The fantastic adventures.., p.54
The Fantastic Adventures of Lefty Feep, page 54
“This is the only way,” Omar tells him. He calls over the edge of the balcony. “Ready, now?”
Arthur can hear grunting as the bearded man climbs up the rope. Then the grunting dies away.
A voice comes from below. “Are you safe up there, Peter?”
“Quite safe.”
But it is swami Omar who speaks. The man on the rope says nothing. “You two come up now,” Omar says, in a deep voice.
Arthur Arthur blinks in the dark as he hears the other two men climbing the rope. But where is the first man?
Suddenly the climbing and breathing sounds are gone. And Omar laughs. “See that?” he chuckles. “All three of them climb the rope.”
“What is all this?” asks Arthur.
Omar reaches into his pocket and pulls out a flashlight. He plays it on the rope. A most peculiar rope. It is not tied to the balcony at all. It just stands straight up in the air. There are no three spies on it. There isn’t even one spy.
On top of that, there is no top on the rope. No visible top. It just stands straight in the air and seems to go up into a kind of grayish cloud and fade away.
“What?” gulps Arthur Arthur, taking this all in.
“This is what I have in my briefcase,” Omar answers. “What I intend to take and show Professor Einstein.”
“But—”
“It’s the old Hindu rope trick!” explains Omar. “I just trick our three friends into climbing up a rope which makes them disappear into nowhere.”
He smiles at Arthur Arthur. “This is the kind of thing you westerners refuse to believe. Now you can tell your editor you see it happen with your own eyes. And that’s that. Now we will climb down, take the rope, and then take this briefcase with the naval plans along to the authorities.” Omar glances down at the floor of the balcony where the briefcase is. Only it isn’t, anymore.
“I am robbed!” yells Omar. “One of those dogs must reach out when he passes the balcony level here and grab the briefcase. Now they’ve got it up there with them.”
He faces Arthur Arthur with a slow stare. “Those papers are very important,” he says. “We must get them back.”
“How?”
“Arthur, there is just one thing to do. You must climb up that rope and get back the second briefcase.”
Arthur shudders. “Not on your life. I’m not going to be roped into climbing that thing!”
“But you must!”
“Why not climb up and get it yourself?”
“If I do, how would you get me down?” asks Omar.
“If I do, how would you get me down?” Arthur snaps back.
“Leave that to me,” says swami Omar.
Arthur Arthur eyes the dangling rope. It is thick and brown, and it stands straight up in the air from the floor below. He can see every strand and thread in it, but when he stares up the rope just blurs off into nothing. “Just what is up there?” he asks Omar.
Omar shrugs. “That is what I intend to discuss with Einstein,” he says. “This rope is woven by the holy contemplants in the temple where I study metaphysics. Every strand is a prayer to the Infinite. All I know is that the rope is a link with that part of existence beyond our five senses. According to the theories of Einstein and the physicists, it could be a gateway to the Fourth Dimension.”
Arthur shakes his head. “What you are giving me is not exactly a road map,” he says.
“Why not climb up and find out?” the swami Omar coaxes. “I think beyond that rope lies the realm of what we call Imagination. It is from here that I get the champagne and the fruit and the serpents that apparently come from nowhere. I imagine them and they come from Imagination to existence. That is all I know. The rest is up to you.”
“Up to me?”
“Yes. Up the rope, which you will climb. You will find the three spies and get back the briefcase.”
“I rather be hanged with your lousy rope than climb it,” screams Arthur Arthur, passionately.
But Omar steps forward suddenly. His hands shove out. Arthur Arthur topples backwards across the balcony rail. He tumbles, grabs empty air. Grabs the rope. He hangs there. Then, with a groan, he tries to slide down. But be can’t! The rope tangles up under his feet in invisible knots. Still groaning, he climbs up. He sticks out his hands pleading to Omar, like an organ-grinder’s monkey asking for pennies.
But Omar shakes his head. “Good luck!” he calls out. “I suggest that wherever you go, you stick close to the rope at all times.”
Arthur Arthur climbs a few feet more without knowing it. And then the rope seems to move of its own accord beneath his hands. The swami’s voice gets very faint and far away. The world turns to a gray mist, like the mist at the top of the rope.
And all at once Arthur feels himself shooting up — up through a ceiling that isn’t there, through a sky that doesn’t exist, and into the world beyond. He stops in the middle of a cloudy plain. Nothing but mist all around him. He seems to be standing on something, but he can’t see it. He seems to be holding the rope with one hand but be can’t see it. Looking down, he can’t even see himself!
He can’t see his own feet or his own hands!
Arthur closes his eyes and shudders. But there is nothing to shudder, because his body appears to disappear. Only his mind is left. Omar is probably right. This is a world of pure Imagination. There is nothing to rely on but his thoughts.
