How I Conquered Your Planet (3 page)

“
Why are you stapling your mouth closed?”

“
Mphmknxks.” I replied, stapling faster.

“
Hey, I didn’t come here to audition a mouth stapling act.
Audiences don’t like them. They don’t understand them. I need a detective. Do
you want the job or not?”

“
Grmpkliglemorf!”

He watched as I applied a final staple, and began methodically
smearing glue on the lower half of my face, then said: “I guess I’ll try one of
the other detectives in the building.”

I watched him go, disappointedly. “Fxup yak!” I hollered.

The Gremlin let the man out the door, sat back down at his desk
and smiled at me. I didn’t smile back. I wouldn’t be doing any smiling for some
time.

Arthur Gremlin was doing a lot of smiling these days. He had
seemed pretty tense when he first joined the firm, but the more time he spent
with me, and the more he saw me in action, the more he relaxed.

Finally after watching me spend three entire days trying to get
a carton of milk open, he wiped the milk off his face and relaxed completely
for the first time. It’s like something that had been nagging at him finally
went away.

The next day, after he had made a very long distance call that
the phone company charged me $23,000 for, (more expenses!) my fortunes abruptly
changed. All of a sudden I started getting a lot of new business. Enough so I
actually got some use out of that Disneyland line I’d had installed in front of
my desk. When I asked where these new clients had heard of me – was it my ad in
the Daily Detective or my comical TV infomercial, the one where I play all the
parts and speak in the Swedish accent? – they would exchange glances with the
Gremlin and then say they guessed they had heard of me everywhere. That made me
feel good. You can’t get more famous than that.

And these weren’t just routine cases I was suddenly getting.
They were plum assignments that I could charge big money for. And my new
clients seemed to be willing to pay whatever I asked. As an experiment, I tried
asking for $1000 a day, plus expenses, plus more expenses, plus those first
expenses again. They didn’t even blink an eye. In fact, none of these new
clients ever blinked their eyes. No eyelids. I told them if they wanted to get
some lids for those eyes, I wasn’t a doctor, but I would do my best. They
declined. Fine, I said, I just wanted them to know that I was here to serve
them.

Over the next couple of months I happily carried out a series
of unusual assignments for these new clients. They seemed to be satisfied with
my work, and I was more than satisfied with the way they paid their bills in
cash. I’d already made my nut for the year and was working on next year.

One client wanted me to get back his copy of our nation’s Air
Defense Plans which his mother had given him (“The Case Of The Missing Defense
Plans”). Another wondered where his maps of escape routes from the city went.
(“The Case Of The Missing Escape Route Maps”) Other clients had me measuring
troop strength, planting explosives, sabotaging railroads, air terminals and
power grids, and beating up atomic scientists.

As the weeks went by, I gradually began to notice that the jobs
I’d been doing for these clients were a little offbeat. I hadn’t questioned the
assignments at first, because I needed the money and it doesn’t pay to argue
with someone who is writing you a check. If you do, they might not finish
writing that check.

But when I found myself about to shoot the Mayor in the back of
the head for some client I suddenly thought: Wait a minute! What am I doing?

I seemed to be acting like a crook. And doing a crooked thing.
That didn’t sound like me. I’m a good man. Something strange was going on. And
since I was a part of it, I needed to find out what it was. I decided that what
I needed was a detective to look into this. And since I am, to the best of my
knowledge, the cheapest detective in history, I decided to hire me.

I wasn’t sure who I could trust at this point. I wasn’t even
sure I could trust my own secretary. So I did my investigating late at night,
during lunch hours and so on. Each time I ducked out of the office, I would
make a different excuse to the Gremlin, saying I had to get another driver’s
license – the one I had gotten yesterday was only a one-day one - or I had to
get my teeth rotated, or my nose cleaned, or I had to go outside because it was
too inside in here. I don’t think he suspected anything at first, because I
have this reputation for being kind of stupid. A reputation like that comes in
handy sometimes. Most of the time it ruins everything, but sometimes it’s
handy.

I started my investigations by looking into who these people
were who had been hiring me. Surprisingly, all of them turned out to be
professional magicians. And they all lived in the same building. What are the
odds of that?

Then I took a closer look at the jobs they’d been having me do
for them. Now that these jobs were finished, now that I wasn’t being blinded by
a paycheck, I could see I’d done a surprisingly large amount of damage all over
town. The places I’d been sent to “investigate” were all either shut down now,
or burned down, or being run by little men who looked something, but not
exactly, like Arthur Gremlin. Come to think of it, my magician clients looked a
lot like him too. This started to make me a little suspicious of Arthur
Gremlin. And vice versa.

The Gremlin first started getting suspicious of me when he saw
me reading letters I had removed from a secret drawer in his desk with a
crowbar and a small amount of explosives. The letters were written in an alien
tongue. Even the punctuation looked kind of scary. But I couldn’t decipher
them. The Gremlin frowned when he saw me reading them, but seemed to accept my
explanation that I had tripped on the rug and cushioned my fall by ripping open
his desk and reading his letters.

Our mutual suspicion increased when an Air Force General came
to see me. Someone had sabotaged his missile base. The police couldn’t figure
out who did it, and he wasn’t too keen about telling Washington about it. He
was hoping I might be able to solve the mystery, since that was my business.

I started to tell him that he’d come to the right place,
because I had sabotaged his missile base. But before I could get nine words
out, I found myself stuffing his military decorations and good conduct medals
into my mouth. He frowned at this and asked what the meaning of it was. Then,
when I started eating his uniform, he took his business elsewhere.

The Gremlin and I looked at each other. Neither one of us was
smiling. Both of us hissed.

