Out of Their Minds

18

The woman had said it would be a scorcher and it was. Heat waves shimmered off the pavement and came wavering to meet me. The sky was a brassy bowl and there was no breath of breeze to stir the scorching air.

I'd had some trouble with the bike to start with, but within a couple of miles or so my body had recaptured some of the data programmed into it during boyhood days and I began to get the hang of it again. It wasn't easy, however; a lot better than walking, of course, and that would have been my choice.

I had told the woman that I'd pay a good price for the bike and she'd taken me at my word. A hundred dollars, which had taken almost all the money that I had. A hundred for an ancient contraption tied together with baling wire and stove bolts, worth, at the most, ten bucks. But it was either pay the price or walk, and I'd been in a hurry. And, I told myself, if the situation which now existed should continue, perhaps the bike was not really overpriced. If I could only have kept the horse, I'd have had a piece of property that would have been worthwhile. Horses and bikes might be the coming thing.

The highway was littered with stalled cars and trucks, with here and there a bus, but there weren't any people. Everyone who'd been on the stalled vehicles had had plenty of time to get off the road. It was a depressing sight, as if all those vehicles had been living things that had been killed and just left lying there; as if the highway itself, had been a living thing full of sound and movement and now was lying dead.

I kept pedaling along, wiping the sweat out of my eyes with my shirtsleeve and wishing that I had a drink of water, and after a, time I saw that I was in the city's outskirts.

There were people, but no traffic was moving. Quite a lot of bicycles were on the street and I saw a few people who were using roller skates. There is nothing more ridiculous in the world than a man in a business suit, carrying an attaché case, and trying to be nonchalant as he proceeds down the street on a pair of roller skates. Everyone was either silently doing nothing—sitting on the curbs or on steps or out in their lawns and gardens—or going about their business in what seemed a rather desperate fashion.

I came to a little park, a typical Washington park, one-block square with a statue in its center, benches set beneath the trees, an old lady feeding pigeons, and a drinking fountain. It was the drinking fountain that attracted me. The hours of pedaling in the sun had made my tongue feel like a mass of cotton that filled my entire mouth.

I didn't waste much time. I had a drink and rested for a moment on one of the benches, then got on the bike and set out again.

As I neared the White House I saw that a crowd had gathered, standing in a semicircle, filling the sidewalk and spilling out into the avenue, standing silently and staring, apparently at someone who stood beside the fence.

Kathy! I thought. For that was the exact place against the fence where I had expected her. But why should they be staring at her? What was going on?

I pedaled frantically up to the edge of the crowd and leaped off the bike. Letting it fall upon the sidewalk, I charged into the crowd, pushing and shoving. People swore at me and some pushed back and others shouted angrily, but I plowed my way through and finally staggered through the inner rank of people and out onto the sidewalk.

And there he stood—not Kathy, but the one, if I'd had good sense. I'd have expected to be there, Old Nick, His Satanic Majesty, the Devil.

He was dressed as I last had seen him, with his obscene belly hanging down, over the dirty piece of cloth that afforded him a minimum of decency. He had his tail in his right hand and was using the barb of it as a toothpick to probe his mossy fangs. He leaned nonchalantly against the fence, with his cloven hoofs braced against a crack that ran along the concrete, and he was leering at the crowd in an infuriating manner. But at the sight of me, he dropped his tail forthwith and, advancing toward me, addressed me as a bosom pal for whom he had been waiting.

"Hail, the home-come hero!" he bugled, walking swiftly toward me with his arms outstretched. "Back from Gettysburg. I see that you got scotched. Where did you find the pretty baggage to tie up your head so becomingly?"

He went to throw his arms around me, but I jerked away. I was sore at him for being there when I'd expected to find Kathy."

"Where's Kathy?" I demanded. "I expected her." "Oh, the little wench," he said. "You can rest your apprehensions. She is safe. At the great white castle on the hill. Above the witch's house. I expect you saw it."

"You lied to me," I told him, furiously. "You told me…"

"So I lied to you," he said, spreading his arms to indicate that it was of no consequence. "It is one of my most minor vices. What is a little lie among good friends? Kathy is safe so long as you play ball with me." "Play ball with you!" I yelped, disgusted. "You want the pretty cars to run," he said. "You want the radios to blat. You want the phones to ring."

