De Camp, L Sprague - The Stolen Dormouse

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The Stolen
Dormouse
By L. Sprague de Camp
THE riot started during the Los Angeles Radio Exposition, in the third week of February, 2236. The
foresighted managers of the Exposition had put the Crosley and Stromberg exhibits as far apart as
possible. But they could not prevent the members of these companies from meeting occasionally.
Thus, on the day in question, His Integrity, Billiam Bickham-Smith, chairman of Stromberg,
had passed into the recesses of the Stromberg booth, leaving a froth of lesser nobility and
whitecollars in his wake, when a couple of Crosley whitecollars dropped an injudicious remark
within hearing.
A Stromberg whitecollar said to one of these stiffly: “Did I hear you say our prefab
houses leaked, sir?”
“You did, sir,” replied one of the Crosleys evenly.
“Are you picking a fight with me, sir?” The Stromberg fingered his duelling stick.
“I am not. I am merely stating a fact, sir.”
“Slandering our product is the same as picking a fight, sir.”
“When I state a fact I state a fact, sir. Good day.” The Crosley turned his back.
The Stromberg’s stick hissed through the air and whacked the Crosley’s skull. The
Crosley’s skull gave forth a muffled clang, whereupon the Stromberg knew that his enemy wore a
steel cap disguised by a wig.
Now, no member of the nobility would have hit an enemy from behind. But the Stromberg was
a mere low-born whitecollar, which somewhat excused his action in the eyes of his contemporaries.
The Crosley who had been hit, shrieked “Foul!” and broke his assailant’s nose with a neat
backhand. Strombergs boiled out of the exhibit, pulling on padded gloves and duelling goggles.
At that instant, Horace Crosley Juniper-Hallett passed on his way to the Crosley booth to
take up his outhanding for the day. His job was to pass out catalogues, printed in bright colors
on slick paper, describing the Crosley exhibits, and also the many commodities other than radios,
such as automobiles and microscopes, manufactured by this “radio” company. Exhibit-goers, unable
to resist the lure of something for nothing, would collect up to twenty pounds of these brochures
in the course of their visit, and like as not, drop them in a heap beside the gate on their way
out. Horace Juniper-Hallett himself was of medium height and slim—skinny, if you want the brutal
truth. His complexion was fair and his hair pale blond. He had twice given up trying to grow a
mustache; after a month of trying, nobody could see the results of his cultivation except himself.
Take a good look at him, for this ineffectual-looking youth is our hero.
As he was barely twenty-two, and not too mature for his age, his behavior patterns had not
yet hardened in the mold of experience. Just now, of the several conflicting impulses that seized
him, that of playing peacemaker was uppermost. He ran up and pulled the nearest of the embattled
partisans back. His eye caught that of Justin Lane-Walsh, heir to the Stromberg vice-presidential
chair. He shouted: “Here, you, help me separate ‘em!”
“Bah!” roared the heir to the vice presidency. “I hate all Crosleys, ‘specially you.
Defend yourself!” And he advanced,
whirling his duelling stick around his head. He and JuniperHallett were whacking away merrily, as
were all the other members of the feuding companies in sight, when the police arrived.
A DUELLING stick, whose weight is regulated by the conventions, is no match for a three-foot
nightstick. When the clatter had died down, and the physicians were doing emergency repairs on
assorted skulls, collar bones, and so forth, the chief of police summoned the chairmen of the
rival houses.
Billiam Bickham-Smith of Stromberg and Archwin TaylorThing of Crosley appeared, glaring.
“Aw right,” said the chief. “I warned you ‘bout this here feudin’. I said, the next time
they’s a scrap in a public place, I’d close up your show. I wouldn’t say a word if you’d fight
your duels out in the hills somewhere. But I got to proteck the innocent bystanders.”
The chief of police was a small, sallow man. He wore the blue tunic of officialdom, with a
shield bearing the motto of the Corporate State: Alle was nicht Pflicht ist, ist verboten—”A1l
that is not compulsory is forbidden.” His trouser legs were gayly colored, in different patterns:
one that of the American Empire, the other that of Los Angeles, the capital.
Archwin of Crosley looked through the head of the rival house as though Billiam of
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Stromberg were not there. He said to the chief: “You can’t expect my men to submit to unprovoked
assault. Unprovoked assault.”
“Unprovoked!” snorted Billiam of Stromberg. “My lord chief, I’ve got all the witnesses you
want that egghead’s men struck first.”
“What?” yelled Archwin of Crosley. “Where’s my stick?”
Whereas, Billiam of Stromberg had a beautiful head of silky white hair, Archwin of Crosley
had no hair at all. He was sensitive to references to this fact.
“Won’t do you no good to start a fight here,” said the chief. “I’m going to close you up.
I represent the plain citizens of Los Angeles, and we don’t want no feudin’ in the city limits.
The Imperial Board of Control will back me up, too.”
“Vulgar rabble,” muttered Billiam of Stromberg.
“Have to travel all day to get out of the limits of this city,” growled Archwin of
Crosley.
