"Oh," said Tim Woodart expansively, "I offered him some, but he
refused, saying that his idea was nothing but a fiction idea and that
any bright engineer would know how to send matter by radio."
"Oh."
"Besides, he's in Philadelphia, now, and the men in the white coats
wouldn't let him write with anything but a blunt crayon."
"Well, could you send things by wire with it?"
Tim smiled, "Not at present," he said. "There isn't a transmission
line with a broad enough band-pass to accept the signal frequencies
necessary."
"Now," said Jenny, taking a sip of her Martini, "you're getting in way
over my head."
Tim Woodart pulled out pencil and paper, but Jenny stopped him by
laying a gentle hand on his. "Don't," she said plaintively. "I don't
even know what happens when I snap on the light switch, let alone
understanding transmission lines."
Uncertainly he replaced the pencil and paper in his pocket. Then he
laughed. "Shall we dance?"
"That," she told him, "I understand."
They danced--and they danced well together. And while they were getting
better acquainted, a hundred miles to the south a man was stopped by a
motorcycle policeman for traveling too fast.
"Name?" snapped the policeman.
"Harold Farman."
"Driver's license?"
"Why ... er ... I--"
"No license?"
"Well, it's here. But--"
The policeman nodded. "Gimme," he snapped.
Harry Foster cursed himself for forgetting. For even trying to run
under an assumed name without changing every bit of evidence. But the
policeman looked rather rough, and Harry handed over the license.
"This says 'Harry Foster'," grunted the cop.
"I'm Harry Foster."
"That wasn't the name you gave me," said the cop pointedly.
"Look, officer, I'm about to meet a young lady--we're meeting at the
Border to marry in Mexico. Her father objects, and he's influential
enough to send out word that I'm to be picked up on some pretext and
held. That's why."
The officer nodded sensibly. "Sounds reasonable," he said, "and
logical, and just about as silly as the usual guy who tried to elope."
"Well--thanks, officer. And may I bet you fifty that today is Sunday?"
"Today's Tuesday," replied the officer.
"My goodness," said Foster in surprise. "I lose, don't I?" He handed
the officer a folded fifty. The officer took it and smiled dryly.
"You lose," he told Foster, "because so far as I know, there's a
Lieutenant Miller of the Los Angeles police that has a dragnet out for
Harry Foster--the motion picture hero!"
"Now look--"
"I've looked," said the cop, "and you're it. Will you come quietly or
will you come horizontal?"
Harry Foster laughed. "I'm not _that_ Harry Foster," he said.
"No?"
"No."
"And how am I going to tell?"
"Call Miller. I happen to know that the moving picture star died not
more than a few days ago."
"That," said the policeman, closing his book, "is something that we can
check but quickly. You'll come along while we check it, though."
"I'll come," said Foster cheerfully.
He went. The policeman called. Miller gave him the right answer, that
the wanted man, Harry Foster, had been buried within the week. No,
there was no mistake. The dead man's identity had been established to
the satisfaction of every interested agency. The F.B.I. and the local
police had seen to it that the dental work checked, fingerprints,
everything including visual identification by friends, enemies, wife,
and business associates.
Harry Foster left a short time later with an internal grin. He--was
dead. Ergo--he could not be punished!
He laughed wildly as he resumed his driving, but his driving was less
wild. There was a thoughtful quality about it.
At the Mexican Border, Harry Foster stopped for rest and while resting
he read the newspaper. It carried the usual run of gossip columns, and
in one of them Harry Foster saw--and read with growing interest:
The widow of Harry Foster, whose body was found on the evening
before the authorities were to have closed in on his nefarious
activities, is finding solace in the company of Tim Woodart, who
is the inventor of Hammer Productions' new play technique. No one
would deny Jenny Foster her right to happiness, and we'll cheer
her on--
Foster crumpled the paper craftily. Woodart was about ready to start
banking checks in six or seven figures, and--
Harry Foster left the restaurant and headed back toward Hollywood.
* * * * *
The locomotive thundered across the stage at a forty-five degree
angle, filling the theater with a wave of heat and a puff of smoke and
steam. Then it was past and gone, and its string of cars rumbled out
of "offstage" to the right rear to the "offstage" at the left-front
corner. It slowed and stopped, and the porter and passengers emerged;
the principal players of the scene appeared and went through their
action.
"Now that," said Hammer, pleased, "is a right good scene."
"Y'know," smiled Jenny Foster, "people are going to be so surprised to
see the real thing come roaring across the stage that they're going to
forget a couple of rather irrelevant items like having their heroine's
head nineteen feet in diameter."
"Yeah," drawled Hammer, "and tell the crook to shave closer. A close-up
of Jack Vanders looks like a pincushion with telephone poles shoved in.
