Discussion katherine

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S M O K E GHOST By F r i t z L e i b e r , J r .

• The ghosts of old were white and misty things of the night. But the ghosts of todays black and grimy, soot-filled cities might be very different things—

Illustrated by Edd C a r t i e r #

M i s s M I L L I C K wondered just what had happened to Mr. Wran. He kept making the strangest remarks when she took dictation. Just this morning he had quickly turned around' and asked, "Have you ever seen a ghost, Miss Millick?" And she had tittered nerv- ously and replied, "When I was a girl there was a thing in white that use'd to come out of the closet in the attic bedroom when you slept there, and moan. Of course it was just my imagination. I was frightened of lots of things." And he had .said, " I don't mean that tradi- tional kind of ghost. I mean a ghost from the world today, with the soot of the factories in its face and the

pounding of machinery in its soul. The kind that would haunt coal yards and slip around at night through de- serted office buildings like this one. A real ghost. Not something out of books." And she hadn't known what to say.

He'd never been like this before. Of course it might be joking, but it didn't sound that way. Vaguely Miss Millick wondered -whether he mightn't be seeking some sort of sympathy from her. Of course, Mr. W r a n was married and had a little child, but that didn't prevent her from having daydreams. She had daydreams about most of the men she worked for. The daydreams were

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all very, similar in pattern and not very exciting, but they helped fill up the emptiness in her mind. And now he was asking her another of those disturbing and jarringly out-of-place questions.

"Have you ever thought what a ghost of our times would look like, Miss Millick? Just picture it. A smoky composite face with the hungry anxiety of the unemployed, the neurotic restlessness of the person without purpose, the jerky tension of the high-pressure metropolitan worker, the' sullen resentment of the striker, the callous viciousness of the strike breaker, the aggressive whine of the panhandler, the inhibited terror of the bombed civilian, and a thousand other twisted emotional patterns? Each one overlying and

. yet blending with the other, like a pile -of semitrans- parent masks ?"

Miss Millick gave a little self-conscious shiver and said, "My, that would be terrible. What an awful thing to think of."

She peered at him furtively across the desk. Was he going crazy? She remembered having heard that there had been something impressively abnormal about Mr. Wran's childhood, but she couldn't recall what it was. If only she could do something—joke at him or ask him what was really wrong. She shifted around the extra pencils in her left hand and mechanically traced over some of the shorthand curlicues in her, notebook.

"Yet, that's just what such a ghost or vitalized pro- jection would look like, Miss Millick," he continued, smiling in a tight way. " I t would grow out of the real world. It would reflect all the tangled, sordid, vicious, things. All the loose ends. And it would be very grimy. I don't think it would seem white or wispy or favor graveyards. It wouldn't moan. But it would mutter unintelligibly, and twitch at your sleeve. Like a sick, surly ape. What would such a thing want from a person, Miss Millick? Sacrifice? Worship? Or just fear? What could you do to stop it from troubling you?"

Miss Millick giggled nervously. She felt embarrassed and out of her depth. There was an expression beyond her powers of definition in Mr. W r a n ' s ordinary, flat- cheeked, thirty-ish face, silhouetted against the dusty window. H e turned away and stared out into the gray downtown atmosphere that rolled in from the railroad yards and the mills. When he spoke again his voice sounded far away.

"Of course, being immaterial, it couldn't hurt you physically—at first; You'd have to be peculiarly sensi- tive even to see it, or be aware of it at all. But it would begin to influence your actions. Make you do this. Stop you from doing that. Although only a projection, it would gradually get its hooks into the world of things as-they are. Might even get control of suitably vacuous minds. Then it could hurt whomever it wanted."

Miss M I L L I C K squirmed and tried to read back her shorthand, like books said you should do when there was a pause. She became aware of the failing light and wished Mr. W r a n would ask her to turn on t h e over-

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head light. She felt uncomfortable and scratchy as if soot were sifting down on to her skin.

"It's a rotten world, Miss Millick," said Mr. Wran, talking at the window. "Fit for another morbid growth of superstition. It's time the ghosts, or whatever you call them, took over and began a rule of fear. They'd be no worse than men."

