The Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator Read online

  Arthur came hopping around from the back just as they knocked thunderously. He’d been back there digging up a few incipient cabbages of Thomas’ planting, to see why they didn’t grow faster. He soared at least an easy thirty feet, and propped himself on his tail to look interestedly at the visitors.

  “G-good God!” said the short, squat officer. He had been smoking a cigarette. He threw it down and grabbed his gun.

  That was his mistake. Arthur liked cigarettes. This one was a mere fifteen feet from him. He soared toward it.

  The government man squawked, seeing Arthur in mid-air and heading straight for him. Arthur looked rather alarming, just then. The officer fired recklessly, missing Arthur. And Arthur remained calm. To him, the shots were not threats. They were merely the noises made by an automobile whose carburetor needed adjustment. He landed blandly, almost on the officer’s toes—and the officer attacked him hysterically with fist and clubbed gun.

  Arthur was an amiable kangaroo, but he resented the attack, actively.

  The short, squat officer squawked again as Arthur grabbed him with his forepaws. His companion backed against the door, prepared to sell his life dearly. But then—and the two things happened at once—while Arthur proceeded to kick the living daylights out of the short, squat officer, Thomas resignedly opened the door behind the other and he fell backward suddenly and knocked himself cold against the doorstep.

  Some fifteen minutes later the short, squat officer said gloomily: “It was a bum steer. Thanks for pulling that critter off me, and Casey’s much obliged for the drinks. But we’re hunting a bunch of counterfeiters that have been turning out damn good phony bills. The line led straight to you. You could have shot us. You didn’t. So we got to do the work all over.”

  “I’m afraid,” admitted Pete, “the trail would lead right back. Perhaps, as government officials, you can do something about the fourth-dimensional demonstrator. That’s the guilty party. I’ll show you.”

  He led the way to the laboratory. Arthur appeared, looking vengeful. The two officers looked apprehensive.

  “Better give him a cigarette,” said Pete. “He eats them. Then he’ll be your friend for life.”

  “Hell, no!” said the short, squat man. “You keep between him and me! Maybe Casey’ll want to get friendly.”

  “No cigarettes,” said Casey apprehensively. “Would a cigar do?”

  “Rather heavy, for so early in the morning,” considered Pete, “but you might try.”

  Arthur soared. He landed within two feet of Casey. Casey thrust a cigar at him. Arthur sniffed at it and accepted it. He put one end in his mouth and bit off the tip.

  “There!” said Pete cheerfully. “He likes it. Come on!”

  They moved on to the laboratory. They entered—and tumult engulfed them. The demonstrator was running and Thomas—pale and despairing—supervised its action. The demonstrator was turning out currency by what was, approximately, wheelbarrow loads. As each load materialized from the fourth dimension, Thomas gathered it up and handed it to Daisy, who in theory was standing in line to receive it in equitable division. But Daisy was having a furious quarrel among herself, because some one or other of her had tried to cheat.

  “These,” said Pete calmly, “are my fiancée.”

  But the short, squat man saw loads of greenbacks appearing from nowhere. He drew out a short, squat revolver.

  “You got a press turning out the stuff behind that wall, huh?” he said shrewdly. “I’ll take a look!”

  He thrust forward masterfully. He pushed Thomas aside and mounted the inch-thick glass plate. Pete reached, horrified, for the switch. But it was too late. The glass plate revolved one-eighth of a revolution. The demonstrator hummed gleefully; and the officer appeared in duplicate just as Pete’s nerveless fingers cut off everything.

  Both of the officers looked at each other in flat, incredulous stupefaction. Casey stared, and the hair rose from his head. Then Arthur put a front paw tentatively upon Casey’s shoulder. Arthur had liked the cigar. The door to the laboratory had been left open. He had come in to ask for another cigar. But Casey was hopelessly unnerved. He yelled and fled, imagining Arthur in hot pursuit. He crashed into the model of a tesseract and entangled himself hopelessly.

  Arthur was an amiable kangaroo, but he was sensitive. Casey’s squeal of horror upset him. He leaped blindly, knocking Pete over on the switch and turning it on, and landing between the two stupefied copies of the other officer. They, sharing memories of Arthur, moved in panic just before the glass plate turned.

