The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (42 page)

"They did, did they?"

"Yes," said the boy.

"The-sons of bitches!" and every sword was out of its sheath in
an instant, and the men on their feet.

"Come on!" shouted Doangivadam, fetching his long rapier up
with a whiz and falling into position.

But the men hesitated, wavered, gave back, and that was the
friend of the under dog's opportunity-he was on them like a cat.
They recovered, and braced up for a moment, but they could not
stand against the man's impetuous assault, and had to give way
before it and fall back, one sword after another parting from their
hands with a wrench and flying, till only two of the enemy remained armed-Katzenyammer and Binks-then the champion
slipped and fell, and they jumped for him to impale him, and I
turned sick at the sight; but 44 sprang forward and gripped their
necks with his small hands and they sank to the floor limp and
gasping. Doangivadam was up and on guard in a moment, but the battle was over. The men formally surrendered-except the two
that lay there. It was as much as ten minutes before they recovered;
then they sat up, looking weak and dazed and uncertain, and
maybe thinking the lightning had struck again; but the fight was
all out of them and they did not need to surrender; they only felt of
their necks and reflected.

We victors stood looking down upon them, the prisoners of war
stood grouped apart and sullen.

"How was that done?" said Doangivadam, wondering; "what was
it done with?"

"He did it with his hands," I said.

"With his hands? Let me see them, lad . . . . Why, they are soft
and plump-just a girl's. Come, there's no strength in these paddies; what is the secret of this thing?"

So I explained:

"It isn't his own strength, sir; his master gives it him by magicBalthasar the enchanter."

So then he understood it.

Ile noticed that the men had fallen apart and were picking up
their swords, and he ordered 44 to take the swords away from them
and bring them to him. And he chuckled at the thought of what
the boy had done, and said,

"If they resist, try those persuaders of yours again."

But they did not resist. When 44 brought him the swords he
piled them on the table and said,

"Boy, you were not in the conspiracy; with that talent of yours,
why didn't you make a stand?"

"There was no one to back me, sir."

"There's something in that. But I'm here, now. It's backing
enough, isn't it? You'll enlist for the war?"

"Yes, sir."

"That settles it. I'll be the right wing of the army, and you'll be
the left. We will concentrate on the conspiracy here and now.
What is your name?"

The boy replied with his customary simplicity,

"No. 44, New Series 864,962."

Doangivadam, who was inserting the point of his rapier into its sheath, suspended the operation where it was, and after a moment
asked,

"What did I understand you to say?"

"No. 44, New Series 864,962."

"Is-is that your name?"

"Yes, sir."

"My-word, but it's a daisy! In the hurry of going to press, let's
dock it to FortyFour and put the rest on the standing-galley and let
it go for left-over at half rates. Will that do?"

"Yes, sir."

"Come, now-range up, men, and plant yourselves! FortyFour
is going to resume his account of the conspiracy. Now go on, 44,
and speak as frankly as you please."

FortyFour told the story, and was not interrupted. When it was
finished Doangivadam was looking sober enough, for he recognized
that the situation was of a seriousness beyond anything he had
guessed-in fact it had a clearly hopeless look, so far as he could at
the moment see. The men had the game in their hands; how could
he, or any other, save the master from the ruin they had planned?
That was his thought. The men read it in his face, and they looked
the taunts which they judged it injudicious to put into words while
their weapons were out of their reach. Doangivadam noted the
looks and felt the sting of them as he sat trying to think out a
course. He finished his thinkings, then spoke:

"The case stands like this. If the master dismisses 44-but he
can't lawfully do it; that way out is blocked. If 44 remains, you
refuse to work, and the master cannot fulfill his contract. That is
ruin for him. You hold all the cards, that is evident.

Having conceded this, he began to reason upon the matter, and
to plead for the master, the just master, the kind and blameless
master, the generous master, now so sorely bested, a master who
had never wronged any one, a master who would be compassionate
.
if he were in their place and they in his . . . .

It was time to interrupt him, lest his speech begin to produce
effects, presently; and Katzenyammer did it.

