"Wallpaper," the man said. And William fell down in a frothy faint.

Oh, Candy didn't leave him there. She was faithful. She took him up on her shoulders and plodded along with him, on past the West Side Show Square on 18th Street, past the Mingle-Mangle and the Pad Palace, where she (no, another girl very like her) had turned back before, on and on.

"It's the same thing over and over and over again," William whimpered as she toted him along.

"Be quiet talkie," she said, but she said it with some affection.

They came to the great Chopper House on 20th Street. Candy carried William in and dumped him on a block there.

"He's become ancient," Candy told an attendant. "Boy, how he's become ancient!" It was more than she usually talked.

Then, as she was a fair-minded girl and as she had not worked any stint that day, she turned to and worked an hour in the Chopper House. (What they chopped up in the Chopper House was the ancients.) Why, there was William's head coming down the line! Candy smiled at it. She chopped it up with loving care, much more care than she usually took.

She'd have said something memorable and kind if she'd been a talkie.

BY THE SEASHORE.

The most important event in the life of Oliver Murex was his finding of a seashell when he was four years old. It was a bright and shining shell that the dull little boy found. It was bigger than his own head (and little Oliver had an unusually large head), and had two eyes peering out of its mantle cavity that were brighter and more intelligent-seeming than Oliver's own. Both Oliver and the shell had these deep, black, shiny eyes that were either mockingly lively or completely dead -- with such shiny, black things it was hard to say which.

That big shell was surely the brightest thing on that sunny morning beach and no one could have missed it. But George, Hector, August, Mary,Catherine and Helen had all of them missed it and they were older and sharper-eyed than was Oliver. They had been looking for bright shells, going in a close skirmish line over that sand and little Oliver had been trailing them with absent mind and absent eyes. "Why do you pick up all the dumb little ones and leave the good big one?" he yiped from their rear. They turned and saw the shell and they were stunned. It actually was stunning in appearance - why hadn't they seen it? (It had first to been seen by one in total sympathy with it. Then it could be seen by any superior person.) "I wouldn't have seen it either if it hadn't whistled at me," Oliver said. "It's a Hebrew Volute," George cried out, "and they're not even found in this part of the world."

"It isn't. It's a Music Volute," Mary contradicted, "I think it's a Neptune Volute," Hector hazarded.

I wish I could say it's a Helen Volute," Helen said, "but it isn't. It's not a Volute at all. It's a Cone, an Alphabet Cone."

Now these were the shelliest kids along the seashore that summer and they should all have known a Volute from a Cone, all except little Oliver. How could there be such wide differences among them?

"Helen is right about its being a Cone," August said. "But it isn't an Alphabet Cone. It's a Barthelemy Cone, a big one."

"It's a Prince Cone," Catherine said simply. But they were all wrong. It was a deadly Geography Cone, even though it was three times too big to be one.

How could such sharp-eyed children not recognize such an almost legendary prize?

Oliver kept this cone shell with him all the years of his growing up. He listened often to the distant sounding in it, as people have always listened to seashells. No cone, however, is a real ocean-roarer of a shell. They haven't the far crash; they haven't the boom. They just are not shaped for it, not like a Conch, not like a Vase Shell, not like a Scallop, not even like the common Cowries or Clam Shells or Helmet Shells. Cones make rather intermittent, sharp sounds, not really distant. They tick rather than roar.

"Other shells roar their messages from way off," Helen said once. "Cones telegraph theirs." And the clicking, ticking of Cones does sound somewhat like the chatter of a telegraph.

Some small boys have toy pandas or bears. But Oliver Murex had this big seashell for his friend and toy and security. He slept with it -- he carried it with him always. He depended on it. If he was asked a question he would first hold the big cone shell to his ear and listen -- then he would answer the question intelligently. But if for any reason he did not have his shell near at hand he seemed incapable of an intelligent answer on any subject.

There would sometimes be a splatter of small blotches or dusty motes on the floor or table near the shell.

"Oh, let me clean those whatever-they-ares away," mother Murex said once when she was nozzling around with the cleaner.

"No, no -- leave them alone -- they'll go back in," Oliver protested.

"They just came out to get a little sunlight." And the little blotches, dust motes, fuzz, stains, whatever retreated into the shell of the big cone.

"Why, they're alive!" the mother exclaimed.

"Isn't everybody?" Oliver asked.

"It is an Alphabet Cone just as I always said it was," Helen declared.

"And those little skittering things are the letters of the different alphabets that fall of the outside of the shell. The cone has to swallow them again each time, and then it has digested them they will come through to the outside again where they can be seen in their patterns."