The crowd was getting restless. It was pressing closer and while the people in it might not know what was going on, they were all ears when the Devil spoke about the cars and radios.

But the Devil ignored them. "A hero you can be," he said. "You can bring about negotiations. You can play the big shot."

I didn't want to be a hero. The crowd, I sensed, was getting ugly.

"We'll go in," the Devil said, "and talk turkey with them." He made a thumb across his shoulder, pointing at the White House.

"We can't get in," I told him. "We can't just go walking in."

"Surely you have got a White House press card?"

"Yes, of course, I have. But that doesn't mean I can just walk in, anytime I wish. Especially with a bird like you in tow."

"You mean you can't get in?"

"Not the way you think."

"Look," he said, almost pleading with me, "you have to talk with them. You can shoot the proper lingo and you know the protocol. I can't do anything by myself. They would not listen to me."

I shook my head.

A couple of guards had left the gate and were walking down the sidewalk.

The Devil saw me looking at them.

"Trouble?" he demanded.

"I think it is," I said. "The guard probably has phoned the police—no, not phoned, I guess. But I imagine they have sent someone to tell the cops there might be trouble brewing."

He moved closer to me and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. "Trouble with cops I don't need," he said. He craned his neck to see the two guards. They still were walking toward us. He grabbed me by the arm. "Come on, let's go," he said.

The world went out from under me with a clap of thunder and in its place was darkness and the roar of heavy winds. Then we were in a large room with a long table running down the center of it and many men around the table. The man at the head of the table was the President.

Smoke was rising in tendrils from a scorched place in the carpet where I stood beside the Devil and the air was heavy with the smell of brimstone and of burning fabric. Someone was hammering frantically on the two doors that led into the room.

"Tell them, please," the Devil said, "that they can't get in. I'm afraid the doors are jammed."

A man with stars upon his shoulder leaped to his feet. His outraged bellow filled the room. "What is the meaning of this!"

"General," said the Devil, "please resume your seat and do your best to be at once an officer and a gentleman. No one will get hurt."

He flicked his tail ferociously to emphasize his words.

I looked quickly around the room to check my first impressions and I saw that they'd been right. Here we were, in the midst of a cabinet meeting—perhaps something more than a cabinet meeting, for there were others there, the director of the FBI, the head of the CIA, a sprinkling of high military brass, and a number of grim-faced men I did not recognize. Along a wall a group of very solemn and apparently learned men sat stiffly on a row of chairs.

Boy, I thought, we have done it now!

"Horton," said the Secretary of State, speaking gently to me, not flustered (he was never flustered), "what are you doing here? The last I knew of you, you were on a leave of absence."

"I took the leave," I said. "It seems it didn't last very long."

"You heard about Phil, of course."

"Yes, I heard of Phil."

The general was on his feet again and he, unlike the secretary, was a very flustered man. "If the Secretary of State will explain to me," he roared, "what is going on."

The pounding still was continuing, louder than ever now. As if the Secret Service boys were using chairs and tables to try to beat in the doors.

"This is most extraordinary," said the President, quietly, "but since these gentlemen are here, I would suspect they had some purpose in their coming. I suppose we should hear them out and then get on with business."

It was all ridiculous, of course, and I had the terrible feeling that I'd never left the Land of Imagination, that I still was in it, and that all this business of the President and his cabinet and the other people here was no more than a half-baked parody good for little more than a panel in a comic strip.

"I think," said the President to me, " that you must be Horton Smith, although I would not have recognized you."

"I was out fishing, Mr. President," I said. "I have had no time to change."

"Oh, that's quite all right," said the President. "We stand on no great ceremony here. But I don't know your friend."

"I'm not sure, sir, that he is my friend. He claims he is the Devil."

The President nodded sagely. "That is what I had thought, although it seemed farfetched. But if he is the Devil, what is he doing here?"

"I came," the Devil said, "to talk about a deal."

