The Time Machine Did It Read Online Free PDF

because he liked to bet on the ponies, but
because he had a wooden leg, a hook for a hand, a toupee, a glass chest, and
all sorts of other replacement parts. He’d had a tough life, I guess.
    He didn’t answer my knock so I put
my shoulder to the door, gave it my trademark Burly Shove, and walked in. Harry
was on the bed, just a bald head on a pillow, with all the rest of him
carefully stowed around the room.
    “Get outta here,” he said.
    “I just wanted to ask you some
questions, Harry. Then you can ask me some. There are probably all sorts of
things you’d like to know about me. We can take turns. Back and forth, kind of
fair like. I’ll get the ball rolling by asking you about time machines. Then
you can ask me something. Then more time machine questions.”
    “I said get outta here. Or I’ll
bite your brains out.”
    Well I didn’t want that to happen,
that would be awful, so I left. But I was a little peeved that he wasn’t more
civil to such a welcome guest as me so, and maybe I shouldn’t have done it, I
put my mouth to the keyhole and yelled “Fire!”, trying to give the impression
that the building was burning. I could hear consternation and thrashing around
inside, then I heard a head roll off the bed and thump on the floor. Like I
said, I probably shouldn’t have done that.
    Then I tried something I always
try at least once in the course of an investigation. I put on a ten gallon hat
and adopted the persona of my alter-ego Billy Bob Burly, a loudmouthed Texas
oilman, and tried to con some useful information out of a crook I saw hanging
around outside a cigar store.
    Like always, my impersonation
wasn’t perfect. My accent kept slipping from Texan to Swedish, and my cowboy
hat kept falling off. But I kept plugging away. You’ve got to give the scam a
chance to work. But I wasn’t conning much information out of this particular
mark. In fact he wasn’t saying anything. He was just looking at me like I was a
train wreck. Pretty soon, as usual, I was forgetting my lines and having to
start over, until I finally just tore up my script, jumped up and down on my
cowboy hat and sat down on the curb to brood, telling the mark to get away from
me or I would shoot him.
    Now I’ve seen detectives on TV
work that same con with 100% success. It works every time for them. I’ve tried
to talk to statisticians about my unbelievable 0% success rate - I mean what
are the odds of that? - but they say they’re not interested. Even though it’s
their specialty! That’s what’s wrong with America today, I guess. Something
like that. I know something’s wrong with America. Maybe that’s it.
    Next I tried a good old-fashioned
stakeout. I like these because they’re easy. You’re not trying to outwit
anybody. In fact you’re not trying to do anything. You’re just sitting quietly
and comfortably for hours at a time waiting for some other poor slob to do
something. I’m great at that. And all the time you’re sitting there you get to
quietly listen to your car radio, and eat all kinds of stuff: donuts, salted
snacks, you name it. Anything goes on a stakeout. I didn’t know what to watch
for exactly in this stakeout, so I just parked where I had a good vantage point
of things in general. When I couldn’t see out of my car anymore because of all
the parking tickets that had been slapped on my windshield, I figured it was
time to call it a day. It was another failure, intelligence-wise, but like I
said, I like stakeouts.
    On the way back to the office I
stopped and questioned a burglar who I happened to see robbing a house.
    After a half dozen questions, the
burglar became impatient. “Hey look, Burly, if you’re going to keep asking me
questions, at least give me a hand with some of these bulkier items.”
    I helped him carry a stereo out to
his getaway car and tie up and gag the homeowner, while I questioned him some
more. He said he didn’t know anything about any time machine. He said I should
ask H.G.