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Roy Glashan's Library
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Amazing Stories, November 1932,
with "The Finger of the Past"
Trust Dr. Breuer to give us something "different." "The Finger of the Past" is unquestionably an entertaining bit of scientific thinking, but even more than that it is highly provocative of serious thought and is worthy of much consideration.
WALDO SWIFT, dapper young salesman of "Palaeoscopes, Inc.," shifted his necktie infinitesimally into the position of utmost nicety, squared back his shoulders, and then picked up his little black case from beside the elevator door and stepped briskly and energetically toward Herodias Buffum's office. And indeed, the prospect upon whom he was about to call was regarded among salesmen as a tough nut to crack. He had been known to eject salesmen physically into the outer corridor. Therefore, Waldo Swift, in spite of the confidence he had in the appeal of the marvelous and astonishing invention he was "distributing," gathered together all the courage he had before he opened the door. He found himself in the luxuriously furnished reception-room belonging to the executive offices of The Radionic Remedies Company, located on the 127th floor of The Manufacturers' Building. There were two other doors in addition to the one by which he had entered. Beyond one of them was the faint hum of typewriting machines, while the other, which bore the name of "Herodias Buffum, President," was slightly ajar. As Swift let his eyes rove about the room taking in first one elegant object and then another, he could not help hearing clearly the sounds that came from Buffum's office.
A distant door closed faintly, and a tinkling voice said: "Good morning, sir!"
It was Miss Peacheline Fairchild, the stenographer, who glided efficiently into the room, even before Buffum had ceased jabbing the button on his desk.
"We've got a lot of work today," Buffum said deep down in his throat. "Starting on something new."
Miss Fairchild was already sitting with notebook ready and pencil poised. Buffum was walking about the room, hands clasped behind his back, his eyes on the ceiling.
"Whew!" he exclaimed. "A quarter of a million dollars to a country doctor for a prescription on a little card. What do you think of that, Miss Fairchild?"
"Yes sir," replied Miss Fairchild respectfully, with downcast eyes.
"Well," continued Buffum, "it was worth it. That little card is going to save our business. Did you know that The Radionic Remedies was just about on the rocks?"
By way of reply, Miss Fairchild gazed at him with large, sympathetic eyes. Buffum continued:
"The patent-medicine business is getting difficult. People don't fall for stuff like they used to. Our rejuvenation idea has gone stale in spite of our wonderful publicity department, and we're going into the hole. I've about worried myself nuts for a new idea."
Miss Fairchild was studying him carefully, trying to decide whether or not he was dictating, and whether or not she ought to be putting this all down. Finally she decided that it was not dictation, and nodded sympathetically. Buffum went on:
"Then comes along old Doc Cranbury with his prescription for a thought-stimulating tincture—God knows everybody needs it nowadays. Let's see: Buffum's Brain Builder! No. That's weak. Well, we'll get a name. The first thing is to get the whole organization to work on it. Take this, Miss Fairchild: Ahem! Ah-hrr!—Wait. Let's have a look at the prescription first."
He started toward the wall, into which a heavy safe-door was let, when a mellow bell pealed softly. For just then, in the outer office, Waldo Swift had discovered the button marked: "Visitors Please Ring."
"Hell!" said Buffum. He turned to Miss Fairchild: "Bring him in and we'll have it over before we begin."
He eyed Swift's black case, as the latter entered the private office, while Swift's eye traveled about the still more luxuriously furnished room. It was certainly modern with its television screen, its photophonic beam projector, the huge keyboard for controlling the distant factory from the downtown office, the helicopter landing-stage outside the window sill. There were luxurious rugs and richly finished furniture; and amidst it, Buffum glowered at the square black case in Waldo Swift's hand.
"What the hell do you want?" he demanded.
Waldo Swift had a pleasant, cheery tone of voice. "This remarkable machine will astonish you. Tremendous value in your business, entertaining in your sure hours—"
"I can't be bothered now," growled Buffum.
"Just go right on working, sir," Waldo Swift said deferentially "I shall not interrupt."