The Secretary of Commerce said, "About this difficulty with the cars…"

"But it's all insane!" protested the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. "I sit here and I see it happening and I tell myself it can't be happening. Even if there were such a personage as the Devil…" He turned to appeal to me. "Mr. Smith," he said, "you know this is not the way to go about it."

"Indeed I do," I said.

"I'll admit," said Commerce, "that these whole proceedings are most irregular, but this is an unusual situation. If Mr. Smith and his sulfurous friend have any information, we should listen to them. We've listened to great numbers of other people, including our scientific friends," and he made a sweeping gesture to indicate the men ranged in the chairs along the wall, "and we haven't heard a thing except a large array of people telling us that what has happened is impossible. The scientific community informs us that these happenings defy all laws of physics and that they are frankly fuddled. And the engineers have told

"But the Devil!" bellowed the man with the stars upon his shoulders.

"If he is the Devil," said the Secretary of Interior.

"My friends," the President said, wearily, "there was another president—a great wartime president—who, upon being chided for doing business with an unsavory foreign character, said that to span a stream he'd walked across a bridge with the Devil. And here is another president who will not shy from dealing with the Devil if it shows the way out of our dilemma."

The President looked across the room at me. "Mr. Smith," he asked, "can you explain to us just what in hell is going on?"

"Mr. President," protested HEW, "this is too ridiculous to waste our time upon. If the press should ever get a whiff of what went on within this room…"

The Secretary of State snorted: "Little good it would do them if they did. How would they get it out? I presume that all press wires are down. And, in any case, Mr. Smith, is of the press, and if he so wishes, no matter what we do we can't keep it quiet."

"It's a waste of time," said the general.

"We've had an entire morning of wasted time," Commerce pointed out.

"I'd waste more of it," I told them. "I can tell you what it's all about, but you won't believe a word of it."

"Mr. Smith," said the President, "I would hate to have to beg you."

I snapped at him. "Sir, you do not have to beg me."

"Then will you and that friend of yours pull chairs up to the table and tell us what you came to say."

I walked across the room to get one of the chairs he had indicated and the Devil clumped along beside me, switching his tail excitedly. The hammering on the doors had stopped.

As I walked I could feel holes being bored into my back by the eyes of the men around the table. For the love of God, I thought, what a spot to be in—sitting in a room with the President and his cabinet, brass from the Pentagon, a panel of outstanding scientists, and various advisers. And the worst thing about it was that before I was through with them they'd tear me to tiny ribbons. I had wondered just how I could go about finding anyone in authority, or close to authority, who would sit still long enough to listen to me. And now I had those people who were about to listen to me—not a single person, but a whole room full of them—and I was scared to death. Health, Education and Welfare had been shooting off his mouth, and so had the general, while most of the others had sat stolidly in place, but I had no doubt before it was all over, some of the others would join in.

I pulled the chair over to the table and the President said to me, "Just go ahead and tell us what you know. From having watched you at times on television, I know you can give us a lucid and no doubt interesting account."

I wondered how to start, how to tell them, in a mini- mum of time, the story of what had happened in the last few days. Then, suddenly, I knew the only way to do it— pretend that I was in front of a microphone and camera and that I was doing nothing more than I had done for years. Except it wouldn't be all that easy. In a studio I would have had time to outline in my mind exactly what to say, would have had a script to help out in the rough spots. Here I was on my own and I didn't like it much, but I was stuck with it and there was nothing I could do-but go through with it the best way that I could.

They all were looking at me and a good many of them, I knew, were angry with me for being about to insult their intelligence, and there were others who plainly were amused, knowing very well there was no such thing as a Devil and waiting for the punch line. And I think, as well, that some of them were frightened, but that made little difference, for they had been frightened before the Devil and myself had come into the room.

"There are some things I am going to tell you," I said, "that you can check on." I looked at the Secretary of State. "Phil's death, for instance." I saw his start of surprise, but I didn't give him a chance to say anything, but kept right on. "For the most part, however," I told them, "there is no way of checking. I'll tell you the truth, or as close to the truth as I can come. As for believing any of it, or all of it, that is up to you…"

Now that I had made a start, it was easy to go on. I pretended that I wasn't in the cabinet room, but that I was in a studio and that when I got through with what I had to say, I'd get up and leave.