Didn't know hair could be so big!"
"What bothers me," smiled Martha Evers, "is where I drink that
Manhattan in the close-up. Darned drink must be all of twenty-three
gallons."
"That isn't the main trouble with that scene," objected Vanders
cheerfully. His saturnine face was only for selling purposes; a more
pleasant villain was seldom to be found. "What bothers everybody is
that you can smell the odor of that drink, it's so big. Half of the
would-be sots in the audience are going to be as dry as the Sahara by
the time Evers gets it down."
Martha laughed, "Hammer is a great one for realism," she said, "but
I hope he doesn't insist on a real slug of cyanide in the poisoning
scene. I hate to think of twenty gallons of cyanide!"
"No doubt," laughed Hammer. "But what we ought to do is to have Woodart
fix up some way of stopping that thing during close-up. We could start
with a normal Martini and end up with fifty gallons."
Woodart shook his head. "Cost twenty times as much liquor itself," he
said with a good-natured smile. "You see, the energy that keeps this
thing in balance comes from the wipe-out of the previous scene. Stop it
that way and your light bill heads for the ceiling."
"O.K.--it was just an idea."
Vanders faced the group. "Look," he said. "I'm a professional villain,
and all villains are supposed to want something for nothing and finding
out that it can't be did."
Woodart agreed.
Then the scene changed to an overhead shot of Cincinnati. Taken by
helicopter, the scene was an angle shot down across Fountain Square
towards the river. In the cinema such shots do not seem bizarre, but in
solid, the street with its teeming cars and pedestrians was tilted at
an angle: the angle between street and camera remained as it was, and
the camera, of course, became the projector which was in the back of
the theater.
The "eye" zoomed down and the street grew in size until the fountain
that gave the Square its name was in plain view. It seemed incongruous
that the water in the fountain came out at an odd angle to gravity and
fell back at another odd angle, yet this was not a running reproduction
of Fountain Square but a swift series of instantaneous reproductions
and the droplets of water like everything else was replaced in whatever
relative position it was, regardless of the facts of true gravity.
The scene tilted flat, finally, and traveled along the street on the
level until the principal character was approached, whereupon the
action began. The camera followed Jack Vanders into a bar where he met
Martha Evers and ordered the Manhattan that was to become Gargantuan in
size--
* * * * *
Jenny Foster put her face up for a good night kiss, and then shoved her
apartment door open as Tim turned to leave. Inside, the living room
light was on, and Jenny instantly called Tim back.
"Someone," she said, pointing to the lights.
"O.K." he said, entering before her. Sprawled in Jenny's easy-chair
was--
"Foster!"
"Who--me?" asked Foster in surprise. "Foster's dead."
"Can it," snapped Woodart. "And talk!"
"Or else?" drawled Foster indolently.
"Or else," snarled Woodart.
"Or else what?"
Tim went to the telephone and dialed the number of the police force.
"Don't bother," said Harry Foster. "I'm ... Foster, that is, is dead."
Tim replaced the telephone. "What's the gag?" he demanded.
"I," said Foster hollowly, "am a ghost returned to plague mine
unfaithful wife."
"The hereafter is going to have a moaning ghost with a shanty on its
eye," said Woodart ominously. "Unfaithful wife my foot. If ever she--"
"Now that's been the big bone of contention," smiled Foster. "Foster
gave her no grounds, and she was too good to give me any. And Foster
gave her none because it is still impossible to have a wife testify
against her husband."
"Very sly of you."
"Of Foster."
"You're Foster!"
"Me? No. Foster's dead."
Jenny gave a weak cry of despair. "What do you want?" she asked.
"How much have you got?" asked Foster pointedly.
"Blackmail," snarled Woodart.
"Why no. Not at all."
"You name it."
"It need have no name. You see, Woodart, I've learned that I no
longer need the protection of the legality that prevents a wife from
testifying against her husband. Her husband is dead."
"So?"
"Well, it isn't blackmail to perform a service for someone."
"Meaning?"
"Divorce comes high," explained Foster pointedly.
"After which--if done--you could continue to ask for more," said
Woodart angrily. "You could threaten to prove that you were paid to get
the divorce, a mere matter of blackening the character of a woman whose
only error was being blind enough to take a second look at you."
"Your ingenious mind is too complex," said Foster quietly.
"May I point out that if you are dead, you are dead, and therefore--"
Foster laughed nastily. "Legally and physically, Harry Foster died
and was buried. Legally there is nothing that could possibly prevent
you from marrying her if you wanted to. But you see, Woodart, my wife
is a completely moral woman, to say nothing of ethical. Though it is
legal, there is still the gnawing doubt in her that she is compounding
a felony--bigamy."