"But"—Miss Millick's diaphram jerked, making her titter inanely—"of course there aren't any such things as ghosts." : Mr. W r a n turried around. She noticed with a start that his grin had broadened, though without getting any less tight.

"Of course there aren't, Miss Millick," he said in a sudden loud, reassuring, almost patronizing voice, as if she had been doing the talking rather than he. "Mod- ern science and common sense and better self-under- standing all go to prove it."

He stopped, staring past her abstractedly. She hung her head and might even have blushed if she hadn't felt so all at sea. Her leg muscles twitched, making her stand up', although she hadn't- intended to. She aim- lessly rubbed her hand back and forth along the edge of the desk, then pulled it back.

"Why, Mr. Wran, look what I got off your desk," she said, showing him a heavy smudge. There was a note of cumbersomely playful reproof in her voice, but she really just wanted to be saying something. " N o wonder the copy I bring you always gets so black. Somebody ought to talk to those scrubwomen. They're skimping on your room."

She wished he would-make some normal joking reply. But instead he drew back and his face hardened.

"Well, to get back to the letter to Fredericks," he rapped out harshly, and began to dictate.

When she was gone he jumped up, dabbed his finger experimentally at the smudged part of the desk, frowned worriedly at the almost inky smears. H e jerked open a drawer, snatched out a rag, hastily swabbed off the desk, crumpled the rag into a ball and tossed it back. There were three or four other rags in the drawer, each impregnated with soot.

Then he strode over to the window and peered out anxiously through the gathering dusk, his eyes search- ing the panorama of roofs, fixing on each chimney, each water tank.

" I t ' s a psychosis. Must be. Hallucination. Com- pulsion neurosis," he muttered to himself in a tired, dis- traught voice that would have made Miss Millick gasp. "Good thing I'm seeing the psychiatrist tonight. It's that damned mental abnormality cropping up in a new form. Can't be any other explanation. Can't be. But it's so damned real. Even the soot. I don't think I could force myself to get on the elevated tonight. Good thing I made the appointment. The doctor will know—" His voice trailed off, he rubbed his eyes, and his mem- ory automatically started to grind.

IT HAD all begun on the elevated. There was a par- ticular little sea of roofs he had grown into the habit of

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glancing at just as the packed car carrying him home- ward lurched around a turn. A dingy, melancholy lit- tle world of tar paper, tarred gravel, and smoky brick. Rusty tin chimneys with odd conical hats suggested abandoned listening posts. There was a washed-out advertisement of some ancient patent medicine on the _ nearest wall. Superficially it was like ten thousand other drab city roofs. But he always saw it around dusk, either in the normal smoky half-light, or tinged with red by the flat rays of a dirty sunset, or covered by ghostly windblown white sheets of rain-splash, or patched with blackish snow; and it seemed unusually bleak and suggestive, almost beautifully ugly, though in no sense picturesque; dreary but meaningful. Uncon- sciously it came to symbolize for Catesby Wran certain disagreeable aspects of the frustrated, frightened cen- tury in which he lived, the jangled century of hate and heavy industry and Fascist wars. T h e quick, daily glance into the half darkness became an integral part of his life. Oddly, he never saw it in the morning, for it was then his habit to sit on the other side of the car, his head buried in the paper.

One evening toward winter he noticed what seemed to be a shapeless black sack lying on the third roof from the tracks. H e did not think about it. It merely regis- tered as an addition to the well-known scene and his memory stored away the impression for further refer- ence. Next evening, however, he decided he had been mistaken in one detail. The object was^a roof nearer than he had thought. Its color and texture, and the grimy stains around it, suggested that it was filled with coal dust, which was-hardly reasonable. Then, too, the following evening it seemed to have been blown against a rusty ventilator by the wind—which could hardly have happened if it were at all heavy. Perhaps it was filled with leaves. Catesby was surprised to find himself anticipating his next daily glance with a minor note of apprehension. There was something unwholesome in the posture of the thing that stuck in his mind—a bulge in the sacking that suggested a misshapen head peering around the ventilator. And his apprehension was jus- tified, for that evening the thing was on the nearest roof, though o n : the farther side, looking as if it had just flopped down„over the low brick parapet.

