The Umbrella Man and Other Stories Read Free Page B

the end, Mr. Bohlen said he would have to think about it some more. The next morning, he was quietly enthusiastic. Within a week, he was completely sold on the idea.
    “What we’ll have to do, Knipe, is to say that we’re merely building another mathematical calculator, but of a new type. That’ll keep the secret.”
    “Exactly, Mr. Bohlen.”
    And in six months the machine was completed. It was housed in a separate brick building at the back of the premises, and now that it was ready for action, no one was allowed near it excepting Mr. Bohlen and Adolph Knipe.
    It was an exciting moment when the two men—the one, short, plump, breviped—the other tall, thin and toothy—stood in the corridor before the control panel and got ready to run off the first story. All around them were walls dividing up into many small corridors, and the walls were covered with wiring and plugs and switches and huge glass valves. They were both nervous, Mr. Bohlen hopping from one foot to the other, quite unable to keep still.
    “Which button?” Adolph Knipe asked, eyeing a row of small white discs that resembled the keys of a typewriter. “You choose, Mr. Bohlen. Lots of magazines to pick from—
Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Ladies’ Home Journal
—any one you like.”
    “Goodness me, boy! How do I know?” He was jumping up and down like a man with hives.
    “Mr. Bohlen,” Adolph Knipe said gravely, “do you realize that at this moment, with your little finger alone, you have it in your power to become the most versatile writer on this continent?”
    “Listen Knipe, just get on with it, will you please—and cut out the preliminaries.”
    “Okay, Mr. Bohlen. Then we’ll make it . . . let me see—this one. How’s that?” He extended one finger and pressed down a button with the name TODAY’S WOMAN printed across it in diminutive black type. There was a sharp click, and when he took his finger away, the button remained down, below the level of the others.
    “So much for the selection,” he said. “Now—here we go!” He reached up and pulled a switch on the panel. Immediately, the room was filled with a loud humming noise, and a crackling of electric sparks, and the jingle of many tiny, quickly moving levers; and almost in the same instant, sheets of quarto paper began sliding out from a slot to the right of the control panel and dropping into a basket below. They came out quick, one sheet a second, and in less than half a minute it was all over. The sheets stopped coming.
    “That’s it!” Adolph Knipe cried. “There’s your story!”
    They grabbed the sheets and began to read. The first one they picked up started as follows: “Aifkjmbsaoegweztpplnvoqudskigt&,-fuhpekanvbertyuio lkjhgfdsazxcvbnm, peru itrehdjkg mvnb, wmsuy . . . ” They looked at the others. The style was roughly similar in all of them. Mr. Bohlen began to shout. The younger man tried to calm him down.
    “It’s all right, sir. Really it is. It only needs a little adjustment. We’ve got a connection wrong somewhere, that’s all. You must remember, Mr. Bohlen, there’s over a million feet of wiring in this room. You can’t expect everything to be right first time.”
    “It’ll never work,” Mr. Bohlen said.
    “Be patient, sir. Be patient.”
    Adolph Knipe set out to discover the fault, and in four days’ time he announced that all was ready for the next try.
    “It’ll never work,” Mr. Bohlen said. “I know it’ll never work.”
    Knipe smiled and pressed the selector button marked READER’S DIGEST . Then he pulled the switch, and again the strange, exciting, humming sound filled the room. One page of typescript flew out of the slot into the basket.
    “Where’s the rest?” Mr. Bohlen cried. “It’s stopped! It’s gone wrong!”
    “No sir, it hasn’t. It’s exactly right. It’s for the
Digest
, don’t you see?”
    This time it began. “Few people yet know