The Shipshape Miracle : And Other Stories

The Money Tree

Chuck Doyle, loaded with his camera equipment, was walking along the high brick wall which sheltered the town house of J. Howard Metcalfe from vulgar public contact when he saw the twenty-dollar bill blow across the wall.

Now, Doyle was well dried behind the ears—he had cut his eyeteeth on the crudities of the world and while no one could ever charge him with being a sophisticate, neither was he anybody’s fool. And yet there was no question, either, about his quick, positive action when there was money to be picked up off the street.

He looked around to see if anyone might be watching—someone, for example, who might be playing a dirty joke on him, or, worse yet, someone who might appear to claim the bill once he had retrieved it.

There was small chance there would be anyone, for this was the snooty part of town, where everyone minded his own business and made sure that any uncouth intruders would mind theirs as well—an effect achieved in most cases by high walls or dense hedges or sturdy ornamental fences. And the street on which Doyle now prepared to stalk a piece of currency was by rights no proper street at all. It was an alley that ran between the brick walls of the Metcalfe residence and the dense hedge of Banker J. S. Gregg—Doyle had parked his car in there because it was against traffic regulations to park on the boulevard upon which the houses fronted.

Seeing no one, Doyle set his camera equipment down and charged upon the bill, which was fluttering feebly in the alley. He scooped it up with the agility of a cat grabbing off a mouse and now he saw, for the first time, that it was no piddling one-dollar affair, or even a five-spot, but a twenty. It was crinkly and so new that it fairly gleamed, and he held it tenderly in his fingertips and resolved to retire to Benny’s Place as soon as possible, and pour himself a libation or two to celebrate his colossal good luck.

There was a little breeze blowing down the alley and the leaves of the few fugitive trees that lined the alley and the leaves of the many trees that grew in the stately lawns beyond the walls and hedges were making a sort of subdued symphonic sound. The sun was shining brightly and there was no hint of rain and the air was clean and fresh and the world was a perfect place.

It was becoming more perfect by the moment.

For over the Metcalfe wall, from which the first bill had fluttered, other bills came dancing merrily in the impish breeze, swirling in the alley.

Doyle saw them and stood for a frozen instant, his eyes bugging out a little and his Adam’s apple bobbing in excitement. Then he was among the bills, grabbing right and left and stuffing them in his pockets, gulping with the fear that one of them might somehow escape him, and ridden by the conviction that once he had gathered them he should get out of there as fast as he could manage.

The money, he knew, must belong to someone and there was no one, he was sure, not even on this street, who was so contemptuous of cash as to allow it to blow away without attempting to retrieve it.

So he gathered the bills with the fervor of a Huck Finn going through a blackberry patch and with a last glance around to be sure he had missed none, streaked for his car.

A dozen blocks away, in a less plush locality, he wheeled the car up to the curb opposite a vacant lot and furtively emptied his pockets, smoothing out the bills and stacking them neatly on the seat beside him. There were a lot of them, many more than he had thought there were, and his breath whistled through his teeth.

He picked up the pile of currency preparatory to counting it and something, some little stick-like thing was sticking out of it. He flicked it to knock it away and it stayed where it was. It seemed to be stuck to one of the bills. He seized it to pull it loose. It came and the bill came with it.

It was a stem, like an apple stem, like a cherry stem—a stem attached quite solidly and naturally to one corner of a twenty-dollar bill!

He dropped the pile of bills upon the seat and held up the stem and the bill hung from the stem, as if it were growing from the stem, and it was clear to see that the stem not long before had been fastened to a branch, for the mark of recent separation was plainly visible.

Doyle whistled softly.

A money tree! he thought.

But there was no such a thing as a money tree. There’d never been a money tree. There never would be a money tree.

“I’m seeing things,” said Doyle, “and I ain’t had a drink in hours.”

He could shut his eyes and there it was—a mighty tree, huge of boll and standing true and straight and high, with spreading branches fully leafed and every leaf a twenty-dollar bill. The wind would rustle all the leaves and would make money-music and a man could lie in the shade of such a tree and not have a worry in the world, just waiting for the leaves to drop so he could pick them up and put them in his pocket.

He tugged at the stem a bit and it still clung to the bill, so he folded the whole thing up as neatly as he could and stuck it in the watch pocket of his trousers. Then he picked up the rest of the bills and stuffed them in another pocket without counting them.

Twenty minutes later he walked into Benny’s Bar. Benny was mopping the mahogany. One lone customer was at the far end of the bar working through a beer.

“Gimme bottle and a glass,” said Doyle.

“Show me cash,” said Benny.

Doyle gave him one of the twenty-dollar bills. It was so fresh and new and crisp that its crinkling practically thundered in the silence of the place. Benny looked it over with great care.

“Got someone making them for you?” he asked.

“Naw,” said Doyle. “I pick them off the street.”

Benny handed across a bottle and a glass.

“You through work,” he asked, “or are you just beginning?”

“I put in my day,” said Doyle. “I been shooting old J. Howard Metcalfe. Magazine in the east wanted pictures of him.”

“You mean the racketeer?”

“He ain’t no racketeer. He went legitimate four or five years ago. He’s a magnate now.”

“You mean tycoon. What kind of tycoon is he?”

“I don’t know. But whatever kind it is, it sure pays off. He’s got a fancy-looking shack up on the hill. But he ain’t so much to look at. Don’t see why this magazine should want a picture of him.”

“Maybe they’re running a story about how it pays to go straight.”

Doyle tipped the bottle and sloshed liquor in his glass.

“It ain’t no skin off me,” he declared philosophically. “I’d go take pictures of an angleworm if they paid me for it.”

“Who would want pictures of any angleworm?”

“Lots of crazy people in the world,” said Doyle. “Might want anything. I don’t ask no questions. I don’t venture no opinions. People want pictures taken, I take them. They pay me for it, that is all right by me.”

Doyle drank appreciatively and refilled the glass.

“Benny,” he asked, “you ever hear of money growing on a tree?”

“You got it wrong,” said Benny. “Money grows on bushes.”

“If it grows on bushes, then it could grow on trees. A bush ain’t nothing but a little tree.”

“No, no,” protested Benny, somewhat alarmed. “Money don’t really grow on bushes. That is just a saying.”

The telephone rang and Benny went to answer it. “It’s for you,” he said.

“Now how would anyone think of looking for me here?” asked Doyle, astounded.

He picked up the bottle and shambled down the bar to where the phone was waiting.

“All right,” he told the transmitter. “You’re the one who called. Start talking.”

“This is Jake.”

“Don’t tell me. You got a job for me. You’ll pay me in a day or two. How many jobs do you think I do for you without being paid?”

“You do this job for me, Chuck, and I’ll pay you everything I owe you. Not only for this one, but for all the others, too. This is one that I need real bad and I need it fast. You see, this car went off the road and into this lake and the insurance company claims—”

“Where is the car now?”

“It’s still in the lake. They’ll be pulling it out in a day or two and I need the pictures—”

“You want me, maybe, to go down into the lake and take pictures underwater?”

“That’s exactly the situation. I know that it’s a tough one. But I’ll get the diving equipment and arrange everything. I hate to ask it of you, but you’re the only man I know…”

“I will not do it,” Doyle said firmly. “My health is too delicate. If I get wet I get pneumonia and if I get cold I have a couple teeth that begin to ache and I’m allergic to all kinds of weeds and more than likely this lake is filled with a lot of water lilies and other kinds of plants.”

“I’ll pay you double!” Jake yelled in desperation. “I’ll even pay you triple.”

“I know you,” said Doyle. “You won’t pay me nothing.”

He hung up the phone and shuffled back up the bar, dragging the bottle with him.

“Nerve of the guy!” he said, taking two drinks in rapid succession.

“It’s a hell of a way,” he said to Benny, “for a man to make a living.”

“All ways are,” said Benny philosophically.

“Look, Benny, there wasn’t nothing wrong with that bill I give you?”

“Should there been?”

“Naw, but that crack you made.”

“I always make them cracks. It goes with the job. The customers expect me to make them kind of cracks.”

He mopped at the bar, a purely reflex action, for the bar was dry and shiny.

“I always look the folding over good,” he said. “I’m as hep as any banker. I can spot a phoney fifty feet away. Smart guys want to pass some bad stuff, they figure that a bar is the place to do it. You got to be on your guard against it.”

“Catch much of it?”

Benny shook his head. “Once in a while. Not often. Fellow in here the other day says there is a lot of it popping up that can’t be spotted even by an expert. Says the government is going crazy over it. Says there is bills turning up with duplicate serial numbers. Shouldn’t be no two bills with the same serial number. When that happens, one of them is phoney. Fellow says they figure it’s the Russians.”

