But that hadn't been what he had said.
Conquer the world. I heard it plain as day. I went to fetch the mop, because that was as good a way as any to think over what to do about Winston McNeely McGhee. I mean, what did I want with the world? Uncle Otto had already bequeathed me the world, or anyway as much of it as I ever hoped to own.
When I came back Winnie was tottering around the room, followed at a respectful distance by my wife holding the baby. She was saying to the prospective conqueror of all the world:
"How did you hear about Harlan's good lu- About the tragic loss of his dear uncle, I mean?"
He groaned, "I read it in the paper." He fiddled aimlessly with the phone.
"It's all for the best, I say," said Margery in a philosophic tone, carving damp graham-cracker crumbs out of the baby's ear. "Dear Otto lived a rich and full life. Think of all those years in Yemen! And the enormous satisfaction it must have given him to be personally responsible for the installation of the largest petroleum-cracking still west of the Suez!"
"East, my dear. East. The Mutawakelite Kingdom lies just south of Saudi Arabia."
She looked at him thoughtfully, but all she said was, "Winnie, you've changed."
And so he had; but for that matter so had she. It was not like Margery to be a hypocrite. Simpering over her ex-husband I could understand-it wasn't so bad; she was merely showing the poor guy how very much better off she was than she ever would have been with him. But the tragic loss of my dear uncle had never occasioned a moment's regret in her-or in me; the plain fact of the matter is that until the man from the Associated Press called up she didn't even know I had an Uncle Otto. And I had pretty nearly forgotten it myself. Otto was the brother that my mother's family didn't talk about. How were they to know that he was laying up treasures of oil and gold on the Arabian Peninsula?
The phone rang; Winnie had thoughtlessly put it back on the hook. "No!" Margery cried into it, hardly listening, "We don't want any uranium stock! We've got closets full!"
I said, taking advantage of the fact that her attention was diverted: "Winnie. I'm a busy man. How about you telling me what you want?" He sat down with his head on his hands and made a great effort.
"It's-difficult," he said, speaking very slowly. Each word came out by itself, as though he had to choose and sort painfully among all the words that were rushing to his mouth. "I-invented something. You understand? And when I heard about you inheriting money-"
"You thought you could get some of it away from me," I sneered.
"No!" He sat up sharply-and winced and clutched his head. "I want to make money for you."
"We've got closets full," I said gently.
He said in a desperate tone, "But I can give you the world, Harlan. Trust me!"
"I never have-"
"Trust me now! You don't understand, Harlan. We can own the world, the two of us, if you'll just give me a little financial help. I've invented a drug that gives me total recall."
"How nice for you," I said, reaching for the knob of the door.
But then I began to think.
"Total recall?" I asked.
He said, sputtering with eagerness, "The upwelling of the unconscious! The ability to remember everything-the eidetic memory of an idiot savant and the indexing system of a quiz winner. You want to know the first six kings of England? Egbert, Etheiwulf, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelred and Alfred. You want to know the mating call of a ruff-necked grouse?" He demonstrated the call of the ruff-necked grouse.
"Oh," said Margery, coming back into the room with the freshly diapered baby. "Bird imitations."
"And more!" cried Winnie. "Do you know about the time the United States had two presidents?"
"No, but-"
"March the third," he said. "Eighteen seventy-seven. Rutherford B. Hayes-I'd better say Rutherford Birchard Hayes-was about to succeed Grant, and he was sworn in a day early. I ought to explain that-"
"No," I said. "Don't explain."
"Well, how about this? Want me to name the A.B.C. bowling champions from 1931 to date? Clack, Nitschke, Hewitt, Vidro, Brokaw, Gagliardi, Anderson-oh, wait a minute. I forgot 1936. That's Warren. Then Gagliardi, Anderson, Danek-"
"Winnie," I said, "cut it out, will you? This has been a tough day."
"But this is the key to conquering the world!"
"Hah," I said. "You're going to bore everybody to death by naming bowling champions?"
"Knowledge is power, Harlan." He rested his head on his palms briefly. "But it does make my head ache."
I took my hand off the knob of the door.
I said grudgingly, "Sit down, Winnie. I admit you've got me interested. I can't wait to hear what the swindle is."
"Harlan!" warned Margery.
Winnie said: "There's no swindle, I promise you. But think what it can mean! Knowledge is power, Harlan, as I say. Why, with my super-brain we can outwit the rulers of any country anywhere. We can own the world! And-money, you say? Knowledge is money too. For instance-" he winked-"worried about taxes? I can tell you the minority opinion in U. S. Govt. v. Oosterhagen, 486 Alabama 3309. There's a loophole there you could drive an armored truck through!"
Margery sat down with a cigarette in the long, long holder I'd bought her to square a beef the year after we were married. She looked at me and then at the cigarette; and it penetrated, and I raced over with a match.
"Thank you, darling," she said throatily.
She had changed herself as well as the baby. She now wore something more suitable for a co-heiress of a big fat hunk of money entertaining an ex-husband. It was a gold lamé housecoat, and she had bought it, within an hour of the time the Associated Press man had called, on a charge account we'd never owned until the early editions of the papers hit the stores around Levittown.
And that reminded me. Money. Who needed money? What was the use of inheriting all that loot from Uncle Otto if I couldn't throw Winnie out on his ear?
Politeness made me temporize: "All this is very interesting, Winnie, but-"
"Harlan, the baby!" Margery yelled. "Get him out of the pretzels!"
I did, while Winnie said faintly behind me: "The shape of a pretzel represents children's arms folded in prayer-or so it was thought in the seventh century. A good pretzel bender can bend more than thirty-five a minute. Of course, machines are faster."
I said, "Winnie-"
"Like to know the etymology of the word 'navy'? Most people think it has something to do with sailors."
"Winnie, listen to me-"
"It doesn't, though. It comes from the laborers on the Inland Navigation Canals-eighteenth-century England, you know. Well, the laborers-"
I said firmly, "Winnie, go away."
"Harlan!"
"You stay out of this, Margery," I told her. "Winnie's after my dough, that's all. Well, I haven't had it long enough to want to throw it away. Besides, who wants to rule the world?"
"Well. . ." Margery said thoughtfully.
"With all our money?" I cried. "Who needs it?"
Winnie clutched his head. "Oh," he moaned. "Wait, Harlan. All I need is a stake. I've got the long-term cycles of every stock on the Exchange down in my head-splits and dividends and earnings records since nineteen ought four! I know the private brokers' hand signals on the Curb-wave up for buy, wave down for sell; look, see how my fingers are bent? That means the spread between bid and asked is three-eighths of a point. Give me a million dollars, Harlan!"
"No."
"Just a million, that's all. You can spare it! And I'll double it in a week, quadruple it in a month-in a year we'll have a billion. A billion dollars!"
I shook my head. "The taxes-"
"Remember U. S. Govt. v. Oosterhagen!" he cried. "And that's a bare beginning. Ever think what a billion dollars could do in the hands of a super-genius?" He was talking faster and faster, a perfect diarrhea of words, as though he couldn't control the spouting. "Here!" he yelled, clutching at his temple with one hand, pulling something out of his pocket with the other. "Look at this, Harlan! It's yours for a million dollars-no, for a hundred thousand. Yes, a hundred thousand dollars and you can have it! I'll sell it for that, and then I won't split with you-we'll both be super-geniuses. Eh? Fair enough?"