They sat and listened quietly, although there were several times that some of them stirred uneasily, as if they were ready to break in on me. But the President raised his hand and shushed them and allowed me to go on. I didn't check my time, but I would guess it didn't take much more than fifteen minutes. I packed a lot of meat into what I had to say; I left out everything except the basics of it.

When I was finished, no one said anything for a moment and I sat there, looking around the table at them.

Finally, the FBI director stirred. "Most interesting," he said.

"Yes, isn't it," said the general, acidly.

"What I gather," said Commerce, "is that this friend of yours objects to the fact that we have introduced so many diverse elements into this mythical land of his that we've played hob with any attempt to set up a decent kind of government."

"Not a government," I said quickly, aghast that the man should think in terms of a government for such a place as I had described. "A culture. Perhaps, you'd call it a way of life. A purpose—for there seems no purpose in the land. Each goes his merry, zany way. There is no direction. You'll understand, of course, that I had only a few hours there and so I can't..»

Treasury turned a look of horror upon Commerce. "You can't mean," he cried, "that you place any credence in this—this fairy tale—this..»

"I don't know if I do or not," said Commerce. "We have here a credible witness who, I am convinced, would not give perjured testimony."

"He's been duped!" cried Treasury.

"Or it's a publicity stunt of some sort," declared HEW.

"If you gentlemen will permit me," said State, "there is one statement that struck me rather forcibly. Philip Freeman died, so the coroner said, of a heart attack. There was some very puzzling talk that he'd been shot by an arrow—an arrow fired by a man dressed as an ancient archer might have been. But no one, of course, believed it. It was too incredible. Just as this story we have heard seems incredible and if so…"

"You believe this story?" HEW demanded.

"It's hard to believe," said State, "but I would warn against sweeping it all aside, brushing it underneath the carpet without a second glance. We should, at least, discuss it."

The general said, "Perhaps we should ask our panel of distinguished scientists what they think of it." He swung around in his chair and nodded at the line of men in chairs against the wall.

Slowly one of them got to his feet. He was a fussy and feeble old man, white-haired and, in a strange manner, very dignified. He spoke carefully, making little motions with his blue-veined hands. "I may not speak for all my colleagues," he said, "and if I do not, I presume they will correct me. But in my view, my most considered view, I must say that a situation such as has been outlined here violates all known scientific tenets. I'd say it was impossible."

He sat down as carefully as he had gotten up, putting down his hands to grasp the chair arms firmly before he lowered himself into the seat.

Silence filled the room. One or two of the scientists nodded their heads, but none of the others stirred.

The Devil said to me, "These stupid jerks don't believe a word of it!"

The room was quiet and he said it loud enough so that all could hear him and while there was ample reason to believe that at one time or another, politics being what they are, they'd all been characterized as stupid jerks by someone, this was the first time, more than likely, they'd been called it to their faces.

I shook my head at him, both as a rebuke for the language he had used and to let him know that no, they did not believe it. I knew they didn't dare believe it; anyone who believed it would be laughed out of public office.

The Devil leaped to his feet and banged a massive, hairy fist upon the table. Little jets of smoke spurted from his ears.

"You created us," he yelled at them. "With your dirty little evil minds and your beautifully fuzzy minds and your fumbling, uncertain, yearning, fearful minds you created us and the world you put us in. You did it without knowing it and for that you can't be blamed, although one would think that personages so clever with the physics and chemistry would have run to earth these impossible things your savants say can't happen. But now that you do know, now that the knowing has been forced upon you, you are morally obligated to come up with a remedy to the deplorable conditions you have forced upon us. You can…"

The President sprang to his feet and, like the Devil, thumped the table with his fist—although the total effect was lost since no smoke spouted from his ears.

"Monsieur Devil," he shouted, "I want some answers from you. You say you stopped the cars and the radios and..»