“The Russians?”

“Sure, the Russians flooding the country with phoney money that’s so good no one can tell the difference. If they turned loose enough of it, the fellow said, they could ruin the economy.”

“Well, now,” said Doyle in some relief, “I call that a dirty trick.”

“Them Russians,” said Benny, “is a dirty bunch.”

Doyle drank again, morosely, then handed the bottle back.

“I got to quit,” he announced. “I told Mabel I would drop around. She don’t like me to have a snootful.”

“I don’t know why Mabel puts up with you,” Benny told him. “There she is, working in that beanery where she meets all sorts of guys. Some of them is sober and hard working—”

“They ain’t got any soul,” said Doyle. “There ain’t a one of them truck drivers and mechanics that can tell a sunset from a scrambled egg.”

Benny paid him out his change.

“I notice,” he said, “that you make your soul pay off.”

“Why, sure,” Doyle told him. “That’s only common sense.”

He picked up his change and went out into the street.

Mabel was waiting for him, but that was not unusual. Something always happened and he was always late and she had become resigned to waiting.

She was waiting in a booth and he gave her a kiss and sat down across from her. The place was empty except for a new waitress who was tidying up a table at the other end of the room.

“Something funny happened to me today,” said Doyle.

“I hope,” said Mabel, simpering, “that it was something nice.”

“Now I don’t know,” Doyle told her. “It could be. It could, likewise, get a man in trouble.”

He dug into his watch pocket and took out the bill. He unfolded it and smoothed it out and laid it on the table.

“What you call that?” he asked.

“Why, Chuck, it’s a twenty-dollar bill!”

“Look at that thing on the corner of it.”

She did, with some puzzlement.

“Why, it’s a stem,” she cried. “Just like an apple stem. And it’s fastened to the bill.”

“It comes off a money tree,” said Doyle.

“There ain’t no such thing,” objected Mabel.

“Yes, there is,” Doyle told her, with mounting conviction. “J. Howard Metcalfe, he’s got one growing in his back yard. That’s how he gets all his money. I never could get it figured out how all these big moguls that live in them big houses and drive those block-long cars could manage to make all the money it would take to live the way they do. I bet you every one of them fellows has got money trees growing in their yards. And they’ve kept it a secret all this time, except today Metcalfe forgot to pick his money and a wind came along and blew it off the tree and over the wall and—”

“But even if there was such a thing as a money tree,” persisted Mabel, “they could never keep it secret. Someone would find it out. All of them have servants and the servants would know …”

“I got that all figured out,” said Doyle. “I been giving this thing a lot of thought and I know just how it works. Them servants in those big mansions aren’t just ordinary servants. They’re all old retainers. They been in the family for years and they’re loyal to the family. And you know why they’re loyal? It’s because they’re getting their cuts off the money trees. I bet you they salt it all away and when it comes time for them to retire they live the life of Riley. There wouldn’t nobody blab with a setup like that.

“And if all those big shots haven’t got something to hide, why has every one of them big houses got big walls or thick hedges around the back of them?”

“But they have garden parties,” Mabel protested. “I read about them in the society section all the time—”

“You ever been to one of them garden parties?”

“No, of course I haven’t.”

“You bet your boots you haven’t. You ain’t got no money tree. And they don’t invite no one except other people who likewise have money trees. Why do you think all them rich people are so snooty and exclusive?”

“Well, even if they have got money trees, what difference does it make? What are you going to do about it?”

“Mabel, would you maybe be able to find me a sugar sack or something?”

“We have a lot of them out back. I could get you one.”

“And fix up a drawstring in it so once I got it full, I could jerk the string and tighten it up so the money wouldn’t all spill out if I had to—”

“Chuck, you wouldn’t!”

“There’s a tree outside the wall. I can shinny up it. And there’s a branch sticking out into the yard. I could tie a rope to that…”

“But they’d catch you!”

“Well, we’ll know if you get that sack for me. I’ll go out, hunt up some rope.”

“But all the stores are closed by now. You can’t buy a rope.”

“Know just where to get some,” said Doyle. “Fellow down the street has eighteen, twenty feet of it fixed up for a swing out back. Took pictures of a kid swinging there just a day or two ago.”

“You’ll have to drive me over to my place. I can’t fix the sack in here.”

“Just as soon as I get back with the rope.”

“Chuck?”

“Yeah?”

“It isn’t stealing, is it—this money tree?”

“Naw. If Metcalfe has one, he hasn’t any right to it. It’s fair game for anyone. It’s more than fair—it ain’t right for a man to have a thing like that all to himself.”

“And you won’t be caught for having counterfeit…”

“Now, how could it be counterfeit?” demanded Doyle, just a bit aghast that she should suggest it. “Nobody’s making it. There ain’t no plates and there isn’t any press. The stuff just grows, hanging on that tree.”

She hunched over the table toward him. “But, Chuck, it’s so impossible! How could a tree grow money?”

“I don’t pretend to know,” said Doyle. “I ain’t no scientist and I don’t catch the lingo, but some of them botany fellows, they can do some funny things. Like that man named Burbank. They can fix it so plants will do most anything they want. They can change the kind of fruit they bear and they can change their size and their growing habits and I haven’t got no doubt at all if someone put his mind to it, he could make a tree grow money.”

Mabel slid out of the booth.

“I’ll get the sack,” she said.

Doyle shinnied up the tree that grew outside the high brick wall. Reaching the big branch that extended over the wall, invading the air space over the Metcalfe garden, he crouched quietly.

He tilted his head skyward and watched the scared fleeing of light clouds. In another minute or two, a slightly larger cloud, he saw, would close in on the moon and when that happened was the time to drop into the garden.

He crouched and watched the garden and there were several trees but there was nothing he could make out that was peculiar about any one of them. Except it seemed, when he listened closely, that the rustling of the leaves of one of them was crisper than the other rustlings.

He checked the rope looped in his hand and the sack tucked beneath his belt and waited for the heavier cloud to move across the moon.

The house was quiet and still and only showed one faint glimmer of light in an upstairs room. And the night was quiet as well, except for the rustling of the leaves.

The edge of the cloud began to eat into the moon and Doyle moved out on cat feet along the branch. Swiftly he knotted the rope around the branch and let it down.

And having accomplished that, having come this far, he hesitated for an instant, listening hard, straining his eyes for any trace of motion in the darkened rectangle of the garden.

He could detect none.

Quickly, he slid down the rope and stole toward the tree which had seemed to rustle more crisply than the others.

He reached it and thrust up a cautious hand.

The leaves had the size and feel of bills and he plucked at them frantically. He jerked the sack from his belt and thrust the handful of leaves into it and then another handful and another.

Easy, he exulted. Just like picking plums. Just like being in a plum thicket. As easy as picking. . .

Just five minutes, he told himself. That is all I need. Just five full minutes with no one pestering.

He didn’t get five minutes. He didn’t get a minute, even.

A whirlwind of silent anger came in a quiet rush out of the darkness and was upon him. It bit him in the leg and it slashed him in the ribs and it tore his shirt half off him. It was as silent as it was ferocious, and he glimpsed it in that first startled second only as a floating patch of motion.

He stifled the hurt yip of surprise and fear that surged into his throat and fought back as silently as the thing attacking him. Twice he had his hands upon it and twice it slipped away and swarmed to the attack again.

Then, finally, he got a grip upon it that it could not shake and he lifted it high to smash it to the ground. But as he lifted it, the cloud sailed off the moon and the garden came alight.

He saw the thing, then, really saw it, for the first time, and clamped down his gurgle of amazement.

He had expected a dog of some sort. But this was not a dog. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. It was nothing he had ever heard of.

One end of it was all mouth and the other end of it was blunt and square. It was terrier-sized, but no terrier. It had short, yet powerful legs and its arms were long and sinuous and armed with heavy claws and somehow he had managed to grab it in such a manner that the arms and murderous claws were pinned against its body.

It was dead white and hairless and as naked as a jaybird. It had a sort of knapsack, or what appeared to be a knapsack, strapped upon its back.

But that was not the worst of it.

Its chest was large and hard and gleaming, like the thorax of a grasshopper and the chest was like a neon-lighted billboard, with characters and pictures and dots and hooks and dashes flashing off and on.

Rapid-fire thoughts snaked their way through the fear and horror that tumbled in Doyle’s brain and he tried to get them tracking, but they wouldn’t track. They just kept tumbling round and wouldn’t straighten out.

