Classic Rock Fiction

A Dewey Needham Adventure

Into the Wild Blonde Yonder

by Jim Esposito

Seven A.M. My phone starts ringing. That’s no big deal for most people, but I work in a nightclub. I don’t get home until three or four in the morning, and many times – take the previous night, for instance – I’m not entirely sober.

“Hello, Dewey!” gruffed my father’s voice at the other end of the line. He was calling from Florida. “The trouble with young people today,” my Pop would lecture, “is they can’t add or subtract.” Yet he couldn’t look at his clock, deduct three hours, figure out what time he was waking me up in California.

“Yeah, Dad. What’s going on?”

“You know our neighbor, Jodi?” he asked.

“No,” I answered.

“I told you about her,” he explained. “She makes lots of money.”

I nodded. Force of habit. My old man only talked about two things. One was money, how much of it anyone made or spent or wasted. The other was how materialistic the world had gotten.

“She’s coming out to Los Angeles. I gave her your number. Maybe she’ll want to see a show or something.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“I don’t know much about what she does,” he told me. “But maybe you can learn something.”

“I’ve already got a job, Pop.”

“Some job,” he grumbled. “You’re up all night. And what have you got to show for it?”

“I’m tired and I’m hung over.”

“Oh…” His voice tinged with sarcasm. “Would you prefer to continue this discussion some other time?”

“No, actually, I’d rather just drop it completely,” I replied. (For all it mattered.) “Nice hearing from you, Dad. I’m going back to sleep.”

I hung up. Except for the part about his neighbor, a fairly typical exchange. Which is the main reason I forgot about the conversation almost as soon as it was over

Sir Arhtur Conan Doyle Comes Up with The Star Trek Transporter in 1929

The Disintegration Machine

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Originally Published in The Strand Magazine, 1929

Professor Challenger was in the worst possible humour. As I stood at the door of his study, my hand upon the handle and my foot upon the mat, I heard a monologue which ran like this, the words booming and reverberating through the house:

“Yes, I say it is the second wrong call. The second in one morning. Do you imagine that a man of science is to be distracted from essential work by the constant interference of some idiot at the end of a wire? I will not have it. Send this instant for the manager. Oh! You are the manager. Well, why don’t you manage? Yes, you certainly manage to distract me from work the importance of which your mind is incapable of understanding. I want the superintendent. He is away? So I should imagine. I will carry you to the law courts if this occurs again. Crowing cocks have been adjudicated upon. I myself have obtained a judgement. If crowing cocks, why not jangling bells? The case is clear. A written apology. Very good. I will consider it. Good morning.”

It was at this point that I ventured to make my entrance. It was certainly an unfortunate moment. I confronted him as he turned from the telephone -a lion in its wrath. His huge black beard was bristling, his great chest was heaving with indignation, and his arrogant grey eyes swept me up and down as the backwash of his anger fell upon me.

“Infernal, idle, overpaid rascals!” he boomed. “I could hear them laughing while I was making my just complaint. There is a conspiracy to annoy me. And now, young Malone, you arrive to complete a disastrous morning. Are you here, may I ask, on your own account, or has your rag commissioned you to obtain an interview? As a friend you are privileged -as a journalist you are outside the pale.”

I was hunting in my pocket for McArdle’s letter when suddenly some new grievance came to his memory. His great hairy hands fumbled about among the papers upon his desk and finally extracted a press cutting.

“You have been good enough to allude to me in one of your recent lucubrations,” he said, shaking the paper at me. “It was in the course of your somewhat fatuous remarks concerning the recent Saurian remains discovered in the Solenhofen Slates. You began a paragraph with the words: ‘Professor G.E. Challenger, who is among our greatest living scientists…’”

“Well, sir?” I asked.

“Why these invidious qualifications and limitations? Perhaps you can mention who these other predominant scientific men may be to whom you impute equality, or possibly superiority to myself?”

“It was badly worded. I should certainly have said: ‘Our greatest living scientist,’” I admitted. It was after all my own honest belief. My words turned winter into summer.

“My dear young friend, do not imagine that I am exacting, but surrounded as I am by pugnacious and unreasonable colleagues, one is forced to take one’s own part. Self-assertion is foreign to my nature, but I have to hold my ground against opposition. Come now! Sit here! What is the reason of your visit?”

I had to tread warily, for I knew how easy it was to set the lion roaring once again. I opened McArdle’s letter. “May I read you this, sir? It is from McArdle, my editor.”

“I remember the man -not an unfavourable specimen of his class.”

“He has, at least, a very high admiration for you. He has turned to you again and again when he needed the highest qualities in some investigation. That is the case now.”

“What does he desire?” Challenger plumed himself like some unwieldy bird under the influence of flattery. He sat down with his elbows upon the desk, his gorilla hands clasped together, his beard bristling forward, and his big grey eyes, half-covered by his drooping lids, fixed benignly upon me. He was huge in all that he did, and his benevolence was even more overpowering than his truculence.

“I’ll read you his note to me. He says: