well, there were a couple of guys who were going to Oxford or some place like that and they got a couple of days off. So they’re hitchhiking around and they happen to bump into this miller, see? And he’s got a good-looking wife and a daughter who’s really stacked. So that night while the old man’s asleep, these guys…”

When Martinelli came back there was a happy smile on his face.

“I took your note about my grade change by the Dean’s office and he says I’m eligible again. Then I went over to the library for the book you wanted but the gal at the desk couldn’t help me. She said one copy was lost and the other was at the bindery.”

“Oh well,” said Albert. “I’ll find a copy some place. At least you finally did find out where the library was.”

“But I got it anyway,” said Martinelli triumphantly. “There was something about the title that stuck in my head so I went over to the drugstore and looked. Sure enough, they got it out in pocket book. Here.” He tossed the small paper-backed volume on Albert’s desk. “From the cover it looks like hot stuff. Maybe there’s more to these here classics than I thought. Anything else I can do for you?”

“Just a second,” said Albert and made a quick check of his brief case. He had chalk, a piece of brass tubing, and a small quantity of charcoal.

“I guess not,” he said. “You run on back to the practice field. I have an engagement for this evening;—I suppose you’d call it a heavy date—and I’ve got to get ready for it.”

“Okay, Doc. I’ll be seeing you.” His hand was on the door knob when Albert stopped him.

“I have thought of something else. Will you scout around and see if you can find me a fire extinguisher? I’ve got to build a small fire in here shortly and I don’t want to take any chances of it getting out of hand.”

Martinelli looked bewildered, but he obeyed without question. “I got one in the car,” he said, “I’ll bring it right up.”

As the door shut behind him, Albert picked up the pocket book and examined the provocative scene on the cover with a great deal of interest. It showed two godlike young creatures engaged in some sort of a Renaissance bed. Albert eyed the male figure with a certain amount of envy—and then shrugged. Even if he were no physical prize, Priscilla’s dimensions were also several inches short of those of the impossibly curved and scantily dressed female who was sprawled out with a dreamy smile on her face.

“Aglon, Tetragram, vaycheon,” he muttered to himself and then settled down to wait Martinelli’s return with the extinguisher. With a sigh of anticipation, he flipped open the pocket book and began to read the first of The Adventures of Casanova.