"You're damned right I stopped them," roared the Devil. "All over the world I stopped them, but it was a warning only, a showing of what could be done. And I was humane about it. The cars came to smooth and even stops and not a soul was injured. The planes I let get to the ground before I made them not to run. The factories I left working so there would be jobs and wages and goods still being made…"

"But without transportation we are dead," yelled Agriculture, who had been silent heretofore. "If food can't be moved, the people will starve. If goods can't move, business will come to a standstill."

"Our armies in the field," the general cried. "They have no planes nor armor and communications are cut off.."

"You ain't seen nothing yet," the Devil told them. "Next time around the wheel will be outlawed. No wheel will turn. No factories, no bicycles, no roller skates, no…"

"Monsieur Devil, please," screamed the President, "will you lower your voice? Will all of us lower our voices? There is nothing gained in screaming. We must be reasonable. I had one question and now I have another. You say you did this. Now tell us how you did it."

"Why, I," the Devil stammered, "why, I just did it, that is all. I said let it happen and it happened. I do a lot of things that way. You see, you wrote it into me and you thought it into me and you talked it into me. A devil can do anything at all, so long as it is bad. I doubt exceedingly I'd be so successful doing good."

"Enchantment, gentlemen," I told them. "That is the only answer for it. And don't blame the Devil for it; we thought it up ourselves."

The old gentleman who had spoken for the scientists lurched to his feet. He raised clenched fists above his head. "Enchantment," he squeaked. "There can't be enchantment. There is no law of science…" He meant to say more, but his voice choked and he stood for a moment, fighting for breath and voice, but giving up, sat down."

"Maybe not," the Devil said. "Maybe not any science law. But what care we for science? The wheel next, then electricity and after that, most likely, fire, although I haven't thought that far ahead. And once that is done, back to the feudal manor, back to the good old Dark Ages, where there was some honest thinking done and..»

"Now, sir," said the President, "another question, please, if you have done with threats."

"Most excellent sir," said the Devil, trying very hard to be polite, "I do not deal in threats. I only tell what can be done and what shall be done and..»

"But why?" asked the President. "What exactly is your grievance?"

"Grievance!" bellowed the Devil, in a rage and forgetful of politeness. "You ask me for grievance. Horton Smith, who has a wound from Gettysburg, who jousted barehanded with Quixote, who chased a vicious witch through a fearsome woods, has outlined my grievance."

As a sign of his honest reason, he let his voice sink from a bellow to a roar. "Once," he said, "our land was peopled by a hardy folk, some of them honestly good and some of them as honestly evil. I kid you not, my friends; I was and am one of the evil ones. But at least we had purpose and between the good and bad, between the imps and fairies, we made a life of it. But now what have we got? I'll tell you what we have. We have Li'l Abner and Charley Brown and Pogo. We have Little Orphan Annie and Dagwood Bumstead and the Bobbsey Twins, Horatio Alger, Mr. Magoo, Tinkerbell, Mickey Mouse, Howdy Doody…"

The President waved him silent. "I think you have made your point," he said.

"They have no character," said the Devil. "They have no flavor nor any style. They are vapid things. There's not an honestly evil one among them and none is really good—the goodness that is in them is enough to turn one's stomach. I ask you in great sincerity how one is to build a worthwhile civilization with inhabitants such as that?"

"This gentleman's stomach," said HEW, "is not the only one's that's turned. I am.aghast that we sit here and listen to his buffoonery."

"Just a little more," said the President. "I'm trying to make something out of this. With your indulgence, please."

"I suppose," the Devil said, "that you are wondering now what can be done about it."

"Precisely," said the President.

"You can put an end to all this foolishness. You can halt the Li'l Abners and the Mickey Mouses and the Howdy Doodles. You can return to honest fantasy. You can think about some evil things and others that are good and you can believe in them.."

Agriculture was on his feet. "I have never in my life," he yelled, "heard such an infamous suggestion. He is suggesting thought control. He would have us dictate entertainment values and he would have us throttle artistic and literary creativity. And even if we agreed to do this, how would we go about it? Laws and edicts would not be enough. A secret campaign would have to be launched, a most secret one, and I would guess it would be impossible to keep it secret for longer than three days. But even if we could, it would take billions of dollars and years of Madison Avenue's most devious and devoted efforts and I don't think even then that it would catch on. These are not the Dark Ages, the honest thought of which this gentleman seems to admire so greatly. We cannot bring our people, or the people of the world, to believe again in devils or in imps, or in angels, either. I propose that we close out this discussion."