The chairmen subsided, looking unhappy. They did not want the Exposition closed; neither,
really, did the chief of police. Aside from the dangers of antagonizing two of the noblest clans
of the American Empire, there was the loss of business.
He let them think for half a minute, then said: “Course, if you’d agree to discipline your
men hard enough next time there’s a fight, maybe we could let the show go on.”
“I’ll go as far as that old goat will,” said Archwin of Crosley. “What’s your plan?” asked
Billiam of Stromberg, controlling himself with visible effort.
“This,” said the chief. “Any man who gets in a scrap gets degraded, if he belongs to one
of the orders, and read out of his company.”
The chairmen looked startled. This was drastic. Billiam Bickham-Smith asked: “Even if he’s
of the rank of executive?”
“Even if he’s of the rank of entrepreneur.”
“Whew!” That was little short of sacrilege.
Archwin of Crosley asked: “Even if he’s the innocent party?”
“Even if he’s the innocent party. ‘Count of both of ‘em would claim they was innocent, and
the only thing we could do would be give ‘em a trial by liedetector, and everybody knows how to
beat the liedetector nowadays. Do you agree on your honor as an entrepreneur, Lord Archwin?”
“I agree.”
“You, Your Integrity of Stromberg?”
“Uh-huh.”
BACK at the Crosley exhibit, Archwin Taylor-Thing searched out Horace Juniper-Hallett. His
Integrity’s eye had the sparkle of one who bears devastatingly good news.
He said: “Horace, that was a fine piece of work you did this morning. A fine piece of
work. That was just the right course to follow; just the right course. Try to prevent trouble, but
if your honor’s attacked, give back better than you get. I’ve had my eye on you for some time.
But, until today, you minded your own affairs and didn’t do anything to businessman you for.” The
chairman raised his voice: “Come gather round, all you
loyal Crosleys. Gimme a stick, somebody. Thanks. Kneel, Whitecollar Juniper-Hallett.” He tapped
Juniper-Hallett on the shoulder and said: “Rise, Horace Juniper-Hallett, Esquire. You are now of
the rank of businessman, with all the privileges and responsibilities of that honorable rank. I
hereby present to you the gold-inlaid fountain pen and the briefcase that are the insignia of your
new status. Guard them with your life.”
It was over. The Crosleys crowded around, slapping Juniper-Hallett’s back and wringing his
hand. Dimly, he heard Lord Archwin’s voice telling him he could have the rest of the day off.
Then he was instructing a still younger whitecollar, Wilmot Dunn-Terry, in the duties of
the outhander. “You encourage ‘em to take one of each of the catalogues,” he said, “but not more
than one. Some of these birds’ll try to walk off with half a dozen of each, just because they’re
free.” He lowered his voice. “Along around fifteen o’clock, your feet will begin to hurt. If
there’s a lull in the business, look around carefully to see that none of the nobles is in sight,
and sit down. But don’t stay sat long, and don’t get to reading or talking. Keep your eyes open
for visitors and nobles, especially nobles. Got it?”
Dunn-Terry grinned at him. “Thanks, Horace. Can I still call you Horace, now that you’re a
businessman and all? Say, what’s this about the theft of a dormouse from Sleepers’ Crypt?”
“Huh? I haven’t heard. Haven’t seen a paper this morning.”
“One of ‘em’s disappeared,” said Dunn-Terry. “I overheard some of the nobility talking
about it. They sounded all worked up. There was some talk about the Hawaiians, too.”
Juniper-Hallett shrugged. His head was too full of his recent good fortune to pay much
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attention. The clock hands reached ten; the gates opened; the visitors started to trickle in. A
still slightly dazed Horace Juniper-Hallett wandered off.
His hand still tingled from the squeezing it had received. He wondered what on earth he
had done to deserve his elevation to businessmanhood. He was young for the rank, he knew. True, he
was of noble blood on his mother’s side, but Archwin of Crosley had the reputation of leaning over
backward to avoid favoring members of the ruling class in dealing out busi
nessmanhoods; he had even been known to elevate proletarians.
What Juniper-Hallett did not know was that the chairman was trying to build him up as a
possible heir to the presidency. His Acumen, the president of Crosley, was getting on; he had two
sons, one a moron and the other a young hellion. Next in line, by relationship, was Juniper-
Hallett himself. Though, as the relationship was remote, and Juniper-H allett was of noble blood
on his mother’s side only, he had not given the prospect any thought. His Acumen, the president,
father of the precious pair of misfits, did not know the chairman’s plans, either.
J UNIPER-HALLETT, in his happy daze, noted casually the scowls of the Stromberg whitecollars. But
the brief case and the fancy fountain pen in his breast pocket gave him the feeling that the
hostility of such rabble could no longer affect him.
Then he saw a girl. The daze cleared instantly, to be replaced by one of pinkish hue. She
was a stunning brunette, and she wore the Stromberg colors of green, brown, and yellow. She was
leaning against part of one of the Stromberg booths. Juniper-Hallett had seen her picture, and
knew she was the daughter of His Integrity Billiam Bickham-Smith, chairman of Stromberg. Her name
was Janet BickhamCoates, “Coates” being her mother’s father’s family name.