I continued my investigations, but I was no longer doing it
alone. I would make my excuse of the day and slip out, but as I walked the
street I noticed I was being shadowed - mostly by real shadows, but there would
always be one shadow that didn’t stop exactly when I stopped and started up
again a little after I started. And it smoked a cigarette when I wasn’t smoking
one. And it got ahead of me sometimes and had to wait for me to catch up.

Each day the atmosphere became a little more tense around the
office. Now when I made a lame excuse and ducked out of work, the Gremlin also
made a lame excuse – often the same one – and we went down the elevator
together. Once we got down to street level we split up, but pretty soon I
noticed I was being tailed again. And it wasn’t just the Gremlin who was
watching me now. It seemed like everyone was watching me.

Magicians would turn their heads to look at me - sometimes in
the middle of performances. Sometimes they even went so far as to make me think
I was a chicken. And, looking back on it, I’m not sure I wasn’t a chicken.
Those eggs in my refrigerator came from somewhere. You explain it.

Other times as I drove down the street I could have sworn I was
being tailed by a space ship.

It was an uncomfortable position for a detective to be in. The
people I’d been tailing had started tailing me. That happens a lot in my
business though. You get used to it, even though you never exactly like it.
You’ve got to learn to laugh at yourself, as long as everyone else is doing it.
Otherwise you’ll be the only person who isn’t laughing.

Then the day came that I knew had to come sometime. The day I’d
feared above all others. The day I couldn’t think of an excuse to leave the
office. I couldn’t even think of the excuses I’d used before, so I couldn’t say
I was going to do that one again. My mind was a blank.

I thought alcohol might help me think – that’s what it’s for,
after all - so I opened a bottle and started drinking, while I tried to come up
with an idea. I couldn’t think of anything at first, but partway through the
second bottle I started thinking what a good buddy of mine Arthur Gremlin was.
What a pal. The little knucklehead. Then I started thinking that he and I
should fight. Then I wished I could see him again, but knew I never could. Then
I remembered I was supposed to be thinking of an excuse to get away from him. I
got back to work on that, but before I’d gotten very far, the Gremlin abruptly
put on his coat and hat, made an excuse I wished I had thought of, and left. I
was stunned. Now I didn’t need to think of an excuse at all! I could investigate
anything I wanted undisturbed. I wondered why.

I trailed the Gremlin to a magic shop in the theater district
that catered mostly to professional magicians. I stayed back and watched for
awhile from across the street, but he didn’t come back out. Finally I walked
over to the shop. It was closed for a “private party”, a sign on the door said.
There were skulls and crossbones on this sign.

I opened the door and went inside. There was no party that I
could see. Everything was dark and quiet. That didn’t necessarily mean it
wasn’t a party. I’d had parties like that. But where was Arthur Gremlin? I
started to switch on the lights and the radio, but checked myself at the last
moment. Better stay inconspicuous, Burly, I thought.

Due to the darkness, I stumbled over a number of things as I
made my way stealthily through the shop. I knocked over magic tricks, stage
props, costumes, and the cash register. I accidentally made myself disappear
for awhile, nearly sawed myself in half, and had a knock-down-drag-out fight
with a rabbit-lined hat.

The racket caused someone in the back room to open the door and
look into the shop. He didn’t see anything amiss, though one of the marionettes
hanging from the ceiling was unusually large and sweaty.

He peered at it for a long moment, frowned when it hiccupped,
peered at it a little longer, then closed the door. The magic shop was dark
again.

I got down, removed as many strings from myself as I could, and
began creeping towards the door to the back room.

I tried to look through the keyhole, but this was one of those
doors that didn’t have one. So I tried to make a keyhole, very very quietly,
using a very small chisel and a very quiet hammer.

After ten minutes of this, I wasn’t making much progress so I
got a bigger chisel and the King Of The Hammers, and went back to work.
Suddenly the door opened again and the same person looked out. I froze with my
chisel raised and a demented expression on my face. The man looked past me into
the shop for a few moments, then closed the door again.

I was getting a little frustrated. I wanted very much to know
what was going on in that back room, but there didn’t seem to be any stealthy
way to do it. So, finally I just opened the door and walked in.

“
Sorry I’m late guys,” I said, pretending I knew everybody. “You
would not believe the traffic on Made-Up Avenue today. So what are we doing?
What’s the meeting about? Jesus!”

The room was full of strange people dressed as Martians and
making “beep beep” sounds.

Maps on the walls showed Martian armies advancing in all
directions, stabbing and death-raying Earthmen, and laying waste to the
countryside. Washington D.C. and Central City had X’s drawn through them and
scary flags flying over them. Insert ovals on the maps showed pictures of
smiling Martian Generals giving us the thumbs up. Some of the Martians
portrayed on the maps were eating dead Earthmen’s bodies, but were being
chastised by their comrades for doing so.

Everyone turned to look at me. The beeps in the room took on a
more ominous tone. I figured it was time to leave.

“
Is this Yankee Stadium?” I bluffed. “No? I’ll try upstairs
then. It’s probably upstairs.”

I backed slowly out of the room and through the magic shop
again, banging into the same things I had banged into coming in. Then I banged
into Arthur Gremlin, who was blocking the way out of the shop, holding a large
gun.

I stopped. The back room emptied out and the strange men began
coming towards me, beeping louder.

I tried another bluff. “I think he went that way,” I told them,
pointing at a blank wall. “I suggest we spread out. You two take the North
Side. You three, Chinatown. Mugsy… where’s Mugsy?”

I looked around the room, supposedly to see if I could spot
Mugsy, but actually to see if this was working. It wasn’t. They kept coming towards
me.

I made one last attempt to fool them. “Look behind you,” I said
sharply. No one turned. “Hey, come on, look behind you.” A few turned this
time, but not enough. I shook my head. “All of you have to look for this to
work.”