"That's enough of that taffy-shut it off!" he said. "We stand
solid; the man that weakens-let him look to himself!"

The war-light began to rise in Doangivadam's eyes, and he
said-

"You refuse to work. Very well, I can't make you, and I can't
persuade you-but starvation can! I'll lock you into the shop, and
put guards over you, and the man that breaks out shall have his
reward."

The men realized that the tables had been turned; they knew
their man-he would keep his word; he had their swords, he was
master of the situation. Even Katzenyammer's face went blank with
the suddenness of the checkmate, and his handy tongue found
nothing at the moment to say. By order the men moved by in single
file and took up their march for the shop, followed by 44 and
Doangivadam, who carried swords and maintained peace and order.
Presently-

"Halt!" cried the commander. "There's a man missing. Where is
Ernest Wasserman?"

It was found that he had slipped out while 44 was telling his
story. But all right, he was heard coming, now. He came swaying
and tottering in, sank into a chair, looking snow white, and said,
"0, Lord!"

Everybody forgot the march, and crowded around him, eager to
find out what dreadful thing had happened. But he couldn't answer questions, he could only moan and shiver and say-

"Don't ask me! I've been to the shop! 0, lordylord, oh, lordylord!"

They couldn't get a thing out of him but that, he was that used
up and gone to pieces. Then there was a break for the shop,
Doangivadam in the lead, and the rest clattering after him through
the dim and musty corridors. When we arrived we saw a sight to
turn a person to stone: there before our eyes the press was whirling
out printed sheets faster than a person could count them-just
snowing them onto the pile, as you may say-yet there wasn't a
human creature in sight anywhere!

And that wasn't all, nor the half. All the other printing-shop
work was going briskly on-yet nobody there, not a living thing to
be seen! You would see a sponge get up and dip itself in a basin of
water; see it sail along through the air; see it halt an inch above a galley of dead matter and squeeze itself and drench the galley, then
toss itself aside; then an invisible expert would flirt the leads out of
that matter so fast they fairly seemed to rain onto the imposingstone, and you would see the matter contract and shrink together
under the process; next you would see as much as five inches of that
matter separate itself from the mass and rise in the air and stand
upright; see it settle itself upon that invisible expert's ring-finger as
upon a seat; see it move across the room and pause above a case and
go to scattering itself like lightning into the boxes-raining again?
yes, it was like that. And in half or three-quarters of no time you
would see that five inches of matter scatter itself out and another
five come and take its place; and in another minute or two there
would be a mountain of wet type in every box and the job finished.

At other cases you would see "sticks" hovering in the air above
the space-box; see a line set, spaced, justified and the rule slipped
over in the time it takes a person to snap his fingers; next minute
the stick is full! next moment it is emptied into the galley! and in
ten minutes the galley's full and the case empty! It made you dizzy
to see these incredible things, these impossible things.

Yes, all the different kinds of work were racing along like Sam
Hill-and all in a sepulchral stillness. The way the press was
carrying on, you would think it was making noise enough for an
insurrection, but in a minute you would find it was only your fancy,
it wasn't producing a sound-then you would have that sick and
chilly feeling a person always has when he recognizes that he is in
the presence of creatures and forces not of this world. The invisibles
were making up forms, locking up forms, unlocking forms, carrying
new signatures to the press and removing the old: abundance of
movement, you see, plenty of tramping to and fro, yet you couldn't
hear a footfall; there wasn't a spoken word, there wasn't a whisper,
there wasn't a sigh-oh, the saddest, uncanniest silence that ever
was.

But at last I noticed that there really was one industry lacking-a
couple of them: no proofs were taken, no proofs were read! Oh,
these were experts, sure enough! When they did a thing, they did it
right, apparently, and it hadn't any occasion to be corrected.

Frightened? We were paralyzed; we couldn't move a limb to get
away, we couldn't even cross ourselves, we were so nerveless. And
we couldn't look away, the spectacle of those familiar objects drifting about in the air unsupported, and doing their complex and
beautiful work without visible help, was so terrifyingly fascinating
that we had to look and keep on looking, we couldn't help it.

