I swallowed, but I knew they were playing tricks. High-Pockets Jones had
walked into the cabinet a second time, and his double had worked the
controls and produced a third. Well, this could get confusing, but I
stayed calm. "You're a floor-man, too, aren't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Okay. You go back to the Monotype room and get a bunch of slugs and
leads and saw them up to fill the cases. They're getting pretty low."
"Yes, sir." He turned and went away.
When I got back to the office I thought I'd just turn on the lucite and
see what they might be up to next. I had an uneasy feeling.
Sure enough, a High-Pockets Jones was stepping out of the second
compartment of the cabinet. I gulped and quickly checked the others.
This was the fourth one.
I went back to raise hell, but High-Pockets--well, one of them--was
quite calm about it. "Two men can do it faster than one," he said.
I licked my lips and beat my brains, but I didn't know the answer. I
went back to think it over. I had just decided to laugh it off when
three High-Pockets Joneses came into the office.
"We need something to do," they said, all in that great booming voice
that seemed to come from the ceiling.
"See the foreman. Tell him to give you all the standing type that needs
to be distributed."
They left. I breathed a sigh of relief and sent out for a padlock to put
on the cabinet.
* * * * *
An hour later, with a nice, shiny new padlock, I went back to the
composing-room. But I very nearly fainted when I saw the activity going
on back there. The composing-room was filled with High-Pockets Joneses.
Two still were at the linecasting machines, and a whole crew of others
were running around the floor.
"Where's the foreman?" I barked.
High-Pockets Jones--one of them--came to attention. "He went home. He
was quite discouraged; he told us to throw in all the standing type we
could find."
It didn't look good. I had the feeling that High-Pockets was laughing at
me--this High-Pockets, anyway.
That reminded me. I gathered up all the High-Pocketses in the
composing-room and lined them up. There were nine--exactly nine--every
one of them over seven feet tall and thin as a sidestick, every one of
them with a gentle, booming voice.
I wanted to tell the original High-Pockets to gather them all up and put
them back together, but I didn't know how to find the original.
Well, they couldn't get me down. I fooled them. I told them all to take
the rest of the day off--at full pay.
All nine of them washed up together and left together. It was the
damnedest thing I ever saw offstage. Nine identical High-Pocketses--all
so tall they had to weave around the neon lights instead of ducking
under them. It was enough to give a man nightmares, to watch that line
of High-Pockets Joneses advancing across an open composing-room.
This kind of thing went on the next day, and the next. Every day there
were nine High-Pockets Joneses in the composing-room. Everybody was
falling over everybody else, when they weren't standing around laughing
up their sleeves.
There was nothing I could do. I had been forced to turn over all of my
house to eight of the High-Pocketses, because they had to have a place
to stay, and after all, I was responsible for them.
Our production went up a little, but the Legal Printing Company job was
hardly touched. There was too much of that sort of festive spirit in the
air; everybody was watching the High-Pocketses and waiting to see what
would happen next--and hoping for something extravagant. In other words,
they refused to take it seriously; to them, it was a circus.
I didn't have the nerve to ask anybody else to split. After all,
High-Pockets was in nine places at once; that should have been enough.
It was apparent by that time that the extender would never be anything
in a printing office but a psychological monstrosity.
I had to admit I was stymied, and I got so I didn't give a whoop. I was
sunk anyway. That is the way it went that week. On Saturday night Dr.
Hudson and I got beautifully soused.
* * * * *
On Monday morning I didn't care. The Legal Printing Company called up
and said they could give us a few more days; if they could have it by
Friday, they could still make the filing date. I said we'd do everything
possible, and then I hung up and laughed bitterly and aloud. We couldn't
get it out if we had another month. The only thing was, as soon as our
plant closed up, they could ask the court for an extension because of
unforeseen circumstances, and probably get it. So I laughed aloud.
I saw Dr. Hudson cleaning out his desk, and I nodded. "Sorry, Doc, we
got all fouled up. Maybe some other time--"
He nodded. "Progress always encounters opposition," he said. "It just
happens that we are the sacrifices in this deal."
"Yeah." I went out and had a drink.
I was pretty dazed that week. It didn't make any difference. I had
already tried everything possible, and they had me hog-tied. And those
nine High-Pocketses had made me a laughing-stock.
On Friday morning, I looked at the calendar and it suddenly occurred to
me that this was the thirty-first and the receivers would be around this
afternoon to decide whether or not to close the place.