He set his case on the floor, opened it, took out a complicated and delicate-looking piece of mechanism, and began setting it up.
"Just pay no attention to me for the moment," he said to Buffum. "As soon as I am ready I shall ask you to look at the screen for a couple of seconds."
But Buffum could not keep his eyes off the shiny, clicking little mechanism.
"What is the damned thing?" he asked.
Waldo Swift, working deftly with the apparatus, replied:
"This is the famous Palaeoscope. You can connect it with any person, scene, or object, and it will project a true and faithful animated picture of what happened to that person or at that place, at any past time that you may designate."
Buffum snorted.
"A bunch of boloney. You're wasting my time. I'm busy."
Swift never even noticed the discourtesy.
"I'm connecting it with your desk. What time shall we choose? Say this time yesterday. All right. Here goes!"
AT first Buffum started suddenly, half rose out of his chair, and a few inarticulate gurgles escaped him. However, in an instant, Swift had moved a lever on the machine. It whirred and flickered, and on the screen appeared Buffum's desk, at which was seated Buffum together with an old, gray- whiskered man. The latter gravely handed over to Buffum a small card in exchange for an elaborately executed check. Buffum was then seen to walk over to the safe and elaborately put away and lock up in it the newly acquired card.
"That's far enough!" Buffum said sharply. He was evidently nervous. "Stop the thing."
Swift shut off the machine at once.
"Now," he said, "I shall be pleased to leave this model here with you for you to try out. I'll see you again this afternoon."
"I'll look it over," growled Buffum. "I might get one for the office boy's Christmas present."
"After you've seen what it will do, sir," Swift said briskly, "you will want to order a hundred machines for your advertising department."
"Arrh!" snorted Buffum. "Quit blowing smoke-rings. You're wasting my time. I'm busy. All right, Miss Fairchild. Ready? Take this."
"Good day, sir," said Swift in the exit door. "I'll see you later."
"Hrrrumph! Damn nuisance," growled Buffum. "All right. Let's see, where was I? Oh, yes. We need the prescription of old Doc Cranbury's brain-tickler."
He got up out of his chair and walked to the safe again. Twirling the knobs, he swung open the door and reached in. His face became blank. He leaned in and searched frantically around. He became rigid. He tossed things back and forth in the safe.
"It's gone!" he screamed. "Help! Police! It's stolen!"
After a moment he quieted down, and walked about and groaned.
"I'm ruined!" he gasped, dropping into a chair. "The prescription is gone. The business is a wreck. Miss Fairchild, call the police."
Suddenly his eyes alighted on the Palaeoscope standing on a little table.
"Aha!" he cried. "If that pesticating contraption is any good, we'll find out what has become of that prescription. Never mind the police, Miss Fairchild."
Miss Fairchild dropped the telephone suddenly. She seemed unusually agitated. Buffum fumbled around the delicate mechanism for some time before he found the proper way to set and start it; but fortunately his hurried and clumsy efforts did it no harm. After several false starts it began to flicker and whirr smoothly and steadily. On the screen appeared a picture of the safe in the wall, darkened as though it were night. A young man entered by the door that led from the main office, twirled the knobs, and opened the doors of the safe. Buffum watched him in the picture in breathless fascination.
"Ho! ho!" he cried suddenly as the face of the young man on the screen turned fully around for a front view.
"So it's Oliver! My precious nephew! The police, Miss Fairchild."
Miss Fairchild scurried to the telephone and began dialing a number, while Buffum viciously jabbed the button on his desk, and then paced up and down the room snarling to himself. In a moment the door opened and a young man walked in. He seemed to be possessed of no particular personality nor distinctive appearance. He was just a nice young man, like thousands we see constantly on the street, neat, well-mannered, well-groomed, clever-looking.
"Now," said Buffum icily, standing and regarding the young man with a cold eye. "Hand over the prescription. I can prove that you've got it; so come on and quit acting innocent."
