Wrack and Rune (17 page)

Lumpkin only glanced over her shoulder and drawled, “Ah, Professor Shandy, how do you do? I’m so glad you overheard that remark. Now you can testify at the hearing that I was subjected to verbal abuse and threats of physical violence when I attempted to carry out my proper function as next of kin to the deceased.”

“Certainly, Lumpkin. If you don’t feel sufficiently abused, perhaps I could help you there, too. It is a shame about the two cents. However, if you’ll wait here as Miss Horsefall suggests, I’ll help her fetch out whatever—er—effects your cousin may have left.”

Canute Lumpkin spread a mauve silk handkerchief over the seat of the least-battered rocking chair, hitched the creases of his pinky-beige trousers ever so carefully over his knees, and planted his pudgy bottom on the handkerchief.

“How kind of you, Professor Shandy. I shall be quite content to entrust the mission to a person of your stature and probity. It won’t take too long, will it? I should so hate to cause a scene by violating the sanctity of Miss Horsefall’s threshold if I were kept waiting.”

There was no cause for delay. Spurge Lumpkin’s personal effects consisted of two worn but clean and mended suits of long underwear, some much-darned socks, a couple of flannel shirts with turned collars and patched elbows, a pair of work pants, a plaid mackinaw much like the one Shandy himself had worn until Helen had threatened him with bodily violence if he didn’t buy himself something fit to be seen in, a pair of heavy boots with run-down heels, and a cap and mittens knitted from odds and ends of bright worsted.

These last brought tears to Miss Horsefall’s eyes as she laid them on top of the pitiful heap. “I knitted these for Spurge one Christmas before my hands got so bad. Never seen a man more tickled. We had a good Christmas that year. Times was better then. Ayup. Well, I’ll be in a better place myself before long, the Lord willin’.”

“Nonsense, you mustn’t talk that way,” Shandy replied brusquely. “Is this all? No—er—pajamas or slippers or whatever?”

“Hell, no. Spurge always slep’ in ’is socks an’ union suit. It was as much as I could do to make ’im take a bath an’ change ’em once a week. Spurge did have a good suit an’ a white shirt that used to belong to Henny when he was bigger, but we buried ’im in those. Ain’t nothin’ else but the tobacco boxes.”

“Good Lord,” said Shandy, eyeing the stack of cartons that filled one corner of the sparsely furnished little room. “What did he keep in them?”

“Nothin’. He just liked to save ’em.”

There must have been hundreds of the small tin and cardboard containers, carefully stowed away in those dusty grocery cartons. Shandy would have liked to make sure the containers were in fact empty, but it would take ages to open them all and he knew Nutie the Cutie was quite capable of staging the promised scene if they didn’t get this stuff out to him right away. Anyway, the film of dust over them would be proof that they hadn’t been tampered with, assuming there could possibly be anything of worth inside. There probably wasn’t, judging from the lightness of the boxes, unless Spurge had gone in for collecting chicken feathers. Shandy picked up a tottering armload and juggled them out to the porch.

“You’d better start putting these in your car, Lumpkin. There are lots more.”

“Oh dear. Perhaps I might just sort over the boxes ands leave what I don’t—”

“Not on your life. You came for your cousin’s possessions and you’re damn well going to take them away.”

Lumpkin shrugged and began loading the worthless boxes into his shiny new car. At last he sighed, “Is this all?”

“This is damn well all, an’ no thanks to you for what little there is,” Miss Horsefall snapped back. “Never seen you offer Spurge so much as a stick o’ chewin’ gum while he was alive. He’d o’ been sent to the county home with nothin’ but the shirt on ’is back if me an’ Henny hadn’t o’ took ’im in. An’ a hell of a lot o’ thanks we ever got for it from your folks, not that we cared. Spurge was our—” She cleared her nose with a mighty sniff, wiped her sleeve across her rheumy eyes, and finished savagely, “Now you got what you come for. Take it an’ git.”

Nute Lumpkin picked his mauve silk handkerchief off the broken rocker seat, folded it carefully, tucked it into his breast pocket so that a precise inch of the edge stuck out, made Miss Horsefall a low bow, and got.

“WHAT IN TIME DO
you s’pose he done that for?” the old woman muttered as Lumpkin drove off with his carload of junk. “Them things ain’t no good to him.”

“Just another of his little nastinesses, I expect,” Shandy replied.

