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  She flushed. “I don’t think I have to take that from you, Little Ed Wonder. I’m clean. I’m neat. How I dress doesn’t effect the work I do.”

  “Well, you’re my front. Suppose somebody came in? Maybe a potential sponsor. Possibly a potential guest. What does he think? You don’t see the other girls…” He swept his eyes around the extensive office, as though in indication, and came to an abrupt halt.

  Dolly eyed him in superiority.

  He blurted, “What in the devil’s got into all you dames? I just saw Mary Malone in the elevator. She looked like she was in costume to play Little Nell, down on the farm.”

  Dolly said primly, “Mr. Mulligan asked you to see him as soon as you came in.”

  Still letting his eyes go round the office, from one to the next of some dozen of secretaries and stenographers, in utter disbelief, Ed made his way to his immediate boss’ sanctum.

  3

  He’d carried out his assignment to cover Tubber’s meeting hadn’t he? Fatso Mulligan should have been on the grateful side. He should have been, well, genial.

  Instead, he sat there like a lard Buddha and gave Ed Wonder the oatmeal look.

  Ed cleared his throat and said, “You wanted to see me, Mr. Mulligan?”

  The older man half-closed one eye, which didn’t go very far toward dimming the intensity of the glare. “See here, Wonder, what was the lame-brained idea of taking Miss Fontaine to that kooky meeting last night?”

  Ed Wonder looked at him. He opened his mouth, closed it again. He could think of something to say, but there was discretion to consider.

  Mulligan rapped, “Miss Fontaine is a highstrung young lady. Very susceptible to suggestion. Uh, delicate.”

  Helen Fontaine was about as delicate as a hydrofluoric rubdown. So he had nothing to say in reply to that.

  The TV-radio executive growled, “Well, don’t stand there shuffling around like a kid that has to go to the rest room. What’da you got to say?”

  Ed had to say, “What’s happened, Mr. Mulligan?”

  “What’s happened? How would I know what’s happened? Mr. Fontaine’s had me over the coals for the past ten minutes. The girl’s hysterical. She says this Tubber guy you took her to see hypnotized her, or something.”

  Ed shook his head. He took a breath. “She’s not hypnotized.”

  “How do you know she’s not hypnotized? She’s hysterical, keeps screaming about this Tubber.”

  Ed said placatingly, “I’ve had several hypnotists on the program. In order to straight man for them, I had to cram up on the subject. I was there last night. Believe me, Tubber didn’t hypnotize anybody.”

  Mulligan made movements of his mouth as though checking his dentures with his tongue. It came to Ed Wonder that it was just as well that his chief never appeared before camera.

  He said finally, “You better get over there and see what you can do. Mr. Jensen isn’t happy about this Tubber character. We’re having a meeting of the chapter tonight. You’d better be there to give a report on what happened.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll go right on over to the Fontaine’s. She’ll probably snap out of it.”

  Jensen Fontaine himself met Ed Wonder at the door of the Fontaine mansion. He had evidently been watching the progress of Ed’s Volkshover up the sweep of driveway that culminated in the grandiose entry which vaguely reminded the radioman of the White House.

  Actually, he had met Helen’s father a couple of times before but only glancingly. Ed doubted that he was remembered. Evidently the tycoon had long since given up trying to channel his daughter’s life. Certainly he made no effort to censor her escorts.

  He bent a grim eye on Ed Wonder now as the radioman ascended the stairs to the double doors, one of which was open. It was a day for grim eyes, Ed decided unhappily. For a long time he had been trying to get next to Jensen Fontaine through his contact with Helen. This wasn’t exactly it.

  The older man rapped, “You’re this Edward Wonder?”

  “Yes, sir. I have the Far Out Hour from midnight to one.”

  “You have what ?”

  Ed said unhappily, “On your radio and TV station, sir, WAN-TV. I have the Friday night program on radio from midnight to one o’clock.”

  “Radio?” Fontaine rasped indignantly. “Do you mean to tell me that Mulligan still continues radio programs in this day? What’s wrong with television?”