Then all the dots and dashes, all the hooks and symbols cleared off the billboard chest and there were words, human words, in capitals, glowing upon it:

Even to the exclamation point.

“Pal,” said Doyle, not a little shaken, but nevertheless determined, “I will not let you go. I got plans for you.”

He looked swiftly around for the sack and located it on the ground nearby and reached out a foot to pull it closer.

YOU SORRY, spelled the creature.

“Not,” said Doyle, “so that you could notice.”

Kneeling, he reached out swiftly and grabbed the sugar sack.

Quickly he thrust the creature into it and jerked the drawstring tight.

He stood up and hefted the sack. It was not too heavy for him to carry.

Lights snapped on in the first floor of the house, in a room facing on the garden, and voices floated out of an open window. Somewhere in the darkness a screen door slapped shut with a hollow sound.

Doyle whirled and ran toward the dangling rope. The sack hampered him a little, but urgency compensated for the hindrance and he climbed swiftly to the branch.

He squatted there, hidden in the shadow of the leaves, and drew up the rope, coiling it awkwardly with his one free hand.

The thing inside the sack began to thrash about and he jerked the sack up, thumped it on the branch. The thing grew quiet at once.

Footsteps came deliberately down a shadow-hidden walk and Doyle saw the red glow of a cigar as someone puffed on it.

A man’s voice spoke out of the darkness and he recognized it as Metcalfe’s voice.

“Henry!”

“Yes, sir,” said Henry from the wide verandah.

“Where the devil did the rolla go?”

“He’s out there somewhere, sir. He never gets too far from the tree. It’s his responsibility, you know.”

The cigar-end glowed redder as Metcalfe puffed savagely.

“I don’t understand those rollas, Henry. Even after all these years, I don’t understand them.”

“No, sir,” said Henry. “They’re hard things to understand.”

Doyle could smell the smoke, drifting upward to him. He could tell by the smell it was a good cigar.

And naturally Metcalfe would smoke the very best. No man with a money tree growing in his garden need worry about the price of smokes.

Cautiously, Doyle edged a foot or two along the branch, anxious to get slightly closer to the wall and safety.

The cigar jerked around and pointed straight at him as Metcalfe tilted his head to stare into the tree.

“What was that!” he yelled.

“I didn’t hear a thing, sir. It must have been the wind.”

“There’s no wind, you fool. It’s that cat again!”

Doyle huddled closer against the branch, motionless, yet tensed to spring into action if it were necessary. Quietly he gave himself a mental bawling-out for moving.

Metcalfe had moved off the walk and clear of the shadow and was standing in the moonlight, staring up into the tree.

“There’s something up there,” he announced pontifically. “The leaves are so thick I can’t make out what it is. I bet you it’s that goddam cat again. He’s plagued the rolla for two nights hand running.”

He took the cigar out of his face and blew a couple of beautiful smoke rings that drifted ghost-like in the moonlight.

“Henry,”’ he shouted, “bring me a gun. I think the twelve-gauge is right behind the door.”

Doyle had heard enough. He made a dash for it. He almost fell, but he caught himself. He dropped the rope and almost dropped the sack, but managed to hang onto it. The rolla, inside the sack, began to thrash about.

“So you want to horse around,” Doyle said savagely to the thing inside the sack.

He tossed the bag toward the fence and it went over and he heard it thump into the alley. He hoped, momentarily, that he hadn’t killed it, for it might be valuable. He might be able, he thought, to sell it to a circus. Circuses were always looking for crazy things like that.

He reached the tree trunk and slid down it with no great ceremony and very little forethought and as a result collected a fine group of abrasions on his arms and legs from the roughness of the bark.

He saw the sack lying in the alley and from beyond the fence he heard the ferocious bellowing and blood-curdling cursing of J. Howard Metcalfe.

Someone ought to warn him, Doyle told himself. Man of his age, he shouldn’t ought to allow himself to fly into such a rage. Someday he’d fall flat upon his face and that would be the end of him.

Doyle scooped up the sack and ran as hard as he could to where he’d parked the car at the alley’s end. Reaching it, he tossed the sack into the seat and crawled in himself. He took off with a rush and wound a devious route to throw off any possible pursuit—although that, he admitted to himself, was just a bit fantastic, for he’d made his getaway before Metcalfe could possibly have put someone on his tail.

Half an hour later he pulled up beside a small park and began to take stock of the situation.

There was both good and bad.

He had failed to harvest as much of the tree-grown money as he had intended and he had tipped his mitt to Metcalfe, so there’d not be another chance.

But he knew now for a certainty that there were such things as money trees and he had a rolla, or he supposed it was a rolla, for whatever it was worth.

And the rolla—so quiet now inside the sack—in its more active moments of guarding the money tree, had done him not a bit of good.

His hands were dark in the moonlight with the wash of blood and there were stripes of fire across his ribs, beneath the torn shirt, where the rolla’s claws had raked him, and one leg was sodden-wet. He put down a hand to feel the warm moistness of his trouser leg.

He felt a thrill of fear course along his nerves. A man could get infected from a chewing-up like that—especially by an unknown animal.

And if he went to a doctor, the doc would want to know what had happened to him, and he would say a dog, of course. But what if the doc should know right off that it was no dog bite. More than likely the doc would have to make some report or other—maybe just like he’d have to make a report on a gunshot wound.

There was, he decided, too much at stake for him to take the chance—he must not let it be known he’d found out about the money tree.

For as long as he was the only one who knew, he might stand to make a good thing of it. Especially since he had the rolla, which in some mysterious manner was connected with the tree—and which, even by itself, without reference to the tree, might be somehow turned into a wad of cash.

He eased the car from the curb and out into the street.

Fifteen minutes later he parked in a noisome alley back of a block-long row of old apartment houses.

He descended from the car and hauled out the sack.

The rolla was still quiet.

“Funny thing,” Doyle said.

He laid his hand against the sack and the sack was warm and the rolla stirred a bit.

“Still alive,” Doyle told himself with some relief.

He wended his way through a clutter of battered garbage cans, stacks of rotting wood, piles of empty cans; cats slunk into the dark as he approached.

“Crummy place for a girl to live,” said Doyle, speaking to himself. “No place for a girl like Mabel.”

He found the rickety backstairs and climbed them, went along the hall until he came to Mabel’s door. She opened it at his knock, immediately, as if she had been waiting. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him in and slammed the door and leaned her back against it.

“I was worried, Chuck!”

“Nothing to worry about,” said Doyle. “Little trouble, that’s all.”

“Your hands!” she screamed. “Your shirt!”

Doyle jostled the bag gaily. “Nothing to it, Mabel. Got what done it right inside this sack.”

He looked around the place. “You got all the windows shut?” he asked.

She nodded, still a bit wide-eyed.

“Hand me that table lamp,” he said. “It’ll be handy for a club.”

She jerked the plug out of the wall and pulled off the shade, then handed the lamp to him.

He hefted the lamp, then picked up the sack, loosened the draw string.

“I bumped it couple of times,” he said, “and heaved it in the alley and it may be shook up considerable, but you can’t take no chances.”

He upended the sack and dumped the rolla out. With it came a shower of twenty-dollar bills—the three or four handfuls he had managed to pick before the rolla jumped him.

The rolla picked itself off the floor with a show of dignity and stood erect—except that it didn’t look as if it were standing erect. Its hind legs were so short and its front legs were so long that it looked as if it were sitting like a dog. The fact that its face, or rather its mouth, since it had no face, was on top of its head, added to the illusion of sitting.

Its stance was pretty much like that of a sitting coyote baying at the moon—or, better yet, an oversized and more than ordinarily grotesque bullfrog baying at the moon.

Mabel let out a full-fledged scream and bolted for the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

“For cripes sake,” moaned Doyle, “the fat’s in the fire for sure. They’ll think I’m murdering her.”

Someone thumped on the floor upstairs. A man’s voice bellowed: “Cut it out down there!”

The rolla’s gleaming chest lit up:

HUNGRY. WHEN

WE EAT?

Doyle gulped. He felt cold sweat starting out on him.

WASSA MATTER? spelled the rolla. GO AHEAD. TALK. I CAN HEAR.

Someone started hammering on the door.

Doyle looked wildly around and saw the money on the floor. He started scooping it up and stuffing it in his pocket.

Whoever was at the door kept on hammering.

Doyle finished with the money and opened the door.

A man stood there in his undershirt and pants and he was big and tough. He towered over Doyle by at least a foot. A woman, standing behind him, peered around at Doyle.

“What’s going on around here?” the man demanded. “We heard a lady scream.”

