The Reluctant Shaman and Other Fantastic Tales

Buckminster first sought Carl Grinnig at his normal place of employment, having assumed from Grinnig's wild talk that he was telephoning from there. But the shop head of the Alliance Oil Burner Co. informed Buckminster that the company's able but erratic mechanic was not in, allegedly because of sickness.

So the M. H. S. I. salesman rattled over to East Tremont Avenue and turned north toward the boardinghouse where Grinnig lived. This was a large, wooden, frame building with a front porch and wooden scrollwork.

At the first intersection, a policeman held up Buck-minster's car with a decisive "Not this way, buddy!" Buckminster himself could see, beyond the cop, the backs of a small crowd of people, and over the heads of these the upperworks of a fire engine standing in front of Grinnig's house. He turned the car down a side street, parked, and walked toward the scene, observing that the house had several broken windows and that from these, dark streaks of smoke or char ran up the clapboarded sides of the house.

"Mr. Buckminster!" said a voice. It was that of Carl Grinnig, a large, powerful, blond young man with a black eye and a couple of purplish discolorations about the jaw. He seized a flabby Buckminster arm in one huge hand.

"Yeah?" said Buckminster, suppressing the desire to wince. "Had a fire?"

"Had a fire? Yust wait till I tell you—"

Grinnig's explanation was drowned by an outburst of sound: exclamations from the crowd, smothered curses from a couple of firemen who ran out of the house to the engine, from which they took a couple of chemical extinguishers and dashed back. People pointed toward a curl of smoke, which rose suddenly from one of the broken windows. Buckminster could hear people running about inside the house, and presently the smoke ceased.

A stout, harassed-looking civilian came out of the house and pushed through the people. Buckminster recognized the man as Grinnig's landlord. Grinnig called out: "Hey, Mr. Feldman! What is it this time?"

Feldman made motions of pulling nonexistent hair. "A book! A book up off the table I was lifting, just a ordinary book it was, and when I open it, into flames it bursts! Right in front of it the gentleman from the insurance company was standing. His own eyes he don't believe! Me, I'm going crazy!" The house owner departed distractedly.

"You see, Mr. Buckminster?" rumbled Grinnig. "It's been like this all morning. First it was a calendar on the wall went up, whoof. Then a mattress caught fire. This book's about the twentieth screwy fire. After the fire department had turned out for five or six of 'em, they yust left an engine here and guys sitting in every room with chemical extinguishers."

"Did you get hurt in the fires?" asked Buckminster, eying the mechanic's obvious contusions.

"Naw, that was just a little fight with a coupla sailors. Di'n't amount to nothing on account of there was only three of them. But I gotta see you, quick."

"What have I got to do with—" began the correspondence-course salesman, but Grinnig shushed him warningly.

"We gotta talk alone somewheres. Come on, maybe there ain't nobody in old man Feldman's garage." And Grinnig dragged Buckminster willy-nilly up the driveway, growled, "Beat it, you kids," to a pair of small boys who were watching events from the roof of the two-car garage, and shoved the salesman within.