  Ed had a strong desire to close his eyes in suffering. However, he said, “Yes, sir. Nothing’s wrong with TV. In fact, I wish we could switch my program over. But there’s some people who can’t look at television.”

  “Can’t look at television? Why not! TV has become the American way of life! What kind of people can’t enjoy television? Perhaps this should be looked into, young man!”

  “Yes, sir. Well, blind people for one and…”

  Jensen Fontaine’s eye went bleaker still.

  “…and, well, people who are working and can’t sit down to watch a screen. People who are driving cars manually. There’s lots of people who still listen to radio when they can’t watch TV. I get a lot of truck drivers who listen to my program. And waitresses in all night restaurants. And…”

  The elderly tycoon blurted, “I don’t know how in the confounded blasted blazes we got onto this. You’re the young fool who took my daughter to this ridiculous religious quack’s meeting last night?”

  “Yes, sir. Yes, I was. I mean did, that is. The question came up whether or not this Ezekiel Joshua Tubber…”

  “Who?”

  “Yes, sir. Ezekiel Joshua Tubber.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Nobody has a name like that in this day. It’s a pseudonym, young man. And a man who needs a pseudonym is covering something. Probably something subversive.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s the question that came up at the last meeting of the local chapter of the Stephen Decatur Society; whether or not this Tubber was subversive. So Helen, that is, Miss Jensen, and I went to attend.”

  Some of the bleakness was gone. Jensen said, “Ummm, the society, eh. My country may she always be right …”

  “But my country, right or… ah… wrong!” Ed clipped right back at him.

  “Excellent, my boy. I wasn’t at the last meeting, Ed. I’ll call you Ed. Busy off at the convention in California. This Tubber is a subversive, eh? What’s he pulled on my daughter, Ed? We’ll get to the bottom of this.” He took Ed Wonder by the arm and led him inside.

  “Well, no sir,” Ed told him, answering his first question. “At least it didn’t seem so to me. I’m supposed to make a report to the chapter tonight. Mr. Mulligan arranged it.”

  “Hump. Sounds like a subversive to me. What did he do to Helen?”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir. I came over to see her. I’d think she’s just upset. She had a bit of fun last night. Heckled Tubber a little and he got sore and cursed her.”

  “You mean this charlatan, this, this subversive with the unknown name, actually swore at my daughter!” The glare was back.

  “Well, no sir. What I meant was he laid a curse on her. You know, a hex. A spell.”

  Jensen dropped Ed Wonder’s arm and stared at him for a long appraising moment.

  Ed said, finally, “Yes, sir.” There wasn’t anything else to say.

  Jensen Fontaine said, “Come with me, young man.” He led the way to a staircase and ascended it, wordlessly. He led the way down a hall, wordlessly. Around a corner, past a half dozen doors, wordlessly. He opened a door and preceded Ed Wonder through it.

  Helen Jensen was in bed, her hair every which way on the pillow, her face pale, and her eyes on the wild side. There were two medical looking coves and a nurse starched Prussian stiff in attendance.

  Jensen Fontaine blurted, “Out!”

  One of the doctors said smoothly, “I would suggest, Mr. Fontaine that your daughter be given a long rest and complete change of scene. Her hysteria is…”

  “Out. All of you,” Fontaine snapped, tossing his head at the trio
of medicos.

  Three sets of eyebrows went up, but all had evidently had contact with the Fontaine personality before. They gathered up odds and ends and beat a retreat.

  Helen said, “Hello, Little Ed.”

  Ed Wonder opened his mouth but before even greetings came forth, Jensen Fontaine’s blast chopped him to silence.

  “Helen!”

  “Yes, Daddy…”

  “You get out of that bed. Suppose the newspapers got this. A curse! A hex! My daughter with two of the best diagnosticians and psychiatrists in Ultra-New York in attendance because she’s been hexed. Get out of that bed. What would this do to my name? What would it do to the society if the word went out that prominent members believed in witches?”

  He spun violently, glared at Ed Wonder, for some unknown reason, and charged out of the room as though on the way to storm Little Round Top.