"My friend," said Treasury, "takes this incident too seriously. I cannot bring myself, nor, I suspect, can many others in this room, to regard it as of any validity at all. To give the color of acceptance to this ridiculous situation by debating it on even the most hypothetical grounds seems to me to be degrading and not in keeping with the dignity of orderly procedure."

"Hear! Hear!" the Devil said.

"We have taken enough of your impudence," the FBI said to the Devil. "It is not in the best American tradition for a council of state to be insulted by such outbursts of malicious nonsense delivered by something, or someone, who can have no actual basis in fact."

"That does it!" the Devil raged. "No basis in fact, you say. I'll show you nincompoops. Next comes the wheel and electricity and then I will be back and we have a better basis, maybe, for some forthright dealing."

Saying which, he reached out and grabbed me by the arm. "Leave us go," he said.

We went, no doubt in a flash of evil-smelling light and smoke. In any case, the world went away again and there was the blackness and the howling of the winds and when the blackness fell away we were back on the sidewalk outside the White House fence.

"Well," the Devil said, triumphantly, "I guess I told them, kid. I took the pompous hides off their four-flushing backs. Did you see their faces when I called them nincompoops?"

"Yes, you did well," I said, disgusted. "You have all the. finesse of a hog."

He rubbed his hands together. "And now," he said, "the wheels."

"Lay off it," I warned him. "You'll wreck this world of ours and then what will happen to that precious world of yours…"

But the Devil wasn't listening to me. He was looking over my shoulder and down the street and there was a funny look upon his face. The crowd that had ringed the Devil in when I first had found him had disappeared, but there were a number of people in the park across the street and these people now were shouting in an excited" fashion.

I swung around to look.

Less than half a block away and bearing down upon us with great rapidity was Don Quixote astride the running bag of bones that served him as a charger. His helmet was down and the shield was up. The leveled lance was aglitter in the sun. Behind him Sancho Pan/a applied an enthusiastic whip to his donkey, which humped along in a stiff-legged gait not unlike a startled rabbit. While he applied the whip with one hand, Sancho Panza held the other arm out stiffly to one side, clutching a bucket. There was some sort of liquid in the bucket and it slopped alarmingly as the donkey tried its best to keep up with the storming charger. And behind the two of them came a prancing unicorn, shining white in the brilliant sunlight, with its slender horn a breathtaking lance of silver. It moved daintily and easily and was a thing of utter grace, and seated upon it, riding it sidesaddle fashion, was Kathy Adams.

The Devil reached out a hand for me, but I knocked his arm away and made a grab at him. I clutched him about the middle and as I did so I kicked my foot backward, forcing it between two iron palings of the fence. I didn't really think what I was doing; I didn't plan it, and I'm not sure I knew at the time exactly why I did it. But apparently there was some subconscious thought inside of me that informed me that it just possibly might work. If I could divert the Devil from taking off to some other place for no longer than a second, Don Quixote would be down upon him and, if his aim were true, he'd have the Devil spitted on his lance. And there was also something about being securely anchored if I were to do it and another something about the effect of iron upon the Devil, and that, I. suppose, was the reason I struck my foot between the palings.

The Devil was squirming to get away, but I hung onto him, with my arms locked about his middle. His hide stank and my face, where I had it pressed against his chest, was wet with his greasy sweat. He was struggling and cursing horribly and beating at me with his fists, but out of the corner of one eye I saw the lance point flashing in toward us. The beat of clopping hooves came closer and then the lance point struck with a squashy sound and the Devil fell away. I let go of him and fell upon the sidewalk, with my foot still between the palings.

I twisted around and Saw that the lance had caught the Devil in the shoulder and had him pinned against the fence. He was squirming and mewling. He waved his arms and froth ran out of the corners of his mouth.

Don Quixote raised a hand and tried to flip his visor up. It stuck. He wrenched at it so hard that he jerked the entire helmet off his head. It flew from his fingers and clanked upon the sidewalk.