There wasn't any doubt as to what they would do. I began to clean out my
own desk. I felt terrible.
Then one of the High-Pocketses came in with a piece of copy in his hand.
He looked at me queerly and then said softly, "You leaving?"
"Yes," I said bitterly, "I'm going. You got me licked; I'm through."
"I was just trying to point out to you the absurdity of some of your new
devices," he said.
"Okay," I said, "you win. Guys like you make a business of going around
the country breaking print-shops and printing-office managers."
High-Pockets' booming voice came from the ceiling. "You are mistaken. I
did not try to break you."
"Well, you broke me, anyway." I blurted out the whole thing to him, how
the receivers were about to close us up, how the Legal Printing Company
job was weeks behind and was supposed to be delivered today. Then I
apologized. "It isn't your fault," I told him. "I'm sorry. I didn't
mean that. I just--well, I wanted to make good on this job."
High-Pockets was very thoughtful. "I feel kind of sorry for you," he
said.
"Oh, you don't need to. I earned it; I've got it coming. I was just a
little too ambitious, that's all. I didn't know a man could be _too_
ambitious."
High-Pockets looked at me. His deep eyes were thoughtful. I could almost
see the neurons buzzing around in his head.
"If I could get this job out for you on time, would that save the day?"
"Probably." I laughed--or tried to. "But it is now a physical
impossibility. There isn't enough time."
High-Pockets said sharply, "Call a truck," and wheeled out of the
office.
I called the delivery truck before I realized what I had done. Well, it
didn't make any difference. They could start hauling out the machinery.
I finished cleaning out my desk and took a wastebasket full of papers to
the back shop.
And there, I give you my word, three High-Pocketses were busy carrying
galleys from the type-dump to the proof-press. And as fast as they could
carry a galley of type from the dump, another galley would just
materialize there. I stood and stared. Galleys of type were coming out
of thin air at the rate of about four galleys a minute.
I went over to where High-Pockets--the original High-Pockets, I
suppose--was sitting at his machine. "Would you please tell me what is
going on?" I asked.
"Well," said High-Pockets, "it isn't so complicated. I just sent the
other five back in time to set this job, that's all. They've gone back
about twelve weeks; and of course there isn't much time, so I had to
make them double up. I've got them split up into shifts, along with a
double of the chairman there, to cover the six machines. It's a little
hard to explain, whether they are split up in time, or the time-split
ones are split up in place, or just what."
"It's insane," I said weakly.
"Well, at any rate, you see you have the equivalent of twelve night
shifts running at once, plus twelve graveyard shifts. That's twenty-four
times six--you have six machines--times twelve--that's the number of
galleys a day for each machine. I think it comes out to seventeen
hundred for a day's work."
* * * * *
I grabbed hold of the vise-locking screw to keep my knees from doubling
under me. It was incredible--and yet it was true.
High-Pockets also had organized the proofreaders and copyholders, and
they were reading in the past also, and sending us proofs in the
present. If anybody ever tells you they can't get seventeen hundred
galleys of type a day out of six linecasting machines--well, they just
don't know High-Pockets Jones.
"Of course," he said apologetically, "they'll want to be paid."
I was practically hysterical by that time. "I'll see that they get
overtime for every hour they put in."
High-Pockets looked at me with his deep eyes. "Me, too," he said. I
laughed when I thought how there were nine of him working in twelve
places at once--or was it twenty-four--or maybe forty-eight. I was too
dizzy by that time to figure out anything. I only knew the job was going
to be delivered. The truckers were going in a steady stream through the
back door.
Maybe the receivers would close up the place; maybe they wouldn't. At
least the job was being delivered.
About four-thirty, the galleys suddenly quit coming; the job was
finished. Half an hour later it was out of the shop, and I had entered
it on the books.
I had hardly laid down the pen when the three receivers came in. They
smoked a little and talked and I held my breath while they looked at the
books. I couldn't figure out what they were going to do.
One of them whistled when he saw the Legal Printing Company figures.
"Well," he said, "business _has_ been good."
"Fair," I said modestly.
The door to the shop opened and High-Pockets Jones walked in. I gulped;
eight High-Pockets Joneses walked in behind him.
The three receivers stared. Their eyes stuck out until it was ludicrous.
But it wasn't funny; I knew something was going to happen now.
By the time the last High-Pockets got in, the first receiver had seen
what was going on and was trying to get out, but nine High-Pocketses in
one room are a lot. For a minute it looked like a basketball game.