Next evening the sack was gone. Catesby was an- noyed at the momentary feeling of relief that went through him, because the whole matter seemed too un- important to warrant feelings of any sort. What differ- ence did it make if his imagination had played tricks on him, and he'd fancied that the object was crawling and hitching itself slowly closer across the roofs? That was the way any normal, imagination-worked. H e deliber- ately chose to disregard the fact that there were reasons, for thinking his imagination was by no means a normal one. As he walked home from the elevated, however, he found himself wondering whether the sack was really gone. H e seemed to recall a vague, smudgy trail lead- ing across the gravel to the nearer side of the roof. For an instant an unpleasant picture formed in his mind— that of an inky, humped creature crouched behind the*-

nearer parapet, waiting. Then he dismissed the whole subject.

The next time he felt the familiar grating lurch of the car, he caught himself trying not to look out. That an- gered him. He turned his head quickly. When he turned it back, his compact face was definitely pale. There had only been time for a fleeting rearward glance at the escaping roof. H a d he actually seen in silhouette the upper part of a head of some sort peering over the parapet? Nonsense, he told himself. And even if he had seen something, there were a thousand explanations which did not involve the supernatural or even true hallucination. Tomorrow he would take a good look and clear up the whole matter. If necessary, he would visit the roof personally, though he hardly knew where to find it and disliked in any case the idea of pampering a whim of fear. ,

H E DID N O T R E L I S H the walk home from the elevated that evening, and visions of the thing disturbed his dreams and were <in and out of his mind all next day at the office. I t was then that he first began to relieve his nerves by making jokingly serious remarks about the supernatural.to Miss Millick, who seemed properly mys- tified. I t was on the same day, too, that he became aware of a growing antipathy to grime and soot. Every- thing he touched seemed gritty, and he found himself mopping and wiping at his desk like an old lady with a morbid fear of germs. H e reasoned that there was no real change in his office, and that he'd just now become sensitive to the dirt that had always been there, but there was no denying an increasing nervousness. Long before the car reached the curve, he was straining his eyes through the murky twilight determined to take in every detail.

Afterward he realized that he must have given a muffled cry of some sort, for the man beside him looked at him curiously, and the woman ahead gave him an unfavorable stare. Conscious of his own pallor and un- controllable trembling, he stared back at them hungrily, trying to regain the feeling of security he had completely lost. They were the usual reassuringly "wooden-faced people everyone rides home with on the elevated. But suppose he had pointed out to one of them what he had seen—that sodden, distorted face of sacking and coal dust, that boneless paw which waved back and forth, unmistakably in his direction, as if reminding him of a future appointment— He involuntarily shut his eyes tight. His thoughts were racing ahead to tomorrow evening. He pictured this same windowed oblong of light and packed humanity surging around the curve— then an opaque monstrous form leaping out from the roof in a parabolic swoop—an unmentionable face pressed close against the window, smearing it with wet coal dust—huge paws fumbling sloppily at the g l a s s —

Somehow he managed to turn off his wife's anxious inquiries. N e x t morning he reached a decision and made an appointment for that evening with a psychia- trist a friend had told him about. It cost him a consid- erable effort for Catesby had a peculiarly great and very

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well-grounded distaste for anything dealing.with psycho- logical abnormality. Visiting a psychiatrist meant rak- ing up an episode in his past which he had never fully described even to his wife and which Miss Millick only knew of as "something impressively abnormal about M r . Wran's childhood." Once he had made the deci- sion, however, he felt considerably relieved. The doc- tor, he told himself, would clear everything up. H e could almost fancy the doctor saying, "Merely a bad case of nerves. However, you must consult the oculist whose name I ' m writing down for you, and you must take two of these pills in water every hour," and so on. It was almost comforting, and made the coming revela- tion he would have to make seem less painful.

