The Last Drop

EUCLID O’BRIEN’S assistant, Harry McLeod, looked at the bottle on the bar with the air of a man who has just received a dare.

Mac was no ordinary bartender—at least in his own eyes if not in those of the saloon’s customers—and it had been his private dream for years to invent a cocktail which would burn itself upon the pages of history. So far his concoctions only burned gastronomically.

Euclid had dismissed the importance of this bottle as a native curiosity, for it had been sent from Borneo by Euclid’s brother, Aristotle. Perhaps Euclid had dismissed the bottle because it made him think of how badly he himself wanted to go to Borneo.

Mac, however, had not dismissed it. Surreptitiously Mac pulled the cork and sniffed. Then, with determination, he began to throw together random ingredients—whiskey, yolk of an egg, lemon and a pony of this syrup Euclid’s brother had sent.

Mac shook it up.

Mac drank it down.

“Hey,” said Euclid belatedly. “Watcha doin’?”

“Mmmmm,” said Mac, eyeing the three customers and Euclid, “that is what I call a real cocktail! Whiskey, egg yolk, lemon, one pony of syrup. Here”—he began to throw together another one—“try it!”

“No!” chorused the customers.

Mac looked hurt.

“Gosh, you took an awful chance,” said Euclid. “I never know what Aristotle will dig up next. He said to go easy on that syrup because the natives said it did funny things. He says the native name, translated, means swello.”

“It’s swell all right,” said Mac. Guckenheimer, one of the customers, looked at him glumly.

“Well,” snapped Mac, “I ain’t dead yet.”

Guckenheimer continued to look at him. Mac looked at the quartet.

“Hell, even if I do die, I ain’t giving you the satisfaction of a free show.” And he grabbed his hat and walked out.

Euclid looked after him. “I hope he don’t get sick.”

Guckenheimer looked at the cocktail Mac had made and shook his head in distrust.

Suddenly Guckenheimer gaped, gasped and then wildly gesticulated. “Look! Oh, my God, look!”

A fly had lighted upon the rim of the glass and had imbibed. And now, before their eyes, the fly expanded, doubled in size, trebled, quadrupled …

Euclid stared in horror at this monster, now the size of a small dog, which feebly fluttered and flopped about on shaking legs. It was getting bigger!

Euclid threw a bung starter with sure aim. Guckenheimer and the other two customers beat it down with chairs. A few seconds later they began to breathe once more.

Euclid started to drag the fly toward the garbage can and then stopped in horror. “M-Mac drank some of that stuff!”

Guckenheimer sighed. “Probably dead by now then.”

“But we can’t let him wander around like that! Swelling up all over town! Call the cops! Call somebody! Find him!”

Guckenheimer went to the phone, and Euclid halted in rapid concentration before his tools of trade.

“I gotta do something. I gotta do something,” he gibbered.

Chivvis, a learned customer, said, “If that stuff made Mac swell up, it might make him shrink too. If he used lemon for his, he got an acid reaction. Maybe if you used limewater for yours, you would get an alkaline reaction.”

Euclid’s paunch shook with his activity. Larkin, the third customer, caught a fly and applied it to the swello cocktail. The fly rapidly began to get very big. Euclid picked up the loathsome object and dunked its proboscis in some of his limewater cocktail. Like a plane fading into the distance, it grew small.

“It works!” cried Euclid. “Any sign of Mac?”

“Nobody has seen anything yet,” said Guckenheimer. “If anything does happen to him and he dies, the cops will probably want you for murder, Euclid.”

“Murder? Me? Oh! I shoulda left this business years ago. I shoulda got out of New York while the going was good. I shoulda done what I always wanted and gone to Borneo! Guckenheimer, you don’t think they’ll pin it on me if anything happens to Mac?”

Guckenheimer suddenly decided not to say anything. Chivvis and Larkin, likewise, stopped talking to each other. A man had entered the bar—a man who wore a Panama hat and a shoulder-padded suit of the latest Broadway design, a man who had a narrow, evil face.

Frankie Guanella sat down at the bar and beckoned commandingly to Euclid.

“Okay, O’Brien,” said Guanella, “this is the first of the month.”

O’Brien had longed for Borneo for more reasons than one, but that one was big enough—Frankie Guanella, absolute monarch of the local corner gang, who exacted his tribute with regularity.

