THE MAN WHO TOOK PARIS

INTRODUCTION, by Vella Munn

Fans and reviewers of Homer’s speculative fiction are impressed by his scientific knowledge. Historian Mike Ashley said of The Planeteer, “…it is a remarkable story, especially for a first fiction sale outside of movie scenarios, and shows the depths of Flint’s unbridled imagination.”

What most of those readers don’t know is that Homer had a lively sense of humor. The Man Who Took Paris, which wasn’t published while he was alive, is an example. Others appeared in the letters he wrote to his wife.

Dec. 6, 1923: “I am very seriously interested in your highly scientific and most worthy inquiry into the Relative Excellence of Valley and Mountain Grown Kisses. I have always felt that this was a neglected subject and could stand a great deal of experimental investigation. You can count on me to do my part.”

Dec. 8, 1923: “Just to see if it makes any improvement in the readability of my letter, I’m going to do it on Frankie’s machine. It is a Remington, at one time a pretty good typewriter but has not been kept covered up or otherwise cared for. Sounds like someone chopping kindling.”

Dec. 15, 1923: “Anyway, when it comes to grammatical blunders, Madame School Teacher, I regret very much to have to call you up to my desk and ask you, what’s the meaning of the word ‘negoiate’? You wrote this in describing the accident on the Alpha grade. You meant ‘negotiate.’ Terrible—terrible.”

Pictures of his three children taken when they were teenagers demonstrate that they, too, loved to laugh:

THE MAN WHO TOOK PARIS

Me and the professor was having an argument when Quigley’s flivver arrived. The professor was trying to make me believe that instinct is a bigger animal than reason. I knowed better.

“No,” says I. “There ain’t nothing to beat reason. Instinct can’t touch logic. Why, there wouldn’t be the first darn instrument in this observatory if it wasn’t for reason.”

But the professor says something about the marvelous power of intuition over the unknown, and just then this Quigley butted in. Of course, the professor, Mr. Newland, had invited him; but we was in the clock-room, setting up the new clock, and I wasn’t much stuck on being bothered.

Anyhow, I didn’t like Quigley’s looks, from the start. He was so all-fired handsome, and spick and span and smooth as silk, he made me tired. There was only one thing about him that wasn’t perfect: his upper lip was short, and looked like it was trying to trip his nose up. And I can’t go a man who sneers even just a little.

Well, Newland tells him all about it. He shows him how all the clocks is set on brick piers, and how we keep the room at seventy degrees, just to make sure of having correct time. A clock ain’t much good to astronomers unless she keeps right to a tenth of a second.

Then he points out the different clocks, one for every big city in the world. That way, the observatory can keep tab on the time, exact. Sometimes it’s very important for an astronomer to know what time it is somewheres else.

“This new clock is to keep Paris time.” And he told Quigley how much it cost, and how it was made with platinum wheels, and iridium bearings, and jewels and all.

“Gee! No wonder it cost so much,” says Quigley, squinting his eyes. Up to that he ain’t said nothing.

“You bet,” the professor comes back; only, of course, he uses different language than met. (Just the same, if I am only a janitor, I gets as good pay as him.) “Them metals and jewels is worth thousands in the rough, let alone the work. But they make one peach of a clock; he’ll be nearer right than any of the others at the end of the year.” Everybody in the observatory is bugs about that clock. She was give to us by a Frisco millionaire.

And then the professor shows the big thermometer, and the thermograph, the machine what records the temperature on a chart. It’s got a clock-works and a fountain-pen geared up to a queer kind of a thermometer, and the chart turns around once every twenty-four hours, you know.

We got another one out in the main corridor, what keeps track of the outside air. That one, the fountain pen makes a zigzag line across the chart, high when it’s the hot part of day, and low during the night. The one in the clock room always has a nice straight line, right on the seventy mark, never no different.

“Just to make sure the clocks get a square deal,” says the professor. Quigley keeps quiet until they was just going out; then he wants to know, in a meek little voice:

“Ain’t you going to give them their milk now?”

And he snickers, crazy-like, thinking he’s said something funny. The professor looks hurt. You see, them astronomers think a whole lot of their instruments, more than they do of theirselves, by a long shot.

Well, Quigley goes around the whole place with Newland, and gets off funny cracks on everything we got some pictures of nebulae, mounted in boxes with electric lights inside to show them off good. Quigley calls then pin-wheels. And there’s some swell photographs of the moon, out in the corridor; he points out the craters, and says the old man must have just got over the small-pox.

And crazy stuff like that.