Juniper-Hallett stood very still, listening to the blood pounding in his ears, and
looking, not at the girl, but at a point three meters to the left of her. He ran over what he knew
of her
—she was just about his age; went in for sports— He was determined to do something about her. At
the moment, he could not think what. If the Strombergs had been friendly, it would have been
simple; some of them undoubtedly knew her to speak to. But as things were, she’d probably be no
more ingratiated by the sight of the Crosley colors—a blueand-yellow-striped coat and red
pants—than the rest of them.
Nor would it be simple to get a suit of Stromberg colors. First, the obligations of
businessmanhood forbade it. Second, the salesman in the clothing department of the drugstore would
make you identify yourself. He’d want no trouble with
the genuine Strombergs for having sold a suit of their colors to an outsider.
And the Strombergs were throwing a big dinner that night. Justin Lane-Walsh appeared. He
put his hat on his head of copper-wire curls and walked past Juniper-Hallett. He slowed down as he
passed, growling: “If it weren’t for the old man’s orders, you dirty Crosley, I’d finish what we
started, sir.”
Juniper-Hallett fell into step beside him. “I’m sorry I can’t oblige you, you dirty
Stromberg. I’d like nothing better, sir.”
“I’m sorry, too. Don’t know what we can do about it.”
Juniper-Hallett felt an idea coming. He said: “Let’s grab some lunch, and then go
somewhere and drink to our mutual sorrow.”
“By the great god Service, that’s an idea!” Lane-Walsh looked down at his enemy with an
almost friendly expression. “Come along, sister.”
“Coming, you big louse.” They went.
“ IR,” said Lane-Walsh over his third drink, “I can just imagine my stick crunching through
that baby face of
yours. Swell thought, huh?”
“I don’t know,” said Juniper-Hallett. He winced every time Lane-Walsh made a crack like
that about his looks. But he was learning, somewhat late in life, not to let such taunts drive him
into a fury. “I find the idea of knocking those big ears loose a lot nicer. Why do all Strombergs
have ears that stick out?”
Lane-Walsh shrugged. “Why are all Crosleys baby-faced shrimps?”
“I wouldn’t call Lord Archwin baby-faced,” said JuniperHallett judiciously. “Any baby with
a face like his would probably scare its parents to death.”
“That’s so. Maybe I judge the rest of ‘em by you. Well,” he held up his glass, “here’s to
an early and bloody settlement of our differences.”
“Right,” said Juniper-Hallett. “May the worst man get all his teeth knocked out. Look,
Justin old scum, what have you heard about the stealing of a dormouse from the Crypt?”
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Lane-Walsh’s face went elaborately blank. “Not a thing, sister, not a thing.”
“I heard the Hawaiians might be mixed up in it.”
“Might be,” said Lane-Walsh. “The dormouse that was stolen, a guy named Arnold Ryan, was
half Hawaiian, they say.”
“He must date back to the days of single surnames. Wasn’t he the original inventor of
hibernine?”
“He—” Lane-Walsh’s face went through a perfect doubletake, as he realized that he had
fallen over his own mental feet. He covered his confusion with a big gulp of rye-and-soda. Then he
said: “You never know what those devilish Hawaiians are up to. Loafers, pirates, blasphemers
against the good god Service. They’ve stopped another shipment of tungsten from New Caledonia.”
“Sure,” said Juniper-Hallett. “But about this dormouse Ryan, whom you just said you didn’t
know anything about—”
“I said I didn’t know,” said Lane-Walsh angrily. “I may have heard a few things. Now, I
say these Hawaiians ought to be wiped out. What’s the matter with our admirals? Scared of a few
flying torpedoes? I—”
“Pipe down,” said Juniper-Hallett.
Lane-Walsh saw that he was attracting attention, and lowered his brassy voice. “Right.
Say, I’ll be getting drunk at this rate. And I’ve got to be at the speakers’ table tonight.”
Juniper-Hallett smiled. “I’m an A. C. member. How about dropping in there for a steam bath
and a rubdown?”
“Swell. You really take exercise and everything? You’ll be a man before your mother, sir.”
“Yep. One of these days I’ll pull your neck out by the roots and tie it in knots, Your
Loyalty.”
“0. K., if you can do it. Makes me almost wish you were a human being instead of a
stinking Crosley. Let’s go.”
J UNIPER-HALLETT took a steam bath with his enemy, wishing that he, too, had a set of muscles like
the tires of a transcontinental bus. Years of conscientious weight-lifting and other, equally
dull, exercise had hardened Juniper-Hallett’s stringy muscles until he was much stronger than he
looked. But still he was not satisfied. Every bathing suit advertisement roused his inferiority
complex.
He said to Justin Lane-Walsh: “About that dormouse—”
“Oh, forget the dormouse,” said Lane-Walsh. “You know as
much about him as I do. As I understand it, he’s not due to wake up for another fifty years, so
whoev~er’s stolen him is welcome to him.”