“I ain’t got any dough,” said O’Brien, made truculent by Mac’s possible trouble.

“No?” said Guanella. “O’Brien, we been very reasonable. The las’ guy who wouldn’t pay out a policy got awful boint when his jernt boined down.”

And just to show his aplomb, Guanella reached out and tossed off one of the cocktails which had been used on the flies.

In paralyzed horror the four stared at Guanella, wondering if he would go up or shrink.

“Hey, who’s the funny guy?” said Guanella, snatching off his hat, his voice getting shriller. He looked at the band. “No, it’s got my ’nitials.” He clapped it back on and it fell over his face.

With a squeal of alarm he tumbled off the stool. Whatever he intended to do, he was floundering around the floor in clothes twice too big for him. Shrill, mouselike squeaks issued from the pile of clothing. Chivvis and Larkin and Guckenheimer looked around bug-eyed. Presently the Panama detached itself from the pile of clothes and began to run around the room on a pair of small bare legs.

A customer had just come in, and had started to climb a stool. He looked long and carefully at the hat. Then he began tiptoeing out. Before he reached the door, the hat started toward the door also. The customer went out with an audible swish, the hat scuttling after him.

“Oh, my!” said O’Brien. “He won’t like that. No, sir! He’s sensitive about his size anyway. We better do something before he brings his whole mob back. Will you telephone again, Mr. Guckenheimer?”

As Guckenheimer moved to do so, O’Brien went into furious action to make another shrinko cocktail. He was just about to add the syrup when the shaker skidded out of his trembling hands and smashed on the floor. O’Brien took a few seconds of hard breathing to get himself under control. Then he hunted up another shaker and began over again. If Mac’s swello cocktail had contained a pony of syrup, an equal amount in the shrinko cocktail ought to just reverse the effect. He made a triple quantity just to be on the safe side.

Guckenheimer waddled back from the booth.

“They found him!” he cried. “He’s down by the McGraw-Hill building, hanging on to the side. He says he doesn’t dare let go for fear his legs will break under his weight!”

“That’s right,” said Chivvis. “It accords with the square-cube law. The cross-sectional area, and hence the strength in compression, of his leg bones would not increase in proportion to his mass—”

“Oh, forget it, Chivvis!” snapped Larkin. “If we don’t hurry—”

“—he’ll be dead before we can help him,” finished Guckenheimer.

O’Brien was hunting for a thermos bottle he remembered having seen. He found it, and had just poured the shrinko cocktail into it and screwed the cap on when three men entered the Hole in the Wall. One of them carried Frankie Guanella in the crook of his arm. Guanella, now a foot tall, had a handkerchief tied diaperwise around himself. The three diners, now the only customers in the place, started to rise.

One of the newcomers pointed a pistol at them, and said conversationally, “Sit down, gents. And keep your hands on the table. Thass right.”

“Whatchgonnado?” said O’Brien, going pale under his ruddiness.

“Don’t get excited, Jack. You got an office in back, ain’tcha? We’ll use it for the fight.”

“Fight?”

“Yep. Frankie says nothing will satisfy him but a dool. He’s sensitive about his size, poor little guy.”

“But—”

“I know. You’re gonna say it wouldn’t be fair, you being so much bigger’n him. But we’ll fix that. You make some more of that poison you gave him, so you’ll both be the same size.”

“But I haven’t any more of the stuff!”

“Too bad, Jack. Then I guess we’ll just have to let you have it. We was going to give you a sporting chance, too.” And he raised the gun.

“No!” cried O’Brien. “You can’t—”

“What’s he got in that thermos bottle?” piped Frankie. “Make him show it. He just poured it outa that glass and it smells the same!”

“Don’t!” yelped O’Brien. He grabbed at the bottle of Borneo syrup and the thermos in the vain hope of beating his way out. But too many hands were reaching for him.

And then came catastrophe! The zealous henchmen, in their tackle, sent both syrup and thermos flying against the beer taps. The splinter of glass was music in O’Brien’s ears. The syrup was splattered beyond retrieve, for most of it had gone down the drain. But O’Brien had no more than started to breathe when he realized that only the syrup bottle had broken. The thermos, no matter how jammed up inside, still contained the shrinko cocktail.

