“Thass what I shaid,” Charlie said. “Suit yourshelf.”
“You did not.”
“What did I shay, then?”
I said, “You shaid—I mean said: ‘Shoot yourself.’”
Even Jove nods.
Only Jove doesn’t wear a headband like the one I still had on. Or maybe, come to think of it, he does. It would explain a lot of things.
I must have nodded, because there was the sound of a shot. I let out a yell and jumped up, and Charlie jumped up too. He looked sober.
He said, “Hank, you had that thing on. Are you—?”
I was looking down at myself and there wasn’t any blood on the front of my shirt. Nor any pain anywhere. Nor anything. I quit shaking. I looked at Charlie; he wasn’t shot either. I said, “But who—? What—?”
“Hank,” he said. “That shot wasn’t in this room at all. It was outside, in the hallway, or on the stair.”
“On the stair?” Something prickled at the back of my mind. What about a stair? I saw a man upon the stair, a little man who was not there. He was not there again today. Gee, I wish he’d go away.
“Charlie,” I said. “It was Yehudi! He shot himself because I said ‘shoot yourself’ and the pendulum swung. You were wrong about it being an—an automatonic autosuggestive whatzit. It was Yehudi doing it all the time. It was—”
“Shut up,” he said.
But he went over and opened the door and I followed him and we went out in the hallway.
There was a decided smell of burnt powder. It seemed to come from about halfway up the stairs because it got stronger as we neared that point.
“Nobody there,” Charlie said, shakily.
In an awed voice I said, “He was not there again today. Gee, I wish— ”
“Shut up,” said Charlie sharply.
We went back into my room.
“Sit down,” Charlie said. “We got to figure this out. You said, ‘Shoot yourself,’ and either nodded or swayed forward. But you didn’t shoot yourself. The shot came from—” He shook his head, trying to clear it.
“Let’s have some coffee,” he suggested. “Some hot, black coffee. Have you got— Hey, you’re still wearing that headband. Get us some, but for Heaven’s sake be careful.”
I said, “Bring us two cups of hot black coffee.” And I nodded, but it didn’t work. Somehow I’d known it wouldn’t.
Charlie grabbed the band off my head. He put it on and tried it himself.
I said, “Yehudi’s dead. He shot himself. That thing’s no good anymore. So I’ll make the coffee.”
I put the kettle on the hot plate. “Charlie,” I said, “look, suppose it was Yehudi doing that stuff. Well, how do you know what his limitations were? Look, maybe he could have brought us Lili—”
“Shut up,” said Charlie. “I’m trying to think.”
I shut up and let him think.
And by the time I had the coffee made, I realized how silly I’d been talking.
I brought the coffee. By that time, Charlie had the lid off the pillbox affair and was examining its innards. I could see the little pendulum that worked the switch, and a lot of wires.
He said, “I don t understand it. There’s nothing broken.”
“Maybe the battery,” I suggested.
I got out my flashlight and we used its bulb to test the little dry cell. The bulb burned brightly.
“Idon’t understand it,” Charlie said.
Then I suggested, “Let’s start from the beginning, Charlie. It did work. It got us stuff for drinks. It mixed one pair of drinks. It— Say—”
“Iwas just thinking of that,” Charlie said. “When you said, ‘Blow me down,’ and bent over to pick up the drink, what happened?”
“A current of air. It blew me down, Charlie, literally. How could I have done that myself? And notice the difference in pronouns. I said, ‘Blow me down,’ then but later I said, ‘Shoot yourself.’ If I’d said, ‘Shoot me,’ why maybe—”
There was that prickle down my spine again.
Charlie looked dazed. He said, “But I worked it out on scientific principles, Hank. It wasn’t just an accident. I couldn’t be wrong. You mean you think that—It’s utterly silly!”
I’d been thinking just that, again. But differently. “Look,” I said, “let s concede that your apparatus set up a field that had an effect upon the brain, but just for argument let’s assume you misunderstood the nature of the field. Suppose it enabled you to project a thought. And you were thinking about Yehudi; you must have been because you jokingly called it the Yehudi principle, and so Yehudi—”
“That’s silly,” said Charlie.
“Give me a better one.
He went over to the hot plate for another cup of coffee.
And I remembered something then, and went over to the typewriter table. I picked up the story, shuffling the pages as I picked them up so the first page would come out on top, and I started to read.
I heard Charlie’s voice say, “Is it a good story, Hank?” I said, “G-g-g-g-g-g—”
Charlie took a look at my face and sprinted across the room to read over my shoulder. I handed him the first page. The title on it was THE YEHUDI PRINCIPLE.
The story started:
“I am going crazy.
“Charlie Swann is going crazy, too. Maybe more than I am, because it was his dingbat. I mean, he made it and he thought he knew what it was and how it worked.”
As I read page after page I handed them to Charlie and he read them too. Yes, it was this story. The story you’re reading right now, including this part of it that I’m telling right now. Written before the last part of it happened.
Charlie was sitting down when he finished, and so was I. He looked at me and I looked at him.
He opened his mouth a few times and closed it again twice before he could get anything out. Finally he said, “T-time, Hank. It had something to do with time too. It wrote in advance just what—Hank, I’ll make it work again. I got to. It’s something big. It’s—”
“It’s colossal,” I said. “But it’ll never work again. Yehudi’s dead. He shot himself upon the stair.”
“You’re crazy,” said Charlie.
“Not yet,” I told him. I looked down at the manuscript he’d handed back to me and read:
“I am going crazy.”
I am going crazy.