Helen still believed this was an Alphabet Cone. It wasn't. It was a deadly Geography Cone. The little blotches that seemed to fall off it or to come out of it and run around -- and that then had to be swallowed again -- may have been little continents or seas coming from the Geography Cone; they may have been quite a number of different things. But if they were alphabets (well, they were those, among other things), then they were more highlycomplex alphabets than Helen suspected.

It isn't necessary that all children in a family be smart. Six smart ones out of seven isn't bad. The family could afford big-headed, queer-eyed Oliver, even if he seemed a bit retarded. He could get by most of the time. If he had his shell with him, he could get by all the time. One year in grade school, though, they forbade him the company of his shell. And he failed every course abysmally. "I see Oliver's problem as a lack of intelligence," his teacher told father Murex. "And lack of intelligence is usually found in the mind."

"I didn't expect it to be found in his feet," Oliver's father said. But he did get a psychologist in to go over his slow son from head to foot.

"He's a bit different from a schizo," the psychologist said when he had finished the examination. "What he has is two concentric personalities. We call them the core personality and the mantle personality -- and there is a separation between them. The mantle or outer personality is dull in Oliver's case. The core personality is bright enough, but it is able to contact the outer world only by means of some separate object. I believe that the unconscious of Oliver is now located in this object and his intelligence is tied to it. That seashell there, now, is quite well balanced mentally. It's too bad that it isn't a boy. Do you have any idea what object it is that Oliver is so attached to?"

"It's that seashell there. He's had it quite a while. Should I get rid of it?"

"That's up to you. Many fathers would say yes in such a case; almost as many would say no. If you get rid of the shell the boy will die. But then the problem will be solved - you'll no longer have a problem child."

Mr. Murex sighed, and he thought about it. He had decisions to make all day long and he disliked having to make them in the evening, too.

"I guess the answer is no," he finally said. "I'll keep the seashell and I'll also keep the boy. They're both good conversation pieces. Nobody else has anything that looks like either of them."

Really they had come to look alike, Oliver and his shell, both big-headed and bug-eyed and both of them had a quiet and listening air about them.

Oliver did quite well in school after they let him have the big seashell with him in class again.

A man was visiting the Murex house one evening. This man was by hobby a conchologist or student of seashells. He talked about shd Is. He set out some little shells that he had carried wrapped in his pocket and explained them.

Then he noticed Oliver's big seashell and he almost ruptured a posterior adductor muscle.

"It's a Geography Cone!" he shrieked. "A giant one! And it's alive!" "I think it's an Alphabet Cone," Helen said.

"I think it's a Prince Cone," Catherine said.

"No, no, it's a Geography Cone and it's alive!"

"Oh, I've suspected for a long time that it was alive," Papa Murex said.

"But don't you understand? It's a giant specimen of the deadly Geography Cone."

"Yes, I think so. Nobody else has one," father Murex said.

"What do you keep it in?" the conchologist chattered. "What do you feed it?"

"Oh, it has total freedom here, but it doesn't move around very much. We don't feed it anything at all. It belongs to my son Oliver. He puts it to his ear and listens to it often."

"Great galloping gastropods, man! It's likely to take an ear clear off the boy."

"It never has."

"But it's deadly poisonous. People have died of its sting."

"I don't believe any of our family ever has. I'll ask my wife. Oh, no, I needn't. I'm sure none of my family has ever died of its sting. I justremembered that none of them has ever died at all."

The man with the hobby of conchology didn't visit the Murex house very much after that. He was afraid of that big seashell.

One day the school dentist have a curious report of things going on in Oliver's mouth.

"Little crabs are eating the boy's teeth -- little microscopic crabs,"

the dentist (he was a nervous man) told Mr. Murex.

"I never heard of microscopic crabs," Mr. Murex said. "Have you seen them, really, or examined them at all?"

"Oh no, I haven't seen them. How would I see them? But his teeth just look as if microscopic crabs had been eating them. Ah, I'm due for a vacation.

I was going to leave next week."

"Are his teeth deteriorating fast?" Mr. Mu rex asked the dentist.

"No, that's what puzzles me," the dentist said. "They're not deteriorating. The enamel is disappearing, eaten by small crabs, I'm sure of that; but it's being replaced by something else, by some shell-like material."

"Oh, it's all right then," Mr. Murex said.

"I was going to leave on vacation next week. I'll call someone and tell them that I'm leaving right now," the dentist said.