  Ed looked after him. “How can a man who can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds make that much noise?” he said. He looked down at Helen. “What in the devil’s wrong?”

  “I itch. Not right now. Like an allergy, or something.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, as though he had put a dime in a slot machine and nothing had come out.

  Finally he said, “When do you itch?”

  “If I put on makeup. Even the slightest touch of lipstick. Or if I do up my hair any way except combed straight down to my shoulders or done in braids. Or if I put on anything except the simplest clothes I’ve got. No silk. Not even in my underthings. I simply start itching. It started really last night, but I didn’t realize it. Little Ed, I’m scared. It works. That old goat’s curse is working on me.”

  Ed Wonder stared down at her. “Don’t be a twitch.”

  She stared back at him, defiantly.

  He had never seen Helen Fontaine before, save last night, in other than the height of heights, fashionwise. Every pore in place. It came to him now that she possibly looked better this way. Possibly when she got to be the age of Mary Malone, the screen and TV star, she’d need civilization’s contributions to aid nature’s gifts. But in her mid-twenties…

  Helen said, “You were there.”

  “Sure I was there. So old Tubber waved his arms around a little, got red in the face and slapped a hex on you. And you believed him.”

  “I believed him because it worked.” she flared back.

  “Don’t be a kook, Helen! Curses don’t work unless the person who has one laid on him believes it will work. Anybody knows that.”

  “Fine! But in this case it worked without my believing in it. Do you think I believe in curses?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, maybe I do now. But I didn’t then. And let me tell you something else, Little Ed Wonder. That chubby daughter of his, and those followers in the audience. They believe in the power, as they call it, too. They’ve seen him do it before. Remember how scared his daughter was when she heard him speaking in wrath?”

  “They’re a bunch of twitches.”

  “All right, all right. Go on. Get out. I’m getting up and getting dressed. But I’m going to dress in the simplest things I’ve got, understand?”

  “I’ll see you later,” Ed told her, not doing very well at keeping disgust from his voice.

  “The later the better,” she snapped back.

  He had to get hopping on this program for the Friday after next. On his way past Dolly’s desk to his own he said to her, “Get me Jim Westbrook. And put a little snap into it, eh?”

  “Who?” Dolly said. He still couldn’t get used to her well scrubbed face and her cotton print, not to speak of the Little Dutch girl hairdo.

  “Jim Westbrook. We’ve had him on the program several times. He’s in the book as James C. Westbrook.”

  He sat down at his desk and fumbled his key into the top drawer. Something was nagging him about Dolly’s down-on-the-farm getup, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Something that should be very obvious, but didn’t come through. He shook his head to switch subjects and brought forth the letter from the swami. He scanned it again. Confound it, this was the sort of character he could really project over TV. His program demanded TV. Half the kooks he had on as guests needed to be seen to be appreciated.

  The phone buzzed and he picked it up.

  It said, “Little Ed? Jim Westbrook here.”

  “Yeah, hi Jim. Listen, I’ve got this Hindu twitch who calls himself Swami Respa Rammal. Claims he can walk on burning coals. Is there any chance he can?”

  Over the phone Jim Westbrook said slowly, “With a name like that, friend, he sounds like a phony. A respa is a sort of Tibetian neophyte lama who indures fantastic cold as part of his training for full lamahood. And Rammal is a Moslem name, rather than Hindu. And he wouldn’t call himself a swami, either. That’s the wrong word. A swami is simply a Hindu religious teacher. Comes from the Sanskrit word svamin, meaning master.”

  “All right, all right,” Ed Wonder said. “Phony name or not, is it possible that he can walk on burning coals?”

  “It’s been done, friend.”

  Ed was incredulous. “At 800 degrees Fahrenheit?”

  “That’s a little better than the melting point of steel,” Jim told him, “but it’s been done.”

  “When, and by whom?”

  “Well, right offhand I can’t reel off names and dates but there’re two types of this fire-walking. The first takes place over coals and embers and the second over hot stones. The Hindus do it and so do various cults in the South Seas. For that matter, every year in Northern Greece and Southern Bulgaria they have a day on which they traditionally walk on hot coals. The British Society for Psychical Research and the London Council for Psychical Investigation both looked into it, witnessed it, and even had some of their members try it. Some succeeded…”

  “And…” Ed prompted.