What would happen now? If he drank that shrinko he might never, never, never again be able to get any syrup to swell up again!

One of the gangsters, having vaulted the bar, was unscrewing the thermos for Frankie’s inspection. Smelling of it, Frankie announced that it was the right stuff, all right, all right. Another gangster came over the bar.

And then O’Brien was upon his back on the duckboards and a dose of shrinko was being forcibly administered. He gagged and choked and swore, but it went on down just the same.

“There,” said one of the men in a satisfied voice. “Now shrink, damn you.”

He put the cap back on the bottle and the bottle on the bar, mentally listing a number of persons who might benefit from a dose.

The first thing O’Brien noticed was the looseness of his clothes. He instinctively reached for his belt to tighten it, but he knew it would do no permanent good.

“Come on in the office, all of you,” said the gangster lieutenant. He prodded the three customers and O’Brien ahead of him. O’Brien tripped over his drooping pants. As he reached the office door he fell sprawling. A gangster booted him and he slid across the floor, leaving most of his clothes behind him. The remaining garments fell off when he struggled to his feet. The walls and ceiling were receding. The men and the furniture were both receding and growing to terrifying size.

He was shivering with cold, though the late-May air was warm. And he felt marvelously light. He jumped up, feeling as active as a terrier despite his paunch. He was sure he could jump to twice his own height.

“Watch the door, Vic,” said the head gangster. His voice sounded to O’Brien like a cavernous rumble. One of his companions opened the door a little and stood with his face near the crack. The head gangster put down Guanella, who was now O’Brien’s own size. Guanella had a weapon that looked to O’Brien like an enormous battle-ax, until he realized that it consisted of an unshaped pencil split lengthwise, with a razor blade inserted in the cleft, and the whole tied fast with string. Guanella swung his ponderous-looking weapon as if it were a feather.

The head gangster said, “Frankie couldn’t pull a trigger no more, so he figured this out all by himself. He’s smott.”

Guanella advanced across the floor toward O’Brien. He was smiling, and there was death in his sparkling black eyes. No weapon had been produced for O’Brien, but then he did not really expect one. This was a gangster’s idea of a sporting chance.

Guanella leaped forward and swung. The razor-ax went swish, but O’Brien had jumped back just before it arrived. His agility surprised both himself and Guanella, who had never fought under these grasshoppery conditions. Guanella rushed again with an overhead swing. O’Brien jumped to one side like a large pink cricket. Guanella swung across. O’Brien, with a mighty leap, sailed clear over Guanella’s head. He fell when he landed, but bounced to his feet without appreciable effort.

Around they went. O’Brien, despite his chill, did not feel at all tired, though a corresponding amount of exercise would have laid him up if he had been his normal size. The laughter of the men thundered through the room. O’Brien thought unhappily that as soon as they became bored with this spectacle they would tie a weight to him to make him easier game for their man.

Then a reflection caught his eye. It was a silvery spike lying in a crack of the floor. He snatched it up. It was an ordinary pin, not at all sharp, to his vision, but it would do for a dagger.

Guanella approached, balancing his ax. The minute he raised it, O’Brien leaped at him, stabbing. The point bounced back from Guanella’s hide, which seemed much tougher than ordinary human skin had a right to be. Down they went. Their mutual efforts buffeted O’Brien about so that he hardly knew what he was doing. But he got a glimpse of Guanella’s arm flat on the floor, the handle—the eraser end—of the ax gripped in his fist. With both hands O’Brien drove the point of his pin into the arm. It went in and through and into the wood. Guanella shouted. O’Brien caught up the ax and raced for the door.

He moved so quickly, compared to his normal ponderousness, that the gangsters were caught flat-footed. O’Brien slashed with the rear edge at the ankle of the man at the door. He saw the sock peel down, and the oozing skin after it. Vic roared and jumped, almost stepping on O’Brien, who dashed through and out.

He raced to the bar; a mighty jump took him to the top of a stool, and thence he jumped to the bar-top. He gathered the thermos bottle under his arm. It was a small thermos bottle, but it was still almost as big as he was. But he had no time to ponder on the wonders of size. There was a thunderous explosion behind him, and a bullet ripped along the bar, throwing splinters large enough to bowl him over. He hopped off onto a stool, and thence to the floor, and raced out. He zigzagged, and the shots that followed him went wide.

