The man who saved New York
was a thud. That was Porky’s head falling back inert against the chair;
and there he lay, motionless, in a trance. Lisbeth noticed him and gave
a frightened little gasp.
“He’s all right,” I murmured.
“Shut up,” Baldy admonished. “Look--oh migosh, look at the old woman!”
She was something to look at, no argument on that. The light had
changed back, but that didn’t stop her. With imperious, if shaking
steps, she strode out from the curb, holding up a hand to stop the
traffic. By some miracle nothing hit her. And at the exact center of
the intersection she stopped.
“Oh-h,” I heard Baldy murmur. “She’s gonna direct the traffic!”
That undoubtedly was her general idea. She had the closed umbrella
gripped in her hand, holding it over her head as she gestured for the
cars to stop, or come forward. It was quite a sight. And in a minute or
two there were a lot of sounds --cars honking, the drivers yelling; the
grinding, bumping crash of a couple of minor collisions. How long it
went on I have no idea. I was pretty scared. The vague impulse came to
me that I ought to give Porky’s inert body a shake to rouse him; but I
didn’t dare. What that would have done, heaven only knows. Anyway, down
in the street policemen were coming on the run. The scene down there
was quite a mess, with that old woman still vigorously telling the
traffic what it ought to do. Nothing had yet hit her. Then the
policemen reached her; gripped her. The vague thought struck me that
Porky would probably think this the proper time to withdraw. Evidently
he did. I saw the old woman stiffen and then go limp in the policemen’s
arms; and here in the chair Porky gave a twitch, with his head coming
up, his eyes open staring at me, and a nervous smile on his lips.
That was all there was to it. Just as simple as that.... Porky was the
first of us to speak.
“Well, there you are,” he said.
“How’d it work?”
“Take a look,” I told him.
He looked. “See?” he said. “That’s what I mean. I got her in trouble
and I didn’t intend it, honest.”
Beyond any doubt the old woman was in trouble. Four policemen were
telling her off; and then a radio car came and they bundled her into
it.
“That’s tough,” Baldy murmured. “How’s she gonna explain it? She’ll
wind up in Bellevue.”
“Well, he didn’t intend it,” Lisbeth said. Then she turned on me. “Why
don’t you go down there and do something about it? Get her off--you can
just tell them--”
“Not me,” I said. “You go. And I’ll come to the asylum and try and get
you out. This whole thing is crazy, and anybody connected with it--”
“It may be crazy, but it works,” Baldy declared. “Listen, you lugs,
don’t you realize what we’ve got? A gold mine! Fame! Fortune! Why
listen, we’ll put Porky in the movies--”
“I don’t want to go in the movies,” Porky said. “I just want to get rid
of--”
“He doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to,” Lisbeth put in.
“That’s silly,” I told Baldy. “What would it look like in the movies?
Like nothing. Just trick photography.”
“Well then, vaudeville,” Baldy declared. “The scientific wonder of the
age. He takes possession of various people in the audience--”
“Wouldn’t _that_ make a hit with them!” I retorted.
“It would not!”
“I’ll bet we could get a thousand a week for it,” Baldy insisted.
“I won’t do it,” Porky said. “I’d wind up in the insane asylum, or in
jail. Listen, I came here to see Ray, just to ask him would he
please--”
* * * * *
It was then that the big idea came to me. The war! Money is a wonderful
thing, but what with all the publicity the war gets, naturally it’s on
your mind even more than money. How could we use Porky’s gift to help
with the war? I’ve always had a vivid imagination, and this thing
seemed suddenly to give it an immense stimulus. Lisbeth was about to
tell Baldy and me again that Porky didn’t have to do anything he didn’t
want to do, but I silenced her.
“Look here, Porky,” I demanded, “why did you make that old woman direct
traffic?”
“I dunno, it just occurred to me. When I was a kid I always wanted to
be a policeman when I grew up.”
“That’s it!” Baldy exclaimed. “His subconscious! You see--”
I interrupted him. “Porky, listen, could you take possession of somebody
who’s out of sight?”
“Sure I could,” he agreed readily. “Remember? I told you--that woman in
the room above me, arguing with her husband. I couldn’t see them.”
“All right. Now then, could you--” Baldy interrupted me. He happened to
be looking out the window. Down the street from me there’s an
Undertaking Parlour, with a Neon sign of ghastly green. “Say,” he
exclaimed, “here’s a thought! I wonder could he take possession of a
corpse, for instance? There’s probably one over there in that
Undertaker’s place. Suppose he made it come walking out! Think of how
wonderful it would--”
“I’m thinking about it and I won’t do it,” Porky declared.
“I should say not,” Lisbeth agreed. “Dad, listen, he’s told you ten
times all he wants is to--”
“Don’t be gruesome,” I told Baldy. “I’m thinking of something
important.”
“Like what?” Lisbeth demanded.
“The war,” I said. “I’ve got it all worked out.”
I told them. And I must say, it sounded even more feasible, telling it,
that it did thinking it up. Nazi submarines are always lurking off our
coast. We know that.
“Like this,” I said. “We go down near Sandy Hook. Porky doesn’t
actually have to see his victim--that’s been demonstrated. So he just
mentally selects one of the lurking submarines and takes possession of
its Commander.”
“Do I?” Porky said.
“You do.”
“And _then_ what do I do?”
