Fredric Brown - Etaoin Shrdlu

It was rather funny for a while, the business about Ronsons Linotype. But it began to get a bit too sticky for comfort well before the end. And despite the fact that Ronson came out ahead on the deal, Id have never sent him the little guy with the pimple, if Id guessed what was going to happen. Fabulous profits or not, poor Ronson got too many gray hairs out of it.

Youre Mr. Walter Merold? asked the little guy with the pimple. Hed called at the desk of the hotel where I live, and Id told them to send him on up.

I admitted my identity, and he said, Glad to know you, Mr. Merold. Im and he gave me his name, but I cant remember now what it was. Im usually good at remembering names.

I told him I was delighted to meet him and what did he want, and he started to tell me. I interrupted him before he got very far, though.

Somebody gave you a wrong steer, I told him. Yes, Ive been a printing technician, but Im retired. Anyway, do you know that the cost of getting special Linotype mats cut would be awfully high? If its only one page you want printed with those special characters, youd do a lot better to have somebody hand-letter it for you and then get a photographic reproduction in zinc.

But that wouldnt do, Mr. Merold. Not at all. You see, the thing is a secret. Those I represent But skip that. Anyway, I darent let anyone see it, as they would have to, to make a zinc.

Just another nut, I thought, and looked at him closely.

He didnt look nutty. He was rather ordinary-looking on the whole, although he had a foreignrather an Asiaticlook about him, somehow, despite the fact that he was blond and fair-skinned. And he had a pimple on his forehead, in dead center just above the bridge of the nose. Youve seen ones like it on statues of Buddha, and Orientals call it the pimple of wisdom and its something special.

I shrugged my shoulders. Well, I pointed out, you cant have the matrices cut for Linotype work without letting somebody see the characters you want on them, can you? And whoever runs the machine will also see

Oh, but Ill do that myself, said the little guy with the pimple. (Ronson and I later called him the L.G.W.T.P., which stands for little guy with the pimple, because Ronson couldnt remember his name, either, but Im getting ahead of my story.) Certainly the cutter will see them, but hell see them as individual characters, and that wont matter. Then the actual setting of the type on the Linotype I can do myself. Someone can show me how to run one enough for me to set up one pagejust a score of lines, really. And it doesnt have to be printed here. Just the type is all Ill want. I dont care what it costs me.

O.K., I said. Ill send you to the proper man at Merganthaler, the Linotype people. Theyll cut your mats. Then, if you want privacy and access to a Linotype, go see George Ronson. He runs a little country biweekly right here in town. For a fair price, hell turn his shop over to you for long enough for you to set your type.

And that was that. Two weeks later, George Ronson and I went fishing on a Tuesday morning while the L.G.W.T.P. used Georges Linotype to assemble the weird-looking mats hed just received by air express from Mergenthaler. George had, the afternoon before, showed the little guy how to run the Linotype.

We caught a dozen fish apiece, and I remember that Ronson chuckled and said that made thirteen fish for him because the L.G.W.T.P. was paying him fifty bucks cash money just for one mornings use of his shop.

And everything was in order when we got back except that George had to pick brass out of the hellbox because the L.G.W.T.P. had smashed his new brass matrices when hed finished with them, and hadnt known that one shouldnt throw brass in with the type metal that gets melted over again.

The next time I saw George was after his Saturday edition was off the press. I immediately took him to task.

Listen, I said, that stuff about misspelling words and using bum grammar on purpose isnt funny any more. Not even in a country newspaper. Were you by any chance trying to make your newsletters from the surrounding towns sound authentic by following copy out the window, or what?

Ronson looked at me kind of funny and said, Wellyes.

Yes, what? I wanted to know. You mean you were deliberately trying to be funny, or following copy out the

He said,

Come on around and Ill show you.

Show me what?

What Im going to show you, he said, not very lucidly. You can still set type, cant you?

Sure. Why?

Come on, then, he said firmly. Youre a Linotype technician, and besides you got me into this.

Into what?

Into this, he said, and wouldnt tell me a thing more until we got there. Then he rummaged in all pigeonholes of his desk and pulled out a piece of dead copy and gave it to me.

His face had a kind of wistful look. Walter, he said, maybe Im nuts, and I want to find out. I guess running a local paper for twenty-two years and doing all the work myself and trying to please everybody is enough to get a man off his rocker, but I want to find out.

I looked at him, and I looked at the copy sheet hed handed to me. It was just an ordinary sheet of foolscap and it was in handwriting that I recognized as that of Hank Rogg, the hardware merchant over at Hales Corners who sends in items from there. There were the usual misspellings one would expect from Hank, but the item itself wasnt news to me. It read: The weding of H.M. Klaflin and Miss Margorie Burke took place yesterday evening at the home of the bride. The bridesmades were

I quit reading and looked up at George and wondered what he was getting at. I said, So what? This was two days ago, and I attended the wedding myself. Theres nothing funny about

Listen, Walter, he said, set that for me, will you? Go over and sit down at the Linotype and set that whole thing. It wont run over ten or twelve lines.

Sure, but why?

Because Well, just set it, Walter. Then Ill tell you why. So I went out in the shop and sat down at the Linotype, and I ran a couple of pi lines to get the feel of the keyboard again, and then I put the copy on the clipboard and started. I said, Hey, George, Marjorie spells her name with a j, doesnt she, instead of a g?

And George said, Yeah, in a funny tone of voice.

I ran off the rest of the squib, and then looked up and said, Well?

He came across and lifted the stick out of the machine and read the slugs upside down like all printers read type, and he sighed. He said, Then it wasnt me. Lookit, Walter.

He handed me the stick, and I read the type, or started to.

It read. The weding of H.M. Klaflin and Miss Margorie Burke took place yesterday evening at the home of the bride. The bridesmades were

I grinned. Good thing I dont have to set type for a living anymore, George. Im slipping; three errors in the first five lines. But what about it? Now tell me why you wanted me to set it.

He said, Set the first couple lines over again, Walter. II want you to find out for yourself.

I looked up at him and he looked so darned serious and worried that I didnt argue. I turned back to the keyboard and started out again : The wedding of My eyes went up to the assembly slide and read the characters on the front of the mats that had dropped, and I saw that it read, The weding of

Theres one advantage about a Linotype you may not know if youre not a printer. You can always make a correction in a line if you make it before you push the lever that sends in the line of matrices to cast the slug. You just drop the mats you need for the correction and put them in the right place by hand.

So I pushed the d key to get another d matrix to correct the misspelled word wedingand nothing happened. The keycam was going around all right and the click sounded O.K., but no d mat dropped. I looked up top to see if there was a distributor stop and there wasnt.