Outside, he yelled, “Orson!”

Orson Crow, O’Brien’s favorite hackman, looked up from his tabloid. Seeing O’Brien bearing down on him, he muttered something about seeing things, and trod on the starter.

“Wait!” shouted O’Brien. “It’s me, Obie! Let me in, quick! Quick, I say!”

He pounded on the door of the cab. Crow still did not recognize him, but at that minute a gangster with a pistol appeared at the door of the Hole in the Wall. Crow at least understood that this animated billiken was being pursued with felonious intent. So he threw open the door, almost knocking O’Brien over. O’Brien leaped in.

“McGraw-Hill building, quick!” he gasped. Crow automatically started to obey the order. As the cab roared down Eighth Avenue, O’Brien explained what he could to the bewildered driver.

“Well, now,” he said, “have you got a handkerchief?” When Crow produced one, not exactly clean, O’Brien tied it diaperwise around his middle.

When they reached the McGraw-Hill building, they did not have to ask where McLeod was. There was a huge crowd, and many firemen and policemen in evidence. Some men were trying to rig up a derrick. A searchlight on a firetruck played on the unfortunate McLeod, whose fingers clutched the twenty-first story of the building, and whose feet rested on the pavement. He had had difficulty in the matter of clothes similar to that experienced by O’Brien and Guanella, except that he had, of course, grown out of his clothes instead of shrinking out from under them. Around his waist was wound several turns of rope, and through this in front was thrust an uprooted tree, roots up.

A cop stopped the cab. “You can’t go no closer.”

“But—” said Crow.

“Gawan, I says you can’t go no closer.”

O’Brien said, “Meet me on the south side of the building, Orson. And open this damn door first.”

Crow opened the door. O’Brien scuttled out with his thermos bottle. He scurried through the darkness. The first cop did not even see him. The other persons who saw him did not have a chance to investigate, and assumed that they had suffered a brief illusion. In a few minutes he had dodged around the crowd to the front doors of the building. A fireman saw him coming, but watched him, popeyed, without trying to stop him as he raced through the front door. He kept on through the green-walled corridors until he found a stairway, and started up.

After one flight, he regretted this attempt. The treads were waist-high, and he was getting too tired to leap them, especially with his arms full of thermos bottle. He bounced around to the elevators. The night elevators were working, but the button was far above his reach.

He sat down, panting, for a while. Then he got up and wearily climbed down the whole flight of steps again. He found the night elevator on the ground floor, with the door open.

There was nothing to do but walk in, for all the risks of delay and exposure to Guanella’s friends that such a course involved. The operator did not notice his entrance, and when he spoke the man jumped a foot.

“Say,” he said, “could you take me up to the floor where the giant’s head is?”

The operator looked wildly around the cab. When he saw O’Brien he recoiled as from an angry rattlesnake.

“Well, now,” said O’Brien, “you don’t have to be scared of me. I just want to go up to give the big guy his medicine.”

“You can go up, or you can go back to hell where you came from,” said the operator. “I’m off the stuff for life, I swear!” and then he bolted.

O’Brien wondered what to do now. Then he looked over the controls. He swarmed up onto the operator’s stool, and found that he could just reach the button marked “18” with his thermos bottle. He thumped the button and pulled down on the starter handle. The elevator started up with a rush.

When it stopped, he went out and wandered around the half-lit corridors looking for the side to which McLeod clung. He was completely turned around by now. But his attention was drawn by a rushing, roaring, pulsating sound coming from one corridor. He trotted down that way.

It was all very well to be able to move more actively than you could ordinarily, but O’Brien was beginning to get tired of the enormous distances he had to cover. And the thermos bottle was beginning to weigh tons.

Euclid O’Brien soon found what was causing the racket. It was the tornado of breath going in and out of McLeod’s nose, a part of which could be seen directly in front of the window at the end of the corridor. The nose was a really alarming spectacle. It was lit up with a crisscross of lights from the street lamps and searchlights outside, and by the corridor lights inside. The pores were big enough for O’Brien to stick his thumb into. Sweat ran down it in rippling sheets.

He took a deep breath and jumped from the floor to the windowsill. He could not possibly open the window. But he took a tight grip on the thermos bottle and banged it against the glass. The glass broke.

