Or anyway, it looked like a washing machine.
Wapshot put his hand on it with simple pride.
“My Semantic Polarizer,” he explained.
I followed him into the room, holding my breath. There was a fine, greasy film of grit on the gadget Wapshot had not been clever enough to close the window to the airshaft, which appeared to double as a garbage chute for the guests on the upper stories. Under the grit as I say, a washing machine. One of the small light-housekeeping kinds: a drawn aluminum pail, a head with some sort of electric business inside. And a couple of things that didn’t seem connected with washing clothes two traps, one on either side of the pail. The traps were covered with wire mesh, and both of them were filled with white cards.
“Here,” said Wapshot, and picked one of the cards out of the nearest trap. It was a tiny snapshot, like the V-mail letters, photographically diminished, soldiers overseas used to send. I read it without difficulty: Dear Mr. Wapshat,
My Husband was always a good Husband to me, not counting the Drink, but when his Cousin moved in up-stairs he cooled off to me. He is always buying her Candy and Flowers because he promised her Mother he would take care of her after the Mother, who was my Husband’s Aunt, died. Her Television is always getting broken and he has to go up to fix it, sometimes until four o’clock in the Morning. Also, he never told me he had an Aunt until she moved in. I enclose $1 Dollar and .98 Cents as it says in your ad. in SHUT UP!, please tell me, is she really his Cousin?
I looked up from the letter. Wapshot took it from me, glanced at it, shrugged. “I get a lot of that kind,” he said.
“Mr. Wapshot, are you confessing that you are telling fortunes by mail?”
“No!” He looked upset. “Didn’t I make you understand? It hasn’t got anything to do with fortunes. Questions that have a yes or no answer, that’s all if I can give them a definite yes or a definite no, I do it and keep the dollar ninety-eight. If I can’t I give back the money.”
I stared at him, trying to tell if he was joking. He didn’t look as though he was joking. In the airshaft something went whiz-pop; a fine spray of grit blew in off the window sill.
Wapshot shook his head reproachfully. “Throwing their trash down again. Mr. Barclay, I’ve told the desk clerk a dozen times”
“Forget the desk clerk! What’s the difference between what you said and fortune-telling?”
He took a deep breath. “I swear, Mr. Barclay,” he said sadly, “I don’t think you listen. I went all through this in your office.”
“Do it again.”
He shrugged. “Well,” he said, “you start with Clerk Maxwell. He was a man who discovered a lot of things, and one of the things he discovered he never knew about”
I yelled, “Now, how could he”
“Just listen, Mr. Barclay. It was something that they call ‘Maxwell’s Demon.’ You know what hot air is?”
I said, meaning it to hurt, “I’m learning.”
“No, no, not that kind of hot air. I mean just plain hot air, like you might get out of a radiator. It’s hot because the molecules in it are moving fast. Understand?
Heat is fast molecules, cold is slow molecules. That’s the only difference.” He was getting warmed up. “Now, ordinary air,” he went on, “is a mixture of molecules at different speeds. Some move fast, some move slow; it’s the average that gives you your temperature. What Clerk Maxwell said, and he said it kind of as a joke, you know except a genius never really jokes, and never really makes a mistake; even the things he doesn’t really mean sometimes turn out to be true Anyway, what Clerk Maxwell said was, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could train a little demon to stand in the window of a house. He could direct the fast-moving molecules inside, giving us heat, and direct the slow-moving ones into, say, the kitchen refrigerator giving us cold.’ You follow me so far?”
I laughed. “Ha-ha. But I’m not a fool, Mr. Wapshot, and I have had a certain amount of education. I am aware that there is a law of entropy that”
“Ha-ha,” he interrupted. “Hold on for a minute, Mr.
Barclay. I heard all about the law of entropy, which says that high and low temperatures tend to merge and average out, instead of separating. I heard about it, you heard about it, and even Maxwell heard about it. But there was a German fellow name of Hilsch, and he didn’t hear about it. Because what he did, Mr. Barclay, was to invent something called the ‘Hilsch Tube,’ and all the Hilsch tube is is Maxwell’s demon come to life. Honest. It really works.
You blow into it it’s a kind of little pipe with a joint sticking out of it, the simplest-looking little thing you ever saw and hot air comes out of one end, cold air comes out of the other. Don’t take my word for it,” he said hurriedly, holding up his hand. “Don’t argue with me. After World War II, they brought back a couple of those things from Germany, and they’re all over the country now. They work.”
I said patiently, “Mr. Wapshot, what has this got to do with fortune-telling?”
He scowled. “It isn’t fortune Well, never mind that.
So we take my Semantic Polarizer. I put into it a large sample of particles what we call a ‘universe.’ These particles are microfilmed copies of letters people have sent me, along with their checks for a dollar ninety-eight, just like I told them to do in my ads. I run the Polarizer for a while, until the particles in the ‘universe’ are thoroughly randomed, and then I start tapping off the questions. The ones that come out at this end, the answer is ‘yes.’ The ones that come out at the other, ‘no.’ I have to admit,” he confessed, a little embarrassed, “that I can only pull about sixty per cent out before the results begin getting unreliable the ones that come off slowly are evidently less highly charged than the ones that come off right away, and so there’s a chance of error. But the ones that come off early, Mr. Barclay, they’re for sure. After all,” he demanded, “what else can they be but definite? Don’t for-get, the particles are exactly alike in every respect shape, color, weight, size, texture, appearance, feel, everything every respect but one. The only difference is, for some the answer is ‘yes,’ for some the answer is ‘no.’ “
I stood looking at him silently.
A bottle whizzed and splintered in the airshaft; we both ducked.
I said, “It works?”
“It works,” he said solemnly.
“You’ve tried it out?”
He grinned almost for the first time. “You took my case, didn’t you? That was a yes. Your price was five hundred? That was a yes. It works, Mr. Barclay. As I see it, that ends the discussion.”
And so it did, of course permanently.
The Semantic Polarizer was remarkably easy to run. I played with it for a while, and then I sent the white-haired bellboy down for the Sunday papers. He looked at me as if I was some kind of an idiot. “Excuse me,” he said, scratching his head, “but isn’t today Wednes”
“I want the Sunday papers,” I told him. “Here.” Well, the five-dollar bill got the papers for me, but obviously he still thought I was crazy. He said: “Excuse me, but did the gemmun in this room go out?”
“You mean Mr. Wapshot?” I asked him. “Yes. That’s right. He went out. And now, if you will kindly do the same….”
I locked the door behind him. Oh, Wapshot had gone out, all right. I pulled the papers apart they were a stack nearly a foot high and crumpled them section by section, and when I had dumped them down the airshaft piece by piece, stare how I might, lean as far out as I would, I could see nothing at the bottom of the shaft but paper.
So much for Cleon Wapshot, gone early to join the immortals.
I checked the room over carefully. There was one small blood spot on the floor, but in that room it hardly mattered. I pulled the leg of the chair over to cover it, put the Semantic Analyzer in its crate, turned off the light and rang for the elevator. The blasted thing weighed a ton, but I managed it.