Night of the Jabberwock

  NIGHT OF THE

  JABBERWOCK

  Born in 1906, Fredric Brown was an American science fiction and mystery writer. In early life he attended the University of Cincinnati and Hanover College, Indiana, before working as a newspaperman and magazine writer in the Midwest. His first foray into the mystery genre was The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947), which won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for outstanding first mystery novel. As an author he wrote more than thirty novels and over three hundred short stories, and is noted for a bold use of narrative experimentation, as exemplified in The Lenient Beast (1956). Many of his books employ the threat of the supernatural or occult before concluding with a logical explanation, and he is renowned for both original plots and ingenious endings. In the 1950s he moved to Tucson, Arizona, and wrote for television and film, continuing to submit many short stories that regularly appeared in mystery anthologies. A cultured man and omnivorous reader, Brown had a lifelong interest in the flute, chess, poker, and the works of Lewis Carroll. He died in 1972.

  NIGHT OF THE

  JABBERWOCK

  FREDRIC BROWN

  THE LANGTAIL PRESS

  LONDON

  This edition published 2010 by

  The Langtail Press

  www.langtailpress.com

  Night of the Jabberwock © 1950 Fredric Brown

  ISBN 978-1-78002-000-6

  NIGHT OF THE

  JABBERWOCK

  CHAPTER ONE

  ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

  All mimsy were the borogoves,

  And the mome raths outgrabe.

  IN my dream I was standing in the middle of Oak Street and it was dark night. The streetlights were off; only pale moonlight glinted on the huge sword that I swung in circles about my head as the Jabberwock crept closer. It bellied along the pavement, flexing its wings and tensing its muscles for the final rush; its claws clicked against the stones like the clicking of mats down the channels of a Linotype. Then, astonishingly, it spoke.

  “Doc,” it said. “Wake up, Doc.”

  A hand—not the hand of a Jabberwock—was shaking my shoulder.

  And it was early dusk instead of black night and I was sitting in the swivel chair at my battered desk, looking over my shoulder at Pete. Pete was grinning at me.

  “We’re in, Doc,” he said. “You’ll have to cut two lines on this last take and we’re in. Early, for once.”

  He put a galley proof down in front of me, only one stick of type long. I picked up a blue pencil and knocked off two lines and they happened to be an even sentence, so Pete wouldn’t have to reset anything.

  He went over to the Linotype and shut it off and it was suddenly very quiet in the place, so quiet that I could hear the drip of the faucet way in the far corner.

  I stood up and stretched, feeling good, although a little groggy from having dozed off while Pete was setting that final take. For once, for one Thursday, the Carmel City Clarion was ready for the press early. Of course, there wasn’t any real news in it, but then there never was.

  And only half-past six and not yet dark outside. We were through hours earlier than usual. I decided that that called for a drink, here and now.

  The bottle in my desk turned out to have enough whisky in it for one healthy drink or two short ones. I asked Pete if he wanted a snort and he said no, not yet, he’d wait till he got over to Smiley’s, so I treated myself to a healthy drink, as I’d hoped to be able to do. And it had been fairly safe to ask Pete; he seldom took one before he was through for the day, and although my part of the job was done Pete still had almost an hour’s work ahead of him on the mechanical end.

  The drink made a warm spot under my belt as I walked over to the window by the Linotype and stood staring out into the quiet dusk. The lights of Oak Street flashed on while I stood there. I’d been dreaming—what had I been dreaming?

  On the sidewalk across the street Miles Harrison hesitated in front of Smiley’s Tavern as though the thought of a cool glass of beer tempted him. I could almost feel his mind working: “No, I’m a deputy sheriff of Carmel County and I have a job to do yet tonight and I don’t drink while I’m on duty. The beer can wait.”

  Yes, his conscience must have won, because he walked on.