O’Brien set the thermos bottle down on the sill, put his hands to his mouth, and yelled, “Hey, Mac!”

Nothing happened. Then O’Brien thought about his voice. He remembered that Guanella’s had gone up in pitch when Guanella had drunk the shrinko. No doubt his, O’Brien’s, voice had done likewise. But his voice sounded normal to him, whereas those of ordinary-sized men sounded much deeper. So it followed that something had happened to his hearing as well. Which, for O’Brien, was pretty good thinking.

It was reasonable to infer that both McLeod’s voice and McLeod’s hearing had gone down in pitch when McLeod had gone up in stature. So that to McLeod, O’Brien’s voice would be a batlike squeak, if indeed he could hear it at all.

O’Brien lowered his voice as much as he could and bellowed, in his equivalent of a deep bass, “Hey, Mac! It’s Obie!”

At last the nose moved, and a huge watery eye swam into O’Brien’s vision.

“Ghwhunhts?” said McLeod. At least it sounded like that to O’Brien—a deep rumbling, like that of an approaching subway train.

“Raise your voice!” shouted O’Brien. “Talk—you know—falsetto!”

“Like this?” replied McLeod. His voice was still a deep groan, but it was at least high enough to be intelligible to O’Brien, who clung to the broken edge of the glass while the blast of steamy air from McLeod’s lungs tore past him, whipping his diaper.

“Yeah! It’s Obie!”

“Who’d you say? Can’t recognize you.”

“Euclid O’Brien! I got some stuff to shrink you back with!”

“Oh, Obie! You don’t look no bigger’n a fly! Did you get shrunk, or have I growed some more?”

“Frankie Guanella’s mob shrunk me.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake do something for me! I can’t get my breath, and I’m gonna pass out with the heat, and my legs are gonna bust any minute! I can’t hold on to this building much longer!”

O’Brien waved the thermos bottle.

McLeod thundered: “Whazzat, a pill?”

“It’s a shrinko cocktail! It’ll work all right, on account of that’s what shrunk me. If I can get it open …” O’Brien was wrestling with the screw cap. “Here! Can you take this cap between your fingernails and hold on while I twist?”

Carefully McLeod released the grip of one of his hands on the windowsills. He groaned at the increased strain on his legs, but the overloaded bones held somehow. He put his free hand up to O’Brien’s window. O’Brien carefully inserted the cap between the nails of the thumb and forefinger.

“Now pinch, slowly,” he cried. “Not too tight. That’s enough!” He turned the flask while McLeod held the cap.

“All right now, Mac, drop the cap and take hold of the cork!” McLeod did so. O’Brien maneuvered the thermos so that its neck was braced in an angle of the hole in the glass. “Now pull, slow!” he called. The cork came out. O’Brien almost fell backwards off the sill. He clutched at the edge of the glass. It would have cut his hand if he had been larger.

“Stick your mouth up here!”

O’Brien never realized what a repulsive thing a human mouth can be until McLeod’s vast red lips came moistly pouting up at him.

“Closer!” he yelled. He poured the cocktail into the cavern. “Okay, you’ll begin to shrink in a few seconds—I hope.”

Presently he observed that McLeod’s face was actually a little lower.

“You’re shrinking!” he shouted.

The horrible mouth grinned up at him. “You got me just in time!” it roared. “I’d ’a been a dead bartender in another minute.”

“There he is!” shouted somebody behind O’Brien in the corridor. O’Brien looked around. Down toward him ran the three unshrunken gangsters.

He yelled to McLeod, “Mac! Put me on your shoulder, quick!”

McLeod reached for him. O’Brien scrambled out on the window ledge and jumped onto the outstretched palm, which transferred him to McLeod’s bare shoulder. He observed that McLeod’s fingers were bruised and bloody from the strain they had taken in contact with the windowsills. He found a small hair and clung to this. The gangsters’ faces appeared at the window a few feet above him. One of them pointed a gun out through the hole in the pane. McLeod made a snatch at the window with his free hand. The faces disappeared like magic, and O’Brien, over the roar of McLeod’s breath and the clamor in the street far below, fancied he heard the clatter of fleeing feet in the building.

“What happened?” asked McLeod, turning his head slightly and rolling his eyes in an effort to focus on the mite on his shoulder.