That’s it! Maybe if he thinks of his body, he will see it! Arthur imagines himself. And sure enough, looking down, there he is. Right in the middle of the mist. It is too much for Arthur Arthur. “I need a drink!” he thinks.
Sure enough, out of the mist comes a glass of scotch. Just like it does for swami Omar back on Earth. Arthur can see it. And he certainly can drink it.
Then he feels better. All at once he remembers his mission up here — somewhere there must be the three bearded bozos with the briefcase. But where? Where in this mist? And how can he find them?
Then he thinks of it. He merely has to imagine that they are standing right next to him. He imagines.
Nothing happens.
Then he remembers he forgets to think of them as being visible. So he does. And there, standing on little clouds of mist at his left, are the three spies.
But without any briefcase! Arthur remembers he must imagine the briefcase, too. And there it is, in the leader’s hand. Here is where Arthur makes his mistake. “Hey!” he yells out, “throw that briefcase over to me!”
The bearded leader shakes his head.
“All right then,” says Arthur Arthur. “I can think that you give me the briefcase.”
Suddenly a gleam appears in the biggest beard’s eye.
He catches on.
In two seconds Arthur suddenly plunges head over heels into space, falling down into the depths of the mist. A wind screams in his ears. “He thinks I am falling,” Arthur realizes. He closes his own eyes and concentrates hard. “I’ve got wings — I can’t fall,” he imagines.
Sure enough, a thump knocks against his shoulder blades. He stops falling and begins to flap. Looking around, he sees a lovely pair of white wings on his shoulders. He flies back to the cloud of mist.
The three are standing just as he leaves them. Quickly, Arthur Arthur imagines that the leader throws him the briefcase. And the briefcase sails for his arms. Then the leader’s eyes glitter again. Arthur Arthur stretches out his arms to catch the briefcase. But it is not a briefcase that dives for his arms. It is a snarling lion!
Crazy like anything, Arthur forces himself to think fast. It is not a lion, he imagines. It is a balloon. The balloon lands gently on his shoulder —
And turns into an octopus!
Arthur feels the coils of the tentacles around his neck. He imagines they are not there. “I wish those rats would strangle in their own beards!” he mutters.
And they do! The three spies reel back clawing at their necks as the barber-bushes rear up and choke them. The leader, Peter, just manages to gurgle, “Think yourselves free!”
In a second the three are facing Arthur once more. And he knows now that the game is up. There is only one way out of this. They understand, and they have three brains to work with against his one. If they all attack him —
Arthur shudders as a dozen arrows suddenly sink into his back, a bolt of lightning strikes his chest, and a big rock bounces on his skull. He thinks just in time. “I can’t be hurt.”
As he tears the arrows out of his unwounded body, the three blink in astonishment. For a second, he has them off guard with surprise. He turns them into butterflies. They turn themselves into machine guns. Arthur Arthur makes himself transparent so the bullets go through him. They turn him to steam. He evaporates, thinking wildly. “This can’t go on,” he realizes. “They are too many for me. Wait — I’ve got it!”
A second later there are a hundred Arthur Arthurs flapping wings in the air. The trio is surrounded. But not for long. Another second and a thousand bearded spies appear. Arthur Arthur turns into a thousand men, each fifty feet tall. But it is too much. He cannot hold such a thought and still act. Neither can the bearded bozos.
They return to their normal single bodies again. The spies stare at Arthur Arthur in a daze. Quick as a flash, he wills that the briefcase come to his hands. Then the leader of the anti-razor gang goes back to normal with a vengeance. He whips out the old familiar revolver of his. Before he can shoot, Arthur Arthur wilts the barrel down to asparagus.
But he can’t go on. He can’t think. Desperate, he gets one last spurt of energy. “We are all back at the bottom of the rope again!” he thinks. There is a crash, a flash, and a smash.
It is a long time later that he wakes up on the tavern floor. Omar is bending over him with the bottle ready. Arthur sits up. All around him are familiar objects. The coil of rope. Three bearded bodies. A briefcase. Omar picks up the rope and the briefcase.
“The police will arrive soon,” he says. “Our three friends are unconscious and they can pick them up. Let us get out of here now, though. I must not delay my visit with Einstein.”
Omar leads Arthur out. Arthur shakes his head. “Tell me it doesn’t happen,” he begs. “Those three lugs get tangled up in the rafters, don’t they? I go up after them and we all fall down. I just imagine the rest.”
Omar stares at him and shakes his head. He shrugs and smiles. “Well, if it makes you feel any better,” he says.
“Nothing makes me feel any better,” Arthur answers. “Except maybe a drink.”
“Get it yourself then,” Omar tells him. “I must be on my way.”
So Omar heads off in one direction and Arthur tails into the tavern where I meet him that afternoon. I am still there, absorbing my fruit, and when he sees me he makes me sit down in a booth and tells me this story I tell you. Strange, is it not?