“But suppose somebody’s found a way of rousing a man from a hibernine trance—”
“Bunk. They’ve tried over and over again, and all they accomplished was killing a few
dormice. Shut up, sister, and let me enjoy the steam.”
Juniper-Hallett was too angry to say anything. But the heat soon sweated his sulks out of
him, and he put his mind on the problem of the stunning brunette. When he spoke to LaneWalsh
again, it was to extol the abilities of a masseur named Gustav. Lane-Walsh bit.
While Gustav was sinking his thumbs up to the second joint in Lane-Walsh’s tortured
muscles, Horace Juniper-Hallett calmly dressed, put Lane-Walsh’s coat and pants in his new brief
case, and walked out.
Three hours later, he showed up at the ballroom of the American Empire Hotel. He was
wearing Lane-Walsh’s suit, with the Stromberg colors of green for the coat and brown, with yellow
stars, for the pants. His landlady, Service bless her, had tak~n a few reefs in it, so that it did
not fit quite as badly as when he had first tried it on. He had further disguised himself by
screwing Lane-Walsh’s monocle, which had been attached by a thread to the coat lapel, into his
right eye. It made him see double, but that was a detail.
Horace Juniper-Hallett was young; he was thin-skinned; he was afraid of doormen,
headwaiters, and policemen; he had an inferiority complex a yard wide. But such is the magic of
sex— well, love, if you want a nicer word for it—that he now marched up to the doorman of this
ballroom as if he had had the courage of six lions poured into him. He had always considered
himself a poor actor. But now he beamed confidence as he put his hand in his pocket. When the hand
of course found no admission card, his expression of shocked dismay would have melted an even
harder heart than that of this doorman—who had been specially picked for hardness of heart.
“Must have left it in my other suit!” he bleated.
“That’s all right, sir,” said the doorman, eyeing the green
coat, the star-spangled pants, and the businessman’s fountain pen. “Just give me your name.”
Juniper-Hallett gave an alias, and described himself as a Stromberg salesologist from
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Miami. He checked his hat and duelling stick, and went in.
II.’
THE ballroom was full of Strombergs and their women. Juniper-Hallett thought that the Stromberg
colors en
masse were pretty depressing. Now, at a Crosley ball— A couple of Strombergs near him were
talking; executives by
their heavy watch chains, nobles by their self-assured bearing. One said: “When the uranium gave
out, we went back to petroleum, and when that gave out, we went back to coal. If the antarctic
coal gives out—”
“How about alcohol?” asked the other.
“All you’d have to do would be to cut the earth’s population by three quarters. You can’t
grow alcohol grains in little tin trays, you know.”
“The Hawaiians—” The speaker realized that his voice was carrying to Juniper-Hallett; he
lowered it and pulled his companion farther away.
Juniper-Hallett was not listening. He had located Janet Bickham-Coates. She was standing
on the edge of a crowd of portly Stromberg lesser nobility surrounding His Integrity, the
chairman.
Juniper-Hallett strolled up and tapped his forehead in greeting. “Care to dance, my lady?”
he asked casually. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m afraid you don’t remember me. Horace Stromberg Esker-
Vanguard, Esquire. I met you at the last convention. You don’t mind?”
She touched her forehead too, then, and melted into his arms. She murmured: “I’m glad you
had the nerve to ask me. The young whitecollars are all afraid to go near father. So I’ve been
dancing with fat His Acumen this and His Efficiency that for an hour.”
“How was the dinner?” he asked.
“Frightful. The speeches, I mean; the food was all right.”
“Was His Loyalty, Justin Lane-Walsh, there?”
“No, now that I think, he wasn’t.” Then she asked: ‘What’s your real name?”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“No, you didn’t.” She laughed up at him. It buoyed his ego to find that this girl laughed
up at him, even if he was a shrimp compared to Lane-Walsh. She said: “You see, I never attended
the last convention.”
“The music’s good, isn’t it?”
“Now, my young friend, you can’t get away with—”
“Janet!” said a hearty female voice. Juniper-Hallett saw a tall, beaky, gray-haired woman.
“I don’t think I know this one.”
“Mother,” said Janet, “this is . . . uh . . . Businessman—”
“Horace Esker-Vanguard,” put in Juniper-Hallett pleasantly.
“Not a bad-looking young fellow,” said the grand dame critically, “in spite of the silly
eyeglass. I don’t know why they wear them. What did you catch him with, Janet? Salt?”
“Mother!”
“Ha-ha, now she’s embarrassed, Businessman Horace. Does the young good to be embarrassed
occasionally. Keeps ‘em from taking themselves too seriously. She’s quite a pretty girl when she
blushes, don’t you think? Well, run along, children, and try not to be bored. These conventions
are stupid, don’t you think? Poor Janet’s been dancing all evening with dodos of my generation.”
She and Juniper-Hallett touched their foreheads.
“And now,” said the girl, “how about telling me who you really are?”