“Saw a mouse,” Doyle told him.

The man kept on looking at him.

“Big one,” Doyle elaborated. “Might have been a rat.”

“And you, mister. What’s the matter with you? How’d your shirt get tore?”

“I was in a crap game,” said Doyle and went to shut the door.

But the man stiff-armed it and strode into the room.

“If you don’t mind, we’ll look the situation over.”

With a sinking feeling in his belly, Doyle remembered the rolla.

He spun around.

The rolla was not there.

The bedroom door opened and Mabel came out. She was calm as ice.

“You live here, lady?” asked the man.

“Yes, she does,” the woman said. “I see her in the hall.”

“This guy bothering you?”

“Not at all,” said Mabel. “We are real good friends.”

The man swung around on Doyle.

“You got blood all over you,” he said.

“I can’t seem to help it,” Doyle told him. “I just bleed all the blessed time.”

The woman was tugging at the man’s arm.

Mabel said, “I tell you, there is nothing wrong.”

“Let’s go, honey,” urged the woman, still tugging at the arm. “They don’t want us here.”

The man went reluctantly.

Doyle slammed the door and bolted it. He leaned against it weakly.

“That rips it,” he said. “We got to get out of here. He’ll keep mulling it over and he’ll up and call the cops and they’ll haul us in …”

“We ain’t done nothing, Chuck.”

“No, maybe not. But I don’t like no cops. I don’t want to answer questions. Not right now.”

She moved closer to him.

“He was right,” she said. “You are all bloody. Your hands and shirt …”

“One leg, too. The rolla gave me a working over.”

The rolla stood up from behind a corner chair.

NO WISH EMBARRASS, he spelled out. ALWAYS HIDE FROM STRANGERS.

“That’s the way he talks,” said Doyle, admiringly.

“What is it?” asked Mabel, backing away a pace or two.

I ROLLA.

“I met him under the money tree,” said Doyle. “We had a little fracas. He has something to do with the tree, guarding it or something.”

“And did you get some money?”

“Not much. You see, this rolla…”

HUNGRY, said the rolla.

“You come along,” Mabel said to Doyle. “I got to patch you up.”

“But don’t you want to hear …”

“Not especially. You got into trouble again. It seems to me you want to get in trouble.”

She headed for the bathroom and he followed.

“Sit down on the edge of the tub,” she ordered.

The rolla came and sprawled in the doorway, leaning against the jamb.

AINT YOU GOT NO FOOD? it asked.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mabel exclaimed in exasperation, “what is it you want?”

FRUIT, VEGETABLES.

“Out in the kitchen. There’s fruit on the table. I suppose I have to show you.”

FIND MYSELF, the rolla said and left.

“I can’t understand that squirt,” said Mabel. “First he chewed you up. Now he’s palsy-walsy.”

“I give him lumps,” said Doyle. “Taught him some respect.”

“Besides,” observed Mabel, “he’s dying of starvation. Now you sit down on that tub and let me fix you up.”

He sat down gingerly while she rummaged in the medicine cabinet.

She got a bottle of red stuff, a bottle of alcohol, swabs and cotton. She knelt and rolled up Doyle’s trouser leg.

“This looks bad,” she said.

“Where he got me with his teeth,” said Doyle.

“You should see a doctor, Chuck. This might get infected. His teeth might not be clean or something.”

“Doc would ask too many questions. We got trouble enough …”

“Chuck, what is that thing out there?”

“It’s a rolla.”

“Why is it called a rolla?”

“I don’t know. Just call it that, I guess.”

“I read about someone called a rolla once. Rolla boys, I think it was. Always doing good.”

“Didn’t do me a bit of good.”

“What did you bring it here for, then?”

“Might be worth a million. Might sell it to a circus or a zoo. Might work up a night club act with it. The way it talks and all.”

She worked expertly and quickly on the tooth-marked calf and ankle, cleaning out the cuts and swabbing them with some of the red stuff that was in the bottle.

“There’s another reason I brought the rolla here,” Doyle confessed. “I got Metcalfe where I want him. I know something he wouldn’t want no one else to know and I got the rolla and the rolla has something to do with them money trees…”

“You’re talking blackmail now?”

“Nah, nothing like that. You know I wouldn’t never blackmail no one. Just a little private arrangement between me and Metcalfe. Maybe just out of gratitude for me keeping my mouth shut, he might give me one of his money trees.”

“But you said there was only one money tree.”

“That’s all I saw, was one. But the place was dark and there might be more of them. You wouldn’t expect a man like Metcalfe to be satisfied with just one money tree, would you. If he had one, he could grow some others. I bet you he has twenty-dollar trees and fifty-dollar trees and hundred-dollar trees.”

He sighed. “I sure would like to get just five minutes with a hundred-dollar tree. I’d be set for life. I’d do me some two-handed picking the like you never see.”

“Shuck up your shirt,” said Mabel. “I got to get at them scratches on your ribs.”

Doyle shucked up his shirt.

“You know,” he said, “I bet you Metcalfe ain’t the only one that has them money trees. I bet all the rich folks has them. I bet they’re all banded together in a secret society, pledged to never talk about them. I wouldn’t wonder if that’s where all the money comes from. Maybe the government don’t print no money, like they say they do …”

“Shut up,” commanded Mabel, “and hold still.”

She worked swiftly on his ribs.

“What are you going to do with the rolla?” she asked.

“We’ll put him in the car and drive down and have a talk with Metcalfe. You stay out in the car with the rolla and if there is any funny stuff, you get out of there. Long as we have the rolla we got Metcalfe across the barrel.”

“You’re crazy if you think I’ll stay alone, with that thing in the car. Not after what it done to you.”

“Just get yourself a stick of stove wood and belt him one with it if he makes a crooked move.”

“I’ll do no such thing,” said Mabel. “I will not stay with him.”

“All right, then,” said Doyle, “we’ll put him in the trunk. We’ll fix him up with some blankets, so he’ll be comfortable. He can’t get at you there. And it might be better to have him under lock and key.”

Mabel shook her head. “I hope that you are doing right, Chuck. I hope we don’t get into trouble.”

“Put that stuff away,” said Doyle, “and let us get a move on. We got to get out of here before that jerk down the hall decides to phone the cops.”

The rolla showed up in the doorway, patting at his belly.

JERKS? he asked. WHATS THEM?

“Oh, my aching back,” said Doyle, “now I got to explain to him.”

JERKS LIKE HEELS?

“Sure, that’s it,” said Doyle. “A jerk is like a heel.”

METCALFE SAY

ALL OTHER

HUMANS HEELS

“Now, I tell you, Metcalfe might have something there,” said Doyle, judicially.

HEEL MEAN

HUMAN WITH

NO MONEY

“I’ve never heard it put quite that way,” said Doyle, “but if that should be the case, you can count me as a heel.”

METCALFE SAY

THAT WHAT IS

WRONG WITH PLANET.

THERE IS TOO

LITTLE MONEY

“Now, that is something that I’ll go along with him.”

SO I NOT

ANGRY WITH

YOU ANY MORE.

Mabel said: “My, but he’s turned out to be a chatterbox.”

MY JOB TO

CARE AND

GUARD TREE.

I ANGRY AT

THE START.

BUT FINALLY

I THINK

POOR HEEL

NEED SOME MONEY

CANNOT BLAME

FOR TAKING.

“That’s decent of you,” Doyle told him. “I wish you’d thought of that before you chewed me up. If I could have had just a full five minutes—”’

“I am ready,” Mabel said. “If we have to leave, let’s go.”

Doyle went softly up the walk that led to the front of the Metcalfe house. The place was dark and the moon was riding homeward in the western sky, just above the tip of a row of pines that grew in the grounds across the street.

He mounted the steps of mellowed brick and stood before the door. He reached out and rang the bell and waited.

Nothing happened.

He rang again and yet again and there was no answer.

He tried the door and it was locked.

“They flown the coop,” said Doyle, talking to himself.

He went around the house into the alley and climbed the tree again.

The garden back of the house was dark and silent. He crouched for a long time atop the wall and the place was empty.

He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and played it downward. It cut a circle of uncertain light and he moved it slowly back and forth until it caught the maw of tortured earth.

His breath rasped in his throat at the sight of it and he worked the light around to make sure there was no mistake.

There was no mistake at all. The money tree was gone. Someone had dug it up and taken it away.

Doyle snapped off the light and slid it back into his pocket. He slid down the tree and trotted down the alley.

Two blocks away he came up to the car. Mabel had kept the motor idling. She moved from behind the wheel and he slid under it and shoved the car in gear.

