“Oh, bounce it, Buzz,” Helen Fontaine said, coming up from behind him. She looked in at Ed Wonder and shook her head critically. “Whatever happened to the haberdasher’s best friend?” she said. “I never expected to see the day when Little Ed Wonder’s tie wasn’t straight.”
“Okay, okay, funnies I get,” Ed rasped. “Follow me, says Buzz De Kemp and we’ll rescue the movie projectionist like the cavalry coming over the hill at the last minute. So great. He sort of disappears and I wind up getting drenched by the fire department and then arrested by the police.”
Buzz looked at him strangely. “I heard you yelling, Little Ed. About all movie projectors being on the blink. How did you know? It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes earlier that it happened. The news wasn’t even on the teletype yet.”
“Get me out of here,” Ed snarled. “How do you think I knew? Don’t be a kook.”
A uniformed jail attendant came up and unlocked the cell door. “Come on,” he said. “You been sprung.”
The three of them followed him out.
Buzz said, “So you were there when he laid on the new curse, eh?”
“New curse?” Helen said.
Buzz said to her, “What else? Ezekiel Joshua Tubber. First he gives all women an allergy if they wear cosmetics or do themselves up in glad rags. Then he slaps his hex on radio and TV. Now all of a sudden there is a strange persistence of film being projected on a screen; it takes an eighth of a second or so for the picture to fade, so the next picture can be different. It doesn’t interfere with still-life shots, but action is impossible.”
They had reached the sergeant’s desk and Ed collected his belongings. His situation was explained. Theoretically, he was out on bail. In actuality, Buzz was going to go to bat for him through the paper and get the charge squashed. If, by any chance, that didn’t work, Helen said she’d put pressure on her father to pull some wires. Ed was of the private belief that the only circumstance under which Jensen Fontaine would pull wires for Ed Wonder was if they were wrapped around his neck.
On the street, Buzz said, “Let’s go somewhere and talk.”
“Somewhere is good,” Ed said. “You can’t get in anyplace for love or loot. Standing room only and they limit the time you can stay, so that others will have their chance.”
Helen said, “We can go to the club. I’ll take you in as guests.”
Her General Ford Cyclone was at the curb. They got into it and Helen dialed their destination. The car rose and slipped into the traffic.
Buzz De Kemp stared out at the horde of wandering pedestrians. “Yesterday was bad enough,” he said. “But today there’s no school. The kids don’t know what to do with themselves.”
“Neither do their parents,” Helen said. “Doesn’t anybody work in this city? I’d think…”
“Do you?” Ed said, for some reason irritated.
“Well, that’s another thing, sharpy,” she said huffily. “I have my charity work with the junior league and…”
Buzz said, “I looked it up. Two thirds of the population of working age in Kingsburg are on unemployment lists. Of those remaining, most put in a twenty-five hour week, some of those with more progressive—I like that term—unions, put in twenty hours.” He tossed his stogie, half-smoked, onto the street. “It makes for a lot of leisure time.”
The country club was a couple of miles outside the city limits. If Helen Fontaine had expected it to be comparatively empty, she was mistaken. She was far from the only one to bring guests to the club. However, they managed to slip into chairs about a table which was just being vacated as they arrived. Helen brought her credit card from her purse and laid it on the table’s screen. “Gents, the eats are on me. What’ll it be?”
They named their druthers, she dialed them, and when the food arrived and the first taste had been taken, said, “Okay, let’s bring the meeting to order. I’m not up on this movie thing.”
Ed Wonder gave them a complete rundown on the happenings in Saugerties. By the time he wound it up, they were both staring at him.
“Oh,
Buzz said, “Remember on the program? He had forgotten he put the hex on women’s vanity.” He looked at Helen Fontaine calculatingly. “You know, on you the Homespun Look comes off.”
“Thank you, kind sir. If I could think of something about your own appearance that I could say something nice about, I would. Why don’t you get a haircut?”
“Compliment the girl, and what do I get?” Buzz complained. “A jolly. I can’t afford a haircut. I’m the most improvident man in the world. I’ve been known to go into a cold shower and come out three dollars poorer.”
Ed said gloomily, “I admit I let the cat out of the bag. Now he knows.” They scowled at him and he explained. “Tubber. Now he knows he’s got the power, as Nefertiti calls it. What’s worse, it seems to be growing.”
“What seems to be growing?” Buzz growled at him.
“The power to make with hexes. Evidently, he’s always had it, but only just recently has he been using it on the grand scale.”
“You mean…” Helen said, ramifications dawning.
“I mean his first two major hexes he pulled off in a rage and without knowing what he was doing. This last one he did on purpose. Now he knows he can do them on purpose.”
Ed said, “Have you two considered the fact that we’re the only ones in the world, except for Tubber’s little group, who know what’s going on?”
Buzz pulled out a fresh stogie and rammed it into his mouth. “How could I forget it? A newspaperman sitting on the biggest story since the Resurrection and he can’t even write it. If I mention Tubber and his curses to Old Ulcers once more, he’s promised to fire me.”
“At least you’ve still got a job,” Ed told him sourly. “Look at me. I spend a couple of years working up the Far Out Hour, a program devoted to spiritualism, ESP, flying saucers, reincarnation, levitation, and what not, and for all that time I have an endless series of cranks, crackpots and crooks as guests. So finally, a real phenomenon comes along. And what happens? I’m out of a career.”
“Both of you are breaking my heart,” Helen said snappishly. “Don’t forget, I was runner-up on the Statewide ten best dressed women of the year poll.”
Buzz looked at her. “How about your father? He was there when Tubber hexed radio. Doesn’t he realize what’s going on?”
Helen said, “I think about half and half. What he really thinks is that Tubber is an agent for the Soviet Complex who’s been sent over to sabotage American industry. He wants the Stephen Decatur Society to investigate and place their information before the F.B.I. Matthew Mulligan agrees with him, of course.”
Ed Wonder closed his eyes to hide his suffering. “Oh, great. I can just see that bunch of kooks sniffing around Tubber’s tent. The new hexes would start flying like geese.”
Helen said, without a good deal of conviction. “The Society isn’t composed of kooks, as you call them.”
Buzz leered at her through the smoke of his newly lighted stogie. “What is it composed of?”
She laughed suddenly, “Twitches,” she said.
Buzz looked at her afresh. “I think I could learn to like you,” he said, nodding.
“All right, all right,” Ed said. “We’ve got to do something. You both realize that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Buzz said. “What?”
Helen said, worriedly, “Perhaps if we all went to see Tubber…”
Ed held up a hand. “Go no further, please. Here sit the three of us. Helen brought him to wrath and the result was the Homespun Look and what will eventually mean the collapse of the cosmetic and women’s textile industries. Buzzo brought him to wrath and the result was the end of radio and TV. Through a fluke, I said too much and as a result he brought himself to wrath and wound up the movie industry. With a background like that do you think any of we three ought ever to let him lay eyes on us again? We seem to be a set of accident prones, with the whole human race getting the benefits.”
Buzz growled around his stogie, “I think you’re right, chum.”
“But we’ve got to do something,” Helen protested.
“What?” Buzz said to the unanswering group.
