Tales From Gavagan's Bar (19 page)

             
"Huh?" said Gross. "It sounded like he said his wife wanted him to come home and keep the egg warm."

             
The bearded man paused in his exit. "He did," he said. "Avis wants to go to the movies. Hello, Bill; long time no see."

             
Dr. Stroud briefly shook Brenner's hand and went on out.

-

             
". . . so," said Doc Brenner, "the radioactive sulphur is in chemical combination with something in the animal's food. Then you can use a Geiger counter every so often to check what part of the animal's body the stuff is in."

             
"But doesn't it kill the animal?" asked Mr. Willison. "I thought all the radioactive elements were dangerous."

             
"Oh, no," said Brenner. "Mr. Cohan, another Scotch and Soda. You can get almost any element in radioactive form now, and some of them are quite harmless. Even gold."

             
"Make mine a Martini," said Mr. Witherwax. "But if they can make gold out of lead or iron or something, why don't they instead of storing it all away at Fort Knox?"

             
"Because it doesn't pay," said Brenner. "It takes a million-dollar machine a week to turn out ten cents' worth of gold. Let's see, then the machine would pay for itself in ten million weeks—"

             
"Over a hundred and ninety thousand years," said Willison gloomily. "There ought to be an easier way to get rich."

             
"I read in a book where there used to be an easier way," said Witherwax. "You get something they called the Philosopher's Stone, see? And you put it on a piece of lead or mercury, and boom! it turns to gold."

             
"That's just a story from the Middle Ages," said Brenner.

             
"Mister, I bet you it was mo' than a story," said a new voice. The others turned to look at a stocky, solidly-built man, deeply
tanned, with close-cut hair and a nose that had been broken. He had the remains of a Rum and Coke before him.

             
"I just naturally bet you-all it was mo' than a story," he repeated, with the slight slurring of sibilants that suggested he was nearing Mr. Cohan's limit.

             
Brenner frowned. "I'd take that bet if there were any way of proving a negative," he said. "All I know is that no one ever had been able to prove that there was any such thing as a Philosopher's Stone."

             
"You think so, mister?" said the tanned man. "All right, you-all smarty pants just tell me what this is."

             
He thrust a hand into a pocket and brought out something yellow, which passed from hand to hand.

             
Brenner said: "It looks like a half-dollar made of gold."

             
"Mister, you are one hundred per cent absitively right," said the tanned man. "That's just what it is."

             
"Is it gold clear through?" asked Willison, "or just a regular silver fifty-cent piece, gold-plated?"

             
"Heft it," said the tanned man.

             
Willison produced a normal half-dollar and balanced the two against each other, first in one hand, then in theother. "That's gold, or at least it's heavier than the other one," he admitted. "But what's the story on it, Mr. Uh?"

             
The tanned man smiled a smile of crafty inebriation. "No, suh," he said. "You ain't goin' catch me that way. First thing you find out who my folks are, where I'm from, and then she's gone. No, sir."

             
Brenner said: "Mr. Cohan, refill the gentleman's glass with my compliments. Sir, we have no intention of pumping you, and even if we had, I do not believe it would be permitted in Gavagan's Bar. To us, you shall remain a nameless Mr. Uh or Mr. Wuk if you choose. But sir, you made the statement that the medieval legend of the Philosopher's Stone was something more than a story, and in proof you offer a modern American half-dollar which appears to be made of gold. We would appreciate having the connection established, sir. I need another Scotch and Soda."

             
The tanned man gasped a trifle and drowned the gasp in a
pull at his renewed Rum and Coke. He looked at the stuffed owl and appeared to ruminate, his forehead wrinkling in concentration. Finally:

#
★
#

             
I guess you got me there, mister [he said]. Maybe I ought to have kept my big fat mouth shut, but I'll tell you. I'll tell you everything except what will let you find it. Le's see.

             
[He closed one eye, then opened it again.] I'm from Fla'da. I live
down there; a little piece north from St. Augustine, never you mind just where. I was out there early in the morning a few weeks ago having a swim all by myself, when the surf began to rough up some, so I come in. Besides, Marybelle, that's my wife, was waiting for me with breakfast, up back a way. We often eat breakfast outdoors like that.

             
Just as I got into shallow water, my foot came down on something sharp. The beach along there is mostly ground-up shell, so fine it's plenty good to walk, but once in a while you get a piece of angel wing or razor clam worn down to a sharp point, and I thought maybe I'd stepped on one of them, so I bent down to see what it was.