“They took it on the lam,” he said. “There ain’t nobody there. They dug up the tree and took it on the lam.”

“Well, I’m glad of it,” Mabel said defiantly. “Now you won’t be getting into trouble—not with money trees at least.”

“I got a hunch,” said Doyle.

“So have I,” said Mabel. “Both of us is going home and getting us some sleep.”

“Maybe you,” said Doyle. “You can curl up in the seat. Me, I got some driving to do.”

“There ain’t no place to drive.”

“Metcalfe told me when I was taking his picture this afternoon about a farm he had. Bragging about all the things he has, you know. Out west some place, near a town called Millville.”

“What has that got to do with it?”

“Well, if you had a lot of money trees…”

“But he had only one tree. In the backyard of his house.”

“Maybe he has lots of them. Maybe he had this one here just to keep him in pocket money when he was in town.”

“You mean you’re driving out to this place where he has a farm?”

“I have to find an all-night station first. I need some gas and I need a road map to find out where is this Millville place. I bet you Metcalfe’s got an orchard on that farm of his. Can’t you see it, Mabel? Row after row of trees, all loaded down with money!”

The old proprietor of the only store in Millville—part hardware, part grocery, part drugstore, with the post office in one corner—rubbed his silvery mustache.

“Yeah,” he said. “Man by the name of Metcalfe does have a farm—over in the hills across the river. He’s got it named and everything. He calls it Merry Hill. Now, can you tell me, stranger, why anyone should name a farm like that?”

“People do some funny things,” said Doyle. “Can you tell me how to get there?”

“You asked?”

“Sure I asked. I asked you just now …”

The old man shook his head. “You been invited there? Metcalfe expecting you?”

“No, I don’t suppose he is.”

“You’ll never get in then. He’s got it solid-fenced. And he’s got a guard at the gate—even got a little house for the guard to stay in. ‘Less Metcalfe wants you in, you don’t get in.”

“I’ll have a try at it.”

“I wish you well, stranger, but I don’t think you’ll make it. Now, why in the world should Metcalfe act like that? This is friendly country. No one else has got their farms fenced with eight-foot wire and barbs on top of that. No one else could afford to do it even if they wanted to. He must be powerful scared of someone.”

“Wouldn’t know,” said Doyle. “Tell me how to get there.”

The old man found a paper sack underneath the counter, fished a stub pencil out of his vest pocket and wet it carefully with his tongue. He smoothed out the sack with a liver-spotted hand and began drawing painfully.

“You cross the bridge and take this road—don’t take that one to the left, it just wanders up the river—and you go up this hollow and you reach a steep hill and at the top of it you turn left and it’s just a mile to Metcalfe’s place.”

He wet the pencil again and drew a rough rectangle.

“The place lies right in there,” he said. “A sizeable piece of property. Metcalfe bought four farms and threw them all together.”

Back at the car Mabel was waiting irritably.

“So you was wrong all the time,” she greeted Doyle. “He hasn’t got a farm.”

“Just a few miles from here,” said Doyle. “How is the rolla doing?”

“He must be hungry again. He’s banging on the trunk.”

“How can he be hungry? I bought him all of them bananas just a couple hours ago.”

“Maybe he wants company. He might be getting lonesome.”

“I got too much to do,” said Doyle, “to be holding any rolla’s hand.”

He climbed into the car and got it started and pulled away into the dusty street. He clattered across the bridge and instead of keeping up the hollow, as the storekeeper had directed, turned left on the road that paralleled the river.

If the map the old man had drawn on the sack was right, he figured, he should come upon the Metcalfe farm from the rear by following the river road.

Gentle hills turned into steep bluffs, covered with heavy woods and underbrush. The crooked road grew rougher. He came to a deep hollow that ran between two bluffs. A faint trail, a wagon-road more than likely, unused for many years, angled up the hollow.

Doyle pulled the car into the old wagon road and stopped. He got out and stood for a moment, staring up the hollow.

“What you stopping for?” asked Mabel.

“I’m about,” Doyle told her, “to take Metcalfe in the rear.”

“You can’t leave me here.”

“I won’t be gone for long.”

“And there are mosquitos,” she complained, slapping wildly.

“Just keep the windows shut.”

He started to walk away and she called him back.

“There’s the rolla back there.”

“He can’t get at you as long as he’s in the trunk.”

“But all that banging he’s doing! What if someone should go past and hear all that banging going on?”

“I bet you there ain’t been anyone along this road within the last two weeks.”

Mosquitos buzzed. He waved futile hands at them.

“Look, Mabel,” he pleaded, “you want me to pull this off, don’t you? You ain’t got nothing against a mink coat, have you? You don’t despise no diamonds?”

“No, I guess I don’t,” she admitted. “But you hurry back. I don’t want to be here alone when it’s getting dark.”

He swung around and headed up the hollow.

The place was green—the deep, dead green, the shabby, shapeless green of summer. And quiet—except for the buzzing of mosquitos. And to Doyle’s concrete-and-asphalt mind there was a bit of lurking terror in the green quietness of the wooded hills.

He slapped at mosquitos again and shrugged.

“Ain’t nothing to hurt a man,” he said.

It was rough traveling. The hollow slanted, climbing up between the hills, and the dry creek bed, carpeted with tumbled boulders and bars of gravel, slashed erratically from one bluff-side to the other. Time after time, Doyle had to climb down one bank and climb up the other when the shifting stream bed blocked his way. He tried walking in the dry bed, but that was even worse—he had to dodge around or climb over a dozen boulders every hundred feet.

The mosquitos grew worse as he advanced. He took out his handkerchief and tied it around his neck. He pulled his hat down as far as it would go. He waged energetic war—he killed them by the hundreds, but there was no end to them.

He tried to hurry, but it was no place to hurry. He was dripping wet with perspiration. He wanted to sit down and rest, for he was short of wind, but when he tried to sit the mosquitos swarmed in upon him in hateful, mindless numbers and he had to move again.

The ravine narrowed and twisted and the going became still rougher.

He came around a bend and the way was blocked. A great mass of tangled wood and vines had become wedged between two great trees growing on opposite sides of the steep hillsides.

There was no possibility of getting through the tangle. It stretched for thirty feet or more and was so thickly interlaced that it formed a solid wall, blocking the entire stream bed. It rose for twelve or fifteen feet and behind it rocks and mud and other rubble had been jammed hard against it by the boiling streams of water that had come gushing down the hollow in times of heavy rain.

Clawing with his hands, digging with his feet, Doyle crawled up the hillside to get around one end of the obstruction.

He reached the clump of trees against which one end of it rested and hauled himself among them, bracing himself with aching arms and legs. The mosquitoes came at him in howling squadrons and he broke off a small branch, heavy with leaves, from one of the trees, and used it as a switch to discourage them.

He perched there, panting and sobbing, drawing deep breaths into his lungs. And wondered, momentarily, how he’d ever managed to get himself into such a situation. It was not his dish, he was not cut out for roughing it. His ideas of nature never had extended any further than a well-kept city park.

And here he was, in the depths of nowhere, toiling up outlandish hills, heading for a place where there might be money trees—row on row of money trees.

“I wouldn’t do it,” he told himself, “for nothing less than money.”

He twisted around and examined the tangle of wood and vines and saw, with some astonishment, that it was two feet thick or more and that it carried its thickness uniformly. And the uphill side of it was smooth and slick, almost as if it had been planed and sanded, although there was not a tool mark on it.

He examined it more closely and it was plain to see that it was no haphazard collection of driftwood that had been built up through the years, but that it was woven and interlaced so intricately that it was a single piece—had been a single piece even before it had become wedged between the trees.

Who, he wondered, could have, or would have, done a job like that? Where would the patience have been mustered and the technique and the purpose? He shook his head in wonderment.

He had heard somewhere about Indians weaving brush together to make weirs for catching fish, but there were no fish in this dry stream bed and no Indians for several hundred miles.

He tried to figure out the pattern of the weaving and there was no pattern that he could detect. Everything was twisted and intergrown around everything else and the whole thing was one solid mass.

Somewhat rested and with his wind at least partially restored, he proceeded on his way, trailing a ravaging cloud of mosquitos in his wake.

It seemed now that the trees were thinning and that he could see blue sky ahead. The terrain leveled out a bit and he tried to hurry, but racked leg muscles screamed at him and he contented himself with jogging along as best he could.

He reached more level ground and finally broke free into a clearing that climbed gently to the top of a grassy knoll. Wind came out of the west, no longer held back by the trees, and the mosquitos fell away, except for a small swarm of diehards that went part way up the knoll with him.

