Time Travel Omnibus, page 309
George Bellows pushed his chair back from the table and got unsteadily to his feet.
“What’s wrong, George?” Connie said in sudden alarm.
Bellows shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all. Just a little groggy. Need some air. I’ll take a quick walk.”
Connie rose and came swiftly to his side.
“Do you want me to call the doctor, George?”
Again Bellows shook his head. He started for the door, then turned.
“Connie,” he said huskily, “how did I come home last night?”
“Why, you weren’t out last night,” Connie said. “You came home in a cheerful frame of mind about six-thirty. We both sat up and played gin rummy until around midnight. Why? What’s wrong, dear?”
“Nothing,” mumbled George Bellows, staggering for the door. “I’ll be back the minute I get a little air.”
OUT in the fresh morning air, George Bellows got a grip on himself. Well, sort of a grip. And after he’d walked half a block, he was able to do a little rationalizing. Rationalizing that included a careful re-summation of everything that had occurred in the “dream” he’d had.
From the re-summation, Bellows was able to recall for the first time since rising, the incident at the south sea-ish night club where there’d been the little Achmet. And then, of course, he recalled the curious little clock.
He remembered, too, the argument he’d had with the little man about fatalism, predestination, and fighting the winds of fate. And he recalled the promise of the little man, after giving him the weird timepiece, that he would be able to relive his nightmarish day.
Bellows felt extremely weak in the knees.
It was preposterous. If there’d been anything a man needed to convince himself that the whole thing had been the poppycock of a dream, it was the mumbo-jumbo of the clock and little Achmet. Such things were utterly impossible.
It was ridiculous, fantastically absurd. Bellows told himself this again and again. But by the time he’d walked around the block and was in sight of his house again, his mind was clear on one thing.
“Impossible or not, ridiculous or not, the damned thing happened to me, and this is my chance to relive this day!”
And so when Bellows reentered his house, he assured an anxious Connie that he felt much better. Assured Connie of that while going into the living room for a look around.
It had occurred to Bellows that he might find the little timepiece in the living room, the curious clock Achmet had given him. He had left it there. But after a brief, futile search, he suddenly realized that if, as he was now convinced, he was living this day over again, the watch naturally wouldn’t be about. He wouldn’t even have seen it yet!
Connie, coming into the living room, asked: “Don’t you want to finish your breakfast, dear? You’d better hurry, if you want to get to work on time.”
George Bellows squared his shoulders grimly. Of course he would finish his breakfast. He would finish his breakfast then set forth to prove to himself and posterity that a man can create his own destiny, given half a chance.
Back at the breakfast table, Bellows looked up at Connie and smilingly said: “Everything tastes swell, kid.”
Connie looked surprised.
“Thank you, George,” she said a little flatly.
As a matter of fact, everything tasted foul. But Bellows was out to change things. To change everything. He’d started off this day the first time with a fight with Connie. He wouldn’t fight with her this morning.
“Yes indeed,” Bellows reiterated, “this is a dandy morning snack!”
Connie suddenly stood up.
“Do you have to rub it in, George? Do you have to be so sarcastic? I know the tomato juice is flat. I know something’s wrong with the cream. It wasn’t my fault the toast burned. And now you have to be nasty!”
BELLOWS, mouth full of burned toast, gurgled astonishedly at his wife as she swept angrily from the room. He heard her mules clicking up the stairs to the bedroom.
He swallowed the burned toast and rose hastily to his feet, thinking of following her to set things right. And then he glanced at his watch.
It was twenty minutes to nine. He’d just have time to make it to work. He couldn’t afford to go upstairs and placate Connie. He’d have to let that wait until he got to the office. He’d call her from there.
Bellows found his hat where his wife had hidden it, and dashed to the garage. He was already into the stream of Sheridan Road traffic when he remembered about the trouble he’d encounter at the Outer Drive. It would be blocked off.
It was.