"Whassa big idea, guvnor?" the young man said calmly, evidently thoroughly accustomed to Buffum's eccentric outbursts. "Are you having a movie made?"
"Give me that prescription at once!" Buffum snarled angrily. "Or you go to jail. In fact, you'll probably go anyhow."
"Prescription for what?" asked Oliver with youthful sarcasm.
"Keeping your temper and making your meaning clear? All right, I'll sit down and write you out a good one."
He took out his fountain-pen and began unscrewing the cap. Buffum became all the more enraged at this.
"Damn you, you're making me sore!" he shouted. "I can prove that you came in here last night, opened the safe, and took a prescription out. Now deny it."
Oliver shrugged his shoulders.
"I came in last night," he said, "and put away some important papers. But your twitter about a prescription leaves me cold."
THE outer door slammed and there was a trample of feet in the reception-room. As the bell sounded, Miss Fairchild opened the door, and three policemen entered, looking around in bewilderment. Buffum stalked up to them.
"I charge this man," he shouted, swinging his arm toward Oliver, "with having opened my safe and taken a valuable document."
"Hm," said one of the policemen, with chevrons on his arm; "that's Mr. Mayflower, your nephew, isn't it?"
"What difference does that make?" roared Buffum. "Take him away and lock him up. I'll appear to charge him formally."
The policemen acceded deferentially to the demands of so powerful and wealthy a man as Buffum. Yet they were sorry for Oliver, and handled him as gently as possible. Oliver had a half-amused, half-cynical expression on his face, and said not a word. He only looked inquiringly at Miss Fairchild, and when he had gotten her eye, glanced toward Buffum and tapped his forehead. Miss Fairchild's face remained set and immovable; nothing could be read from it.
"The ungrateful whelp," Buffum continued to growl after the policemen had led Oliver out. "After I'd set him up in life! Miss Fairchild, we've got to get the prescription from him somehow, or the business is ruined. It can't be—a big firm like the Radionic—ruined! Miss Fairchild, we've got to get that prescription from him."
Miss Fairchild shrank into a corner and nodded dumbly; she wrung her hands as Buffum raved on.
"We'll have him searched at the station; then we'll go through his room. But I'm afraid. I'm afraid that the rapscallion has hidden that little card pretty thoroughly. Oh, what shall we do, Miss Fairchild? We can't let this business go on the rocks, and I've worried myself sick for months trying to think of something original. Oh, the young scoundrel! A quarter of a million dollars! I could choke him with my bare hands!"
Miss Fairchild shivered, probably at the thought of Oliver being choked with Buffum's bare hands. At this moment, the outer door was flung open as though some powerful force had burst it in, and a regal looking lady entered. Through a scornful lorgnette, and from behind the magnificence of a heap of furs, Mrs. Regina Mayflower regarded her brother sternly.
"Herodias!" she said in a voice such as one uses to call a child to account. "What's this I hear about Oliver?"
"The young rascal!" Buffum spluttered. "The scamp! Stole my prescription. Whole business depends on it. Won't give it back."
"Stole it!" Disdain, supreme disdain radiated from her words and from her whole attitude. The Mayflowers didn't steal, and she knew it.
"Sneaked in at night, and took it out of the safe," Buffum stormed.
"Yes?" Mrs. Mayflower intoned contemptuously.
"I can prove it," Buffum defended himself desperately.
"Ha! ha!" tinkled Mrs. Mayflower's laugh. "He can prove it!"
Buffum, still growling: "The scamp! The wretch!" He went to the Palaeoscope, took a good preliminary look at it, and began to fumble with it. In a moment it began to click, and suggestive shapes flickered across the screen, and disappeared tantalizingly. Buffum growled something to himself and continued to fumble with the apparatus. Mrs. Mayflower had noted something suspicious about the figures that had swiftly misted over the scene.
"Herodias!" she demanded. "What was that?"
"Hrrrrumph!" said Buffum. "What was what?"
"Put that picture on again!" ordered Mrs. Mayflower sternly. "What were you and that stenographer doing on that picture?"