  I wonder now—although of course I didn’t wonder then—whether, if he had known that he would be dead before midnight, he wouldn’t have stopped for that beer. I think he would have. I know I would have, but that doesn’t prove anything because I’d have done it anyway; I’ve never had a conscience like Miles Harrison’s.

  Behind me, at the stone, Pete was putting the final stick of type into the chase of the front page. He said, “Okay, Doc, she fits. We’re in.”

  “Let the presses roll,” I told him.

  Just a manner of speaking, of course. There was only one press and it didn’t roll, because it was a Miehle vertical that shuttled up and down. And it wouldn’t even do that until morning. The Clarion is a weekly paper that comes out on Friday; we put it to bed on Thursday evening and Pete runs it off the press Friday morning. And it’s not much of a run.

  Pete asked, “You going over to Smiley’s?”

  That was a silly question; I always go over to Smiley’s on a Thursday evening and usually, when he’s finished locking up the forms, Pete joins me, at least for a while. “Sure,” I told him.

  “I’ll bring you a stone proof, then,” Pete said.

  Pete always does that, too, although I seldom do more than glance at it. Pete’s too good a printer for me ever to catch any important errors on him and as for minor typographicals, Carmel City doesn’t mind them.

  I was free and Smiley’s was waiting, but for some reason I wasn’t in any hurry to leave. It was pleasant, after the hard work of a Thursday—and don’t let that short nap fool you; I had been working—to stand there and watch the quiet street in the quiet twilight, and to contemplate an intensive campaign of doing nothing for the rest of the evening, with a few drinks to help me do it.

  Miles Harrison, a dozen paces past Smiley’s, stopped, turned, and headed back. Good, I thought, I’ll have someone to drink with. I turned away from the window and put on my suit coat and hat.

  I said, “Be seeing you, Pete,” and I went down the stairs and out into the warm summer evening.

  I’d misjudged Miles Harrison; he was coming out of Smiley’s already, too soon even to have had a quick one, and he was opening a pack of cigarettes. He saw me and waved, waiting in front of Smiley’s door to light a cigarette while I crossed the street.

  “Have a drink with me, Miles,” I suggested.

  He shook his head regretfully. “Wish I could, Doc. But I got a job to do later. You know, go with Ralph Bonney over to Neilsville to get his pay roll.”

  Sure, I knew. In a small town everybody knows everything.

  Ralph Bonney owned the Bonney Fireworks Company, just outside of Carmel City. They made fireworks, mostly big pieces for fairs and municipal displays, that were sold all over the country. And during the few months of each year up to about the first of July they worked a day and a night shift to meet the Fourth of July demand.

  And Ralph Bonney had something against Clyde Andrews, president of the Carmel City Bank, and did his banking in Neilsville. He drove over to Neilsville late every Thursday night and they opened the bank there to give him the cash for his night shift pay roll. Miles Harrison, as deputy sheriff, always went along as guard.

  Always seemed like a silly procedure to me, as the night side pay roll didn’t amount to more than a few thousand dollars and Bonney could have got it along with the cash for his day side pay roll and held it at the office, but that was his way of doing
things.

  I said, “Sure, Miles, but that’s not for hours yet. And one drink isn’t going to hurt you.”

  He grinned. “I know it wouldn’t, but I’d probably take another just because the first one didn’t hurt me. So I stick to the rule that I don’t have even one drink till I’m off duty for the day, and if I don’t stick to it I’m sunk. But thanks just the same, Doc, I’ll take a rain check.”

  He had a point, but I wish he hadn’t made it. I wish he’d let me buy him that drink, or several of them, because that rain check wasn’t worth the imaginary paper it was printed on to a man who was going to be murdered before midnight.

  But I didn’t know that, and I didn’t insist. I said, “Sure Miles,” and asked him about his kids.

  “Fine, both of ’em. Drop out and see us sometime.”

  “Sure,” I said, and I went into Smiley’s.