A little sickly, Bellows followed the regular Sheridan Road run along toward Lincoln Park. Mentally he lashed himself for having forgotten about this snag in his haste. Unconsciously, he did a bit of weaving and accelerator pounding in his nervous impatience. Then, of course, he encountered the second detour at Sheridan and Broadway, and was forced along the street car ridden, cobblestoned street. The scene of his accident was approaching, and Bellows began to be aware of it.
He fought back the impulse to sneak off into a side street, knowing that it would only serve to slow him until he was late for work, and knowing too, that he would have to thwart the fate of the accident on his own hook.
And then he came to that corner. The corner where, in the first living of this day, he’d had the smashup with the beer truck. The light, as it had the first time, was changing from green to yellow. Bellows knew he had time to scoot across the intersection before the yellow faded into a red “stop” signal.
Grimly, Bellows smiled.
“Not when I know better,” he muttered.
He slammed his foot down on the break pedal, obeying the yellow light to the strictest letter of the law. Ahead of him, to the right, he saw the big beer truck barrelling across the intersection.
He’d thwarted fate!
And then Bellows felt a jarring impact from the rear. A jarring impact which knocked him forward against the wheel, smashing his mouth on a spoke.
The roaring of the crash was still in his ears when Bellows climbed dazedly from his machine. Sickly he saw at a glance that a streetcar, coming up directly behind him, had been unable to stop fully when Bellows had jammed on his own brakes. And the streetcar had quite thoroughly pleated his automobile, obviously beyond hope of repair!
For a minute George Bellows was too sickly stunned to do anything but gape. Gape and hold a handkerchief to his swollen and bleeding mouth. The streetcar motorman was climbing from his platform.
CHAPTER V
BELLOWS hesitated only an instant.
He knew what a wait would mean. Any time spent in bickering here, or accident reports, would make him late to work. And that would mean his discharge.
He made up his mind swiftly. He could settle about this accident later, somehow.
Quickly, Bellows looked about. He sighted an empty taxi and dashed toward it. He heard shouts of amazement and anger behind him as he ran.
Bellows shouted his office address to the driver, adding:
“Five bucks if you get me there before nine!”
The driver nodded throwing the hack into gear. They roared off, leaving a bewildered motorman, an irate traffic cop, and a hooting crowd of spectators to decide what to do with a demolished sedan which was tying up traffic.
Nervously, Bellows settled back and lighted a cigarette. He glanced at his watch and frowned. Then he looked out the window, saw the speed and dexterity with which the driver handled the hack, and knew he had a prayer of a chance of arriving at work on time.
At precisely three minutes to nine they rolled up before the office building in which the advertising firm of Barton and Biddle was located. The driver got his five dollars, and George Bellows raced into the building lobby just in time to catch an express elevator.
Bellows entered the offices of Barton and Biddle at exactly nine o’clock. He nodded to the switchboard girl and the stenographic help in the bullpen, making his way toward his own private office cubicle.
And then he saw the boss, Homer Barton.
Barton was moving from the other side of the office to intercept him. Bellows looked up at the clock on the office wall to reassure himself. Yes. It wasn’t any later than nine. Barton could have nothing to gripe about.
“Oh, George,” Barton’s voice came to Bellows. “I’d like to talk to you a moment.”
Bellows waited for Barton to reach him. The fat, pink faced little fellow was smiling in sort of a hesitant kindliness. Bellows frowned. There was just something in the attitude of his boss, nothing obvious, to suggest disappointment.
“I’d like to talk to you alone in your office, George,” Homer Barton said.
Still frowning, Bellows led the way into his private cubicle and turned to face his employer. Homer Barton closed the door carefully behind them and coughed apologetically.
Suddenly Bellows had a horrible premonition concerning the faint evidence of disappointment in his boss’ manner. He had the definite sensation that Barton had been waiting for him, hoping he would be late.
“What I have to say isn’t pleasant, George,” Homer Barton said in his cold little voice. “And frankly, I wish I didn’t have to say it to you personally this way.”
