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time going out to get another pair.
But first of all, he'd have to get this basket out of here. Somehow it had become stuck to the floor - maybe some of
the yellow goo had run underneath the edge of it and dried. Maybe if he had a pinch bar or some sort of lever that he
could jab beneath it, he could pry it loose.
From the basket the yellow stuff made merry bubbling noises at him.
He clapped his bat back on his head and went out and slammed and locked the door behind him.
It was a fine summer day and he walked around a little, trying to run his many problems through his mind, but no
matter what he thought of, he always came back to the basket brimming with the yellow mess and he knew he'd never
be able to get started on any of the other tasks until he got rid of it.
So he hunted up a hardware store and bought a good-sized pinch bar and headed back for the apartment house. The
bar, he knew, might mark up the floor somewhat, but if he could get under the edge of the basket with a bar that size he
was sure that he could pry it loose,
In the lobby, Lang descended on him.
"Mr. Packer," he said sternly, "where are you going with that bar?"
"I went out and bought it to exterminate the mice."
"But, Mr. Packer -"
"You want to get rid of those mice, don't you?"
 "Why, certainly I do."
"It's a desperate situation," Packer told him gravely, "and one that may require very desperate measures."
"But that bar!"
"Ill exercise my best discretion," Packer promised him. "I shall hit them easy."
He went up the elevator with the bar. The sight of Lang's discomfiture made him feel a little better and he managed to
whistle a snatch of tune as he went down the hall.
As he fumbled with the key, he heard the sound of rustling coming from beyond the door and he felt a chill go
through him, for the rustlings were of a furtive sort and they sounded ominous,
_Good Lord_, he thought, _there can't be that many mice in there!_
He grasped the bar more firmly and unlocked the door and pushed it open.
The inside of the place was a storm of paper.
He stepped in quickly and slammed the door behind him to keep the blowing paper from swooping out into the hall.
_Must have left a window open_, he thought. But he knew he had not, and even if he had, it was quiet outside.
There was not a breath of breeze.
And what was happening inside the apartment was more than just a breeze.
He stood with his back against the door and watched what was going on and shifted his grip on the bar so that it
made a better club.
The apartment was filled with a sleet of flying paper and a barrage of packets and a snowstorm of dancing stamps.
There were open boxes standing on the floor and the paper and the stamps and packets were drifting down and
chunking into these, and along the wall were other boxes, very neatly piled - and that was entirely wrong, for there had
been nothing neat about the place when he had left it less than two hours before.
But even as he watched, the activity slacked off. There was less stuff flying through the air and some of the boxes
were closed by unseen hands and then flew off, all by themselves, to stack themselves with the other boxes.
_Poltergeists!_ he thought in terror, his mind scrambling back frantically over all that he had ever thought or read or
heard to grasp some explanation.
Then it was done and over.
There was nothing flying through the air. All the boxes had been stacked. Everything was still.
Packer stepped out into the room and stared in slackjawed amazement.
The desk and the tables shone. The drapes hung straight and clean. The carpeting looked as if it might be new.
Chairs and small tables and lamps and other things, long forgotten, buried all these years beneath the accumulation of
his collection, stood revealed and shining - dusted, cleaned and polished.
And in the middle of all this righteous order stood the wastebasket, bubbling happily.
Packer dropped the bar and headed for the desk.
In front of him a window flapped open and he heard a swish and the bar went past him, flying for the window. It went
out the window and slashed through the foliage of a tree, then the window closed and he lost sight of it.
Packer took off his hat and tossed it on the desk.
Immediately his hat lifted from the desk and sailed for a closet door. The closet door swung open and the hat ducked [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]