David Wright O'Brien 32 min read

The mild, baldish, bespectacled little Stoddard looks like any suburban commuter, but he's one of the toughest, most eccentric customers the narrator's contracting business has ever dealt with.

David Wright O'Brien's 1943 story spins a wry adventure and first-contact tale from a deceptively ordinary client. Fun, clever golden-age pulp. Read it for a genial story where a contractor's oddball customer turns out to harbor something far stranger than mere eccentricity.

In its time

Published in 1943, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

32 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).