The dentist left, and he never did return to his job or to his home. It was later heard of him that he had first abandoned dentistry and then life.

But little Oliver grew up, or anyhow he grew out. He seemed to be mostly head, and his dwarfish body was not much more than an appendage. He and the great seashell came to look more and more like each other by the day.

"I swear, sometimes I can't tell which of you is Oliver," Helen Murex said one day. She was more fond of Oliver and his shell than were any of their brothers or sisters. "Which of you is?" she asked.

"I am."

Oliver Geography Cone grinned.

"I am."

Oliver Murex grinned.

Oliver Murex was finally out of school and had taken his place in the family business. The Murex family was big in communications, the biggest in the world, really. Oliver had an office just off the office of his father. Not much was expected of him. He seemed still to be a dull boy, but very often he gave almost instant answers to questions that no one else could answer in less than a week or more. Well, it was either Oliver or his shell who have the almost instant answers. They had come to resemble each other in voice almost as much as in appearance and the father really didn't care which of them answered -- as long an the answers were quick and correct. And they were both.

"Oliver has a girl friend," Helen teased one day. "She says she's going to marry him."

"However would he get a girl friend?" brother Hector asked, puzzled.

"Yes. How is it possible?" Mr. Murex wanted to know.

"After all, we are very rich," Helen reminded them.

"Oh, I didn't know that the younger generation had any interest in money," Mr. Murex said.

"And, after all, she is Brenda Frances," Helen said.

"Oh, yes I've noticed that she does have an interest in money," Mr.

Murex said. "Odd that such a recessive trait should crop Out in a young lady of today."

Brenda Frances worked for the Murex firm.

Brenda Frances wanted round-headed Oliver for the money that might attach to him, but she didn't want a lot of gaff that seemed also to attach to the young fellow. But now Oliver became really awake for the first time in his life, stimulated by Brenda Frances' apparent interest. He even waxed a little bit arty and poetic when he talked to her, mostly about his big seashell.

"Do you know that he wasn't native to the sea or shore where we found,"

Oliver said. "He tells me that he comes from the very far north, from the Seaof Moyle."

"Damn that bug-eyed seashell!" Brenda Frances complained. "He almost looks alive. I don't mind being leered at by men, but I dislike being leered at by a seashell. I don't believe that there is any such thing as the Sea of Moyle. I never heard of it. There isn't any sea in the very far north except the Arctic Ocean."

"Oh, but he says that this is very far north," Oliver said with his ear to the shell (When you two put your heads together like that I don't know whose ear is listening to whose shell, Helen had said once), "very, very far north and perhaps very again. It's far, far beyond the Arctic Ocean."

"You can't get any farther north than the Arctic," Brenda Frances insisted. "It's as far north as there is any north."

"No. He says that the Sea of Moyle is much farther," Oliver repeated the whispers and ticklings of the shell. "I think probably the Sea of Moyle is clear off-world."

"Oh great glabrous Glabula!" Brenda Frances swore. Things weren't going well here. There was so much nonsense about Oliver as nearly to nullify the pleasant prospect of money.

"Did you know he has attendants?" Oliver asked. "Very small attendants."

"Like fleas?"

"Like crabs. They really are crabs, almost invisible, almost microscopic fiddler crabs. They are named Gelasimus Notarii or Annotating Crabs - I don't know why. They live in his mouth and stomach most of the time, but they come out when they're off duty. They do a lot of work for him. They do all his paper work and they are very handy. I've been practicing with them for a long time, too, but I haven't learned to employ them at all well yet."

"Oh great whelping whelks!" Brenda Frances sputtered.

"Did you know that the old Greeks shipped wine in cone shells?" Oliver asked. "They did it because cone shells are so much bigger on the inside than on the outside. They would put a half a dozen cone shells into an amphora of wine to temper them for it. Then they would take them out and pour one, two, or three amphoras of wine into each cone shell. The cones have so may internal passages that there is no limit to their capacity. The Greeks would load ships with the wine-filled cones and ship them all over the world. By using cones, they could ship three times as much wine as otherwise in the same ship."

"Wino seashells, that's what we really need," Brenda Frances mumbled insincerely.

"I'll ask him," Oliver said. They put their two heads together, Oliver and the cone shell. "He says that cones hardly ever become winos," Oliver announced then. "He says that they can take it or leave it alone."

"After we are married you will have to stop this silly talk," Brenda Frances said. "Where do you get it anyhow?"

"From Shell. I'll tell you something else. The Greek friezes and low reliefs that some student of shells study -- they are natural and not carved.