He reached the top of the knoll and threw himself in the grass, lying flat, panting like a tuckered dog.

And there, not more than a hundred yards away, was the fence that closed in Metcalfe’s farm.

It marched across the rolling, broken hills, a snake of shining metal. And extending out from it was a broad swath of weeds, waist-high, silver-green in the blasting sunlight—as if the ground had been plowed around the fence for a distance of a hundred feet or so and the weeds sown in the ground as one might sow a crop. Doyle squinted his eyes to try to make out what kind of weeds they were, but he was too far away.

Far on the distant ridge was the red gleam of a rooftop among many sheltering trees and to the west of the buildings lay an orchard, ordered row on row.

Was it, Doyle wondered, only his imagination that the shapes of those orchard trees were the remembered shape of the night-seen tree in the walled garden in the rear of Metcalfe’s town-house? And was it once more only his imagination that the green of them was slightly different than the green of other leaves—the green, perhaps of mint-new currency?

He lay in the grass, with the fingers of the wind picking at his sweat-soaked shirt, and wondered about the legal aspects of money that was grown on trees. It could not be counterfeit, for it was not made but grown. And if it were identical with perfectly legal, government-printed money, could anyone prove in any court of law that it was bogus money? He didn’t know much law, but he wondered if there could be any statute upon the books that would cover a point of law like this? Probably not, he concluded, since it was so fantastic that it could not be anticipated and thus would require no rule to legislate against it.

And now, for the first time, he began really to wonder how money could be grown on trees. He had told Mabel, off-handedly and casual, so she wouldn’t argue, that a botanist could do anything. But that wasn’t entirely right, of course, because a botanist only studied plants and learned what he could about them. But there were these other fellows—these bio-something or other—who fooled around with changing plants. They bred grasses that would grow on land that would grow no more than thistles, they cross-pollinated corn to grow more and bigger ears, they developed grains that were disease-resistant, and they did a lot of other things. But developing a tree that would grow letter-perfect money in lieu of leaves seemed just a bit farfetched.

The sun beat against his back and he felt the heat of it through his drying shirt. He looked at his watch and it was almost three o’clock.

He turned his attention back to the orchard and this time he saw that many little figures moved among the trees. He strained his eyes to see them better, but he could not be sure—although they looked for all the world like a gang of rollas.

He crawled down the knoll and across the strip of grass toward the weeds. He kept low and inched along and was very careful. His only hope of making a deal, any kind of deal, with Metcalfe, was to come upon him unawares and let him know immediately what kind of hand he held.

He started worrying about how Mabel might be getting along, but he wiped the worry out. He had enough to worry about without adding to it. And, anyhow, Mabel was quite a gal and could take care of herself.

He began running through his mind alternate courses of action if he should fail to locate Metcalfe, and the most obvious, of course, was to attempt a raid upon the orchard. As he thought it over, he wasn’t even sure but what a raid upon the orchard might be the thing to do. He wished he’d brought along the sugar sack Mabel had fixed up for him.

The fence worried him a little, but he also thrust that worry to one side. It would be time enough to worry about the fence once he got to it.

He slithered through the grass and he was doing swell. He was almost to the strip of weeds and no one apparently had seen him. Once he got to the weeds, it would be easier, for they would give him cover. He could sneak right up to the fence and no one would ever notice.

He reached the weeds and wilted at what he saw.

The weeds were the healthiest and thickest patch of nettles that had ever grown outdoors!

He put out a tentative hand and the nettles stung. They were the real McCoy. Ruefully, he rubbed at the dead-white welts rising on his fingers.

He raised himself cautiously to peer above the nettles. One of the rollas was coming down the slope toward the fence and there was no doubt now that the things he’d seen up in the orchard was a gang of rollas.

He ducked behind the nettles, hoping that the rolla had not seen him. He lay flat upon the ground and the sun was hot and the place upon his hand that had touched the nettles blazed with fire, although it was hard to decide which was the worst—the nettle sting or all the mosquito lumps that had blossomed out on him.

He noticed that the nettles were beginning to wave and toss as if they were blowing in the wind and that was a funny deal, for there wasn’t that much wind.

The nettles kept on blowing and all at once they parted right in front of him, running in a straight line, making a path between him and the fence. The nettles on the right blew to the right so hard they lay flat upon the ground and those to the left blew to the left so hard they were likewise on the ground and the path was there, without a thing to stop one walking to the fence.

The rolla stood just beyond the fence and he spelled out a message in large capital letters upon his blackboard chest:

Doyle hesitated, filled with dismay. It was a rotten break that he had been discovered by this little stinker. Now the cat was out the bag for sure, and all his toiling up the hollow, all his sneaking through the grass stood for absolutely nothing.

He saw that the other rollas were waddling down the slope toward the fence, while the first rolla still stood there, with the invitation on his chest.

Then the lettering on the rolla flickered out. The nettles still stayed down and the path stayed open. The rollas who had been coming down the slope reached the fence and all of them—all five of them—lined up in a solemn row. The first one’s chest lit up with words:

WE HAVE THREE

MISSING ROLLAS

And the chest of the second one:

DO YOU BRING

WORD TO US?

And the third:

WE WOULD LIKE

TO TALK TO YOU

The fourth:

ABOUT THE

MISSING ONES

The fifth:

PLEASE COME

TO US, HEEL.

Doyle raised himself from where he had been lying flat upon the ground and squatted on his toes.

It could be a trap.

What could he gain by talking with the rollas!

But there was no way to retreat without losing what little advantage he might have—there was no choice but to do his best at brazening it out.

He rose to his feet and ambled down the nettle-path with as slight a show of concern as he could manage.

He reached the fence and hunkered down so that he was almost level with the rollas.

“I know where one of the missing rollas is,” he said, “but not the other two.”

YOU KNOW

ABOUT THE

ONE WHO

WAS IN TOWN

WITH METCALFE?

“That’s right.”

YOU TELL

US WHERE

HE IS

“I’ll make a deal,” said Doyle.

All five of them asked, DEAL?

“I’ll tell you where he is; you do something for me. You let me up into that orchard for an hour tonight, then let me out again. Without letting Metcalfe know.”

They huddled, conferring, their blackboard fronts a-squiggle with the queer, confusing symbols Doyle had seen on the rolla’s chest back in Metcalfe’s garden.

Then they turned to face him again, the five of them lined up, shoulder to shoulder:

WE CANNOT DO THAT

WE MADE AN AGREEMENT

AND WE GAVE OUR WORD

WE GROW THE MONEY

METCALFE DISTRIBUTES

IT

“I wouldn’t distribute it,” said Doyle. “I promise that I wouldn’t. I’d keep it for myself.”

NO SOAP, spelled out rolla No. 1.

“This agreement that you have with Metcalfe. How come you made it?”

GRATITUDE, said No. 2.

“Don’t mind my snickering, but gratitude for Metcalfe …”

HE FOUND US

AND HE RESCUED

AND PROTECTED US

AND WE ASKED HIM

WHAT CAN WE DO?

“And he said, grow me some money.”

HE SAY THE PLANET

NEEDED MONEY

HE SAY MONEY

MAKE HAPPY ALL

POOR HEELS LIKE YOU

“The hell you say,” said Doyle, aghast.

WE GROW IT

HE DISTRIBUTE IT

BETWEEN US WE

MAKE ALL THE

PLANET HAPPY

“Just a bunch of missionaries!”

WE DO NOT

READ YOU, CHUM

“Missionaries. People who do good.”

WE DO GOOD

ON MANY PLANETS

WHY NOT DO

GOOD HERE?

“But money?”

THAT WHAT METCALFE

SAY.

HE SAY PLANET HAS

PLENTY OF ALL ELSE

BUT IS SHORT ON MONEY.

“What about the other two rollas that are missing?”

THEY DISAGREE

THEY LEAVE

WE WORRY

MUCH ABOUT

THEM.

“You disagreed on growing money? They thought, maybe, you should grow something else?”

WE DISAGREE

ON METCALFE.

TWO SAY HE TRICK US.

REST OF US

SAY HE VERY

NOBLE HUMAN

What a bunch of creeps, thought Doyle.

Very noble human!

WE TALK

ENOUGH

NOW WE

SAY

GOODBYE.

They turned around, almost as if someone had shouted orders at them, and went stumping up the slope, back toward the orchard.

“Hey!” yelled Doyle, leaping to his feet.

Behind him was a rustle and he whirled around.

The nettles that had been laid to either side to make the path were rising, wiping out the path!