  Big, bald Smiley Wheeler was alone. He smiled as I came in and said, “Hi, Doc. How’s the editing business?” And then he laughed as though he’d said something excruciatingly funny. Smiley hasn’t the ghost of a sense of humour and he has the mistaken idea that he disguises that fact by laughing at almost everything he says or hears said.

  “Smiley, you give me a pain,” I told him. It’s always safe to tell Smiley a truth like that; no matter how seriously you say you mean it, he thinks you’re joking. If he’d laughed I’d have told him where he gave me a pain, but for once he didn’t laugh.

  He said, “Glad you got here early, Doc. It’s damn dull this evening.”

  “It’s dull every evening in Carmel City,” I told him. “And most of the time I like it. But Lord, if only something would happen just once on a Thursday evening, I’d love it. Just once in my long career, I’d like to have one hot story to break to a panting public.”

  “Hell, Doc, nobody looks for hot news in a country weekly.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s why I’d like to fool them just once. I’ve been running the Clarion twenty-three years. One hot story. Is that much to ask?”

  Smiley frowned. “There’ve been a couple of burglaries. And one murder, a few years ago.”

  “Sure,” I said, “and so what? One of the factory hands out at Bonney’s got in a drunken argument with another and hit him too hard in the fight they got into. That’s not murder; that’s manslaughter, and anyway it happened on a Saturday and it was old stuff—everybody in town knew about it—by the next Friday when the Clarion came out.”

  “They buy your paper, anyway, Doc. They look for their names for having attended church socials and who’s got a used washing machine for sale and—want a drink?”

  “It’s about time one of us thought of that,” I said.

  He poured a shot for me and, so I wouldn’t have to drink alone, a short one for himself. We drank them and I asked him, “Think Carl will be in tonight?”

  I meant Carl Trenholm, the lawyer, who’s about my closest friend in Carmel City, and one of the three or four in town who play chess and can be drawn into an intelligent discussion of something beside crops and politics. Carl often dropped in Smiley’s on Thursday evenings, knowing that I always came in for at least a few drinks after putting the paper to bed.

  “Don’t think so,” Smiley said. “Carl was in most of the afternoon and got himself kind of a snootful, to celebrate. He got through in court early and he won his case. Guess he went home to sleep it off.”

  I said, “Damn. Why couldn’t he have waited till this evening? I’d have helped him—Say, Smiley, did you say Carl was celebrating because he won that case? Unless we’re talking about two different things, he lost it. You mean the Bonney divorce?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then Carl was representing Ralph Bonney, and Bonney’s wife won the divorce.”

  “You got it that way in the paper, Doc?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s the nearest thing I’ve got to a good story this week.”

  Smiley shook his head. “Carl was saying to me he hoped you wouldn’t put it in, or anyway that you’d hold it down to a short squib, just the fact that she got the divorce.”

  I said, “I don’t get it, Smiley. Why? And didn’t Carl lose the case?”

  Smiley leaned forward confidentially across the bar, although he and I were the only ones in his place. He said, “It’s like this, Doc. Bonney wanted the divorce. That wife of his was a bitch, see? Only he didn’t have any grounds to sue on, himself—not any that he’d have been willing to bring up in court, anyway, see? So he—well, kind of bought his freedom. Gave her a settlement if she’d do the suing, and he admitted to the grounds she gave against him. Where’d you get your version of the story?”

  “From the judge,” I said.

  “Well, he just saw the outside of it. Carl says Bonney’s a good joe and those cruelty charges were a bunch of hokum. He never laid a hand on her. But the woman was such hell on wheels that Bonney’d have admitted to anything to get free of her. And give her a settlement of a hundred grand on top of it. Carl was worried about the case because the cruelty charges were so damn silly on the face of them.”

  “Hell,” I said, “that’s not the way it’s going to sound in the Clarion.”

  “Carl was saying he knew you couldn’t tell the truth about the story, but he hoped you’d play it down. Just saying Mrs. B. had been granted a divorce and that a settlement had been made, and not putting in anything about the charges.”