When they went into the big dome to look at the thirty-six, Newland done his best to show this guy how grand she is. Honest, she is one whale of a telescope; and the machinery and everything is real wonderful, sure; Quigley ain’t impressed a bit.

“Why don’t you let folks use this scope any other night than Saturday?” he fires at the professor, finally. “Looks to me as if it was big enough to stand the strain all right.”

“In the first place,” the professor is mighty solemn and reverent, “up here, we calls these instruments telescopes, not scopes.” Newland is awful earnest about astronomy. “Anyhow, we got to use them ourselves, other nights.”

But Quigley didn’t collapse in dismay, or nothing like that; not him. He’s not that fragile.

Well, he was to bunk with Newland in his little cottage near the dormitory; but of course, you know how it is, nighttime is daytime for astronomers. Newland was up until after one, taking some pictures of the Milky Way, using the twelve-inch reflector. And Quigley was with him part of the time, and the rest of the time straying all over the place.

Of course I went to bed as usual, around ten. In the morning, I felt kind of uneasy, or something; anyhow, I got on the job half an hour early. First thing, of course, I went to the lavatory to get water for the sawdust. And passing the clock room door, I peeked in, habitual like, to see if she’s still at seventy. And darn me if the window ain’t busted!

Gosh, I sure did open the door in a hurry. The big thermometer was way down to forty-five—the window must have been broke a long time. Then, sudden, I looks for Paris. She’s gone!

Gone complete, I say. Somebody’s unbolted her from the iron plate what is on top of the pier. What’s more, the thermograph is busted and the chart took off it.

I sprints for the phone and gets the director, quick. He comes running from his cottage by the time I raises Newland and a couple more professors. They crowd into the room and look.

Well, of course, I knowed we got to telegraph to a lot of other observatories and get the exact time again, and start the clocks right and all, and it’s up to me to put in a new pane. But them astronomers looks at that empty pier like it was a empty cradle from which a baby had went. Gosh, it made them feel bad.

There wasn’t nothing we could do right away; so we all went into the director’s office and stood around, thinking hard. Who done it? That’s what we’re all wondering, Nobody says nothing, for a long while.

Me, I blames it onto Quigley. I never liked him, nohow; everybody else on the mountain was all right, so far as I knows. All the same, I couldn’t see no real reason why it should be him, special.

By and by the director sits down, and all the others do too, except me. Mr. Douglas, that’s the director, he kind of clears his throat a bit and says:

“Gentlemen, this is a difficult matter. This clock has been took, and we don’t know by who.

“Howsomever, whoever done it, done it for one of two reasons: Either he took it because he wanted one of the finest clocks in the world, or because of the valuable materials in her.

“Now, if he took it because it was a cloak, and not because it was valuable stuff, he’ll get no good from it whatever. She’s such a unusual thing, he won’t dare let nobody see it. He can’t make use of it at all, and he’d know that before he took it, if he’s half way intelligent.

“So I figure that the man what took her did it to get the platinum and iridium and jewels. What do you say, gentlemen?”

Gosh, the director has got brains, all right. He knows more in ten minutes than I do in a year. But them scientific men never make up their minds in a hurry; all than professors sits and thinks for a long time before they owns up that Mr. Douglas is right. “Must have been someone who wanted money.”

“Very well, then,” the director goes on. “We know that much. Whoever done it, needed the cash more than he loved the science. What do you know about that? Now, does any of you know of anybody here on the mountain what is such a bum sport as to take our Paris, just for a few measly thousand dollars?”

There ain’t one of them professors but what could use a few thousand mighty well; astronomers is generally a poor outfit. But they make such pale of their instruments, money don’t mean nothing to them, like it does to other folks.

None of them has any idea who it could be. I has my own opinion, but Mr. Douglas wasn’t asking me. Finally, after a long time, he says something more:

“Of course, we have a stranger among us; Mr. Newland’s friend! And I presume he don’t appreciate such things like us. Maybe he done it; maybe, I say,” being cautious, like all scientific men, especially the Scotch.

Maybe you think Professor Newland is mad about that. Not him; he’s a darn sight more worried about the clock than about Quigley.

“Still,” he objects, “we can’t very well accuse him, having no evidence against him. He could make a fuss about it, and start a lot of talk about the observatory. We don’t want nothing like that.”

They all agrees, quick. Astronomers hates publicity something terrible.

“It might even have been somebody who has a key,” says Mr. Douglas, dreamy like. “The busted window don’t prove nothing. If he was foxy enough to break the thermograph, he wouldn’t use no door!” That’s right; because the thermograph, keeping track of the temperatures, would of showed right off just what time the thing was done.