At the end of half an hour the distribution stopped, and the
composing. In turn, one industry after another ceased. Last of all,
the churning and fluttering press's tremendous energies came to a
standstill; invisible hands removed the form and washed it, invisible hands scraped the bed and oiled it, invisible hands hung the
frisket on its hook. Not anywhere in the place was any motion, any
movement, now; there was nothing there but a soundless emptiness, a ghostly hush. This lasted during a few clammy moments,
then came a sound from the furthest case-soft, subdued, but
harsh, gritty, mocking, sarcastic: the scraping of a rule on a box-partition! and with it came half a dozen dim and muffled spectral
chuckles, the dry and crackly laughter of the dead, as it seemed to
me.

In about a minute something cold passed by. Not wind, just cold.
I felt it on my cheek. It was one of those ghosts; I did not need any
one to tell me that; it had that damp, tomby feel which you do not
get from any live person. We all shrank together, so as not to
obstruct the others. They straggled along by at their leisure, and we
counted the frosts as they passed: eight.

WE ARRIVED back to our beer-and-chess room troubled and
miserable. Our adventure went the rounds of the castle, and soon
the ladies and the servants came, pale and frightened, and when
they heard the facts it knocked them dumb for one while, which
was not -a bad thing.

But the men were not dumb. They boldly proposed to denounce
the magician to the Church and get him burnt, for this thing was a little too much, they said. And just then the magician appeared,
and when he heard those awful words, fire and the Church, he was
that scared he couldn't stand; the bones fairly melted in his legs and
he squshed down in a chair alongside of Frau Stein and Maria, and
began to beg and beseech. His airy pride and self-sufficiency had all
gone out of him, and he pretended with all his might that he hadn't
brought those spectres and hadn't had anything to do with it. He
seemed so earnest that a body could hardly keep from believing
him, and so distressed that I had to pity him though I had no love
for him, but only admiration.

But Katzenyammer pressed him hard, and so did Binks and
Moses Haas, and when Maria and her mother tried to put in a word
for him they convinced nobody and did him no good. Doangivadam
put the climax to the poor man's trouble and hit the nail on the
head with a remark which everybody recognized as the wisest and
tcllingest thing that had been said yet. He said-

"Balthasar Hoffman, such things don't happen by accident-you
know that very well, and we all do. You are the only person in the
castle that has the power to do a miracle like that. Now thenfirstly, it happened; secondly, it didn't happen by itself; thirdly, you
are here. What would anybody but a fool conclude?"

Several shouted-

"He's got him! got him where he can't budge!"

Another shouted-

"He doesn't answer, and he can't-the stake's the place for him!"

The poor old thing began to cry. The men rose against him in a
fury; they were going to seize him and hale him before the authorities, but Doangivadam interposed some more wisdom, good and
sound. I said-

"Wait. It isn't the best way. He will leave the enchantment on,
for revenge. We want it taken off, don't we?"

Everybody agreed, by acclamation. Doangivadam certainly had a
wonderful head, and full of talent.

"Very well, then. Now Balthasar Hoffman, you've got a chance
for your life. It has suited you to deny, in the most barefaced way,
that you put that enchantment on-let that pass, it doesn't signify. What we want to know now, is, if we let you alone, do you promise
it shan't happen again?"

It brought up his spirits like raising the dead, he was so glad and
grateful.

"I do, I do!" he said; "on my honor it shan't happen again."

It made the greatest change. Everybody was pleased, and the
awful shadow of that fear vanished from all faces, and they were as
doomed men that had been saved. Doangivadam made the magician give his honor that he would not try to leave the castle, but
would stand by, and be a safeguard; and went on to say-

"That enchantment had malice back of it. It is my opinion that
those invisible creatures have been setting up and printing mere
rubbish, in order to use up the paper-supply and defeat the master's
contract and ruin him. I want somebody to go and see. Who will
volunteer?"