Tales From Gavagan's Bar (9 page)

             
He collapsed across the bed, and I looked at him and thought. He was obviously on the way out in some direction; and if I could do anything to help him, I figured it would be pure gain. There were the parts of an evening newspaper strewn around the place, so I picked them up and found in them the ad for a Caribbean cruise. I called the line, the ship was sailing in three-quarters of an hour, and fortunately they had a vacant cabin, since there had been a cancellation. I got him into a cab and took him down to the pier and poured him aboard; and I've always been sorry, because the ship turned out to be the
Trinidad Castle.

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"That's the one that was lost?" inquired Witherwax.

             
"Correct," said Willison. "Ran on a reef in the Bahamas during a hurricane and went down with everybody on board."

             
"I doubt it," suddenly said the stocky little man who had described himself as T
obolka.

             
"I beg your pardon," said Willison, with some disfavor.

             
"I beg yours. No offense meant, old man. I wasn't questioning your word, merely the accuracy of your data. When you mentioned a blue spectral tarsier, I said there might be a connection with a case I know of; now I'm certain of it. Your friend Van Nest did not go down on the
Trinidad Castle.
If Mr. Cohan will kindly provide me with another Daiquiri, I'll explain."

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[He turned round with a gesture.] Gentlemen, the story has not been broadcast outside the scientific world for much the same reasons that persuaded Mr. Willison to keep it quiet. I am a biologist and have been rather closely associated with several me
mbers of the Harvard Marine Life expedition to the Bahamas. You may or may not know that its purpose was to collect specimens of marine life on Jackson Key. This is
rather a miserable little sandspit off Great Abaco Island, but it does have peculiarly interesting forms of minor marine fauna.

             
You may have seen photographs of the expedition at work. If you have, the center of the picture was almost certainly occupied by a young lady clad in shorts and performing some scientific task. She is blonde and extremely photogenic, and her name is Cornelia Hartwig.

             
The morning after the
Trinidad Castle
disaster, she found a survivor of that ship who had floated into the surf of Jackson Key on a grating. I think there can be very little doubt that it was your friend Van Nest, though he gave his name as Campbell. He was not in good condition when discovered, though not in serious danger. Restoratives were applied, but there could be no question of sending him to the mainland at once, because the expedition's supply ship made only periodic visits and neither of the two small motorboats was adequate.

             
My friend Professor Rousseau says that, when the young man recovered consciousness and was informed of this, he did not appear to object. He was looking at Cornelia Hartwig, and with an almost equal intensity she was looking at him. I should perhaps explain about her. She is a highly competent biologist but, like your friend Van Nest, may be described as always falling in love. On field expeditions like the one to Jackson Key, it is her usual habit to select one of the older and more thoroughly married members of the scientific staff; and this has caused some trouble in the past. In fact, the members of the expedition were waiting with some apprehension to see who would be the victim on this occasion; and it was with relief that they observed her spending the entire day with the castaway. I cannot imagine what they found in common to talk about, but Professor Rousseau says they had no difficulty.

             
In the evening, when Campbell, or rather Van Nest, was able to be up and about and had eaten something, Cornelia took him to the opposite side of the island from the camp, where there were some palm trees, to look for ghost crabs by
the light of the full moon. I don't know whether they discovered any ghost crabs; but as they sat there under the palms, the extraordinary series of animals you describe appeared as if from nowhere and formed a circle around them at a respectful distance, including a blue spectral tarsier and a frilled lizard of a rich maroon color.

             
There is no doubt that Cornelia was enchanted. At the sight of so many species unknown to science, I would have been myself. The couple did not return to camp until long after all the rest were in bed. When Cornelia told her story in the morning, it was received with a certain amount of skepticism and even of merriment, by the other members of the expedition. I am not surprised. The behavior of Van Nest's animals at Jackson Key was somewhat different than that you describe in the city. Not one of them was visible that morning. They had disappeared with the night.

             
This reception of her story irritated Cornelia; and, on the following evening, she persuaded Professor Rousseau himself to accompany them to the palm trees. He says the animals appeared to come out of the undergrowth and their description tallied with that you gave, Mr. Willison. He threw a flashlight on them and dispelled any idea that they were hallucinations, for they had solidity; but all his efforts to collect a specimen failed because of their agility.

             
After this, Cornelia and Van Nest went to the palm grove every evening, often taking along a sketch pad and a flash; and she produced some remarkable drawings. The pair rather rudely discouraged efforts of other members of the expedition to go with them and seemed so much in love with each other that everyone was content to leave them in privacy. However Professor Rousseau observed that after about three weeks Cornelia—whose daytime work suffered severely by the amount of time she spent out at night—appeared to be growing cooler toward the young man.

