Science fiction; Short stories; Time travel -- Fiction
"There's one place where I'm certain to find Grandfather any time
between 1893 and 1906," Pangborn told us. "The Andrew Jackson Saloon
Bar on Decatur Street. He spent a lot of time there. Used it for his
office they tell me. He was a lawyer. I've set the machine for there,
for the month of September 1896. A good month to die in. Ha!" Pangborn
ostentatiously checked the cylinders of a huge antique revolver.
"Forty-five caliber," Pangborn said grimly. "Poke me, will he? Ha!"
And he climbed into the machine.
All of us crowded around the screen, Von Juntz carefully holding his
beard. We saw the picture forming, the cut glass and bright gas lamps
and polished wood of the Saloon Bar.
"_Four_ to one Pangborn vanishes," Randall said suddenly, "Any takers,
speak now."
I reached for my wallet.
Von Juntz said, "If he vanishes, it will be because he was never born.
And if he was never born, you won't remember taking bets on him."
"Here," I said hastily to Randall, "I gave you some already. I'll hold
my money, hand it back."
Randall withdrew a little. "Don't you trust me?" he asked in a hurt
tone. "I'll pay you if he doesn't vanish."
"Shhh," Von Juntz said. We crowded around the screen again.
The screen looked down on the bar from above and behind it, like
looking in through a window set above the mirror. And at the bar was
only one solitary customer, a tall lean man in a frock coat and plug
hat with a cigar from which smoke curled richly, and a schooner of
beer before him. He looked up at the bar mirror, and we saw a lean,
evilly humorous face with the Pangborn features clearly marked on it.
"Grandpa," Von Juntz whispered.
In a dark angle of the place, Pangborn himself materialized from the
machine. We saw a glimmer as he raised the gun.
"See," Von Juntz whispered. "He has forgotten to uncock the safety. Now
he has. Now he creeps closer. Soon now we shall know the paradox."
Grandpa Pangborn had put down his cigar. His hand had slid under the
lapel of his frock coat. Just before he whirled, I realized that he had
been watching Pangborn in the mirror all the time.
He whirled, his hand whipped out from beneath his lapel, and the sound
of a gunshot echoed in the saloon. We had a clear view of the angry
surprise on Pangborn's face before he toppled nose down into the
sawdust. He was quite obviously dead.
"Whippersnapper," Grandpa Pangborn muttered. He holstered his gun and
looked up, and his lean face oddly seemed to be looking straight into
the peering eye of the time viewer, and into our staring eyes. We could
not be seen.... Or could we?
Looking at us, he spoke.
"Figure that one out!" said Grandpa Pangborn. I cut the switch, and the
viewer went black.
The way I see it, Pangborn vanished, but not in the right way, so
Randall owes me nine dollars. But he says he won the bet, and he won't
even give me back the three I handed him before Pangborn got into that
fool machine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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