“Must we come back to that subject? They’re starting a trepak.”
“I’m afraid we must.”
“You wouldn’t want to see me scattered all over the ballroom, would you? A head here, a
leg there?”
“I’d hate to see you scattered all over anything. But there’ll be some investigating
unless you talk.”
So Juniper-Hallett, his heart pounding with apprehension, told her who he was. Instead of
being angry, she took it as a
joke. Then she insisted on being told how he had come by the suit of Stromberg colors. She took
this for an even better joke.
“It served Justin right,” she said. “I don’t like his type— loud-mouthed ruffian, always
bragging of his success with women. I suppose I shouldn’t talk that way about my own cousin,
especially in the presence of the enemy. But now, why did you go to all that trouble to crash our
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gate?”
“To meet you.”
“Do I come up to your expectations?”
“I could judge that better,” he said thoughtfully, “on neutral ground. You remember what
your mother said about conventions.”
“My mother,” she replied, “has remarkably good sense at times.”
0 N the way out, Juniper-Hallett’s ear caught a phrase ending with “—do with the dormouse.”
Hell’s bones, he thought, why did that subject have to come up to distract him from his
present business? The Strombergs were up to something; he was sure he hadn’t been taken in by Lane-
Walsh’s elaborate protestations of ignorance. And then there was the Stromberg who had spoken of
exhaustion of antarctic coal. It never rained but it poured. You droned along with an uneventful
existence. Then all at once you met the most wonderful girl in the world; you were elevated to
businessmanhood, with the prospect of eventually becoming an executive or even an entrepreneur and
being allowed to carry a personal two-way radiophone; a couple of first-class mysteries were
thrust under your nose. You couldn’t do all these subjects justice at the same time. The good god
Service ought to arrange his timing better.
He was sure Janet was the most wonderful girl in the world, on the quite inadequate
grounds that her presence made him feel tall, brave, debonair, resourceful, cool-headed, and all
the other things he’d wanted to be. He felt, in fact, as though he wouldn’t mind taking on a dozen
Justin Lane-Waishes with duelling sticks at the same time.
He was lucky enough to get a couple of good seats to a show. He and Janet whispered for
the first twenty minutes, until people shushed them.
But Juniper-Hallett still had too much to think about to pay attention to the mesh—the
three-dimensipnal woven structure on which the images were projected. He did remember later that
the show was a violent melodrama laid in the Century of Revolutions, and that at one point the
heroine said: “I am going to die, Boris! Do you hear me? I am going to die!” Whereat, Boris had
ungallantly replied, “Well, stop talking about it and do it!”
The Hawaiians—Justin Lane-Walsh had mentioned them; so had the Stromberg executive at the
ball. Horace JuniperHallett had been brought up to scorn and suspect them. They did not
acknowledge the sovereignty of any of the big, orderly empires that divided the globe between
them. They did not worship the great god Service. Instead of trying with all their might to
increase production and consumption, as civilized people did, the wicked, immoral Hawaiians made
their goods as durable as possible, worked no more than they had to, and sat around in the sun,
loafing the rest of the time.
To add injury to insult, they raided the shipping lanes now and then with their privateering
submarines, robbing the ships of raw materials. And nothing, it seemed, could be done about it. An
attempt by the combined American and Mongolian navies to do something about it, some years before,
had ended in disaster for the attackers— “The show’s over,” said Janet in his ear.
“Oh, is it?” he replied blankly. “Let’s go somewhere where we can talk.”
NEXT morning, Horace Juniper-Hallett showed up at the Exposition, walking warily and frowning. He
was wondering what he ought to do, being a young man much given to wondering what he ought to do.
If he showed his face around there too much, Justin Lane-Walsh would appear thirsting for his
blood. He was not afraid of Lane-Walsh, having exchanged a few stick slashes with him the day
before and found him nothing extraordinary. But if he got in a fight, it would lead to all sorts
of complications; perhaps his own degradation. And with his private affairs in such a delicate
stage, he did not want complications. On the other hand he didn’t want people to think he was
afraid—On the other hand—
He ascertained that Lord Archwin of Crosley was in his semi-office in back of the Crosley
exhibit. A conference with His Integrity would solve the problem for the present.
“Well, my boy,” said the bald, billikenlike chairman, “how does it feel to be a
businessman?”
“Fine. But, Your Integrity, I thought you’d be interested in a couple of clues to the
whereabouts of the stolen dormouse.”
Archwin’s eyebrows, what little there was of them, went up. “Yes, Horace, I would be. Yes,
I would be. What do you know about it?”
Juniper-Hallett told him of Lane-Walsh’s reaction, and of the mention of the dormouse at
the Stromberg ball.
“That’s interesting, if hardly conclusive,” said Archwin. “What interests me more is how
you got into that ball.”
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Juniper-Hallett gulped. He thought he’d been keeping out of trouble! But a businessman
could not tell a lie, except in advertising his product. At least, so Juniper-Hallett had been
taught to believe. He was in for disgrace and disaster, no doubt, but—He blurted out the story of
his embezzlement of Lane-Walsh’s clothes, without mentioning his evening with Janet. Then he
waited for the lightning to strike.