SUDDENLY, as Buffum kept trying levers and buttons on the machine, the mechanism began to run smoothly, and the screen lit up brightly. Again it showed the safe, this time partly darkened, as though at twilight. Miss Peacheline Fairchild slipped stealthily into the room, her dim figure quite recognizable on the screen. She looked about her carefully, and then went to the safe, opened it, searched about; and took out a card that was plainly recognizable in the picture as Dr. Cranbury's prescription. This she put carefully into her handbag, closed the safe, and hurried out.
Buffum's mouth worked up and down in silence, like that of a fish out of the water. Then he began to splutter and choke with rage.
"You—you—you—" he turned to Miss Fairchild, but could get nothing more coherent out of himself. He seized the terrified girl by the arm and shook her. Finally, his wits and words came back.
"Regina! Quick!" he exclaimed. "Call back those policemen with Oliver. No! Not the telephone. The photophonic projector. You can pick them up as they go down the street."
Mrs. Mayflower responded with alacrity. She sent the powerful beam of light out of the window with the photophonic projector. Through the telescopic sights on the instrument she picked up the policemen leading Oliver, far down in the depths of the street. She swung it about until the spot of light enveloped them, and then spoke into the mouthpiece.
"Just a moment!" she cried. "Mr. Buffum wants you back up in his office. He now has evidence that Oliver did not take the prescription, and he has the real thief here."
She watched as the tiny group far down below swung about and started back. Then she shut off the instrument and swept haughtily back into the room. She disdained even to look at Miss Fairchild, but sat down in Buffum's luxurious armchair. Miss Fairchild fidgeted in an embarrassed way at a corner of the desk, while Buffum paced up and down.
"Where is it?" he spluttered when he had regained his composure a little. "Give it to me! I'll strangle you!"
Miss Fairchild, however, maintained a stubborn silence, and Buffum decided that it would be best to await the arrival of the police. It was not long before their steps were heard down the hall, and, together with Oliver, they entered. Oliver nodded and smiled as he glanced about the room, taking in the various elements of the scene and comprehending their significance. Then he bowed to his mother in playful deference.
"Officers!" said Buffum pompously, "I've found the real thief. I was mistaken about Mr. Mayflower. Release him and arrest this—this—this—young woman. I'll fix up all the formalities later. Now, Miss Fairchild, will you give up that prescription?"
Miss Fairchild only smiled at Buffum and shook her head. She went up to Buffum and whispered something in his ear. His face went blank; he opened his mouth as though to say something; then suddenly caught himself and stopped, and looked belligerently about the room. He clenched his fists and crooked his elbows.
"Now, Herodias!" demanded Mrs. Mayflower. "What is all of this? What did that hussy say to you? Tell me at once!"
"Damn foolishness!" muttered Buffum under his breath.
"Shall I tell?" asked Miss Fairchild, smiling archly at Buffum.
"You'd better!" said Mrs. Mayflower, "if you know what's good for you." Sternness filled the atmosphere about her.
"Give up that prescription!" repeated Buffum desperately.
Miss Fairchild stepped in front of him.
"You've promised me a new fur coat," she said, "and you've been putting me off—"
"What's that?" exclaimed Mrs. Mayflower horrified.
IN the meanwhile, Oliver had been attracted by the fascinating complicatedness of the Palaeoscope, and was tinkering with its buttons and levers. Suddenly it began to flicker and then went on clicking steadily. The screen cleared, and on it appeared a picture of Buffum holding Miss Fairchild on his lap and chucking her under the chin. Mrs. Mayflower was petrified with astonishment, and Buffum was for the moment paralyzed. Miss Fairchild giggled hysterically.
Suddenly a crash resounded through the room, and the picture suddenly went out. Buffum had kicked the machine across the room. It lay in a far corner, a mangled wreck, and from it came little sparks and lights and clicks and whirrs, which finally died down to silence.
"Search her handbag!" Buffum commanded the policemen, following it up with a lot of incoherent growlings.