Bellows watched Homer Barton in a sort of dull fascination. The little man wet his thin lips.
“Our business has been falling off considerably, especially in our radio department. You are our radio copywriter, of course, and so when the necessary, ah, adjustments had to be made in our copy staff it was decided we’d best turn your work over to some of our magazine and newspaper copywriters.”
Homer Barton paused to smile sadly at George Bellows, deliberately letting the implication of his words sink in.
“You mean I’m canned?” Bellows said huskily.
“I’m sorry, George. We’ll give you the best of recommendations, and a month’s pay for dismissal. But it has to be done.”
Bellows nodded. “Sure,” he muttered. “Sure. Okay. I’m off starting now, okay?”
“That will be all right,” said Homer Barton. “You can pick up your check at the switchboard. I had it made out in advance.” He extended a cold, damp little hand which Bellows took and shook briefly.
Barton was at the door when Bellows asked: “Incidentally, you were hoping I’d be late this morning, weren’t you?”
Little Homer Barton looked at his ex-employee startledly. He flushed a guilty crimson.
“Why of course not!” he snapped . . . .
IN THE more or less well known figure of speech, George Bellows’ head was bloody but not quite bowed when he walked gloomily into Mindy’s bar some thirty minutes later.
A growing sense of futility, a sort of numbing despair, was beginning to settle on Bellows’ shoulders, true enough. His bucking of the winds of fate to that moment had been scarcely successful. He’d altered the course of his day as consciously as he could to prevent the pattern from taking on the same tragic aspects that it had the first time. But in only the minor, inconsequential details had the pattern changed. And now he found himself no better off than he’d been in the first living of this day when he’d slumped dejectedly onto a barstool in Mindy’s.
He had eight hundred dollars in his pocket, like the first time, and Mindy was smiling asking him what he’d have, ditto the first time.
“Give me,” Bellows said, and then he hesitated. He squared his shoulders slightly, deciding once more to vary the pattern. The first time it had been brandy.
“Give me a scotch and soda,” Bellows said defiantly.
Mindy looked at him as if he wondered about the defiant voice, but he went off to get the drink nonetheless. He’d no sooner returned with it, than Louie, the dapper bookmaker sauntered into the place and slid into a stool beside George Bellows.
Bellows looked up, startled, from his untasted drink. Again the pattern was slightly varied in inconsequential detail. When Louie had entered in the first version of this day, George Bellows had been already slightly stewed. Now he was only starting.
“Hello, Georgie,” Louie said affably. “Yuh look as though yuh lost yuh dawg.”
“You said that before,” Bellows said flatly.
“Huh?” The dapper little bookmaker was taken aback.
“Skip it,” Bellows advised.
“Sure,” Louie said. “Sure.”
“Hows the horse business?” Bellows asked casually, taking his first gulp of scotch.
“Not good, not bad,” Louie replied cautiously.
“That’s good,” Bellows said dryly; “it’s not bad.”
Louie blinked and didn’t answer.
SUDDENLY Bellows was aware that he would be achieving a supreme triumph over fate if he would just drink and get up and walk the hell out of there. Then there would be no bet, and no loss, and a considerable part of his previous grief would not happen.
Bellows drained his scotch and started to get up from his stool. Suddenly a foolish expression crossed his face, and he snapped his fingers.
“My God!” Bellows exclaimed aloud. “What an ass I almost was!”
“Huh?” asked Louie.
“Got a form sheet?” Bellows asked excitedly.
Louie nodded. “Sure.” The racing sheet was out of his pocket and into Bellows’ hand in an instant.
George Bellows, excitedly running his hand along the form, felt the first elation he’d experienced since all his trouble began. Elation and sardonic amusement at the boner he’d almost pulled. For he had almost walked out on Louie. Walked out on Louie the bookmaker when he, George Bellows, through having lived this day before, knew positively what horse was going to win the first race at Arlington!