But as the smoky dusk rolled in, his nervousness re- turned and he let his joking mystification of Miss Mil- lick run away with him until he realized that he wasn't frightening anyone but himself.

H e would have to keep his imagination under better control, he told himself, as he continued to peer out rest- lessly at the massive, murky shapes of the downtown office buildings. Why, he had spent the whole afternoon building up a kind of neomedieval cosmology of super- stition. I t wouldn't do. H e realized then that he had been standing at the window much longer than he'd thought, for the glass panel in the door was dark and there was no noise coming from the outer office. Miss Millick and the rest must already have gone home.

It was then he made the discovery that there would have been no special reason for dreading the swing around the curve that night. It was, as it happened, a horrible discovery. For, on the shadowed roof across the street and four stories below, he saw the thing hud- dle and roll across the gravel and, after one upward look of recognition, merge into the blackness beneath the water tank.

As he hurriedly collected his things and made for the elevator, fighting the panicky impulse to run, he began to think of hallucination and mild psychosis as very de- sirable conditions. For better or for worse, he pinned all his hopes on the doctor.

"So you find yourself growing nervous and . . . er . . . jumpy, as.you put it," said Dr. Trevethick, smiling with dignified geniality. "Do you notice any more definite physical symptoms? Pain? Headache? Indigestion?"

Catesby shook his head and wet his lips. "I'm espe- cially nervous while riding in the elevated," he mur- mured swiftly. i

" I see. We'll discuss that more fully. But I'd like you first to tell me about something you mentioned earlier. You said there was something about your childhood that might predispose you to nervous ail- ments. ' As you know, the early years are critical ones in the development of an individual's behavior pattern."

Catesby studied the yellow reflections of frosted globes in the dark surface of the desk. The palm of his left hand aimlessly rubbed the thick nap of the armchair. After a while he raised his head and looked straight into the doctor's small brown eyes.

" F r o m perhaps my third to my ninth year," he began, choosing the words with care, " I was what you might call a sensory prodigy."

T h e doctor's expression did not change. "Yes?" he inquired politely.

" W h a t I mean is that I was supposed to be able to see through walls, read letters through envelopes and books through their covers, fence and play Ping-pong blind- folded, find things that were buried, read thoughts." The. words tumbled out.

"And could you?" The doctor's expression was tone- less. , " I don't know. I don't suppose so," answered Catesby, long-lost emotions flooding back into his voice. "It's all so confused now. I thought I could, but then they were always encouraging me. My mother . . . wa6 . . . w e l l . . . interested in psychic phenomena. I was . . . exhibited. I seem to remember seeing things other peo-' pie couldn't. As if most opaque objects were transpar- ent. But I was very young. I didn't have any scientific criteria for judgment."

H e was reliving it now. T h e darkened rooms. T h e earnest assemblages of gawking, paying adults. Him- self sitting alone on a little platform, lost in a straight- backed wooden chair. The black silk handkerchief over his eyes. H i s mother's coaxing, insistent questions. The whispers. The gasps. His own hate of the whole business, mixed with hunger for the adulation of adults. Then the scientists from the university, the experiments, the big test. The reality of those memories engulfed him and momentarily made him forget the reason why he was disclosing them to a stranger.

" D o I understand that your mother tried to make use of you as a medium for communicating with the . . . er . . . other world?"

Catesby nodded eagerly. "She tried to, but she couldn't. W h e n it came to get-

ting in touch with the dead, I was a complete failure. All I could do—or thought I could do—was see real, existing, three-dimensional objects beyond the vision of normal people. Objects they could have seen except for distance, obstruction, or darkness. I t was always a dis- appointment to mother," he finished slowly.

He.could hear her sweetish patient voice saying, " T r y again, dear, just this once. Katie was your aunt. She loved you. T r y to hear what she's saying." And he had answered, " I can see a woman in a blue dress stand- ing on the other side of Jones' house." And she had re- plied, "Yes, I know, dear. But that's not Katie. Katie's a spirit. T r y again. Just this once, dear." For a sec- ond time the doctor's voice gently jarred him back into the softly gleaming office.