O’Brien explained, as the windows drifted up past him, shouting up into McLeod’s ear. As they came nearer the street, O’Brien saw hats blown off by the hurricane of McLeod’s breathing. He also saw an ambulance on the edge of the crowd. He figured the ambulance guys must have felt pretty damn silly when they saw the size of their patient.

“What you gonna do next?” asked McLeod. “Swell yourself up? I’d like to help you against Frankie’s gang, but I gotta go to the hospital. My arches are ruined if there isn’t anything else wrong with me.”

“No,” said O’Brien. “I got a better idea. Yes, sir. You just put me down when you get small enough to let go the building.”

Story by story, McLeod lowered himself as he shrank. Soon he was a mere twenty feet tall.

He said, “I can put you down now, Obie.”

“Okay,” said O’Brien. At McLeod’s sudden stooping movement, the nearest people started back. McLeod was still something pretty alarming to have around the house. O’Brien started running again. And again his small size and the uncertain light enabled him to dodge through the crowd before anybody could stop him. He tore around the corner, and then around another corner, and came to Orson Crow’s cab. He banged on the door and hopped in.

“Frankie’s mob is after me!” he gasped.

“Where you wanna go, Chief?” asked Crow, who was now fazed by few things.

“Where could a guy a foot tall buy a suit of clothes this time of night? I’m cold.”

Crow thought for a few seconds. “Some of the big drugstores carry dolls,” he said doubtfully.

“Well, now, you go round to the biggest one you can find, Orson.”

They drew up in front of a drugstore.

O’Brien said, “Now, you go in and buy me one of these dolls. And phone one of the papers to find out what pier a boat for the Far East sails from.”

“What about the dough, Obie? You owe me a buck on the meter already.”

“You collect from Mac. Tell him I’ll send it to him as soon as I get to Borneo. Yeah, and get me a banana from that stand. I’m starving.”

Crow went. O’Brien squirmed around on the seat, trying not to show himself to passing pedestrians and at the same time keeping an apprehensive eye out for Frankie’s friends.

Crow got back in and started the motor as a huge and slightly battered-looking sedan drew up. O’Brien slid to the floor, but not quickly enough. The crack of a pistol was followed by the tinkle of glass as the cab started with a furious rush.

O’Brien, on the floor, was putting on the doll’s clothes. “Where’s that boat leaving from?”

“Pier eleven, on South Street.”

“Make it snappy, Orson.”

“What does it look like I’m doing? Taking a sun bath?”

When they reached the pier, there was no sign of the gangsters. O’Brien tumbled out with his banana.

He said, “Better scram, Orson. They’ll be along. Yes, sir.”

“I’ll see that you get off foist,” said Crow. O’Brien scuttled down the pier to where the little freighter lay. Her screws had just begun to turn, and seamen were casting loose the hawsers. Crow glimpsed a small mite, barely visible in the darkness, running up a bow rope. It vanished—at least he thought it did—but just then the gangsters’ car squealed to a stop beside him. They had seen, too. They piled out and ran down to the ship. The gangplank was up, and the ship was sliding rapidly out of her berth, stern first.

One of the gangsters yelled, “Hey!” at the ship, but nobody paid any attention.

A foot-high, Frankie Guanella capered on the pier in front of the gangsters in excess of homicidal rage. He shrieked abuse at the dwindling ship. When he ran out of words for a moment, Crow, who was climbing back into his cab to make a quiet getaway, heard a faint, shrill voice raised in a tinny song from the shadows around the bow hatches.

It sang, “On the road to Mandalay-ay, where the flying fishes play-ay-ay!”

Crow was too far away to see. But Frankie Guanella saw. He saw the reduced but still-round figure of Euclid O’Brien standing on top of a hatch, holding aloft his bloody ax in one hand. Then the figure vanished into the shadows again.

Guanella gave a choked squeak, and foamed at the mouth. Before his pals could stop him, he bounded to the edge of the pier and dove off. He appeared on the surface, swimming strongly toward the SS Leeuwarden, bobbing blackly in the path of moonlight on the dirty water.

Then a triangular fin—not over a couple of inches high, but still revealing its kinship to its relatives, the sharks—cut the water. The dogfish swirled past Frankie, and there was no more midget swimmer. There was only the moonlight, and the black hull of the freighter swinging around to start on her way to Hong Kong and Singapore.