"Varlet," Don Quixote cried, "I call on you to yield and to give your bounden pledge you will henceforth desist from any further interference in the world of man."

"To hell and damnation with you," the Devil raged. "I will yield to no busybody of a do-gooder that spends his time sniffing out crusades. And of all of them, there is none worse than you, Quixote. You can sense a good deed a million light years off and you are off hell-bent to do it.

And I'll have none of it. You understand that, I'll have none of it!"

Sancho Panza had leaped off the donkey and was running forward with the bucket which, I now saw, had a dipper in it. In front of the Devil, he halted and with the dipper splashed some of the liquid on the Devil. The liquid boiled and hissed and the Devil writhed in agony.

"Water!" Sancho Panza cried in glee. "Blessed by the good St. Patrick and most potent stuff."

He let the Devil have another dipper of it. The Devil writhed and screamed.

"Pledge!" Don Quixote shouted.

"I yield," the Devil yelled. "I yield and pledge."

"And further pledged," said Don Quixote grimly, "that all mischief you here have caused will end—and that immediately."

"I will not," the Devil screamed. "Not all my work undone!"

Sancho Panza flung the dipper on the sidewalk and clutched the pail in both his bands, poised to hurl its entire contents on the Devil.

"Hold!" the Devil shouted. "Avast that cursed water! I do entirely yield and pledge everything you ask."

"Then," Don Quixote said, with a certain courtliness, "our mission here is done."

I didn't see them go. There wasn't even a flicker of their going. They just suddenly were gone. There was no Devil, no Don Quixote, no Sancho Panza and no unicorn. But Kathy was running toward me and I thought it strange she could run so well with her ankle sprained. I tried to jerk my foot free of the fence so I could get up to greet her, but the foot was tightly stuck between the palings and I could not get it loose.

She went down on her knees beside me. "We're home again!" she cried. "Horton, we are home!"

She leaned down to kiss me and across the street the crowd cheered loudly and ribaldly at the kiss. "My foot is stuck," I said.

"Well, pull it loose," she told me, smiling through tears of happiness.

I tried to pull it loose and couldn't. It hurt when I pulled on it. She got up and went to the fence and tried to work it free, but it still stayed stuck.

"I think the ankle's swelling," she said and sat down upon the sidewalk, laughing. "The two of us," she cried. "We have something with our ankles. First mine, now yours."

"Your ankle is all right," I said.

"They had magic at the castle," she told me. "A most wonderful old magician with a long white beard and a funny cap and gown with stars all over them. It was the nicest place I've ever seen. So genteel and polite. I could have stayed forever if you had been there with me. And the unicorn. He was the nicest, sweetest thing. You saw the unicorn?"

"I saw the unicorn," I said.

"Horton, who are those men coming down across the lawn?"

I had been so busy looking at her and so glad that she was back, that I'd not been looking at the lawn. When I did look, I saw them. The President was in the lead, running toward the fence, and behind him streamed the other people who'd been in the room.

The President reached the fence and stopped. He regarded me with something less than friendliness.

"Horton," he demanded, "what the hell is going on out here?"

"My foot is caught," I said.

"To hell with your foot," he said. "That isn't what I mean. I swear I saw a knight and a unicorn."

The others were crowding close up against the fence.

A guard shouted from up by the gate. "Hey! Everybody look! There's a car coming down the street!"

Sure enough, there was.

"But what about his foot?" Kathy asked, indignantly. "We can't get it loose and his ankle's swelling. I'm afraid it's sprained."

"Someone had better get a doctor," said the Secretary of State. "If the cars are running, the phones may be working, too. How are you feeling, Horton?"

"I'm all right," I said.

"And get someone down here with a hacksaw," said the

President. "For the love of God, we got to saw his foot loose."

So I stayed there on the sidewalk and Kathy sat beside me, waiting for the doctor and the hacksaw man.

Disregarding the crowd inside the fence, some of the White House squirrels came sneaking out on the sidewalk to see what was going on. They sat up most daintily, with their forepaws crossed upon their chest, begging for a handout.

And the cars, more and more of them, went on rolling past.