"You mentioned scientific criteria for judgment, Mr. W r a n . As far as you know, did anyone ever t r y ' t o apply them to you?" -

Catesby's nod was emphatic.

" T H E Y did. When I was eight, two young psycholo- gists from the university here got interested in me. I guess they considered it a joke at first, and I remember

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being very determined to show them I amounted to Catesby swallowed. H e had felt an increasing eager- something. Even now I seem to recall how the note of ness to unburden himself of his fears, but it was not easy polite superiority and amused sarcasm drained out of to make a beginning, and the doctor's shrewd question their voices. I suppose they decided at first that it was rattled him. H e forced himself to concentrate. The very clever trickery, but somehow they persuaded thing he thought he had seen on the roof loomed up be- mother to let them try me out under controlled condi- fore his'inner eye with unexpected vividness. Yet it did tions. There were lots of tests that seemed very busi- not frighten him. H e groped for words, nesslike after mother's slipshod little exhibitions. They Then he^saw that the doctor was not looking at him found I was still clairvoyant—or so they thought. I but over his shoulder. Color was draining out of the got worked up and on edge. They were going to dem- doctor's face and his eyes did not seem so small. Then onstrate my supernormal sensory powers to the uni- the doctor sprang to his feet, walked past Catesby, versity psychology faculty. For the first time I began threw open the window and peered into the darkness, to worry about whether I'd come through. Perhaps As "Catesby rose, the doctor slammed down the win- they kept me going at too hard a pace, I. don't know. dow and said in a voice whose smoothness was marred At any rate, when the test came, I couldn't do a thing. by a slight, persistent gasping, " I hope I haven't alarmed Everything became opaque. I got desperate and made you. I saw the face of . . . er . . . a Negro prowler on things up. out of my imagination. I lied. In. the end I the fire escape. I must have frightened him, for he failed utterly, and I believe the two young psychologists seems to have gotten out of sight in a hurry. Don't give lost their jobs as a result." <- it another thought. Doctors are frequently bothered by

H e could hear the brusque, bearded man saying, voyeurs . . . er . .,. Peeping Toms." "You've been taken in by a child, Flaxmain, a mere "A Negro?" asked Catesby, moistening his lips, child. I'm greatly-disturbed. You've put yourself on The doctor laughed nervously. " I imagine so, though the same plane as common charlatans. Gentlemen, I my first odd impression was that it was a white man in ask you to banish from your minds this whole sorry blackface. You see, the color didn't seem to have any episode. It must never be referred to." He winced at brown in it. It was dead-black." the recollection of his feeling of guilt. But at the same Catesby moved toward the window. There were time he was beginning to feel exhilarated and almost smudges .on the glass. "It's quite all right, Mr. W r a n . " light-hearted. Unburdening his long-repressed mem- The doctor's voice had acquired a sharp note of impa- ories had altered his whole viewpoint. The episodes tience, as if he were trying hard to get control of him- on the elevated began to take on what seemed their self and reassume his professional authority. "Let's proper proportions as merely the bizarre workings of continue our conversation. . I was asking you if you overwrought nerves, and an < overly suggestible mind, were"—he made a face—"seeing things." The doctor, he anticipated confidently, would disen- Catesby's whirling thoughts slowed down and locked tangle the obscure subconscious causes, whatever they into place. "No, I'm not seeing anything . . . other might be. And the whole business would be finished people don't see, too.'' And I think . I'd better go now. off quickly, just as his childhood • experience—which I've been keeping you too long." H e disregarded the was beginning'to seem a little ridiculous now—had been doctor's half-hearted gesture of denial. "I'll phone you finished off. about the physical,examination. In a way you've al-