A policeman stepped over to reach for Miss Fairchild's handbag; but she was the quicker of the two. She opened her handbag, took out the prescription, and held it up so that Buffum could see it.
"Here it is!" she exclaimed.
Then she suddenly crumpled it up, put it in her mouth, chewed it up and swallowed it. She laughed out in triumph; but in the middle her laugh broke, and she burst into tears. Two policemen seized her, one from each side.
Buffum turned pale, and sank into a chair with a groan, his head down in his hands. He dropped there for a moment, and then got up and walked swiftly about, with incoherent growlings. He shook his fists and clutched his hands in the direction of Miss Fairchild. Miss Fairchild broke away from the two policemen; ran up to Buffum, and threw her arms about his neck. Mrs. Mayflower shrieked and gasped.
"You used to be so nice to me!" Miss Fairchild wept on Buffum's shoulder. "I can't stand this."
Buffum kept backing away, while Miss Fairchild continued to cling to him. Everyone else in the room was tremendously embarrassed except Oliver. Suddenly, all eyes turned toward the window, whence a loud whirr proceeded. A little flivver helicopter slowly descended on the landing-stage. Out of it climbed the dapper Waldo Swift and stepped into the room through the window, carrying a little black case. He looked about him at the group in mild surprise, as though it were after all a part of his day's work.
"How do you do, ladies and gentlemen?" he said briskly.
Buffum turned on him angrily.
"This is all your fault!" he roared.
"Yes sir!" said Swift. "Anything is possible sir."
He looked over the occupants of the room, and turned to Oliver, who looked to him the most hopeful.
"The little lady here," volunteered Oliver, "Dr—ah—destroyed a very valuable document. The continued prosperity of this firm depends upon that document. The company is therefore ruined. Swallowed it, see?"
Swift smiled in sudden comprehension.
"Ah!" he said. "And you need the document. So very simple."
He looked about the room, noted the wreck of the Palaeoscope in the corner without the least quiver in his composure, and opened his lack case. He took out an exact duplicate of the first machine, and for a few minutes was busied in setting it up.
"We'll set the time back to the same hour as before," he observed as he worked, "with you and the old doctor at the desk."
In a moment Buffum and Dr. Cranbury appeared on the screen, bending over the prescription. Swift manipulated things on the machine, and the view appeared to come closer and grow larger, until it became a close-up of the prescription only, with every letter clear and plain. Swift had out his notebook and was rapidly copying down the prescription. As Buffum in the picture put the prescription into the safe, Swift shut off the machine. Then he tore the page out of his notebook on which the prescription was copied, and handed it to Buffum with a flourishing bow.
"There you are sir," he said. "Your prescription. This is just a trifling example of the service which the Palaeoscope can render you in your business and everyday life. May I put you down for a hundred machines?" he concluded, taking out his order book.
Buffum grasped eagerly at the copy of the prescription, and put it in his wallet with a sigh of relief.
"Make out an order for 500 machines," he said, "250 for our research department, and 250 for our publicity department. Come back in six weeks for another order."
He went over to his desk and bustled busily among a lot of papers; obviously to hide his confusion at the fact that Miss Fairchild was weeping convulsively in one corner. Oliver did the gentlemanly thing, and went over and patted her shoulder in sympathy. He bent over and spoke something low and soft in the effort to console her. As soon as Buffum saw this, he leaped up and whirled around; he hurried over to Miss Fairchild, brushed Oliver aside, and motioned the policemen away.
"Now Miss—" he began; "now Peacheline, you go over to Kirsch and Baum's and pick you out any kind of a fur coat you want. And, would you like to—would you like to go to Peacock's and pick you out a ring, an engagement ring?"
By way of reply, she threw her arms about Buffum's neck and buried her face in his shoulder. In order to address Oliver, Buffum had to bury his neck and chin in her tousled hair.
"Oliver!" he said. "Ah-hrrr! You young scamp, from now on you are manager of the publicity department. Do you hear? And Regina, I can see business coming in again; so you may have that new airplane you've been wanting so long."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.