'Hold on!' Wilson yelled. 'This has nothing to do with your identification of yourself. Keep to the point!'
But Turnbull had begun to comprehend. He was shouting, too, almost too excited to be coherent. 'Your honor, my client must be allowed to speak. If he shows knowledge of an intimate conversation between the late Mr. Harley and the defendant, it would be certain proof that he enjoyed the late Mr. Harley's confidence, and thus, Q.E.D., that he is no other than the astral entity who occupied Harley Hall for so long!'
Gimbel nodded sharply. 'Let me remind counsel for the defense that this is his own witness. Mr. Jenkins, continue.'
The voice began again, 'As I was saying, the woman's name -'
'Shut up, damn you!' Harley yelled. He sprang upright, turned beseechingly toward the judge. 'He is twisting it! Make him stop! Sure, I knew my uncle had a ghost. He's it, all right, curse his black soul! He can have the house if he wants it - I'll clear out. I'll clear out of the whole damned state!'
He broke off into babbling and turned about wildly. Only the intervention of a marshal kept him from hurtling out of the courtroom.
Banging of the gavel and hard work by the court clerk and his staff restored order in the courtroom. When the room had returned almost to normalcy, Judge Gimbel, perspiring and annoyed, said, 'As far as I am concerned, identification of the witness is complete. Has the defense any further evidence to present?'
Wilson shrugged morosely. 'No, your honor.'
'Counsel for the plaintiff?'
'Nothing, your honor. I rest my case.'
Gimbel plowed a hand through his sparse hair and blinked. 'In that case,' he said, 'I find for the plaintiff. An order is entered hereby that the defendant, Russell Joseph Harley, shall remove from the premises of Harley Hall all spells, pentagrams, talismans and other means of exorcism employed; that he shall cease and desist from making any attempts, of whatever nature, to evict the tenant in the future; and that Henry Jenkins, the plaintiff, shall be permitted the full use and occupancy of the premises designated as Harley Hall for the full term of his natural - ah - existence.' The gavel banged. 'The case is closed.'
'Don't take it so hard,' said a mild voice behind Russell Harley. He whirled surlily. Nicholls was coming up the street after him from the courthouse, Wilson in tow.
Nicholls said, 'You lost the case, but you've still got your life. Let me buy you a drink. In here, perhaps.'
He herded them into a cocktail lounge, sat them down before they had a chance to object. He glanced at his expensive wrist watch. 'I have a few minutes,' he said. 'Then I really must be off. It's urgent.'
He hailed a barman, ordered for all. Then he looked at young Harley and smiled broadly as he dropped a bill on the counter to pay for the drinks.
'Harley,' he said, 'I have a motto that you would do well to remember at times like these. I'll make you a present of it, if you like.'
'What is it?'
' "The worst is yet to come."'
Harley snarled and swallowed his drink without replying. Wilson said, 'What gets me is, why didn't they come to us before the trial with that stuff about this charmingly illicit client you wished on me? We'd have had to settle out of court.'
Nicholls shrugged. 'They had their reasons,' he said. 'After all, one case of exorcism, more or less, doesn't matter. But lawsuits set precedents. You're a lawyer, of sorts, Wilson; do you see what I mean?'
'Precedents?' Wilson looked at him slackjawed for a moment; then his eyes widened.
'I see you understand me.' Nicholls nodded. 'From now on in this state - and by virtue of the full-faith-and-credence clause of the Constitution, in every state of the country - a ghost has a legal right to haunt a house!'
'Good lord!' said Wilson. He began to laugh, not loud, but from the bottom of his chest.
Harley stared at Nicholls. 'Once and for all,' he whispered, 'tell me - what's your angle on all this?'
Nicholls smiled again.
'Think about it a while,' he said lightly. 'You'll begin to understand.' He sniffed his wine once more, then sat the glass down gently - And vanished.
As I've mentioned before, I was never a reader of Weird Tales, and its type of fiction did not captivate me. In 1950, though, when 'Legal Rites' finally appeared, Weird Tales was nearing the end of its thirty-year road and I'm rather glad I made its pages at least once before its end, even if only as half of a collaboration. It was the longest story in the issue and it received the cover.
'Legal Rites' and 'The Little Man on the Subway' are the only pieces of fiction I ever wrote in collaboration, and I didn't really enjoy the process. Later on in my career, I had occasion to collaborate on four or five non-fiction books and never really enjoyed that either, nor were any of the collaborations successful. I'm essentially a loner and like to take full responsibility for what I write.
In the case of 'Legal Rites' it seems to me that the beginning is mostly Pohl's rewriting; the trial scene is mostly mine; the ending - I don't remember.
Fantasy was not the only type of story I kept bullheadedly trying, over and over, without much success. Another type was the broadly farcical. I never sold either type to Campbell, but I at least sold the latter elsewhere.
Even while I was writing 'Legal Rites,' I was working on another robot story, but a humorous one - or what I considered humor. I called it 'Source of Power' and at least knew better than to waste time trying it on Campbell. I sent it directly to Thrilling Wonder, and when it was rejected there, I tried Amazing.
Amazing bought it on October 8, 1941 - my first sale to that magazine since those exciting beginning days of the fall of 1938. When it appeared on the stands (two days after Pearl Harbor) in the February 1942 issue, I found that Amazing had retitled it 'Robot AL-76 Goes Astray.'
Although 'Robot AL-76 Goes Astray' was a 'positronic robot' story, it didn't really fit in with the other three I had thus far written. When 1, Robot, my first collection of 'posi-tronic robot' stories, was put together, in 1950, I did not include 'Robot AL-76 Goes Astray' in that volume. When, however, in 1964, The Rest of the Robots was put together, I felt honor-bound by the title, if nothing else, to include all the remaining robot stories published till then, and therefore 'Robot AL-76 Goes Astray' was included.
August 1, 1941 ('Robot AL-76 Goes Astray' was then still working its slow way through the typewriter, because the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union distracted me) was another important day in my writing career. I went to see John Campbell that day and, not liking to come to him without an idea, I thought hard on the subway ride there.
The fate of 'Pilgrimage' (soon to become 'Black Friar of the Flame') was still rankling, and I wanted to write another future-historical. I therefore suggested to him that I do a short story against the background of the slow fall of the Galactic Empire (something I intended to model quite frankly on the fall of the Roman Empire).
Campbell caught fire. We spent two hours together, and by the time it was over it was not going to be a short story at all, but an indefinitely long series of stories dealing with the fall of the First Galactic Empire and the rise of the Second.
I submitted the first story of the series, 'Foundation,' to Campbell on September 8, 1941, and it was accepted on the fifteenth. It appeared in the May 1942 issue of Astounding.
Over the next eight years I was to write seven more stories of what came to be called the 'Foundation' series, and these were finally collected into three volumes, Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation, which collectively were called The Foundation Trilogy.