             
Well, sir, it was something like I never seen on that beach before, a kind of crystal a little bit like they have on some of those old chandeliers, about so-so size, only it was a pinky color, and all worn round the edges. I thought maybe Marybelle might like it, so when I walked up the beach I took it along with me. A little farther along I found Bob—a friend of mine that had come down in his car to have a swim for himself, and there she was stalled.

             
He asked me to help give her a push to get her going, and I did. But when I did I tried to put that old crystal in the little pocket I have on my swimming trunks, where I keep the car keys and fo' bits for to pay my beach fee with. They got a cop on that section of beach that don't do nothing but walk up and down collecting beach fees for the town. Well, the crystal wouldn't fit in my pocket along with the car keys and the money, so I said to hell with it, and I th'ew the stone away. Mister, that must of been the dumbest mistake I ever made.

             
We was too early for the cop that morning, so he never did come 'round for the fo' bits, or else I might have caught up with myself even then. Marybelle and me, we had our breakfast and packed up and went back home, and I plumb forgot all about that business on the beach and the crystal for maybe three-fo' days more. Then one day when I came home from work, here was Marybelle waiting for me, 'most as excited as if her kin-folk come to call.

             
"Where did you get this?" she said, and showed me that little old piece of money right there.

             
I said I didn't know nothing 'bout it and what was it, and she said I have to know on account of it came out of the pocket of my swimming trunks that she was going to put a new elastic in. Then I remembered the morning I went swimming before breakfast and didn't pay no beach fee, and I said that must be the same fo' bits, but I couldn't figure out how it got that way, the trunks just lying in the closet.

             
Marybelle used to be a schoolteacher before she got round to marrying me, and she's smarter than a mule in a pea-patch. Right away she begun asking me about everything that happened that morning, and when I told her about that crystal she said that must of been what done the job, that it was probably all hotted up with stuff like in one of them atom bombs. So we took that fifty-cent piece down to the drug store, and they tested it and said no, it wasn't nothing like that, it was just plain old gold all the way through.

             
The druggist, he wanted to buy that thing, but we wouldn't sell it to him, and we wouldn't tell him where we got it neither. I guess maybe that was kind of dumb, too, on account of his brother, name of—well, never mind his name—is chief of po-lice, and you know how it is in Fla'da, if you got friends on the po-lice, you can get anyone pinched you want to. But we wasn't thinking anything about that then, on account of Marybelle was all excited and said I ought to go back to that beach and try to find the crystal, and she wanted to go up to Washington and look up something about it in the Library of Congress.

             
We fixed it up for her to go to Washington all right, but
that there chief of po-lice come round and said he heard I had some gold coin, and it was the law I have to turn it in to the gov'ment. I had this piece pretty well hid, so I told him to go chase himself for a while, and he run me in. 'Course he couldn't keep me mor'n a couple of days on account of I hadn't done nothing, but I couldn't get down to that beach to look for the crystal, and by the time I got out, Marybelle was back from Washington, and she didn't want me to go looking for it. Right way, that is.

             
She said that Clem—that there druggist was smart enough to have an idea what I got and to have someone watching me when I went back for it. And what I got was that Philosopher's Stone you was talking about, and that it would turn any other kind of metal into gold. When I tried to stick it in my pocket, I must of just hit that fo' bit piece without touching the car keys, or they'd have been gold, too. She got it all wrote down real nice up there in the library.

             
[The tanned man fumbled in his pocket and produced a slip of paper, slightly dirty along the folded edge.]

             
Here it is. It seems that some guy named Para—Paracelsus found it first, way back in fifteen hundred and forty. It tells all about it in one of them old books. Here's the name of it.

             
[He handed the paper to Brenner, who read:
"Liber de Salute per Sanguinem Leonis,
Prague, 1671. That means Book of Salvation Through the Blood of the Lion."]

             
That's what Marybelle said [continued the tanned man.] She says this Paracelsus died the next year after he found the stone and left it to the Archbishop of—of Salzburg, and that the Archbishop sold it to a Jew named Moses of Orleans. I dunno why the Archbishop didn't use it; against his religion I guess. Well, this Moses of Orleans was the guy that backed the expedition that come over to Fla'da and founded a colony there in fifteen and sixty-two, and then the Spaniards come along a couple-three years later and killed them all off. I figure maybe this Moses was along on the expedition, or maybe these Frenchmen stole the stone from him, and that's how it got there.

             
Anyhoo, Marybelle's got a kind of kissing-cousin that's a
lawyer up here, and we came up to see if he can't maybe get a lease or something on that beach, and then we're just naturally going to
take it apart till we find that there stone. No thanks; I've had about all I can carry now, and if I don't get back to the hotel, Marybelle will be mad enough to find out how red I am inside. G'night.