" F r o m that day on," he continued, " I never exhibited ready taken a big load off my mind.". He smiled wood- a trace of my supposed powers. My mother was fran- enly. "Good night, Dr. Trevethick." tic, and tried to sue the university. I had sOmething- like a nervous breakdown. Then the divorce was C A T E S B Y W R A N ' S mental state was a peculiar one. granted, and my father got.custody of me. H e did his His.eyes searched every angular shadow and he glanced best to make me forget it. W e went on long outdoor sideways down each chasmlike alley and barren base- vacations, and did a lot of athletics, associated, with nor- ment passageway and kept stealing looks at the irregu- mal, matter-of-fact "people. I went to business college , lar line of the roofs, yet he was hardly conscious of eventually. I'm in advertising. now. But," Catesby . where he was.going in a general way. He pushed away paused, "now that I'm having nervous symptoms, I'm the thoughts that came into his mind, and kept moving, wondering if there-mightn't be a connection. It's not a H e became-aware of a slight sense of security as he question of whether I really was clairvoyant or not. turned into a lighted street where there were people and Very likely my,mother taught me a. lot of unconscious high buildings and blinking signs. After a_while he deceptions, good enough even to fool young ̂ psychology found himself in the dim -lobby of the structure that instructors. But-don't you think it may have some im-," housed his office. Then he realized why he couldn't go portant bearing on my present condition?" „ . . ' home—because he might cause his wife and baby to see

For several moments the doctor regarded" him-with a • it, just as the doctor had seen it. And the baby, only slightly embarrassing professional frown. Then he said • two years old. y ' quietly, "And is there some . . . er . . . more specific "Heilo, Mr. W r a n , " said the night elevator man," a connection between your experiences then and now?. - burly figure in blue overalls, sliding open the grille- Do you by any chance find that you are once again ' work door to the old-fashioned cage. "I .didn't know beginning to . . . er . . . see things?" you were working nights now."

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Catesby stepped in automatically. "Sudden rush of orders," he murmured inanely. "Some stuff that has to be gotten out."

The cage creaked to a stop at the top floor. "Be working very late, Mr. W r a n ? "

He nodded vaguely, patched the car slide out of sight, found his keys, swiftly crossed the outer office,, and en- tered his own. His hand went out to the light switch, but then the thought occurred to him that the two lighted windows, standing out against the dark bulk of the building, would indicate his whereabouts and serve as a goal toward which something could crawl and climb. He moved his chair so that the back was against the wall and sat down in the semidarkness. He did not remove his overcoat.

For a long time he sat there motionless, listening to his own breathing and the faraway sounds from the streets below; the thin metallic surge of the crosstown streetcar, the farther one of the elevated, faint lonely cries and honkings, indistinct rumblings. Words he had spoken to Miss Millick in nervous jest came back to him with the bitter taste of truth. He found himself unable to reason critically or connectedly, but by their own volition thoughts rose up into his mind and gyrated

slowly and rearranged themselves, with .the inevitable movement of planets.

Gradually his mental picture of the world was trans- formed. No longer a world of material atoms and empty space, but a world in which the bodiless existed and moved according to its own obscure laws or unpre- dictable impulses. The new picture illumined with dreadful clarity certain general facts which had always bewildered and troubled him and from which he had tried to hide; the inevitability of hate and war, the dia- bolically timed mischances which wrecked the best of human intentions, the walls of willful misunderstanding that divided one man from another, the eternal vitality of cruelty and ignorance and greed. They seemed ap- propriate now, necessary parts of the picture. And superstition only a kind of wisdom.

Then his thoughts returned to himself, and the ques- tion he had asked Miss Millick came back, " W h a t would such a thing want from a person ? Sacrifices ? W o r - ship ? Or just fear ? WhaA could you do to stop it from troubling you ?" It had now become a purely practical question.

With an explosive jangle, the phone began to ring. "Cate, I've been trying everywhere to get you," said his

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wife. " I never thought you'd be at the office. What are you doing? I've been worried."

H e saidx something about work. "You'll be home right away?" came the faint anxious

question! "I'm a little.frightened. Ronny just had a scare. It woke him up. He kept pointing to the win- dow saying, 'Black man, black man.' Of course it's something he dreamed. But I ' m frightened. You will be home? What's that, dear? Can't you hear me?"

" I will. Right away," he said. Then he was out of the office,'buzzing the night bell and peering down the shaft.

