Here's a Grotesque,
Fantastic Tale
PENELOPE
By Vincent Starrett
MY FRIEND Raymond is a fascinating fellow—a compendium of useless and entertaining lore.
I can not think of a better companion for an evening with what the ancients felicitously called "pipe and bowl." When the latter is empty and the former going like a blast furnace, Raymond is the equal of any raconteur under the sun, moon and stars. A great fellow, indeed!
And the sun, moon and stars, incidentally, are his familiars. They are no more puzzling to him than a railway time-table; much less, in fact. Occasionally, he lectures, and that is his only fault. I mean that his conversation by degrees slips from its informal, negligee ease and takes on the rhetoric of the classroom. How he can talk! I shall never forget his exposition of his theory of the wireless composition of the Absolute.
No matter! As a rule he is sound—although invariably he is outside the pale. Had he cared to do so, he might have strung a kite-tail of alphabetic degrees after his name, years ago; but he scorns such trappings. Orthodox science, of course, will have none of him; he knows too much. Grayfield of Anaconda University once said of him: "Raymond knows more things that aren't so than any man I ever met."
Again, no matter! The heresy of today is the orthodoxy of tomorrow, and the radical of yesterday is the conservative of today. Thus does the world progress—toward what? Perhaps insanity!
We sat at a table in my rooms and talked; that is, Raymond talked. I listened. It made no difference what was said; it was all entertaining and amusing, and I had not seen him for a fortnight. When, quite suddenly, his voice ceased, it was as if a powerful, natural flow of water had been interrupted in its course.
I looked at him across the table, and was in time to see him squeeze the last golden drop from his glass and set down the tumbler with a sigh. His hand trembled. Instinctively, we both looked at the bottle. It was empty.
"It is glorious!" said Raymond. "I have not felt so light-headed since Penelope was in perihelion."
I looked at him suspiciously. I had always claimed that Raymond's clearest view of the stars was through a colored bottle used as a telescope.
He rose to his feet and unsteadily crossed the floor to collapse upon a