“Hey!” yelled Doyle again, but the rollas paid no attention to him. They went on stumping up the slope.

Doyle stood in his little trampled area, wedged against the fence, and all around him were the nettles—upright and strong and bright in the afternoon. They stretched in a solid mass at least a hundred feet back from the fence and they were shoulder high.

A man could manage to get through them. They could be kicked aside and trampled down, but some of them would be bound to peg a man and by the time one got out of there he’d have plenty welts.

And did he, at the moment, really want to get out of there?

He was, he told himself, no worse off than he had been before.

Better off, perhaps, for he was through the nettles. Better off, that is, if those stinking little rollas didn’t run and tattle on him.

There was no sense, he decided, in going through the nettles now. If he did, in just a couple of hours or so he’d have to wade back through them once again to reach the fence.

He couldn’t climb the fence until it was getting dark and he had no place else to go.

He took a good look at the fence and it would be a tough one to get over. It was a good eight feet of woven wire and atop that were three strands of barbed wire, attached to an arm-like bracket that extended outward beyond the woven fence.

Just beyond the fence stood an ancient oak tree and if he had had a rope he could make a lariat—but he had no rope, and if he wanted to get over the fence, he would somehow have to climb it.

He hunkered tight against the ground and felt downright miserable. His body was corrugated with mosquito lumps and the nettle welts on his hand had turned into blisters and he’d had a bit more sun than he was accustomed to. And now the upper molar on the left side of his jaw was developing a sort of galloping ache. All he needed.

He sneezed and it hurt his head to sneeze and the aching tooth gave a bounding leap.

Maybe, he figured, it was the pollen from those lousy nettles.

Never saw no nettles like them before, he told himself, eying them warily.

More than likely the rollas had a hand in growing them. The rollas were good with plants. They had developed the money trees and if they could develop money trees there wasn’t anything they couldn’t do with plants. He remembered how the nettles had fallen over to the left and right to make a path for him. It had been the rolla, he was sure, who had made them do that, for there hadn’t been enough wind to do it and even if there had been a wind, there wasn’t any wind that blew two ways at once.

There was nothing like the rollas in the world. And that might be exactly it. They’d said something about doing good on other worlds. But no matter what they’d done on other worlds, they’d sure been suckered here.

Do-gooders, he thought. Missionaries, maybe, from some other world, from some place out in space—a roving band of beings devoted to a cause. And trapped into a ridiculous situation on a planet that might have little, if anything, in common with any other world they’d ever seen.

Did they even, he wondered, understand what money was? Just what kind of story had Metcalfe palmed off on them?

They had arrived and Metcalfe, of all persons, had stumbled onto them and taken them in tow. Metcalfe, not so much a man as an organization that from long experience would know exactly how to exploit a situation such as the rollas offered. One man alone could not have handled it, could not have done all that needed to be done to set up the rollas for the kill. And only in an organization such as Metcalfe headed, long schooled in the essentials of self preservation, could there have been any hope of maintaining the essential secrecy.

The rollas had been duped—completely, absolutely fooled—and yet they were no fools. They had learned the language, not the spoken language only, but both the spoken and the written, and that spelled sharp intelligence. Perhaps more intelligence than was first apparent, for they did not make use of sound in their normal talk among themselves. But they had adapted readily, it seemed, to sound communication.

The sun long since had disappeared behind the nettles and now was just above the tree line of the bluffs. Dusk would be coming soon and then, Doyle told himself, he could get busy.

He debated once again which course he should take. By now the rollas might have told Metcalfe he was at the fence and Metcalfe might be waiting for him, although Metcalfe, if he knew, more than likely would not just wait, but would be coming out to get him. And as for the raid upon the orchard—he’d had trouble enough with just one rolla when he tried to rob a tree. He didn’t like to think what five might do to him.

Behind him the nettles began to rustle and he leaped to his feet. Maybe, he thought wildly, they were opening up the path again. Maybe the path was opened automatically, at regularly scheduled hours. Maybe the nettles were like four o’clocks or morning glories—maybe they were engineered by the rollas to open and to close the path so many times a day.

And what he imagined was the truth in part. A path, he saw, was opening. And waddling down the path was another rolla. The path opened in front of him and then closed as he passed.

The rolla came out into the trampled area and stood facing Doyle.

GOOD EVENING, HEEL, he said.

It couldn’t be the rolla locked in the trunk of the car down on the river road. It must, Doyle told himself, be one of the two that had walked out on the money project.

YOU SICK? the rolla asked.

“I itch just something awful and my tooth is aching and every time I sneeze the top of my head comes off.”

COULD FIX.

“Sure, you could grow a drug-store tree, sprouting linaments and salves and pills and all the other junk.”

SIMPLE, spelled the rolla.

“Well, now,” said Doyle and then tried to say no more. For suddenly it struck him that it would be as the rolla said—very, very simple.

Most medicines came from plants and there wasn’t anyone or anything that could engineer a plant the way the rollas could.

“You’re on the level there,” said Doyle enthusiastically. “You would be able to cure a lot of things. You might find a cure for cancer and you might develop something that would hold off heart disease. And there’s the common cold …”

SORRY, PAL,

BUT WE ARE

OFF OF YOU.

YOU MADE

SAPS OF US.

“Then you are one of them that ran away,” said Doyle in some excitement. “You saw through Metcalfe’s game…”

But the rolla was paying no attention to anything he said. It had drawn itself a little straighter and a little taller and it had formed its lips into a circle as if it might be getting ready to let out a bay and the sides of its throat were quivering as if it might be singing, but there was no sound.

No sound, but a rasping shrillness that skidded on one’s nerves, a something in the air that set one’s teeth on edge.

It was an eerie thing, that sense of singing terror in the silence of the dusk, with the west wind blowing quietly along the tops of the darkening trees, with the silky rustle of the nettles and somewhere in the distance the squeaking of a chipmunk homeward bound on the last trip of the day.

Out beyond the fence came the thumping of awkward running feet and in the thickening dusk Doyle saw the five rollas from the orchard plunging down the slope.

There was something going on. Doyle was sure of that. He sensed the importance of the moment and the excitement that was in it, but there was no inkling of what it all might mean.

The rolla by his side had sent out some sort of rallying call, pitched too high for the human ear to catch, and now the orchard rollas were tumbling down the slope in answer to that call.

The five rollas reached the fence and lined up in their customary row and their blackboard chests were alive with glowing characters—the strange, flickering, nonsensical characters of their native language. And the chest of the one who stood outside the fence with Doyle also flamed with the fleeting symbols, changing and shifting so swiftly that they seemed to be alive.

It was an argument, Doyle thought. The five inside the fence were arguing heatedly with the one who stood outside and there seemed an urgency in the argument that could not be denied.

He stood there, on the edge of embarrassment, an innocent bystander pocketed in a family squabble he could not understand.

The rollas were gesturing wildly now and the characters upon their chests glowed more brightly than ever as darkness deepened on the land.

A squalling night bird flew overhead and Doyle tilted up his head to watch it and as he did he saw the moving figures of running men outlined against the lighter sky on the north ridge of the orchard.

“Watch out!” he shouted and wondered even as he shouted why he should have shouted.

At the shout the five rollas whirled back to face the fence.

One set of symbols appeared upon each chest, as if suddenly they might have reached agreement, as if the argument might finally be resolved.

There was a creaking sound and Doyle looked up quickly.

Against the sky he could see the old oak tree was tipping, slanting slowly toward the fence, as if a giant hand had reached out and given it a push.

He watched for a puzzled second and the tilt continued and the speed of the fall picked up and he knew that the tree was crashing down upon the fence and the time had come to get out of there.

He stepped back a pace to turn around and flee and when he put his foot down there was no solid ground beneath it. He fought briefly to keep from falling, but he didn’t have a chance. He fell and thumped into a crowded cavity and above him he heard the roaring rush of the falling tree and then the jarring thud as it hit the ground and the long, high whine of wires stretched so tight they pinged and popped.

Doyle lay quietly, afraid to move.

He was in a ditch of some sort. It was not very deep, not more than three feet at the most, but he was cramped at an awkward angle and there was an uncomfortable stone or root in the middle of his back.

Above him was a tracery of limbs and twigs, where the top of the oak had crashed across the ditch. And running through the fallen branches was a rolla, moving much more swiftly than one would have thought was possible.

From up the slope beyond the smashed-down fence came the bellowing of men and the sound of running feet.

Doyle huddled in his ditch glad of the darkness and of the shelter of the fallen tree.

The stone or root was still in his back and he wriggled to get off it. He slid off to one side and put out a hand to catch his balance and his hand came in contact with a mound of stuff that felt like sand.