“Huh. Bein’ nasty’s ’bout all he’s good for. Goin’ to seem queer not having nothin’ o’ Spurge’s around the place. Henny’ll mind it worse’n me. Him an’ Spurge always got on real good.”

“Hey, tootsie!” From the parlor was coming a mighty roar. “Vere you bane?”

“Button up, you ol’ rip,” Miss Hilda yelled back. “I’m comin’ fast as these worn-out pins o’ mine will carry me. If it ain’t one dratted man wantin’ somethin’ he ain’t entitled to, it’s another.”

“I think this is where we tiptoe gently away,” Shandy murmured to the two young Ameses, who’d been trying to keep the ancient Swede under control. “Let’s go see what your father’s up to.”

As they left the house he remarked, “I’m surprised none of you has mentioned the gold.”

“What gold?” Laurie asked.

“Fergy told me the archaeological party has turned up a gold coin right about where Cronkite Swope found that piece of helmet and started this whole shemozzle.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Fergy may have been, though I hardly think so. According to him, a coin of some appropriate date and description was found buried at the stone. Fergy claims there was general pandemonium among the savants, though he himself couldn’t see why. I suppose it’s possible, though most improbable, that Dr. Svenson swarmed up a tree in his elation and thus sustained his injury. In any case, one might have expected he’d allude in one way or another to the find, but obviously he hasn’t. He seems to have his mind on—er—other matters.”

“Maybe that whack on the head gave him amnesia,” Laurie suggested.

“Or maybe the archaeologists agreed to keep still about the gold so they wouldn’t start another stampede,” said Roy. “How come Fergy knew? When we came by, they had cops out there keeping everybody away.”

“They still have,” Shandy replied. “I had a hard time convincing the guards that I was part of the archaeological team. Understandably, I suppose, since of course I’m not. President Svenson gave me the bum’s rush as soon as I got to the stone, so I might as well have saved myself the trouble. Anyway, Fergy claims he sneaked down that path Swope made through the brambles, which you tell me is being guarded by Bashan.”

“Yeah?” Roy scratched his ear much as Tim would have done. “Dad and Bashan must have been arguing about politics or something and didn’t notice him.”

“Fergy’s that fat man with the orange beard and the neon suit, isn’t he?” said Laurie. “He’d be a hard man not to notice, I should think.”

“Dad could have kept Bashan under control long enough to let Fergy through without being gored if he wanted to. Does he like the guy, Professor?”

“He knows Fergy’s been a good neighbor to the Horsefalls, at any rate.”

“And Dad’s a little miffed with the president right now for spending so much time on this Orm business when they were supposed to be working on a speech for the National Fertilizer Symposium on ‘Phosphates I Have Known.’ Dad was asked to give it, but of course he can’t handle public speaking, so he asked the president to stand in for him. Dr. Svenson said he’d give the speech if Dad would help him write it. You know how great he is on a platform. So Dad’s spent hours and hours writing up notes and now he can’t get the president even to look at them, which he’d promised to do right after the wedding because the symposium’s next weekend.”

“Oh well, I daresay the president will come through with flying phosphates, but I can understand your father’s annoyance,” said Shandy, who’d been put in similar fixes once or twice himself. “Maybe you can get Tim to go home and sack in for a while. He did put in an awfully long and trying day yesterday. Spurge’s death took a jolt out of him, too. By the way, since nobody else seems to be talking about that gold piece, I suggest you—er—follow precedent. I’ve already asked Fergy and his lady friend to keep quiet, though I’m afraid that may be a case of locking the stable after the bull is thrown. Let me go on ahead and chat with your father for a minute, if you don’t mind. After that, I suppose I may as well go and beard the berserker in his lair. I still want to know what in Sam Hill Dr. Svenson was doing up in that tree.”

He walked up the rise to where shiny new wire had been strung between hastily planted fence posts. It did indeed seem a paltry barrier, yet the immense beast penned inside had been conditioned to know he’d get a disconcerting buzz if he touched the wire. Bashan was standing placidly enough in the middle of the enclosure. Beside him, on an outcropping boulder with his feet drawn up and his beard propped on his knees, sat a kobold straight out of Arthur Rackham. Tim and Bashan appeared perfectly content with each other’s company. Shandy was reluctant to intrude on their contemplations, but the day was wearing on and he did want to get back to Helen.

