Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

Don said genially that they had to call it something and that Gemini (he supposed) sounded better than Diseased Kidney.

Mr. White laughed.

Edgar Feld echoed the laugh, though not very heartily. “Mr. Benedict has the most modest, most deprecatory attitude toward his work of any modern artist — working in wood or in any other medium.”

Mr. White said that was very commendable. He asked Don if he’d like a cigar.

“I would, indeed!” the modest artist assented. “Between cigarette smoke, gasoline and diesel fumes, the air is getting unfit to breathe nowadays… So Edgar is conning you into modern art, hey, Whitey?”

“Ho, ho!” Edgar Feld chuckled hollowly.

“Nothing better than a good cigar.” Don puffed his contentment.

White said, with diffidence, that he was only just beginning to learn about modern art. “I used to collect Americana,” he explained.

Edgar Feld declared that Mr. White had formerly had a collection of wooden Indians. His tone indicated that, while this was not to be taken seriously, open mockery was uncalled for.

Don set down the glass he had brought along with him. No, White was hardly WIS material. He was safe. “Did you really? Any of Tom Millards, by any chance? Tom carved some of the sweetest fly-figures ever made.”

Mr. White’s face lit up. “Are you a wooden Indian buff, too?” he cried. “Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I had two of Millard’s fly-figures, and one of his pompeys—”

Walt guffawed. “What are fly-figures and pompeys?”

“A fly-figure is a sachem with an outstretched arm,” Don said. “A pompey is a black boy.”

“A rosebud,” Mr. White happily took up the theme, “is a squaw figure. A scout is one who’s shading his eyes with one hand. Tom Millard, oh, yes! And I had some by John Cromwell, Nick Collins, Thomas V. Brooks, and Tom White — my namesake. Listen! Maybe you can tell me. Was Leopold Schwager a manufacturer or an artist?”

Don Benedict laughed scornfully. “Leopold Schwager was a junk-dealer! Bought old figures for five, ten dollars, puttied and painted ’em, sold ’em for twenty-five. Cobb!” he exclaimed suddenly. “You have any Cobbs, Mr. White?”

“Cobb of Canal Street? No, I always wanted one, but—”

Edgar Feld looked at Walter Swift, cleared his throat. “Now, Don—”

“Cobb of Canal Street,” Don said loudly, “never used a mallet. No, sir. Drove the chisel with the palm of his hand. And then there was Charley Voles—”

Feld raised his voice above Don’s. “Yes, we must talk about his fascinating though obsolete art sometime. Don’t you want to step a little closer to the Gemini, Mr. White?”

“Yes, White, damn it, buy the damned Gemini so they’ll quit bothering us and we can get back to real art,” said Don.

And forget about Walter, Demuth’s and the WIS, he said to himself.

Next morning, he tried to remember what had happened after that. White had taken the shapeless mass of wood Walt called Gemini. (What would he tell Roger Down, the private collector? Some good, whopping lie, depend on it.) He was sure he remembered White with his checkbook out. And then? A confused picture of White examining the polished surface, pointing at something—

Don Benedict badly wanted a cup of coffee. His room was just off the studio, and once there had been a hot-plate there, but Walt had ordered it removed on the grounds of danger. So now Don had to go up to Walt’s apartment when he wanted a cup of coffee. That was how Walt liked everything to be: little brother coming to big brother. Well, there was no help for it. Don went upstairs, anticipating cold looks, curt remarks, at every step.

However, Walt was sweetness itself this morning. The coffee was ready; Walt had poured it even before Don entered the kitchen. After he finished his cup (made from unboiled water, powdered coffee, ice-cold milk) Walt urged another on him. Rather than speak, he took it.

Don knew, by the falsely jovial note of Walter’s voice, that Something Was Up. He gulped the tepid slop and rose. “Thanks. See you later, Walter—”

But Walter reached out his hand and took him by the arm. “Let’s talk about the Lost Dutchman Mine. (”The what ?”) The Spanish Treasure. (“I don’t—”) Spelled E-l-w-e-l-l,” said Walter, with an air at once sly and triumphant.

Don sat down heavily.

“Don’t know what I mean by those figures of speech? Odd. You did last night. Matter of fact, they were yours,” said Walter, mouth pursed with mean amusement. He would refresh Don’s memory. Last night, Mr. White had asked Don how he had come to have so much contemporary knowledge about the making of wooden Indians. Don had laughed. “An old prospector I befriended left me the map to the Lost Dutchman Mine,” he had said, waving his glass. “To the Spanish Treasure.”

When Mr. White, puzzled, asked what he meant, Don had said, “It’s easy. You just walk around the horses.” Now what, just exactly, had Don meant by that?

“I must have been drunk, Walter.”

“Oh, yes, you were drunk, all right. But in vino veritas … Now I’ve been thinking it out very carefully, Don. It seems to me that ‘the old desert rat’ you spoke of must have been that fellow Elwell, who slipped on the ice two winters ago. The one you got to the hospital and visited regularly till he died. Am I right, Don? Am I?”

Don nodded miserably. “Damn liquor,” he added.

“ Now we’re making progress,” said Walt. “ Okay. Now about this map to the mine. I know he left you that damn notebook. I know that. But I looked it over very carefully and it was just a lot of figures scribbled — equations, or whatever th’ hell you call ’em. But it had something else in it, didn’t it? Something you took out. We’ll get to just what by and by. So — and it was right after that that you started going on these vacations of yours. Made me curious. Those funny clothes you wore.”

Stiff and tight, Don sat in the bright, neat kitchen and watched the waters rise. There was nothing for him here and now, except for Mary and the children, and his love for them had been no more selfish than theirs for him. He had been glad when Walt first appeared, happy when they married, unhappy when Walt’s real nature appeared, very pleased when the chance occurred to offer “a position” to his brother-in-law. The misgivings felt when a few people actually offered to buy the shapeless wooden things he had created almost aimlessly (he knowing that he was not a sculptor but a craftsman) vanished when he saw it was the perfect setup for keeping Mary and the kids supported.

Of course, after a while Don had been able to arrange the majority of the “sales.” The waste of time involved in hacking out the wooden horrors which “private collectors” bought was deplorable. The whole system was dreadfully clumsy, but its sole purpose — to create a world in which Walter would be satisfied and Mary happy — was being fulfilled, at any rate.

Or had been.

What would happen now, with Walter on the verge of finding out everything?

“And Syracuse — what a cottonpickin’ alibi! I figured you had a woman hid away for sure, wasting your time when you should have been working, so — well, I wanted to find out who she was, where she lived. That’s why I always went through your pockets when you came back from these ‘vacations’—”

“Walter, you didn’t!”

But of course he knew damned well that Walter did. Had known for some time that Walter was doing it. Had acted accordingly. Instead of hiding the evidence, he had deliberately planted it, and in such a way that it couldn’t possibly fail to add up to exactly one conclusion.