What was the name of that long shot that beat the horse he’d picked the first time? Bellows found it with an excited exclamation, jabbing his finger beneath the name. Merrily, that was it!
And Merrily was priced at twenty to one.
“Yuh wanta plank a bet?” Louie asked.
“You bet your sweet life I do!” Bellows exclaimed.
Louie nodded toward a corner.
“We bettah go ovah to that corner,” he suggested. “We don’t wantah place no bets in fronta the woild.”
Bellows found his billfold, and clambered from the stool to follow dapper little Louie over to the corner of the bar. Louie had eagerly produced a ticket sheaf and a pencil. He looked expectantly at Bellows.
“How much?” he demanded. “And on who?”
“Seven hundred dollars,” Bellows said. Somehow he felt a little more ethical, working on his advance knowledge, in only betting the same amount as before. “Seven hundred dollars on Merrily, in the first. The list prict is twenty to one. What’ll you pay?”
There was the same startled look from the little bookmaker that there’d been before. But then he regained his composure and said, nonchalantly, “I kin oney pay, say, fifteen to one, Georgie. I can’t give no track odds, you know that.”
Bellows grinned. “All right. Fifteen to one. Seven hundred bucks. That makes ten thousand five hundred dollars you’ll have for me, Louie, when that race is over.” He added, “Better get to your bank right now.”
Louie held out his hand. “If you win, Georgie,” he corrected him. “You gotta longshot there. Hand ovah the seven hundid iyon men, Georgie.”
Bellows gave Louie the bills, took his ticket in exchange. He patted the little bookmaker on the shoulder.
“Don’t let it throw you, Louie, when Merrily romps in.”
Louie obviously thought that was very funny. He grinned from ear to ear, like Peter Rabbit. . . .
CHAPTER VI
IT WAS an almost boisterously happy George Bellows who inhaled the fresh, clean air of the lakefront several hours later. An already triumphant Bellows, who had fought fate relentlessly until he had discovered the chink in its armor.
He had left Mindy’s immediately after negotiating his magnificent wager with Louie. Left Mindy’s, again changing the pattern of his first living of this day. Changing it, so far, in detail only, but in details which would this time mean victory.
He had sought the sunshine and healthful lake breezes in direct and conscious contrast to the routine he’d followed in his first living of this day. Then he had sought only the solace, dubious as it was, of brandy and more brandy.
“Ahhh, but it’s so different now,” Bellows told himself. “So very, very different.”
And so for another hour he looked at the gulls and the lake and the trees and felt quite supremely happy. Finally, his watch told him that it was just about time for the first race at Arlington to be run.
Confidently, Bellows found a restaurant which he sometimes patronized. A restaurant where they always had the day’s races blasting forth from the radio.
There Bellows took a seat, noting that the racing program had already started, and the preliminary remarks concerning the first race were already under way by the announcer.
Bellows somewhat smugly ordered a cheese sandwich on whole wheat and a glass of milk. Then with this definitely unimpeachable repast before him, he settled back to listen.
Everything Bellows had heard the first time was once again repeated by the announcer, so he paid scant attention to the radio until the race was due to start. Even the worry of his wrecked automobile and lost job were gone from Bellows’ mind now.
Ten thousand five hundred dollars would keep the wolf quite comfortably from the door until he started at another agency. And as for the automobile, Bellows was quite willing to content himself with the realization that gas rationing and tire shortages would soon make all such luxuries unfeasible anyway.
And so Bellows contemplated his good fortune and waited until the announcer finally came through with his electric words.
“They’re off!”
Bellows sat forward a little at these words, to be sure. But his smile was bland as the announcer, exactly as he had in the first living of this day, recounted the exciting running of this race.
Despair, as he had the first time, led most of the way around. Castaway, also as before, threatened constantly from the backstretch on. Little mention was made of Merrily, but Bellows knew that his horse wasn’t due for mention until the driving home stretch when it broke the finish line ahead of the rest.
