glass plate. The machine went on again. It clucked, hummed, ceased to hum—and there were two nickels. Pete added a dime to the second nickel. At the end of another cycle he ran his hand rather desperately through his hair and added his entire remaining wealth—a quarter. Then, after incredulously watching what happened, he began to pyramid.
Thomas tapped decorously some ten minutes later.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he said hopefully. “About lunch, sir—”
Pete turned off the demonstrator. He gulped.
“Thomas,” he said in careful calm, “I shall let you write the menu for lunch. Take a basketful of this small change and go shopping. And—Thomas, have you any item of currency larger than a quarter? A fifty-cent piece would be about right. I’d like to have something really impressive to show to Daisy when she comes.”
Miss Daisy Manners of the Green Paradise floor show was just the person to accept the fourth-dimensional demonstrator without question and to make full use of the results of modern scientific research. She greeted Pete abstractedly and interestedly asked just how much he’d inherited. And Pete took her to the laboratory. He unveiled the demonstrator.
“These are my jewels,” said Pete impressively. “Darling, it’s going to be a shock, but—have you got a quarter?”
“You’ve got nerve, asking me for money,” said Daisy. “And if you lied about inheriting some money—”
Pete smiled tenderly upon her. He produced a quarter of his own.
“Watch, my dear! I’m doing this for you!”
He turned on the demonstrator and explained complacently as the first cluckings came from the base. The glass plate moved, a second quarter appeared, and Pete pyramided the two while he continued to explain. In the fraction of a minute, there were four quarters. Again Pete pyramided. There were eight quarters—sixteen, thirty- two, sixty-four, one hundred twenty-eight—At this point the stack collapsed and Pete shut off the switch.
“You see, my dear? Out of the fourth dimension to you! Uncle invested it, I inherited it, and—shall I change your money for you?”
Daisy did not look at all absent-minded now. Pete gave her a neat little sheaf of bank notes.
“And from now on, darling,” he said cheerfully, “whenever you want money just come in here, start the machine—and there you are! Isn’t that nice?”
“I want some more money now,” said Daisy. “I have to buy a trousseau.”
“I hoped you’d feel that way!” said Pete enthusiastically. “Here goes! And we have a reunion while the pennies roll in.”
The demonstrator began to cluck and clatter with bills instead of quarters on the plate. Once, to be sure, it suspended all operations and the refrigeration unit purred busily for a time. Then it resumed its self-satisfied delving into the immediate past.
“I haven’t been making any definite plans,” explained Pete, “until I talked to you. Just getting things in line. But I’ve looked after Arthur carefully. You know how he loves cigarettes. He eats them, and though it may be eccentric in a kangaroo, they seem to agree with him. I’ve used the demonstrator to lay up a huge supply of cigarettes for him—his favorite brand, too. And I’ve been trying to build up a bank account. I thought it would seem strange if we bought a house on Park Avenue and just casually offered a trunkful of bank notes in payment. It might look as if we’d been running a snatch racket.”
“Stupid!” said Daisy.
“What?”
“You could be pyramiding those bills like you did the quarters,” said Daisy. “Then there’d be lots more of them!”
“Darling,” said Pete fondly, “does it matter how much you have when I have so much?”
“Yes,” said Daisy. “You might get angry with me.”
“Never!” protested Pete. Then he added reminiscently, “Before we thought of the bank note idea, Thomas and I filled up the coal bin with quarters and half dollars. They’re still there.”
“Gold pieces would be nice,” suggested Daisy, thinking hard, “if you could get hold of some. Maybe we could.”
“Ah!” said Pete. “But Thomas had a gold filling in one tooth. We took it out and ran it up to half a pound or so. Then we melted that into a little brick and put it on the demonstrator. Darling, you’d really be surprised if you looked in the woodshed.”
“And there’s jewelry,” said Daisy. “It would be faster still!”
“If you feel in the mood for jewelry,” said Pete tenderly, “just look in the vegetable bin. We’d about run out of storage space when the idea occurred to us.”
“I think,” said Daisy enthusiastically, “we’d better get married right away. Don’t you?”
“Sure! Let’s go and do it now! I’ll get the car around!”
“Do, darling,” said Daisy. “I’ll watch the demonstrator.”
Beaming, Pete kissed her ecstatically and rushed from the laboratory. He rang for Thomas, and rang again. It was not until the third ring that Thomas appeared. And Thomas was very pale. He said agitatedly:
“Beg pardon, sir, but shall I pack your bag?”
“I’m going to be—Pack my bag? What for?”
“We’re going to be arrested, sir,” said Thomas. He gulped. “I thought you might want it, sir. An acquaintance in the village, sir, believes we are among the lower-numbered public enemies, sir, and respects us accordingly. He telephoned me the news.”
“Thomas, have you been drinking?”
“No, sir,” said Thomas pallidly. “Not yet, sir. But it is a splendid suggestion, thank you, sir.” Then he said desperately: “It’s the money, sir—the bank notes. If you recall, we never changed but one lot of silver into notes, sir. We got a one, a five, a ten and so on, sir.”
“Of course,” said Pete. “That was all we needed. Why not?”
“It’s the serial number, sir! All the one-dollar bills the demonstrator turned out have the same serial number—and all the fives and tens and the rest, sir. Some person with a hobby for looking for kidnap bills, sir, found he had several with the same number. The Secret Service has traced them back. They’re coming for us, sir. The penalty for counterfeiting is twenty years, sir. My—my friend in the village asked if we intended to shoot it out with them, sir, because if so he’d like to watch.”
Thomas wrung his hands. Pete stared at him.
“Come to think of it,” he said meditatively, “they are counterfeits. It hadn’t occurred to me before. We’ll have to plead guilty, Thomas. And perhaps Daisy won’t want to marry me if I’m going to prison. I’ll go tell her the news.”
Then he stared. He heard Daisy’s voice, speaking very angrily. An instant later the sound grew louder. It became a continuous, shrill, soprano babble. It grew louder yet. Pete ran.
He burst into the laboratory and was stunned. The demonstrator was still running. Daisy had seen Pete piling up the bills as they were turned out, pyramiding to make the next pile larger. She had evidently essayed the same feat. But the pile was a bit unwieldy, now, and Daisy had climbed on the glass plate. She had come into the scope of the demonstrator’s action.
There were three of her in the laboratory when Pete first entered. As he froze in horror, the three became four. The demonstrator clucked and hummed what was almost a hoot of triumph. Then it produced a fifth Daisy. Pete dashed frantically forward and turned off the switch just too late to prevent the appearance of a sixth copy of Miss Daisy Manners of the Green Paradise floor show. She made a splendid sister act, but Pete gazed in paralyzed horror at this plethora of his heart’s desire.
Because all of Daisy was identical, with not only the same exterior and—so to speak—the same serial number, but with the same opinions and convictions. And all six of Daisy were convinced that they, individually, owned the heap of bank notes now on the glass plate. All six of her were trying to get it. And Daisy was quarreling furiously with herself. She was telling herself what she thought of herself, in fact, and on the whole her opinion was not flattering.
Arthur, like Daisy, possessed a fortunate disposition. He was not one of those kangaroos who go around looking for things to be upset about. He browsed peacefully upon the lawn, eating up the dahlias and now and again hopping over the six-foot hedge in hopes that there might be a dog come along the lane to bark at him. Or, failing to
