“We’re having it tomorrow.”
“You are not!” snapped his uncle indignantly. “Tomorrow’s Sunday. You kids have the streets to yourself three days a week as it is. If you think you’re going to be allowed to throw lead around while your elders are on their way to church, you’ve got another think coming!”
“I don’t think the producers will mind,” said Alan softly. He made a quick mental calculation and took one step backward. When his hand came out of his worn grenade case, it wasn’t empty.
There had been two little black boxes.
Mr. Flugnet had been right, the new concussion grenade did have a beautiful defined blast area. Aside from a slight ringing in his ears, Alan felt fine as he walked out of the house. For the first time in his life during a consumption period, he didn’t dive into the communication trench that led to the street. Instead he walked slowly across the lawn. When he got to the sidewalk he sat down on the curb and waited. There was a brief staccato rattle of a burp gun from across the way and a moment later the Higgens kid came out of his house.
“Over here,” yelled Alan. “The rest will be along in a minute.”
From houses all up and down the street began to come sharp crashing explosions.
“Those new hand grenades are sure something,” said the Higgens kid.
“They sure are,” said Alan. He sighed comfortably and cupped his chin in his hands. “But tomorrow we’ll have to start collecting all the ones that are left over. You leave stuff like that laying around and somebody might get hurt.”
MR. HOSKIN’S HEEL
1
Albert Hoskin’s seminar in Medieval Backgrounds had only four members, but Albert was used to that. He had long ago reconciled himself to the unhappy realization that even a large university with hundreds of graduate students moving down its intellectual assembly lines seldom produced a degree candidate who had an honest interest in the middle ages.
Donald Futzel, a prematurely bald young man who was on leave from Eastern State Teachers College for the purpose of getting the doctor’s degree that would enable an enlightened administration to promote him to associate professor, was reading a paper on medieval sorcery. As usual, the report was a hodgepodge of poorly digested paragraphs selected almost at random from three or four books and altered only enough to spare him the embarrassment of being admonished for plagiarism.
“And this,” said Futzel listlessly as he chalked a figure on the board, “is a pentagon.”
Albert could restrain himself no longer. “A potent name, Mr. Futzel, and a potent figure. But I’m afraid the two don’t go together. I believe the term you want is pentagram.”
“Okay,” said Futzel, “it’s a pentagram. Anyway…” His voice droned on and on and Albert, after setting his ear to catch any particularly gross error, retired to a consideration of his own troubles.
In spite of being a recognized authority on the Cotton manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Mr. Hoskin had troubles in plenty. Production time was coming around and though he had assiduously mined the dissertation that had won him his Ph. D. and was published in the most respectable of scholarly journals, the department grapevine had it that he was about to be passed over in favor of a tweedy young man from Harvard named Lippencott who wrote articles for the little magazines.
To make matters worse, Lippencott seemed to be getting the inside track with Priscilla Yergut, a comely, though some what emaciated, teacher of Freshman English whom Albert had been escorting to the annual English Department tea for the past several years.
Something that Futzel was saying tripped a relay and Albert started listening actively rather than passively.
“…then the magician would take this brass rod and stick it in the fire and—”
“One moment please,” said Albert. “Are you referring to the piece of magical apparatus that was commonly known as a ‘blasting rod’?”
“Sure,” said Futzel. “Why?”
“It’s a matter of minor importance. But just to avoid any misconceptions I had better point out that blasting rods were made of ash with a metal tip at each end. You may proceed.”
Futzel didn’t. Instead he stuck out his jaw pugnaciously and said, “They were so brass rods. I saw a picture of one. It was brass all the way. It looked like a curtain rod.”
“And where did you see this picture?”
“In a book. I got it right here. The librarian got it out of the locked case in the library for me.”
Unzipping his briefcase, he produced a small vellum-bound volume, and handed it over triumphantly. Albert opened it, took one casual look, and then whistled. It wasn’t too early—the title page said 1607 which explained why Futzel was able to read it—but it was evidently a copy of a much earlier manuscript work on black magic. Just then the bell rang and, with a sigh of relief, the class began to wriggle around in its chairs.
“My apologies, Mr. Futzel,” said Albert. “Would you mind if I kept this overnight? It’s a work that is new to me.”
“Help yourself,” said the other generously.
Albert dropped the small black book into his own briefcase and started across the campus toward the apartment he shared with his Aunt Agatha. He walked faster than usual because half way through the class hour he had left a luridly jacketed copy of The Big Kill in plain sight on the coffee table right beside his facsimile edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Aunt Agatha did not approve of a private investigator who went around shooting lovely ladies in the stomach on little or no provocation, and she was not a person whose likes and dislikes could be lightly disregarded.
He was panting slightly from his unaccustomed exercise when he reached up to the ledge over the apartment door to see if the key was still there. He gave a slight exclamation of pleasure when his fingers encountered it. Aunt Agatha wasn’t home yet.
He put the key in the lock and turned, but the mechanism stuck a little, as usual. As he struggled with the refractory lock, he sternly resolved for the hundredth time to write a stiff letter of protest to his ancient enemy, the janitor. An uncouth and hairy individual who paraded around all day in a dirty undershirt and smoked a vile-smelling pipe, he could at least attend to a rusty lock.
“Having trouble, Mac?”
Startled, Albert swung around. A hard-faced gentleman with the build of a mature gorilla was standing in the shadows watching him.
“Why, yes,” said Albert. “The key, it sticks.”
“Your name Hoskin?”
Albert nodded.
“Good,” grunted the burly stranger and hit him on the head with a blunt object.
When Albert woke up again he was tied to a chair in a dusty apartment that didn’t have that lived-in look. A second stranger, somewhat gone to fat, but even bigger and uglier than the first, stood looking down at him.
“So you’re the creep that’s giving us all the trouble.”
“Beg pardon?” said Albert.
“I shouldn’t have had to send Gutsy after you. Your school spirit should have fixed things up before we had to step in.”
“That’s right,” Gutsy sternly. “Cosmo shouldn’t a had to send me after you.”
Albert looked up at them in honest confusion. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about.”
“The game Saturday, what else? You got a kid named Martinelli in one of your classes, haven’t