HE SAW IT peering up the shaft.at him from three floors below, ,the sacking face pressed close against the iron grille-work. It started up the stair at a shockingly swift, shambling gait-, .vanishing, temporarily from sight as it swung into the second corridor below.;

Catesby clawed at the door to the office, realized he had not locked it, pushed it in, slammed and locked it behind him, retreated to the other side of the room, cowered between- the filing cases and the wall. His teeth were clicking. H e heard the groan: of the rising cage. A silhouette darkened the frosted glass of the door, blotting out part of the grotesque reverse of the company name. After a little the door opened.

The big-globed overhead light flared on and, standing just inside the door,.her hand on the switch, he saw Miss Millick.

"Why, Mr. W r a n , " she stammered vacuously, "I didn't know you were here. I'd just come in to do some extra typing after the movie. I didn't . . . but the lights weren't on. W h a t were you—"

H e stared at her. H e wanted to shout in relief, grab hold of her, talk rapidly. He realized he was grinning hysterically.

"Why, Mr. W r a n , what's happened to you?" she asked embarrassedly, ending with a stupid titter. "Are you feeling sick? Isn't there something I can do for you?" .

H e shook his head jerkily, and managed to say, "No, I ' m just leaving. I was doing some extra work myself."

"But you look sick," she insisted, and walked over toward him. H e inconsequentially realized she must have stepped in mud, for her high-heeled shoes left neat black prints. - "Yes, I'm sure you must be sick. You're so terribly

pale." She sounded like an enthusiastic, incompetent nurse. Her face brightened with a sudden inspiration. "I've got something in my bag that'll fix you up right away,"_sh"e said. " I t ' s for indigestion."

She fumbled at her stuffed oblong purse. H e noticed that she was absent-mindedly holding it shut with one hand while she tried to open it with the other." Then, under his very eyes, he saw her bend back the thick prongs of metal locking the purse as if .they were tin- foil, or as if her fingers had become a pair of steel pliers.

Instantly his memory recited the words he had spoken to Millick that afternoon. " I t couldn't hurt you physi- cally—at first. . ; gradually get its hooks into the world

. . . might even get control of suitably vacuous minds. Then it could hurt whomever it wanted." A sickish, cold feeling came to a focus inside him. He began, to edge toward the door.

But Miss Millick hurried ahead of him. "You don't have to wait, Fred," she called. "Mr.

Wran's decided to stay a while longer." The door to the cage shut with a mechanical rattle.

The cage creaked. Then she turned around in the door. "Why, Mr. W r a n , " she gurgled reproachfully, " I just

couldn't think of letting you go home now. I'm sure you're terribly unwell. Why, you might collapse in the .street. You've J u s t got to stay here until you feel dif- ferent."

The creaking died away. H e stood in the center of the office motionless. His eyes traced the course of Miss Millick's footprints t o where she stood blocking the door. Then a sound that was almost a scream was wrenched out of him, for he saw that the flesh of her face was beginning to change color; blackening until the powder on it was a sickly white dust, rouge a hideous pinkish one, lipstick a translucent red film. It was the same with her hands and with the skin beneath her thin silk stockings.

"Why, Mr. W r a n , " she said, "you're acting as if you were crazy. You must lie down for a little while. Here, I'll help you off with your coat."

The nauseously idiotic and rasping note, was the" same; only it had been intensified. As she came toward him he turned and ran through the storeroom, clattered a key desperately at the lock of the second door to the corridor.

"Why, Mr. W r a n , " he heard her call, "are you hav- ing some kind of fit? You must let me help you."

The door came open and he plunged out into the cor- ridor arid up the stairs immediately ahead. It was only when he reached the top that he realized the heavy steel door in front of him led to the roof. He jerked up the catch. - • •

"Why, Mr. W r a n , you mustn't run away. I'm com- ing after you." '

T H E N he was out on the gritty tar paper of the roof, the night sky was clouded, and murky, with a faint pink- ish glow from the neon signs. From the distant mills rose a ghostly spurt of flame. H e ran to the edge. The street lights glared dizzily upward. Two men walking along were round blobs of hat and shoulders. H e swung around..