  I thought of my one real story of the week, and how carefully I’d enumerated all those charges Bonney’s wife had made against him, and I groaned at the thought of having to rewrite or cut the story. And cut it I’d have to, now that I knew the facts.

  I said, “Damn Carl, why didn’t he come and tell me about it before I wrote the story and put the paper to bed?”

  “He thought about doing that, Doc. And then he decided he didn’t want to use his friendship with you to influence the way you reported news.”

  “The damn fool,” I said. “And all he had to do was walk across the street.”

  “But Carl did say that Bonney’s a swell guy and it would be a bad break for him if you listed those charges because none of them were really true and——”

  “Don’t rub it in,” I interrupted him. “I’ll change the story. If Carl says it’s that way, I’ll believe him. I can’t say that the charges weren’t true, but at least I can leave them out.”

  “That’d be swell of you, Doc.”

  “Sure it would. All right, give me one more drink, Smiley, and I’ll go over and catch it before Pete leaves.”

  I had the one more drink, cussing myself for being sap enough to spoil the only mentionable story I had, but knowing I had to do it. I didn’t know Bonney personally, except just to say hello to on the street, but I did know Carl Trenholm well enough to be damn sure that if he said Bonney was in the right, the story wasn’t fair the way I’d written it. And I knew Smiley well enough to be sure he hadn’t given me a bum steer on what Carl had really said.

  So I grumbled my way back across the street and upstairs to the Clarion office. Pete was just tightening the chase around the front page.

  He loosened the quoins when I told him what we had to do, and I walked around the stone so I could read the story again, upside down of course, as type is always read.

  The first paragraph could stand as written and could constitute the entire story. I told Pete to put the rest of the type in the hellbox and I went over to the case and set a short head in tenpoint, “Bonney Divorce Granted,” to replace the twenty-four-point head that had been on the longer story. I handed Pete the stick and watched while he switched heads.

  “Leaves about a nine-inch hole in the page,” he said. “What’ll we stick in it?”

  I sighed. “Have to use filler,” I told him. “Not on the front page, but we’ll have to find something on page four we can move front and then stick in nine inches of filler where it came from.”

  I wandered down the stone to page four and picked up a pica
stick to measure things. Pete went over to the rack and got a galley of filler. About the only thing that was anywhere near the right size was the story that Clyde Andrews, Carmel’s City’s banker and leading light of the local Baptist Church, had given me about the rummage sale the church had planned for next Tuesday evening.

  It wasn’t exactly a story of earth-shaking importance, but it would be about the right length if we reset it indented to go in a box. And it had a lot of names in it, and that meant it would please a lot of people, and particularly Clyde Andrews, if I moved it up to the front page.

  So we moved it. Rather, Pete reset it for a front page box item while I plugged the gap in page four with filler items and locked up the page again. Pete had the rummage sale item reset by the time I’d finished with page four, and this time I waited for him to finish up page one, so we could go to Smiley’s together.

  I thought about that front page while I washed my hands. The Front Page. Shades of Hecht and MacArthur. Poor revolving Horace Greeley.

  Now I really wanted a drink.

  Pete was starting to pound out a stone proof and I told him not to bother. Maybe the customers would read page one, but I wasn’t going to. And if there was an upside-down headline or a pied paragraph, it would probably be an improvement.

  Pete washed up and we locked the door. It was still early for a Thursday evening, not much after seven. I should have been happy about that, and I probably would have been if we’d had a good paper. As for the one we’d just put to bed, I wondered if it would live until morning.

  Smiley had a couple of other customers and was waiting on them, and I wasn’t in any mood to wait for Smiley so I went around behind the bar and got the Old Henderson bottle and two glasses and took them to a table for Pete and myself. Smiley and I know one another well enough so it’s always all right for me to help myself any time it’s convenient and settle with him afterward.

  I poured drinks for Pete and me. We drank and Pete said, “Well, that’s that for another week, Doc.”