And froze there. For just beyond the ditch, standing among the branches and the nettles, was a pair of legs and the loom of a body extending up into the darkness.

“They went down that way,” said a voice. “Down into the woods. It will be hard to find them.”

Metcalfe’s voice answered: “We have to find them, Bill. We can’t let them get away.”

There was a pause, then Bill said: “I wonder what got into them. They seemed happy up till now.”

Metcalfe swore bitterly. “It’s that photographer. That fellow—what’s his name—I saw him when he was in the tree and he got away that time. But he won’t make it this time. I don’t know what he did or what’s going on, but he’s in it, clear up to his neck. He’s around here somewhere.”

Bill moved away a little and Metcalfe said, “If you run into this photographer, you know what to do.”

“Sure, boss.”

“Medium-sized guy. Has a dopey way about him.”

They moved away. Doyle could hear them thrashing through the nettles, cursing as the nettles stung them.

Doyle shivered a little.

He had to get out and he had to make it fast, for before too long the moon would be coming up.

Metcalfe and his boys weren’t fooling. They couldn’t afford to fool in a deal like this. If they spotted him, more than likely they would shoot to kill.

Now, with everyone out hunting down the rollas, would be the time to get up to that orchard. Although the chances were that Metcalfe had men patrolling it.

Doyle gave the idea some consideration and dropped it. There was, now, just one thing to do and that was get to the car down on the river road as fast as he could make it.

Cautiously, he crawled out of the ditch. Once out of it, he crouched for long minutes in the tangle of fallen branches, listening for sound. There wasn’t any sound.

He moved out into the nettles, following the path that had been crushed down by the men who had pursued the rollas. But, crushed down or not, some of the nettles pegged him.

Then he started down the slope, running for the woods.

Ahead of him a shout went up and he braked his speed and swerved. He reached a clump of brush and hurled himself behind it as other shouts went up and then two shots, fired in quick succession.

He saw it moving above the treetops, rising from the woods—a pale ghost of a thing that rose into the sky, with the red glint of early moonlight on it.

From it trailed a twisting line that had the appearance of a vine and from the vine hung a struggling doll-like figure that was screaming thinly. The ghost-like shape was stubby at the bottom and pointed at the top. It had the look about it of a ballooning Christmas tree and there was about it, too, even from a distance, a faint familiarity.

And suddenly Doyle linked up that familiarity—linked it to the woven mass of vegetation that had damned the creek bed. And as he linked it up, he knew without a question the nature of this Christmas tree riding in the sky.

The rollas worked with plants as Man would work with metals. They could grow a money tree and a protective strip of nettles that obeyed, they could make an oak tree fall and if they could do all that, the growing of a spaceship would not be too hard a job.

The ship was moving slowly, slanting up across the ridge, and the doll still struggled at the end of the trailing vine and its screams came down to earth as a far-off wailing sound.

Someone was shouting in the woods below:

“It’s the boss! Bill, do something! It’s the boss!”

It was quite apparent there was nothing Bill could do.

Doyle sprang from his bush and ran. Now was the time to make his dash, when all the other men were yelling and staring up into the sky, where Metcalfe dangled, screaming, from the trailing vine—perhaps an anchor vine, mayhaps just a part of the rolla-grown spaceship that had become unravelled. Although, remembering the craftsmanship of that woven barrier blocking the creek-bed, it seemed unlikely to Doyle that anything would come unravelled from a rolla ship.

He could imagine what had happened—Metcalfe glimpsing the last of the rollas clambering up the ship and rushing at them, roaring, firing those two shots, then the ship springing swiftly upward and the trailing vine twisted round the ankle.

Doyle reached the woods and went plunging into it. The ground dropped sharply and he went plunging down the slope, stumbling, falling, catching himself and going on again. Until he ran full tilt into a tree that bounced him back and put exploding stars inside his skull.

He sat upon the ground where the impact had bounced him and felt of his forehead, convinced it was cracked open, while tears of pain streamed down his cheeks.

His forehead was not cracked and there seemed to be no blood, although his nose was skinned and one lip began to puff.

Then he got up and went on slowly, feeling his way along, for despite the moonlight, it was black-dark beneath the trees.

Finally he came to the dry stream-bed and felt his way along it.

He hurried as best he could, for he remembered Mabel waiting in the car. She’d be sore at him, he thought—she’d sure be plenty sore. He had gone and let her think he might be back by dark.

He came to the place where the woven strip of vegetation dammed the stream-bed and almost tumbled over it onto the rocks below.

He ran the flat of his hand across the polished surface of the strip of weaving and tried to imagine what might have happened those several years ago.

A ship plunging down to Earth, out of control perhaps, and shattering on impact, with Metcalfe close at hand to effect a rescue.

It beats all hell, he thought, how things at times turn out.

If it had not been Metcalfe, given someone else who did not think in dollar signs, there might now be trees or bushes or rows of vegetables carrying hopes such as mankind had never known before—hope for surcease from disease and pain, an end to poverty and fear. And perhaps many other hopes that no one now could guess.

And they were gone now, in a spaceship grown by the two deserting rollas under Metcalfe’s very nose.

He squatted atop the dam and knew the blasted hopes of mankind, the hope that had never come to be, wrecked by avarice and greed.

Now they were gone—but, wait a minute, not entirely gone! For there was a rolla left. He had to believe that the deserting rolla he had never seen was with the others—but there was still his rolla, locked in the trunk of that old heap down on the river road!

He got up and stumbled through the darkness to the end of the dam and climbed around the clump of anchor trees. He skidded down the sharp incline to the stream-bed and went fumbling down the hollow.

What should he do, he wondered. Head straight for Washington? Go to the FBI?

For whatever else, no matter what might happen, that one remaining rolla must be gotten into proper hands.

Already there was too much lost. There could be no further chances taken. Placed in governmental or scientific hands, that one lone rolla might still retrieve much that had been lost.

He began to worry about what might have happened to the rolla, locked inside the trunk. He recalled that it had been banging for attention.

What if it suffocated? What if there were something of importance, something about its care, perhaps, that it had been vital that it tell him? What if that had been the reason for its banging on the trunk?

He fumbled down the stream-bed in sobbing haste, tripping on the gravel beds, falling over boulders. Mosquitos flew a heavy escort for him and he flapped his hands to try and clear them off, but he was so worried that they seemed little more than an inconvenience.

Up in the orchard, more than likely, Metcalfe’s mob was busy stripping trees, harvesting no one could guess how many millions in brand new, crinkly bills.

For now the jig was up and all of them would know it. Now there was nothing left to do but clean out the orchard and disappear as best they could.

Perhaps the money trees had required the constant attention of the rollas to keep on producing letter-perfect money. Otherwise why had Metcalfe had the rolla to tend the tree in town? And now, with the rollas gone, the trees might go on producing, but the money that they grew might be defective and irregular, like the growth of nubbin corn.

The slope of the land told him that he was near the road.

He went on blindly and suddenly came upon the car. He went around it in the dark and rapped upon the window.

Inside, Mabel screamed.

“It’s all right,” yelled Doyle. “It is me. I’m back.”

She unlocked the door and he climbed in beside her. She leaned against him and he put an arm around her.

“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry that I took so long.”

“Did everything go all right, Chuck?”

“Yes,” he mumbled. “Yes, I imagine that you could say it did.”

“I’m so glad,” she said, relieved. “It is all right, then. The rolla ran away.”

“Ran away! For God’s sake, Mabel …”

“Now, please don’t go getting sore, Chuck. He kept on with that banging and I felt sorry for him. I was afraid, of course, but more sorry than afraid. So I opened up the trunk and let him out and it was OK. He was the sweetest little chap …”

“So he ran away,” said Doyle, still not quite believing it. “But he might still be around somewhere, out there in the dark.”

“No,” said Mabel, “he is not around. He went up the hollow as fast as he could go, like a dog when his master calls. It was dark and I was scared, but I ran after him. I called and kept on following, but it was no use—I knew that he was gone.”

She sat up straight in the seat.

“It don’t make no difference now,” she said. “You don’t need him any longer. Although I am sorry that he ran away. He’da made a dandy pet. He talked so nice—so much nicer than a parakeet—and he was so good. I tied a ribbon, a yellow piece of ribbon around his neck and you never seen anything so cute.”

“I just bet he was,” said Doyle.

And he was thinking of a rolla, rocketing through space in a new-grown ship, heading out for a far-off sun and taking with him possibly some of man’s greatest hopes, all fixed up and cute with a ribbon round his neck.