The thing was in the doorway. The voice was no longer solicitous but moronically playful, each sentence ending in a titter.

"Why, Mr. W r a n , why have you come up here? We're all alone. Just think, I might push you off."

The thing came slowly toward him. He moved back- . ward until his heels touched the low parapet. Without knowing why or what he was. going to do, he dropped to his knees. The black, coarse-grained face came nearer, a focus for the worst in the world, a gathering point for poisons from everywhere. Then the lucidity

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SMOKE GHOST 107

of terror took possession of his mind, and words formed on his lips.

" I will obey you. You are my god," he said. "You have supreme power over man and his animals and his machines. You rule this city and all others. I recog- nize that." Therefore spare me."

Again the titter, closer. "Why, Mr. Wran, you never talked like this before. Do you mean it?"

"The world is yours to do.with as you will, save or tear to pieces," He answered fawningly, as the words automatically fitted themselves together into vaguely liturgical patterns. " I recognize that. I will praise, I will sacrifice. In smoke and soot and flame I will wor- ship you forever."

The voice did not answer. He looked up. There was only Miss Millick, deathly pale and swaying drunkenly. Her eyes were closed. H e caught her as she wobbled toward him. His knees gave way under the added weight and they sank down together on the roof edge.

After a while she began to twitch. Small wordless noises came from her throat, and her eyelids edged open.

"Come on, we'll go downstairs," he murmured jerkily, trying to draw her up. "You're feeling bad."

"I'm terribly dizzy," she whispered. " I must have fainted. I didn't eat enough. And then I'm so nervous lately, about the war and everything, I guess. Why, we're on the roof! Did you bring me up here to get some air? O r did I come u p without knowing it? I'm awfully foolish. I used to walk in my sleep, my mother said."

As he helped her down the stairs, she turned and looked at him. "Why, Mr. Wran," she said, faintly, "you've got a big smudge on your forehead. Here, let me get it off for you." Weakly she rubbed at it with her handkerchief. She started to sway again and he steadied her.

"No, I'll be all right," she said. "Only I feel cold. What happened, Mr. W r a n ? Did I have some sort of fainting spell?"

H e .told her it was something like that.

L A T E R , riding home in an empty elevated car, he won- dered how long he would be safe from the thing. I t was a purely practical problem. He had no way of knowing, but instinct told him he had satisfied the brute for some time. Would it want more when it came again? Time enough to answer that question when it arose. It might be hard, he realized, to keep out of an insane asylum. With Helen and Ronny to protect, as well as himself, he would have to be careful and tight- lipped. H e began to speculate as to how many other men and women had seen the thing or .things like it, and knew that mankind had once again spawned a ghost world, and that superstition once more ruled.

The elevated slowed and lurched in a familiar fashion. H e looked at the roofs again, near the curve. They seemed very ordinary, as if what made them impressive had gone away for a while.

T H E END.

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108'

A GNOME THER

A slightly cockeyed piece concerning a gnome who did not want to be a gnome—and didn't like the way gnomes acted anyway. So—he didn't stay a gnome, but—

T I M C R O C K E T T should never have sneaked into the . mine on Dornsef Mountain. What is winked at in California may have disastrous results in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. Especially when gnomes are involved.

Not that Tim Crockett knew about the gnomes. He was just 'investigating conditions among the lower classes, to use his own rather ill-chosen words. H e was one of a group of southern Californians who had de- cided that labor needed them. They were wrong. They needed labor—at least eight hours of it a day. f

I l l u s t r a t e d by E d d C a r t i e r

Crockett, like his colleagues, considered the laborer a combination of a gorilla and The Man with the Hoe, probably numbering the Kallikaks among his ancestors. He spoke fierily of downtrodden minorities, wrote in- cendiary articles for the group's organ—Earth—and deftly maneuvered himself out of entering his, father's law office as a clerk. He had, he said, a mission. Un- fortunately, he got little sympathy from either the work-

. ers or their oppressors. A psychologist could have analyzed Crockett easily

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