The Head let the famous grin play across his black face. “Fine work, Quinby. And if Grew hadn’t had the sense to see at last that he was licked, you could have gone on with your usuform converters until there wasn’t an android left on Earth. Robinc would have toppled like a wooden building with termites.”
“And Grew?” I asked. “What’s become of him?”
“I think, in a way, he’s resigned to his loss. He told me that since his greatest passion was gone, he was going to make the most of his second greatest. He’s gone off to his place in the mountains with the usuform cook you gave him, and he swears he’s going to eat himself to death.”
“Me,” said Mike, getting to appropriate business, “I’d like a damper death.”
“And from now on, my statisticians assure me, we’re in no danger of ever using up our metal stockpile. The savings on usuforms will save us. Do you realize, Quinby, that you’re just about the most important man in the Empire today?”
That was when I first heard the band approaching. It got louder while Quinby got red and gulped. It was going good when he finally said, “You know, if I’d ever thought of that, I . . . I don’t think I could have done it.”
He meant it, too. You’ve never seen an unhappier face than his when the crowd burst into the Sunspot yelling “Quinby!” and “Q.U.R.!”
But you’ve never seen a prouder face than mine as I saw it then in the bar mirror. Proud of myself, sure, but only because it was me that discovered Dugg Quinby.
Nine-Finger Jack
John Smith is an unexciting name to possess, and there was of course no way for him to know until the end of his career that he would be forever famous among connoisseurs of murder as Nine-finger Jack. But he did not mind the drabness of Smith; he felt that what was good enough for the great George Joseph was good enough for him.
Not only did John Smith happily share his surname with George Joseph, he was proud to follow the celebrated G. J. in profession and even in method. For an attractive and plausible man of a certain age, there are few more satisfactory sources of income than frequent and systematic widowerhood; and of all the practitioners who have acted upon this practical principle, none have improved upon George Joseph Smith’s sensible and unpatented Brides-inthe-Bath method.
John Smith’s marriage to his ninth bride, Hester Pringle, took place on the morning of May the thirty-first. On the evening of May the thirty-first John Smith, having spent much of the afternoon pointing out to friends how much the wedding had excited Hester and how much he feared the effect on her notoriously weak heart, entered the bathroom and, with the careless ease of the practiced professional, employed five of his fingers to seize Hester’s ankles and jerk her legs out of the tub while with the other Five Fingers he gently pressed her Face just below water level.
So far all had proceeded in the conventional manner of any other wedding night; but the ensuing departure from ritual was such as to upset even John Smith’s professional bathside manner. The moment Hester’s face and neck were submerged below water, she opened her gills.
In his amazement, John released his grasp upon both ends of his bride. Her legs descended into the water and her face rose above it. As she passed from the element of water to that of air, her gills closed and her mouth opened.
“I suppose,” she observed, “that in the intimacy of a long marriage you would eventually have discovered in any case that I am a Venusian. It is perhaps as well that the knowledge came early, so that we may lay a solid basis for understanding.”
“Do you mean,” John asked, for he was a precise man, “that you are a native of the planet Venus?”
“I do,” she said. “You would be astonished to know how many of us there are already among you.”
“I am sufficiently astonished,” said John, “to learn of one. Would you mind convincing me that I did indeed see what I thought I saw?”
Obligingly, Hester lowered her head beneath the water. Her gills opened and her breath bubbled merrily. “The nature of our planet,” she explained when she emerged, “has bred as its dominant race our species of amphibian mammals, in all other respects superficially identical with homo sapiens. You will find it all but impossible to recognize any of us, save perhaps by noticing those who, to avoid accidental opening of the gills, refuse to swim. Such concealment will of course be unnecessary soon when we take over complete control of your planet.”
“And what do you propose to do with the race that already controls it?”
“Kill most of them, I suppose,” said Hester; “and might I trouble you for that towel?”
“That,” pronounced John, with any handcraftsman’s abhorrence of mass production, “is monstrous. I see my duty to my race: I must reveal all.”
“I am afraid,” Hester observed as she dried herself, “that you will not. In the first place, no one will believe you. In the second place, I shall then be forced to present to the authorities the complete dossier which I have gathered on the cumulatively interesting deaths of your first eight wives, together with my direct evidence as to your attempt this evening.”
John Smith, being a reasonable man, pressed the point no further. “In view of this attempt,” he said, “I imagine you would like either a divorce or an annulment.”
“Indeed I should not,” said Hester. “There is no better cover for my activities than marriage to a member of the native race. In fact, should you so much as mention divorce again, I shall be forced to return to the topic of that dossier. And now, if you