The chairman’s forehead wrinkled; his nose twitched; his lips jerked; he burst into a roar
of laughter. “That’s the best thing since Billiam lost his pants in a duel with me back in ‘12!
Congratulations, Horace.”
“Then . . . then I’m not going to be degraded for wearing false colors?”
“Service bless you, no. If they’d caught you and made a protest, I might have had to go
through some motion or other. But if they’d caught you, you probably wouldn’t have survived to
tell the story.”
“Whew!” Juniper-Hallett gave a long sigh of relief. Mixed with the relief was a slight feeling of
disillusionment. He’d always been taught that the rules of businessmanhood were adamantine. Now
they seemed to have a few soft spots, after all. And His Integrity’s integrity had acquired the
faintest tarnish. Juniper-Hallett had taken his code so seriously, and worried so about its
violation— “Let me think it over,” said Archwin. “I didn’t know you
were such a Sherlock. The last regular agent we sent around
to the Stromberg building was beaten nearly to death with sticks. Maybe I’ll have some more use
for yo~,1. Maybe I shall.” The chairman agreed that it would be prudent to transfer
Juniper-Hallett from the Exposition back to the main office in the Crosley building. Thither
Juniper-Hallett went, almost getting run over twice. His mind was on his date with Janet the
coming evening. Not until he reached the office, which was over the main showroom, which stretched
along Wilshire Boulevard for six blocks, did he remember that he had meant to ask Lord Archwin
about the state of the antarctic coal fields.
THEY met in the Los Angeles Nominatorium, one place they were unlikely to be disturbed. The long
lines of columns stretched for blocks in all directions. Each line was sacred to one company or
clan, and each pillar bore the names and dates of the members of one family of that company.
“Now up here,” said the guide, “is somethin’ interesting. You see that blank space on the
Froman column? That’s where they’d put John Generalmotors Froman-Epstein, only they didn’t put him
nowheres. And on the Packard colonnade, they’s a blank space where they didn’t put Theodora
Packard Hughes-Halloran, who married him. A Generalmotors marryin’ a Packard—hm-m-m.” He saw that
his visitors were clearly not listening, and gave up.
“Personally,” said Janet, “I don’t care whether they put me on a column or not.”
“Neither do I,” said Juniper-Hallett.
“Do we have to agree on everything, Horace?”
“It sure looks that way. Maybe you agree with me that this Crosley-Stromberg feud’s gone
on long enough.”
“I certainly do. I asked father once what started it, and he said nobody in the company
remembered any more, but I could probably find out if I wanted to dig back far enough into the
records.”
“It’s a lot of bunk,” said Juniper-Hallett. Taking his courage in both hands, he added: “I
don’t see why a person can’t marry whom he pleases, companies or no companies.”
She nodded gravely. “It’s their affair, isn’t it? Of course they ought to stay within
their own class.”
“Right. It doesn’t do to mix classes. But there’s no logical
reason why you and I shouldn’t marry if we felt like it, for instance.”
“No reason at all, if we felt like it. Why, you’re much better suited to me than anyone in
the Stromberg Co.”
“Make it both ways. As a matter of fact, I think it would be about a perfect match.”
“Just about, wouldn’t it?”
“If we felt like it.”
“Oh, of course.”
Juniper-Hallett looked at his shoe buckles. “Matter of fact, I know an old geneticist
who’d do it if I asked him to.”
She turned to face him. “Horace, you mean you do feel like it?”
“Sure. Do you?”
“Of course! I was afraid you were just citing an imaginary case—”
“And I was afraid you were just being nice—”
“Ever since I met you last—”
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“Ever since I saw you—”
The guide looked back over his shoulder. He said “Hm-m-m!” and shuffled off into the
night.
“I’m afraid,” said Juniper-Hallett.
“You afraid? You weren’t afraid of Justin yesterday. And you weren’t afraid to invade the
ball last night.”
“It’s not that. I feel somehow that something’s going to happen. Something to separate
us.”
“How frightful, Horace!”
“Yep, that’s the word for it. For instance, do you know anything about the antarctic coal
situation?”
“No, I don’t suppose I do. Though I’ve heard father—”
“Go on.”
“Nothing definite; just a few words now and then. I suppose I ought to be more interested
in coal and such things. But if that’s the case, I don’t suppose we ought to wait—”
“Any longer than we have to—” said Juniper-Hallett.
“We could start right now—” said Janet.
“And see that geneticist of mine. I’ll have to go back to my house, though, and get my
pedigree. I suppose you will, too.”
“No,” she said brightly, “I brought mine along with me!”
THE geneticist was a benevolent old gent named Miles Carey-West.
He said hello to Juniper-Hallett, and implied with a look that he knew what his young
friend had come for.
“Got your pedigrees?” he asked. He glanced over JuniperHallett’s. Then he looked at
Janet’s. He whistled when he saw the name at the top.