“Quigley was with you all evening, wasn’t he?” Mr. Douglas asks the professor. “Did he act queer any time?”

No; nothing special, thinks the professor. He weren’t really with me, much, anyhow—

“Hold on!” he jerks out. “Come to think of it, he butted in just when I was taking one plate out of the camera, and near spoiled it by running into me, in the dark. I thought it was funny.”

“What time was that?” the director speaks up, quick and sharp.

“Why, I don’t know,” Newland owns up.

“How many photos did you take?”

“Four. Let’s see; I think that must have been the next to the last. Yes, that’s right.”

“Well!” says the director, disgusted like. And Newland suddenly remembers something, and runs out and comes back soon with the developing tank.

I turns out all the lights; except one with red paper on it, and they examines Newland’s negatives. Sure enough, down in the corner of each one is his initials, and a note about what part of the sky the picture is took of, and—the time. They could tell, plain, just when Quigley come into the dome; because the next to the last plate is marked, “Exp. 10:30 to 11:30,” date and all.

“Very well, gentlemen,” says Mr. Douglas, “we know this much more. Quigley was chasing around alone just before 11:30.”

But that wasn’t enough to make a fuse about. They all sat there thinking, for a dickens of a long time; and by and by I begins to get fidgety. I ain’t done my sweeping yet, and I’m itching to get that window fixed. Pretty soon I see it’s six o’clock.

All of a sudden Mr. Douglas looks up quick, and says to me:

“Tom, did you happen to notice the thermometer when you first went into the clock room?”

“Sure,” I answers, glad to say something. “She was just at forty-five.”

“Are you positive; absolute?” he comes back.

“Gee, yes, Mr. Douglas. I looks every time I passes the door, you know.”

“Very well. Mr. Newland, suppose you go and observe the temperature as it is right now. And bring back the chart from the main thermograph, when you come.”

And the professor goes out, looking kind of puzzled; and Mr. Douglas sits beck in his chair, smiling a little to himself. I couldn’t make out nothing; but he keeps on smiling, and pretty soon the other professors begin to look at one another and smile too. Gee, it was queer.

Newland come in a minute with the chart, and reports: “She’s down to forty-one, now.”

I forgot to say it was a pretty cold nights.

Well, Mr. Douglas spreads out that chart, and them professors bends over it like it was a map to Treasure Island. There was a long, slanting line across the paper, being highest at three o’clock the day before and dropping down steady through the night, getting lower and lower until it was running along the thirty-five line in the four and five o’clock columns. It was just beginning to rise again when Newland got it.

Them fellows all grabbed pencils and set to work. You see, they knew the temperature had dropped four degrees in one hour in that clock room; what they wanted to know was how many hours since it begin to fall from seventy to forty-five?

Looks easy, don’t it? But the chart showed that the outside air had got a little warmed during the last hour; and it was the outside air, coming in that window, what had done the dirty work. They had to figure on that, too. And then they had to allow for the way the temperature had come down steady during the early part of the night. Gee, it was some mixed up example.

But them fellows—shucks, it wasn’t nothing for them. They can go to work and figure out when the next eclipse is going to be, or what time high tide will come any date you mention, or even figure out whether there was a comet in Christ’s time or not. This here was soft stuff for them.

For two or three minutes I couldn’t see nothing but figures. They made the whole algebra business sit up and take notice. The way they slung around X and A and B, and logs and reciprocals—I think that’s right—was simply fierce. They used up all kinds of paper.

Mr. Douglas gets it first. He reports:

“Gentlemen, the thief busted that window at eleven twenty-two, approximate.”

Pretty soon they all finish, and they all got the same. Except Newland; his figure is about one minute off, and it worries him terrible. But the director keeps on talking:

“I think we got a right to call Quigley to account for himself, now. And I doubt if he can do it.”

And Mr. Douglas was right. We all went over to the cottage and woke him up, and told him. He didn’t have nothing to say; he just sat on the edge of the bed and thought, for a while. I felt kind of sorry for him; he’s only a kid, anyhow.

Pretty soon he took us out and showed us where he stowed the clock away under the back seat of his flivver. No harm done; he’d wrapped it careful.

Well, there was never nothing done about it. Quigley paid the bill for all the trouble he made; and Mr. Douglas let him off with a good talking to.

It give him a jolt, and did him good, I guess. Anyhow, Newland told me today that Quigley’s been living mighty straight, ever since. He ain’t quite so fresh and sassy, either.

But he always calls a telescope a scope, darn him.