The Gnurrs Come From the Voodvork Out
WHEN Papa Schimmelhorn heard about the war with Bobovia, he bought a box-lunch, wrapped his secret weapon in brown paper, and took the first bus straight to Washington.
He showed up at the main gate of the Secret Weapons Bureau shortly before midday, complete with box-lunch, beard, and bassoon.
That's right—bassoon. He had unwrapped his secret weapon. It looked like a bassoon. The difference didn't show.
Corporal Jerry Colliver, on duty at the gate, didn't know there was a difference.
All he knew was that the Secret Weapons Bureau was a mock-up, put there to keep the crackpots out of everybody's hair, and that it was a lousy detail, and that there was the whole afternoon to go before his date with Katie.
"Goot morning, soldier boy!" bellowed Papa Schimmelhorn.
Corporal Colliver winked at the two Pfc's who were sunning themselves with him on the guard-house steps. "Come back Chris'mus, Santa," he said.
"We're closed for inventory."
"No!" Papa Schimmelhorn was annoyed.
"I cannot stay so long from vork.
Also, I have here a zecret veapon. Ledt me in!"
The Corporal shrugged.
Orders were orders.
Crazy or not, you had to let 'em in.
He reached back and pressed the loony-button, to alert the psycho's just in case.
Then, keys jingling, he walked up to the gate.
"A secret weapon, huh?" he said, unlocking it.
"Guess you'll have the war all won and over in a week."
"A veek?" Papa Schimmelhorn roared with laughter.
"Soldier boy, you vait!
It is ofer in two days!
I am a chenius!"
As he stepped through, Corporal Colliver remembered regulations and asked him sternly if he had any explosives on or about his person.
"Ho-ho-ho!
It iss nodt necessary to haff exblosives to vin a var!
Zo all right, you search me!"
The corporal searched him. He searched the box-lunch, which contained one deviled egg, two pressed-ham sandwiches, and an apple.
He examined the bassoon, shaking it and peering down it to make sure that it was empty.
"Okay, Pop," he said, when he had finished. "You can go on in.
But you better leave your flute here."
"It iss nodt a fludt," Papa Schimmelhorn corrected him.
"It iss a gnurrpfeife. And I must take it because it iss my zecret veapon."
The corporal, who had been looking forward to an hour or so of trying to tootle "Comin' Through The Rye," shrugged philosophically.
"Barney," he said to one of the Pfc's, "take this guy to Section Seven."
As the soldier went off with Papa Schimmelhorn in tow, he pressed the loony-button twice more just for luck.
"Don't it beat all," he remarked.
Corporal Colliver, of course, didn't know that Papa Schimmelhorn had spoken only gospel truth.
He didn't know that Papa Schimmelhorn really was a genius, or that the gnurrs would end the war in two days, or that Papa Schimmelhorn would win it.
At ten minutes past one, Colonel Powhattan Fairfax Pollard was still mercifully unaware of Papa Schimmelhorn's existence.
Colonel Pollard was long and lean and leathery. He wore Peal boots, spurs, and one of those plum-colored shirts which had been fashionable at Fort Huachuca in the twenties.
He did not believe in secret weapons.
He didn't even believe in atomic bombs and tanks, recoilless rifles and attack aviation.
He believed in horses.
The Pentagon had called him back out of retirement to command the Secret Weapons Bureau, and he had been the right man for the job.
In the four months of his tenure, only one inventor—a fellow with singularly sound ideas regarding pack-saddles—had been sent on to higher echelons.
Colonel Pollard was seated at his desk, dictating to his blonde WAC secretary from an open copy of Major-General Wardrop's
"Modern Pigsticking."
He was accumulating material for a work of his own, to be entitled
"Sword and Lance in Future Warfare."