“I thought I’d seen your face somewhere,” he said, peering through thick glasses. “Won’t
this cause all kinds of trouble?”
The young pair shrugged. Juniper-Hallett said: “Yep. We’re ready for it.”
“Ah, well,” said Carey-West. “No reasoning with the young and headstrong. Maybe it’ll be a
good thing; heal up this silly feud. Just like Romeo and Juliet.”
“Who?” asked Juniper-Hallett.
“Romeo and Juliet. Couple of characters in a play by a preindustrial English dramatist.
Hope you make out better than they did, though.”
“What happened to them? I’d like to read it.”
“They died. And you’d have to read it in translation, unless you’re a student of Old
English. Raise your right hands, both of you.”
OF course, thought Horace Juniper-Hallett, it was another dazzling piece of luck, getting the girl
of one’s dreams right off the bat. But he couldn’t help a slight feeling of dissatisfaction; a
feeling that by rushing things so impetuously he’d missed something. Maybe it meant nothing to
have a big wedding and walk out of the Gyratory Club under an arch of duelling sticks held by his
fellow businessmen. But it would have been nice to have had the experience.
It would not do to voice these fugitive thoughts.
“Well—” he said uncertainly. They were standing outside the geneticist’s house, which was
on a back street near Wilshire and Vermont. Now that Juniper-Hallett was no longer dazzled by the
approaching headlights of matrimony, he could see the swarm of problems ahead of him clearly
enough.
Janet was waxing her nose. She said: “I’ll have to go back to the Stromberg building for a
few days, anyway.”
“What? But I always thought—I was led to believe—gulp—”
“That a bride went to live with her husband? Don’t be silly, darling. I’ll have to break
the news gently to my parents. Or they’ll make a frightful row. I can’t go to live with a member
of a rival company without my own company’s consent, you know.”
“Oh, very well.” Juniper-Hallett had an uneasy feeling that his wife would always be about
three jumps ahead of him in making decisions. “Every hour we’re separated will be hell for me,
sweetheart.”
“Every minute will be for me, precious. But it can’t be helped.”
IT was too early to go to bed; besides which Horace JuniperHallett’s mind was too full of a number
of things. Instead of heading for his rooming house, he walked along Wilshire Boulevard toward
Western Avenue. The Crosley building reared into the low clouds ahead of him. The sight always
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aroused Juniper-Hallett’s pride in his company. Time had been when such tall buildings were
forbidden because of earthquakes. Then they had excavated the San Andreas rift and filled it full
of graphite. This, acting as a lubricant, allowed relative motion of the earth on the two sides to
be smooth instead of jerks.
A light, cold drizzle began; one of those Los Angeles winter rains that may last for an
hour or a week.
If he made good as a businessman, he’d soon be able to move into the Crosley building with
the executives and full-blooded nobility. If— “Hey!” Juniper-Hallett saw Justin-Walsh running
toward him, making aggressive motions with his duelling stick. The Stromberg must have been
hanging around the Crosley building just in case. He yelled: “You’re the punk who stole my
clothes!”
“Now, Your Loyalty,” said Juniper-Hallett, “I’ll explain—”
“To hell with your explanations! Defend yourself!”
“But the chief’s order—”
Whack! Juniper-Hallett got his stick up just in time to parry a downright cut at his head.
After that, his reflexes took hold. The sticks swished and clattered. Pedestrians formed a dense
ring around them; a ring that would suddenly bulge outward when one of the fighters came close to
its boundary.
Lane-Walsh was stronger, but Juniper-Hallett was faster. That, with sticks of the standard
Convention weight, gave him an advantage. He feinted a flank-cut; followed it by a leftcheek-cut.
He was a little high; the stick hit Lane-Walsh in the temple. The heir to the Stromberg vice
presidency dropped his stick, and followed it to the pavement.
Juniper-Hallett saw a policeman coming up, drawn by the crowd and the clatter of sticks.
Juniper-Hallett pushed out through the opposite side of the ring. The crowd knew what to do: they
opened a lane for him, meanwhile getting as much as possible in the way of his pursuer. Juniper-
Hallett ducked down the stairs of the Western Avenue station of the Wilshire Boulevard subway
before the cop broke through the crowd. After all, the young man had furnished them with free
entertainment.
But, though Juniper-Hallett got away, the police soon learned who had sent Justin Lane-
Walsh to the hospital with a fractured skull. Everybody knew the colors of the Crosley Co., which
appeared on the raincoat Juniper-Hallett had been wearing as well as on his suit. His brief case
identified him as of the rank of businessman. And, of the members of that order, there was only
one Crosley of Juniper-Hallett’s physical properties in Los Angeles at that time.
They picked him up late that night, still riding the subway back and forth and wondering
whether to give himself up to them, go home as if nothing had happened, or take an airplane for
Mongolia.
III.
THEY led him into the Crosley Co.’s private courtroom, wherein cases between one member of the
company and
another were normally decided. The Old Man was there, and the chief of police, and all the Crosley
higher-ups. JuniperHallett looked around the semicircle of stony faces. Whether they felt sorrow,
or indignation, or hostility, they gave no sign.
