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Fantascience Digest, v. 2, issue 3, March-April 1939

Page 18

PAGE 18     FANTASCIENCE DIGEST

"THE STRANGE CASE
OF MR. GEECH"

BY HENRY KUTTNER

Our household has lately been disturbed by a goat which occasionally wanders into the kitchen through some aperture or other. We have not been able to find out how she gets in. The windows are always locked, and there [[underline]]are[[end underline]] no doors. It has led me to ponder on the strange things that occur in the most sterotyped lives, and reminds me inevitably of the curious affair of John Eleazar Geech.

At the time of which I write Geech was employed in a factory near Pasadena. Nobody seems to know what the factory produced, and, all in all, a great deal of mystery surrounds the whole thing. It is enough for our purposes to state that one day the factory suddenly vanished, leaving on the site merely a good-sized pool of liquid which was discovered to be whale-oil. Mr. Geech was seen several blocks from the scene running like hell.

To outward appearances he was unchanged, except for the singular fact that he gleamed with a peculiar yellow radiance, and the additional extraordinary point that a steady and inexplicable sound of clanking was audible. He had, as a matter of fact, turned into gold. Oddly enough, Geech was not injured by the transformation. Whether or not he knew the reason is problematical; he never explained it to anyone, and of course, no one can ask him now. We cannot help wondering what happened in that strange factory, especially in view of the fact that after Geech crossed the Pasadena bridge he turned to bronze, which caused some to mistake him for Doc Savage.

Some blocks further his mad flight was arrested by an officer by the name of Ferdinand Whelk. Whelk stepped into Geech's path, raised his hand, and said commandingly, "Where do you think you're going?" To this Geech made no reply, pausing only to turn into pig-iron on which Whelk's nightstick cracked and broke. Geech rushed out and vanished. Whelk afterward declared that the man's face was contorted with rage or fear, and that he was breathlessly repeating the curious phrase, The Rabbits have risen." We can only guess as to the meaning of this bizarre comment. incidentally, no traces of rabbits was discovered on the site of the missing factory.

Doctor Horace Tizzy of Glendale was the next to encounter Geech, and his story is illuminating. By the time the encounter took place, Geech had turned to glass--the best kind of optical glass, contends Tizzy, who is an optician by profession. The most intriguing theories are suggested by Tizzy's declaration that he could see [[underline]]through Geech's head[[end underline]] and that seated within the fleeing man's skull, slowly devouring a lettuce leaf, was a Belgian hare. it is of course possible that Tizzy had an hallucination or was drunk. But it is inevitable that the conclusion should arise that all these scattered points of

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PAGE 18 FANTASCIENCE DIGEST "THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. GEECH" BY HENRY KUTTNER Our household has lately been disturbed by a goat which occasionally wanders into the kitchen through some aperture or other. We have not been able to find out how she gets in. The windows are always locked, and there [[underline]]are[[end underline]] no doors. It has led me to ponder on the strange things that occur in the most sterotyped lives, and reminds me inevitably of the curious affair of John Eleazar Geech. At the time of which I write Geech was employed in a factory near Pasadena. Nobody seems to know what the factory produced, and, all in all, a great deal of mystery surrounds the whole thing. It is enough for our purposes to state that one day the factory suddenly vanished, leaving on the site merely a good-sized pool of liquid which was discovered to be whale-oil. Mr. Geech was seen several blocks from the scene running like hell. To outward appearances he was unchanged, except for the singular fact that he gleamed with a peculiar yellow radiance, and the additional extraordinary point that a steady and inexplicable sound of clanking was audible. He had, as a matter of fact, turned into gold. Oddly enough, Geech was not injured by the transformation. Whether or not he knew the reason is problematical; he never explained it to anyone, and of course, no one can ask him now. We cannot help wondering what happened in that strange factory, especially in view of the fact that after Geech crossed the Pasadena bridge he turned to bronze, which caused some to mistake him for Doc Savage. Some blocks further his mad flight was arrested by an officer by the name of Ferdinand Whelk. Whelk stepped into Geech's path, raised his hand, and said commandingly, "Where do you think you're going?" To this Geech made no reply, pausing only to turn into pig-iron on which Whelk's nightstick cracked and broke. Geech rushed out and vanished. Whelk afterward declared that the man's face was contorted with rage or fear, and that he was breathlessly repeating the curious phrase, The Rabbits have risen." We can only guess as to the meaning of this bizarre comment. incidentally, no traces of rabbits was discovered on the site of the missing factory. Doctor Horace Tizzy of Glendale was the next to encounter Geech, and his story is illuminating. By the time the encounter took place, Geech had turned to glass--the best kind of optical glass, contends Tizzy, who is an optician by profession. The most intriguing theories are suggested by Tizzy's declaration that he could see [[underline]]through Geech's head[[end underline]] and that seated within the fleeing man's skull, slowly devouring a lettuce leaf, was a Belgian hare. it is of course possible that Tizzy had an hallucination or was drunk. But it is inevitable that the conclusion should arise that all these scattered points of