And, Gentle Reader, if you don’t think they’re funny, do your best not to tell me so. Leave me to my illusions.
Button, Button
It was the tuxedo that fooled me and for two seconds I didn’t recognize him. To me, he was just a possible client, the first that had whiffed my way in a week – and he looked beautiful.
Even wearing a tuxedo at 9:45A.M.he looked beautiful. Six inches of bony wrist and ten inches of knobby hand continued on where his sleeve left off; the top of his socks and the bottom of his trousers did not quite join forces; still he looked beautiful.
Then I looked at his face and it wasn’t a client at all. It was my uncle Otto. Beauty ended. As usual, my uncle Otto’s face looked like that of a bloodhound that had just been kicked in the rump by his best friend.
I wasn’t very original in my reaction. I said, “UncleOtto!”
You’d know him too, if you saw that face. When he was featured on the cover of Time about five years ago (it was either ’57 or ’58), 204 readers by count wrote in to say that they would never forget that face. Most added comments concerning nightmares. If you want my uncle Otto’s full name, it’s Otto Schlemmelmayer. But don’t jump to conclusions. He’s my mother’s brother. My own name is Smith.
He said, “Harry, my boy,” and groaned.
Interesting, but not enlightening. I said, “Why the tuxedo?”
He said, “It’s rented.”
“All right. But why do you wear it in the morning?”
“Is it morning already?” He stared vaguely about him, then went to the window and looked out.
That’s my uncle Otto Schlemmelmayer. I assured him it was morning and with an effort he deduced that he must have been walking the city streets all night.
He took a handful of fingers away from his forehead to say, “But I was so upset, Harry. At the banquet -”
The fingers waved about for a minute and then folded into a quart of fist that came down and pounded holes in my desk top. “But it’s the end. From now on 1 do things my own way.”
My uncle Otto had been saying that since the business of the “Schlemmelmayer Effect” first started up. Maybe that surprises you. Maybe you think it was the Schlemmelmayer Effect that made my uncle Otto famous. Well, it’s all how you look at it.
He discovered the Effect back in 1952 and the chances are that you know as much about it as I do. In a nutshell, he devised a germanium relay of such a nature as to respond to thoughtwaves, or anyway to the electromagnetic fields of the brain cells. He worked for years to build such a delay into a flute, so that it would play music under the pressure of nothing but thought. It was his love, his life, it was to revolutionize music. Everyone would be able to play; no skill necessary – only thought.
Then, five years ago, this young fellow at Consolidated Arms, Stephen Wheland, modified the Schlemmelmayer Effect and reversed it. He devised a field of supersonic waves that could activate the brain via a germanium relay, fry it, and kill a rat at twenty feet. Also, they found out later, men.
After that, Wheland got a bonus of ten thousand dollars and a promotion, while the major stockholders of Consolidated Arms proceeded to make millions when the government bought the patents and placed its orders.
My uncle Otto? He made the cover of Time.
After that, everyone who was close to him, say within a few miles, knew he had a grievance. Some thought it was the fact that he had received no money; others, that his great discovery had been made an instrument of war and killing.
Nuts! It was his flute! That was the real tack on the chair of his life. Poor Uncle Otto. He loved his flute. He carried it with him always, ready to demonstrate. It reposed in its special case on the back of his chair when he ate, and at the head of his bed when he slept. Sunday mornings in the university physics laboratories were made hideous by the sounds of my uncle Otto’s flute, under imperfect mental control, flatting its way through some tearful German folk song.
The trouble was that no manufacturer would touch it. As soon as its existence was unveiled, the musicians’ union threatened to silence every demiquaver in the land; the various entertainment industries called their lobbyists to attention and marked them off in brigades for instant action; and even old Pietro Faranini stuck his baton behind his ear and made fervent statements to the newspapers about the impending death of art.
Uncle Otto never recovered.
He was saying, “Yesterday were my final hopes. Consolidated informs me they will in my honor a banquet give. Who knows, I say to myself. Maybe they will my flute buy.” Under stress, my uncle Otto’s word order tends to shift from English to Germanic.
The picture intrigued me.
“What an idea,” I said. “A thousand giant flutes secreted in key spots in enemy territories blaring out singing commercials just flat enough to -”
“Quiet! Quiet!” My uncle Otto brought down the flat of his hand on my desk like n pistol shot, and the plastic calendar jumped in fright and fell down dead. “From you also mockery? Where is your respect?”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Otto.”
“Then listen. I attended the banquet and they made speeches about the Schlemmelmayer Effect and how it harnessed the power of mind. Then when I thought they would announce they would my flute buy, they give me this!”
He took out what looked like a two-thousand-dollar gold piece and threw it at me. I ducked.
Had it hit the window, it would have gone through and brained a pedestrian, but it hit the wall. I picked it up. You could tell by the weight that it was only gold plated. On one side it said: “The Elias Hancroft Sudford Award” in big letters, and “to Dr. Otto Schlemmelmayer for his contributions to science” in small letters. On the other side was a profile, obviously not of my uncle Otto. In fact, it didn’t look like any breed of dog; more like a pig.
“That,” said my uncle Otto, “is Elias Bancroft Sudford, chairman of Consolidated Arms!”
He went on, “So when I saw that was all, I got up and very politely said: ’Gentlemen, dead drop!’ and walkedout.”
“Then you walked the streets all night.” I filled in for him, “and came here without even changing your clothes. You’re still in your tuxedo.”
My uncle Otto stretched out an arm and looked at its covering. “A tuxedo?” he said.
“A tuxedo!” I said.
His long, jowled checks turned blotchy red and he roared, “I come here on something of first-rate importance and you insist on about nothing but tuxedos talking. My own nephew!”
I let the fire burn out. My uncle Otto is the brilliant one in the family, so except for trying to keep him from falling into sewers and walking out of windows, we morons try not to bother him.
I said, “And what can I do for you, Uncle?”
I tried to make it sound businesslike; I tried to introduce the lawyer-client relationship.
He waited impressively and said, “I need money.”
He had come to the wrong place. I said, “Uncle, right now I don’t have -”
“Not from you,” he said.
I felt better.
He said, “There is a new Schlemmelmayer Effect; a better one. This one I do not in scientific journals publish. My big mouth shut I keep. It entirely my own is.” He was leading a phantom orchestra with his bony fist as he spoke.
“From this new Effect,” he went on, “I will make money and my own flute factory open.”
“Good,” I said, thinking of the factory and lying.
“But I don’t know how.”
“Bad,” I said. thinking of the factory and lying.