Knowing Bashan pretty well himself, Shandy had no qualms about slipping under the wire. Bashan emitted a roar that would have scared the heart out of any bona fide trespasser, and charged at him. Shandy stepped aside, knowing Bashan didn’t really intend to trample him to death, and patted the bull’s vast flank.

The roar must have registered on Tim’s defective eardrums, for he switched on his hearing aid and looked around. “Hi, Pete. What’s up?”

“The president’s Uncle Sven was, briefly. He’s fallen out of a tree.”

“What the hell for?”

“Good question. Either his memory or his vocabulary has failed him, and he can’t say. I thought I’d go down and ask the president.”

“Stay here with Bashan. He’s safer company, by a damn sight.”

“Granted, but duty calls. I don’t know if it’s struck you, Tim, but there’s one hell of a lot going on around here.”

“I’d begun to suspect something was up,” his friend replied dryly. “Hell, Pete, I may be deaf but I’m not dumb. So that old hellion was up a tree? Chasing a wood nymph?”

“I shouldn’t be at all surprised. Did you let Fergy in through here a while back?”

“Fergy who?”

“Henny’s neighbor, the chap who runs the Bargain Barn.”

“Oh, that tub of lard? I always thought his name was Percy. Say, is there some new development down at the runestone? Outside that old coot hurling himself out of trees?”

“They’ve found a Viking gold piece, according to Fergy.”

“How the hell would he know? Probably a busted collar button.” Ames hitched up his pant leg and scratched his hairy shin. “Christ, Pete, if it actually was gold, Henny’s in for a worse time of it than he had last night. He can’t take much more of this punishment.”

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know, Tim. They have been trying to keep quiet about the gold. Miss Hilda hadn’t heard, and she’s been ministering to Dr. Svenson.”

“God help the poor bugger.”

On this pious note the two friends parted. Shandy picked his way down through the brambles to where Thorkjeld Svenson was still working with the archaeologists. They were picking daintily at the ground in front of the runestone, removing earth practically crumb by crumb. Shandy couldn’t imagine a more tedious job, yet none of the three looked bored.

“President,” he said.

“Arrgh,” Svenson replied without taking his eyes from the ground.

“What happened to your Uncle Sven?”

“Levitated.”

“What?”

“Down, up, down. Landed on his head. Good thing. Man his age. Might have broken a hip.”

“Let’s run through that again if you don’t mind. Your uncle was with you near the runestone, right?”

“Ur.”

“What was he doing?”

“Dr. Svenson was examining a coin we’d found,” said the younger and more enthusiastic of the archaeologists. “Marvelous thing. Norwegian, twelfth century.”

“Possibly tenth,” said the elder. “Maybe not even Norwegian.”

“That was when he was still on the ground, right?” said Shandy, anxious to keep his facts straight.

“Right,” said the president.

“Then what happened?”

“Then all of a sudden he was up in that tree there,” said the younger archaeologist.

“Or possibly the tree next to it,” said the elder archaeologist.

“Then what?” said Shandy.

“Then he was back on the ground, head first. Almost cracked his skull open on the runestone,” answered the younger archaeologist.

“Missed it by at least eight inches,” said the elder archaeologist.

“Are you saying this happened all in—er—one movement, so to speak?”

“Exactly,” said the younger archaeologist.

“Or in a series of movements,” said the elder archaeologist. “I should be inclined to separate the incident into three distinct phases.”

“What I said,” grunted Svenson. “Down, up, down.”

“I see,” said Shandy. “And how far up did he go?”

“Twelve or fifteen feet at least,” said the younger archaeologist.

“Not more than eleven and a half,” said the elder archaeologist.

“By either reckoning, an appreciable distance for a man his age to fall. You are agreed on that point?”

“Have we determined Dr. Sven Svenson’s precise age?” asked the elder archaeologist.

“Hundred and two last November,” grunted Thorkjeld Svenson. “Want a carbon dating?”

The elder archaeologist glanced at Thorkjeld suspiciously, as if he suspected an attempt at levity, but agreed to accept the data as given. “I think we can safely concur with Professor Shandy’s theory that it was in fact an appreciable distance for a man Dr. Svenson’s age to have fallen. More remarkable, it seems to me, is the fact that anyone well into his hundred and third year should have been able to achieve so considerable a height in so short a time.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Shandy, prodding around the runestone. “Did you actually watch him ascending the tree?”