“You have him run his submarine up on the shore and smash it,” I told
him enthusiastically. “Maybe the crew would get suspicious and stop
you? If they did--then all you have to do is open valve and sink the
sub. Or blow it up with one of its own torpedoes. I’m no expert on
submarines, but don’t you see, when you’re the Commander you’ll know
all about them. No trouble at all to find a dozen ways of blasting the
whole thing to smithereens.”
“And kill himself, too,” Lisbeth murmured. “Dad, I thought you had
better sense than--”
“Not at all,” I explained. “In one split second he jumps out to the
safety of his own body which is with us on shore. That’s been
demonstrated. Why, the thing’s perfect. One sub gone. Then he jumps
into another one! And another! The Battle of the Atlantic is the big
hitch in our war effort. You know that. Why, this will--”
* * * * *
Baldy was beginning to get the bigness of my idea. “It’s perfect!” he
exclaimed. “Why, listen, when Hitler finds his subs just aren’t coming
back, he’ll be afraid to send any more out! Then we can get busy on the
Japs. Take a Jap battleship, for instance. Or a Jap General, ordering
all his men in the wrong direction! What chaos! What a cinch for our
forces--”
“Well, I won’t do it,” Porky said. “It just wouldn’t work and I won’t
do it.”
“Why wouldn’t it work?” I demanded. “Lisbeth, stop trying to tell me he
doesn’t have to do what he doesn’t want to do. He does have to. This is
too important a thing--”
“It might work with just the first submarine,” Porky admitted. “But how
do I know I can jump out of the Commander’s body with everything
exploding around me? I never tried anything like that. Suppose I
calculate it wrong and I’m dead before I jump. How do I know whether I
can jump out of a dead body or not? I never tried it--”
That made Baldy mad. “Listen, you big hunk of junk,” he said, “are you
going to put your own personal safety ahead of a chance to win the war
for Uncle Sam?”
“More than just a chance--practically a sure thing,” I agreed.
“That’s because you and Baldy aren’t taking the chance,” Lisbeth put
in. “You two are safe and he gets killed. For just one submarine. It’s
suicide--just plain suicide and I won’t let him do it.”
“All right, I’ll try it,” Porky said suddenly. “I’m no coward, if you
go and put it that way. Only I sure hope it works.”
I patted him on the back. “Good boy. That’s the stuff. Now listen,
everybody, this thing will have to be kept absolutely secret, of
course.”
“Of course--definitely,” Baldy agreed.
“We’ll just go ahead and do it and say nothing,” I went on. “The war
will be won in a hurry--and why it got won will be the mystery. Who
cares, so long as we win it?”
Well, we planned the thing for about an hour. It was so simple, though,
there really wasn’t much planning to do. We decided that about eleven
o’clock that same night, we’d all go quietly down near Coney Island or
somewhere and go to work on the first sub that came within Porky’s
range. The range was an unknown quantity, of course. But, so far as any
of us could figure, there wasn’t any reason why Porky’s astral body
couldn’t jump a mile--ten miles, for instance--just as well as from my
window down into the street.
“Well, let’s go to dinner,” I said at last.
“I was thinking I would take Lisbeth to dinner,” Porky said. “Just to
talk things over, you know.” He gazed at Lisbeth with sort of shy
confusion I expect you’d call it, and she gazed back.
“I’d like that,” Lisbeth said. “Come on, let’s go.”
“And you be back here by eleven o’clock promptly,” I warned.
“Yes, of course--sure we will,” Porky agreed.
“Because the war depends on you.”
“Should you go A. W. O. L.,” Baldy put in--and he didn’t smile when he
said it--“I will personally see that you get put into an insane asylum
for the rest of your natural life.”
* * * * *
It occurred to me to mention that Porky could jump out of an insane
asylum without much trouble, but I decided to keep that thought to
myself. Lisbeth and Porky departed with more promises; and Baldy and I
had dinner and loafed around discussing the thing, waiting impatiently
for eleven o’clock. About quarter past eleven Lisbeth and Porky came
back. You’d have thought they might have spent the evening soberly
discussing the weird, dangerous things into which Porky was about to
plunge. Not at all. They had been to a double-feature movie--“Love’s
Lingering,” and “Passion’s Pretty Flowers,” or something like that.
They were very happy about it. But they sobered down when I mentioned
that Porky had the fate of the war on his hands; and by the time we got
down to the seashore Porky was looking a little white around the gills.
“I sure hope this thing works,” he said weakly.
“Of course it will,” Baldy and I assured him. We sat him down on the
sand. It was a lonely stretch, with the waves rolling up in long
rhythmic lines of white and the open sea a deep purple with leaden
clouds overhead and a wan moon trying to break through.
“Now then, make yourself comfortable,” I told Porky as we stretched him
out on the sand. “We’ll be right here by you all the time.”
That didn’t seem to comfort him much. “I sure hope this thing works,”
he said.
With the fate of the war at stake, I sure hoped so myself; but I wasn’t
going to express any doubts about it. Baldy and I sat down and lighted
up our pipes.
“Just keep your mind on the nearest submarine Commander,” I said. “And
then jump into him and go to work. Then--withdraw. You’ll be back here
with us instantaneously and we’ll start you right off again, it’s a
cinch,” I assured him.
“I sure hope so,” he agreed.
“Nazi submarine Commander,” Baldy put in with sudden thought. “There
might be a U. S. sub out there, Porky. Now listen--don’t you get this
thing mixed--”
“It’s just plain suicide--that’s what it is,” Lisbeth murmured
resentfully. But Baldy and I silenced her.
And then Porky went to work. He was stretched on the sand with head and
shoulders propped up by his elbows behind him. We all held our breaths.