[Illustration]
If you have ever lived in a small town, you have seen Francis Pfleuger,
and probably you have sent him after sky-hooks, left-handed
monkey-wrenches and pails of steam, and laughed uproariously behind his
back when he set forth to do your bidding. The Francis Pfleugers of the
world have inspired both fun and laughter for generations out of mind.
The Francis Pfleuger we are concerned with here lived in a small town
named Valleyview, and in addition to suffering the distinction of being
the village idiot, he also suffered the distinction of being the village
inventor. These two distinctions frequently go hand in hand, and afford,
in their incongruous togetherness, an even greater inspiration for fun
and laughter. For in this advanced age of streamlined electric can
openers and sleek pop-up toasters, who but the most naive among us can
fail to be titillated by the thought of a buck-toothed, wall-eyed moron
building Rube Goldberg contrivances in his basement?
The Francis Pfleuger we are concerned with did his inventing in his
kitchen rather than in his basement; nevertheless, his machines were in
the Rube Goldberg tradition. Take the one he was assembling now, for
example. It stood on the kitchen table, and its various attachments
jutted this way and that with no apparent rhyme or reason. In its center
there was a transparent globe that looked like an upside-down goldfish
bowl, and in the center of the bowl there was an object that startlingly
resembled a goldfish, but which, of course, was nothing of the sort.
Whatever it was, though, it kept growing brighter and brighter each time
Francis added another attachment, and had already attained a degree of
incandescence so intense that he had been forced to don cobalt-blue
goggles in order to look at it. The date was the First of April,
1962--April Fool's Day.
Actually, the idea for this particular machine had not originated in
Francis' brain, nor had the parts for it originated in his
kitchen-workshop. When he had gone out to get the milk that morning he
had found a box on his doorstep, and in the box he had found the
goldfish bowl and the attachments, plus a sheet of instructions
entitled, DIRECTIONS FOR ASSEMBLING A MULTIPLE MOeBIUS-KNOT DYNAMO.
Francis thought that a machine capable of tying knots would be pretty
keen, and he had carried the box into the kitchen and set to work
forthwith.
He now had but one more part to go, and he proceeded to screw it into
place. Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork. Simultaneously his
handiwork went into action. The attachments began to quiver and to emit
sparks; the globe glowed, and the goldfishlike object in its center
began to dart this way and that as though striking at flies. A blue halo
formed above the machine and began to rotate. Faster and faster it
rotated, till finally its gaseous components separated and flew off in a
hundred different directions. Three things happened then in swift
succession: Francis' back doorway took on a bluish cast, the sheet of
instructions vanished, and the machine began to melt.
A moment later he heard a whining sound on his back doorstep.
Simultaneously all of the residents of Valleyview heard whining sounds
on _their_ back doorsteps.
Naturally everybody went to find out about the whining.
* * * * *
The sign was a new one. At the most it was no more than six months old.
YOU ARE ENTERING THE VILLAGE OF VALLEYVIEW, it said. PLEASE DRIVE
CAREFULLY--WE ARE FOND OF OUR DOGS.
Philip Myles drove carefully. He was fond of dogs, too.
Night had tiptoed in over the October countryside quite some time ago,
but the village of Valleyview had not turned on so much as a single
streetlight--nor, apparently, any other kind of light. All was in
darkness, and not a soul was to be seen. Philip began to suspect that he
had entered a ghost town, and when his headlights darted across a dark
intersection and picked up the overgrown grass and unkempt shrubbery of
the village park, he was convinced that he had. Then he saw the girl
walking the dog.
He kitty-cornered the intersection and pulled up alongside her. She was
a blonde, tall and chic in a gray fall suit. Her face was
attractive--beautiful even, in a cold and classic way--but she would
never see twenty-five again. But then, Philip would never again see
thirty. When she paused, her dog paused too, although she did not have
it on a leash. It was on the small side, tawny in hue, with golden-brown
eyes, a slender white-tipped tail, and shaggy ears that hung down on
either side of its face in a manner reminiscent of a cocker spaniel's.
It wasn't a cocker spaniel, though. The ears were much too long, for one
thing, and the tail was much too delicate, for another. It was a
breed--or combination of breeds--that Philip had never seen before.
He leaned across the seat and rolled down the right-hand window. "Could
you direct me to number 23 Locust Street?" he asked. "It's the residence
of Judith Darrow, the village attorney. Maybe you know her."