             
Seeking the cause, he concealed himself near the palm grove before dark. The moon was now in its second quarter, and he had some difficulty in seeing; but when Campbell and Cornelia arrived and the animals began to come out, it was at
once evident that something was wrong. There were only four of them, and these not of the most eccentric character. Moreover, though he was not near enough to hear what was being said, P
rofessor Rousseau declares there was no difficulty in making out the tone of the voices. Cornelia was upbraiding the young man, and he was pleading with her.

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Willison put out his glass for another refill. "I think I get it," he said. "That sea air
and exercise were getting the booze out of his system. That's what I told him he ought to do."

             
"Such was evidently Campbell's own conclusion," continued Tobolka. "On the morning after this, while the members of the expedition were at work, Campbell raided the stock of whiskey, drank almost an entire bottle of it, and was found in his cot in a stupor. Professor Rousseau was very much annoyed and reproved Campbell severely. However, the object of his maneuver was attained. Cornelia accompanied him to the palm grove once more and next morning appeared radiant, with sketches of an entirely new and very aberrant form of
Limulus.

             
"After this, he persuaded Cornelia to obtain whiskey for him. The process did not last long, for the base ship soon arrived and the work of the expedition was completed. At this point, Professor Rousseau encountered a difficulty, for Cornelia absolutely refused to leave the island until she had seen some more of Campbell's animals. With equal vehemence, he refused to leave her; and they could not come back together because of those same animals.

             
"Director Rousseau decided that they were both adults, entitled to make their own decisions, so he left them some tents and supplies and arranged for a boat to make periodic calls at Jackson Key. He tells me that, as Cornelia doesn't have a great deal of money and Campbell had none at all when he was cast on the beach, they were finding it difficult to pay for liquor. When last seen, they were trying to ferment cococut milk. Perhaps we may learn some day whether they succeeded."

             
"Well, thank you, Dr. Tobolka," said Willison. "Maybe I ought to arrange to send his books down there. What do you think?"

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"It makes a man sad to see something like that," said Mr. Gross, shaking his head. "In the first place, a Martini is not the drink for an evening, and in the second, a woman that spends her time drinking solitary in bars is on the road to ruination. Who is she, Mr.
Co-han?"

             
He motioned with his head toward one of the tables, occupied by a woman who might have been a well-preserved forty. In front of her was a double Martini from which she occasionally sipped, running her tongue around her lips after each sip and staring into the glass as though it were ten feet deep. The bartender glanced, then placed both hands on the bar and leaned over.

             
"Mr. Gross," he said severely, "It will do you to know that I am the judge of how much people drink in Gavagan's, by God; and I keep it a decent place. Anybody that has to insult the customers can take his business somewheres else."

             
"I didn't mean nothing," said Mr. Gross, weakly. "I was just thinking of the woman's poor family."

             
"Family she has none; but if she had, they would not be poor nor ashamed of her neither. That there's Jocelyn Millard, that writes the religious poetry on the raddio and all. Father McConaghy says it's as good as a sermon. She's been away for a while now, and this is the first I seen her back."

             
"The radio, eh?" said Mr. Gross, brightening as he turned to gaze at the poetess again. "Isn't that fine? My wife's cousin
knows a man that won a set of dishes on the radio once, but he wasn't married then and had to give them away and the teapot got broke. I'd like to know someone on the radio; maybe with my voice I could get to be one of them announcers."

             
The object of their conversation approached the bar and pushed her glass across.

             
"Another," she said in a husky voice.

             
"Sure, sure," said Cohan. "Miss Millard, do you know Mr. Gross, here? The more people that meet each other, the better it is for all of them."

             
"Pleased to meet you, ma'am," said Gross. "I was just talking to Mr. Cohan about you being in the radio business."

             
"How do you do," said Miss Millard. "But I'm not in the radio business."

             
"Didn't I tell you?" said Mr. Cohan, stirring vigorously. "She only writes the poetry."

             
"Damn the poetry," said Miss Millard.

             
"Huh?" said Gross. "Is there something wrong with it, ma'am?"

             
"Nothing anyone can help."

             
"Don't say that, ma'am. I call to mind when we were having a party at home on a Saturday night once and the toilet broke down and began flooding the whole place out. You wouldn't think anybody could do anything with all the plumbers closed up, but it turned out that my wife's sister's boy friend was studying to be a horse doctor, and he just took off his coat and got to work."