Lefty Feep sat back, shaking his head.
“Very strange,” I admitted. “But I still don’t understand why you won’t eat chicken wings, or why Arthur Arthur is afraid of ropes, and all that. After all, he merely suffered from a little hypnotic experiment.”
“Maybe,” said Lefty Feep.
“No maybe about it,” I answered. “It was pure hallucination. You and I know that the so-called Hindu rope trick is a fake. And certainly you don’t believe any of that stuff about a world of Imagination lying at the other end of it, where whatever you think comes true.”
“Of course I do,” Feep told me.
“But even Arthur Arthur didn’t believe it,” I persisted.
Feep grinned. “That is right. When he tells me the story, he says he doesn’t believe it really happens. Only when I take him to the doctor does he realize it is all a fact.”
“You took Arthur to the doctor? Why?”
Feep grinned again. “Because he makes one mistake when he wishes himself back down the rope in such a hurry. I must take him to the doctor right away, because he doesn’t come down the same as when he went up”
“Meaning?”
“He has to go to the doctor and get those wings amputated!”
Notes
[←1]
Pathe is a multimedia company, known for its newsreels back in the 1940s, which were trailers played before movies in the theatres.
[←2]
Hank was the ten-pin bowling champion and marketed a tabletop game in 1941 called Hank Marino’s Miniature Bowling Alley.
[←3]
Refers to Mickey Finn, a bartender who used to roofie his patrons in order to rob them.
[←4]
An attractive woman, especially (frequently depreciative) one regarded as an object of sexual gratification. Not the later definition, which is Canadian slang for underwear.
[←5]
The Smith Brothers were a pair of well-bearded cough drop hawkers.
[←6]
Charlie McCarthy is Edgar Bergen's famed ventriloquist dummy.
[←7]
Powder, in this sense, is slang for running away.
[←8]
1940s pin up model and actress.
[←9]
Fertilizer brand.
[←10]
According to Wikipedia (so take it as you will), a hep cat was someone who “adopted the lifestyle of the jazz musician, including some or all of the following: dress, slang, use of marijuana and other drugs, relaxed attitude, sarcastic humble or, self-imposed poverty, and relaxed sexual mores.” In other words, a millennial.
[←11]
Antacid.
[←12]
Remember, this was written just after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
[←13]
Heavyweight boxing champion of the world, 1937-49
[←14]
The Gold Dust Twins were the very racist logo of Fairbank's Gold Dust Washing Powder.
[←15]
Name of a very long gone car dealership
[←16]
The jitterbug was a jazz-style dance from the period.
[←17]
As in Ripley’s Believe it or Not.
[←18]
Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury 1934-45.
[←19]
Slang term for craps.
[←20]
Witches gatherings, nothing to do with concerts or Ozzy.
[←21]
From the Hebrew for thief.
[←22]
Originally, a 1920 song by Nora Bayes, but during World War II, it was used as a propaganda song by the Japanese Empire.
[←23]
Glenn Miller classic song, recorded the year before this was written.
[←24]
Izaak Walton (1593-1683) was the author of The Compleat Angler, a classic fishing book.
[←25]
From 1933 to 1975, it was illegal in the United States to own physical gold.
[←26]
A hand-pumped insecticide sprayer.
[←27]
Starting in May 1942, sugar was rationed to ½ a pound per week per person and the only way to get it was from a coupon from your sugar ration book.
[←28]
A four-flusher is a poker player who attempts to pawn off a four-card flush instead of the true five-card flush.
[←29]
Another term for hillbilly.
[←30]
The Fuller Brush man was a door-to-door salesman back in the day.
[←31]
That would mean her mouth – and nothing else.
[←32]
A Five and Ten would have been the 1940s equivalent to a dollar store – everything was either five or ten cents.
[←33]
Again, this is World War II and Japanese-American relations aren’t their best.
[←34]
Pluto Water was a laxative mineral water which had a picture of Pluto, Roman god of the underworld, on it.
[←35]
Victor Mature was the Brad Pitt of the day.
[←36]
Song written in 1860.
[←37]
Spats were coverings over the socks and upper part of the shoes that all the well-dressed men of the time wore. The word is short for “spatter guard.”
[←38]
Not the airport, but the mayor of New York at the time, Fiorello La Guardia.
[←39]
Remember, middle of World War II and all of these things are rationed and hard to find.
[←40]
No, not a spelling error. Gat is slang for revolver or pistol.
[←41]
Burma-Shave was a popular brand of shaving cream back in the day, known for its funny signs along the highway.
[←42]
A popular jazz song from the time.
[←43]
Another jazz song of the day.
[←44]
Again, a goniff is a thief and a yegg is a safecracker or burglar.