  Arthur bounced down again at the demonstrator’s hoot. The nearest copy of the short, squat man made a long, graceful leap and went flying out of the door. Pete struggled with the other, who waved his gun and demanded explanations, growing hoarse from his earnestness.

  Pete attempted to explain in terms of pretty girls stepping on banana peels, but it struck the officer as irrelevant. He shouted hoarsely while another Arthur hopped down from the glass plate—while a third, and fourth, and fifth, and sixth, and seventh Arthur appeared on the scene.

  He barked at Pete until screams from practically all of Daisy made him turn to see the laboratory overflowing with five-foot Arthurs, all very pleasantly astonished and anxious to make friends with himself so he could play.

  Arthur was the only person who really approved the course events had taken. He had existed largely in his own society. But now his own company was numerous. From a solitary kangaroo, in fact, Arthur had become a good-sized herd. And in his happy excitement over the fact, Arthur forgot all decorum and began to play an hysterical form of disorganized leapfrog all about the laboratory.

  The officer went down and became a take-off spot for the game. Daisy shrieked furiously. And Arthur—all of him—chose new points of vantage for his leaps until one of him chose the driving motor of the demonstrator. That industrious mechanism emitted bright sparks and bit him. And Arthur soared in terror through the window, followed by all the rest of himself, who still thought it part of the game.

  In seconds, the laboratory was empty of Arthurs. But the demonstrator was making weird, pained noises. Casey remained entangled in the bars of the tesseract, through which he gazed with much the expression of an inmate of a padded cell. Only one of the short, squat officers remained in the building. He had no breath left. And Daisy was too angry to make a sound—all six of her. Pete alone was sanely calm.

  “Well,” he said philosophically, “things seem to have settled down a bit. But something’s happened to the demonstrator.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Thomas pallidly, “I’m no hand at machinery.”

  One of Daisy said angrily to another of Daisy: “You’ve got a nerve! That money on the plate is mine!”

  Both advanced. Three more, protesting indignantly, joined in the rush. The sixth—and it seemed to Pete that she must have been the original Daisy—hastily began to sneak what she could from the several piles accumulated by the others.

  Meanwhile, the demonstrator made queer noises. And Pete despairingly investigated. He found where Arthur’s leap had disarranged a handle which evidently controlled the motor speed of the demonstrator. At random, he pushed the handle. The demonstrator clucked relievedly. Then Pete realized in sick terror that five of Daisy were on the glass plate. He tried to turn it off—but it was too late.

  He closed his eyes, struggling to retain calmness, but admitting despair. He had been extremely fond of one Daisy. But six Daisies had been too much. Now, looking forward to eleven and—

  A harsh voice grated in his ear.

  “Huh! That’s where you keep the press and the queer, huh—and trick mirrors so I see double? I’m going through that trapdoor where those girls went! And if there’s any funny business on the other side, somebody gets hurt!”

  The extra officer stepped up on the glass plate, inexplicably empty now. The demonstrator clucked. It hummed. The plate moved—backward! The officer vanished—at once, utterly. As he had come out of the pa
st, he returned to it, intrepidly and equally by accident. Because one of Arthur had kicked the drive lever into neutral, and Pete had inadvertently shoved it into reverse. He saw the officer vanish and he knew where the supernumerary Daisies had gone—also where all embarrassing bank notes would go. He sighed in relief.

  But Casey—untangled from the tesseract—was not relieved. He tore loose from Thomas’ helpful fingers and fled to the car. There he found his companion, staring at nineteen Arthurs playing leapfrog over the garage. After explanations the government men would be more upset still. Pete saw the roadster drive away, wobbling.

  “I don’t think they’ll come back, sir,” said Thomas hopefully.

  “Neither do I,” said Pete in a fine, high calm. He turned to the remaining Daisy, scared but still acquisitive. “Darling,” he said tenderly, “all those bank notes are counterfeit, as it develops. We’ll have to put them all back and struggle along with the contents of the woodshed and the vegetable bin.”

  Daisy tried to look absent-minded, and failed.

  “I think you’ve got nerve!” said Daisy indignantly.

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