The Fantasy by Lester Del Rey & Philip K. Dick & Jessica Amanda Salmonson & Robert Bloch & Robert E. Howard

Author:Lester Del Rey & Philip K. Dick & Jessica Amanda Salmonson & Robert Bloch & Robert E. Howard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy, short stories, magic, dark fantasy, sword and sorcery
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2016-07-05T16:00:00+00:00

GATHER ROUND THE FLOWING BOWLER, by Robert Bloch

Originally published in Fantastic Adventures, May 1942.

I was sitting in my usual seat at Jack’s place the other night when I was startled out of it. I literally began to rise and show the shine on my trousers.

“Hey, there!” I called.

A gangling figure paused midway between tables and veered rapidly in the direction of my booth. With a melancholy grin, Mr. Lefty Feep sidled over and extended a dripping hand.

“You been carrying a herring?” I inquired. “Your hand is wet.”

“I am all wet,” said Lefty Feep. “And I like it,”

It was true. Lefty Feep was all wet. For the first time I permitted my gaze to run along the rainbow of his suit. Feep was wearing a box-shoulder Navajo blanket pattern of such blinding hue that at first I thought somebody had spilled spaghetti on him.

But it was not spaghetti that poured from his lapels and cuffs. It was water. Lefty Feep was soaked to the skin.

“Have you been out in the rain?” I ventured.

“You win the $32 question, friend.” said Feep. “I am strolling in a storm this last hour. Outside it is mostly moistly.”

“But you’ll ruin your clothes,” I said —as if it were possible to ruin that atrocious costume.

“So I buy another suit,” Feep grinned, sitting down. “You will pardon me if I seem to drip.”

“I never knew you liked water.”

“I am extremely fond of water—for external use only. Why, it is water that brings me my fortune this last year.”

“Your fortune?” I echoed. Then I regretted it.

For the last time I’d met Lefty Feep he was introduced to me as the biggest liar in seven states. The story he told then more than qualified him for that honor. It dealt, as I remember, with Mr. Feep’s accidental visit to the bowling dwarfs of the Catskill Mountains. Feep claimed to have followed the footsteps of Rip Van Winkle by drinking the dwarf’s brew and sleeping twenty years into the future. He explained his return by claiming he’d bribed the dwarfs to send him back—by building for them a regulation bowling alley on the mountain top.

When Feep had unfolded this slightly incredible saga there had been a curious glint in his eye. I saw it now, as I mentioned his fortune.

“Fortune?” he murmured. “Friend, I have adventures in the last annum that will make your blood run from zero below. I have experiences that will make icebergs out of your corpuscles. Doubtless you wish to catch the details?”

“No,” I grated.

“Well, if you insist—” said Lefty Feep.

* * * *

At first I think I am lucky last year when I do not run into pneumonia. Then something worse happens to me—I run into Gorilla Gabface.

Gorilla Gabface, I believe I mention before, is quite a lusty shout in the old rackets, and he and I are what you might call unfriendly enemies for many the year. We are always making sociable wagers on such matters as who will win the pennant, or what bank will be held up next; and such matters of sporting interest.

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