wife.
I looked around at them in the courtroom. I knew what was happening on the screen. I hadn’t looked at her face until she got into the car after me. Mrs. Swanberg was leaning over, now, watching the screen. One arm was slipped through the landlord’s elbow and she was surreptitiously but affectionately patting the back of his hand. Swanberg himself looked completely blissful. What had she been out there alone for, that night? Well, no telling. Maybe he’d been out of town and she’d felt like doing something childish. Certainly there was no meanness or deceit in her face. She was in love with him. And he, in spite of all his austerity, was obviously in love with her.
I looked out the window. There was no doubt that the fame of the Brain-Finder by now would be all over town. Within a week we’d be flooded with work—high-priced work. We’d take only the very best cases, the highest priced, the least messy. We’d pay the rent. We’d eat in restaurants instead of carrying sandwiches. In another three months we’d be rolling in money—and almost without work. If we wanted to work hard with the Brain-Finder, we’d make millions. I could maybe find myself the right kind of girl to marry.
I looked back at the screen. I had just settled myself in the seat of the roller-coaster car. A pink dress came into my field of vision on the right. Yes, sir, this demonstration would do it. This, and those to follow. Whatever Judge Monday might say, there would be an appeal, and we’d have to take the thing to the Supreme Court, and how could any judge ignore it if Slim could show the judge himself working on his pet corn the night before? We were about to be what is vulgarly but happily known as “in the bucks.”
What would happen to Swanberg? I remembered how I’d always pictured his wife as unattractive, and all of a sudden it made me feel kind of ashamed. He had certainly shown good taste in his choice of a wife.
Well, pretty quick now I could afford to travel in that kind of company.
I wondered what would happen when Swanberg saw his wife throwing her arms around me on the roller coaster. I guessed maybe he wouldn’t be cold; he’d be jealous. Well, a man with a young and beautiful wife—somehow it kind of got me. I mean that sort of calf-like happiness. He loved her and he felt secure in the knowledge that she loved him, and—well, you know how it is.
Gosh, how I wanted that money. Here it was within our reach—the thing we’d worked so hard for, the reason I’d crawled under pullman cars and gone through the sidewalk and sneaked in to evade the landlord—all so Slim could keep working on the Brain-Finder. He had it now. Slim didn’t know how to duplicate it, but one was all we needed. That one was worth a fortune.
I looked back at the Swanbergs, sitting there so close together. Swanberg hadn’t really been tough with us. In fact, he’d been lenient. Three months was a lot to be behind. No, I guess the only thing I hadn’t really liked about him was the fact that he was always so perfectly dressed and so cool while I had to go through the sidewalk on a hot day in August and then press the sweat out of my clothes with a flatiron.
I looked at the girl. She was nice. She hadn’t been doing anything out of the way that night. She certainly hadn’t made any sort of pass at me. And they were in love.
I guess I had no business being an investigator. I looked at the judge, watching every move with his sharp old eyes. I glanced at Slim Coleman, sitting there, looking a little puzzled, his eyes deep and burning. I tried to ask Slim to forgive me. I looked at the screen. The roller-coaster car was pulling up to the top of the first hump.
I took hold of the Brain-Finder. It was heavy, but I picked it up and held it over my head, then I heaved it onto the floor, and it was nothing but a mass of loose wires and broken glass.
A woman screamed. Youngquist fainted. Slim came running with a question in his deep eyes. Tom Ellingbery’s lawyer was triumphant. The judge pounded for order. …
This is four days later. Tom Ellingbery and his wife made up. Last night’s paper showed them on the roller coaster. He was quoted as saying: “All I wanted was to ride the roller coaster.” And she had said: “Boys will be boys.”
Slim brings me four ham sandwiches and coffee twice a day. He got acquainted with the blonde that Tom Ellingbery was riding the roller coasters with, and they went out to the park and had five dollars worth of rides the night that Tom Ellingbery paid Slim the five G’s. (Tom said it was worth that much to have his wife back.) And do you know whom Slim and the blonde ran into at the Park? Mr. and Mrs. Swanberg. First thing I ever heard of a man in a tailcoat riding the roller coaster.
In fact, everybody’s got a blonde but me, and everybody’s riding the roller coaster but me. I’m not riding them now. I got thirty days for contempt of court.
The Mischievous Typesetter
The judge reared back. High-Pockets waited. “In my opinion,” his honor began a little ambiguously, “a linotype operator is very near the bottom of the scale of humanity. There is only one person who stands beneath him. That is the poet.” The judge’s eyes turned full on High-Pockets, all seven gangling feet of him. “You,” the judge said ominously, “are both.”
High-Pockets waited in dread. He had a premonition that this wasn’t even going to be a nice jail sentence where he could meditate and reflect on his strange power over linotypes.