  “Some burned the hell out of their feet.”

  Ed thought about it. He said finally, “Look Jim, do you know anybody with some nice scientific sounding handle who disagrees with you? Suppose we made this a four way panel. Me, the swami, you, who agrees it can be done, and this scientist who claims it can’t. Possibly we can stretch it over two programs. The first one we’ll interview the swami and argue it around. Then during the next week we’ll have him perform, and we’ll report on the experiment the following program.”

  Jim Westbrook said, “Come to think of it, I had an argument with Manny Levy a year or two back on the very subject.”

  “Who?”

  “Doctor Manfred Levy, down in Ultra-New York. He’s a big wig in popularization of science, several books to his credit. On top of that, he’s got a German accent you could chin yourself on. Makes him sound very scientific.”

  Ed said, “Do you think you could get him to act as a panelist on my show?”

  “Sure we could get him—at your top rates.”

  “Not for free, eh? Not just for the fun of it? My budget’s running low for this quarter.”

  Jim Westbrook laughed. “You don’t know Manny, friend.”

  Ed sighed. “Okay, Jim. Get in touch with him, will you? Let me know soonest what he says.”

  He switched off the phone, switched on the dicto and did a letter to Swami Respa Rammal. Whether or not they could get this Doctor Levy on the panel, he decided to use the fire-walker. A fire-walker, yet. Sometimes he wondered how he’d ever gotten into this line. Once he’d wanted to be an actor. It took him some ten years to find out he wasn’t. Deep within, Ed Wonder divided the world into two groups, those who gawked and listened, the twitches, and those who performed. He couldn’t stand not being one of the performers.

  He got up and wandered over to the coke dispenser, not actually thirsty. On the way he stopped at the news teleprinter and let his eyes scan the last few dispatches. El Hassan was uniting North Africa, largely in spite of itself. The Soviet Complex was having interior rumblings again. The Hungarians were slowly replacing the Russians in the higher echelons of the party.
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br />   The teleprinter chattered and he took in the latest item.

  A new fashion seems to be sweeping the nation… No makeup, no frills… Simplicity is the keynote… Robert Hope the third, TV comedian, has already tagged it the Homespun Look …

  Ed Wonder grunted. So that’s why Dolly and the rest of the office staff had come to work looking like the hired girl all set to do the milking. The way these fads could spread. It was bad enough in the old days. Hems up, hems down; hair up, hair dbwn, pony tails, wigs, short, long, and what not; bosoms are in this season, bosoms are out. It had been bad enough but now with universal television, the welfare state and the affluent society, a fad could sweep the country overnight. The proof was in the fact that this one evidently had. That explained Mary Malone’s appearance in the elevator, too. Trust Mary Malone to be in there at the beginning.

  However, he again had that premonition. He couldn’t quite put his finger on something he ought to remember. He shrugged and continued on toward the coke dispenser.

  As he stood there, drinking from his plastic cup, he contemplated the machine. Just how far would the efficiency engineers finally go? The beverage was free. The time and motion people had figured out that it was cheaper to contribute free cold drinks than to have the office help waste the time they did in trotting around getting change, or borrowing a dime each time they wanted refreshing.

  Mulligan waddled from his office and cast his eyes around the room, spotted Ed and started toward him.

  The luck of the Irish. Why couldn’t he have been seated at his desk in a rash of hard work when Fatso issued onto the scene?

  However, the studio head evidently wasn’t in his usual critical mood. He rumbled, almost pleasantly, “All set, Little Ed?”

  Ed looked at him blankly.

  “The chapter meeting,” Mulligan blatted. “Your report on this subversive religious kook.”

  Ed said brightly. “Oh sure, Mr. Mulligan. All set to go.” Actually, he hadn’t given a thought to this. He should have spent some time on it. Old man Fontaine would be there and probably half the local business bigwigs. It was a chance to make an impression. To make contacts.