Archwin Taylor-Thing, chairman of Crosley, cleared his throat. “Might as well get this
over with. Get it over with,” he muttered to nobody in particular. He stepped forward and
raised his voice. “Horace Crosley Juniper-Hallett, Esquire, you have been found unworthy of the
honors of businessmanhood. Hand over your brief case.”
Juniper-Hallett handed it over. Archwin of Crosley took it and gave it to His Economy, the
treasurer.
“Your fountain pen, sir.”
Juniper-Hallett gulped at giving up the last emblem of his status. Archwin of Crosley
broke the pen over his knee. He got ink down his trouser leg, but paid it no attention. He threw
the pieces into the wastebasket.
He said: “Horace Crosley Juniper-Hallett, Esquire, no longer, you are hereby degraded to
the rank of whitecollar. You shall never again aspire to the honorable status of businessmanhood,
which you have so lightly abused.
“Furthermore, in accordance with the agreement of this honorable company with the city of
Los Angeles, we are compelled to expel you from our membership. From this time forth, you are no
longer a Crosley. You shall, therefore, cease using that honorable name. You are forever excluded
from the Crosley section of the Imperial Nominatorium. Neither we nor any of our affiliated
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companies will have any further commerce, correspondence, or communication with you. We renounce
you, cast you out, utterly dissociate ourselves from you.
“Go, Horace Juniper-Hallett, never to return.”
Juniper-Hallett stumbled out.
He was halfway home, shuffling along with bowed head, when he put a hand in his coat
pocket for a cigarette. He snatched out the note he found, which had gotten there he knew not how.
It read:
Meet me twenty-three o’clock basement Kergulen’s Restaurant tomorrow night. Don’t tell
anybody. Anybody. A. T.-T.
Juniper-Hallett decided he could defer thoughts of suicide, at least until he saw what the
Old Man had up his sleeve.
J UNIPER-HALLETT’S old friend, the geneticist, was surprised, a week later, to get a visit from
Janet JuniperHallett, née Bickham-Coates. The girl looked a good deal thinner than when Carey-West
had seen her last. She poured out a
rush of explanation: “Father was wild—simply wild. This is the first time they’ve let me out of
the Stromberg building— and they sent my maid along to make sure I wouldn’t sneak off to Horace.
Where is he? What’s he doing?”
“He was in once after his expulsion,” said the geneticist. “He looked like a
wreck—unshaven, and he’d been drinking pretty hard. Told me he’d moved to a cheaper place.”
“What’ll we do? Isn’t there any way to rehabilitate him?”
“I think so,” said the old gentleman. “If he can get along for a year, and moves to some
city other than the capital, I could arrange to have another radio company take him in. The
Arsiays are looking for new blood, I hear.”
Janet’s eyes were round. “Do companies actually take in outcasts like that?”
The geneticist chuckled. “Of course they do! It’s highly irregular, but it does happen, if
you know how to finagle it. Our man won’t have to stay proletarianized forever. These watertight
compartments that our fine Corporate State is divided into, have a way of developing leaks. You’re
shocked, my dear?”
“N-no. But you sound almost as if you approved of the way they did things back in the Age
of Promiscuity, when everyone married and worked for whomever he pleased.”
“They got along. But let’s decide about you and Horace.”
She sighed. “I can’t live with him, and I can’t live without him. I’d almost rather become
a dormouse than go on like this.”
“Now don’t look at me, my dear. I wouldn’t sell you any hibernine if I thought you should
take it. Don’t want to spend my declining years in jail.”
Janet looked puzzled. “You mean you might approve of it in some cases?”
“Might, though you needn’t repeat that. In general, the laws against the use of hibernine
are sound, but there are cases—”
The doorbell rang. Carey-West admitted Horace JuniperHallett, dressed as a proletarian,
and whistling.
“Janet!” he yelled, and reached for her.
“Why, Horace!” she said a few minutes later. “I thought you were a wreck. Didn’t you mind
being expelled and degraded— and even being separated from me?”
He grinned a little bashfully. If he’d thought, he’d have put on a better act. “That was
all a phony, darling. The general performance, that is. I really got drunk. But that was at the
Old Man’s orders, to make it more convincing.”
“Horace! What on earth do you mean?”
“Oh, I’m technically an outcast, working as an ashman for the city of Los Angeles. But
actually, I’m doing a secret investigation for the Crosleys. Lord Archwin saw me after the
ceremony and told me that if I was successful, he’d have me reinstated and—oh, gee!” Juniper-
Hallett’s boyish face registered dismay. “I forgot I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody, even you!”
“Huh,” said Carey-West. “A fine Sherlock your chairman picked.”
“But now that you’ve gone that far,” said Janet thoughtfully, “you might as well tell us
the rest.”
“I really oughtn’t—”
“Horace! You don’t mistrust your wife, do you?”
“Oh, very well. I’m supposed to find out about this stolen dormouse. And I’m starting with
the Strombergs.”
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