Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

“What a lot of junk!” Walter jeered. “Like somebody swept the floor of an antique shop and dumped it all in your pocket. Ticket stubs with funny old printing, clippings from newspapers of years back — and all like that. However —” he jabbed a thick, triumphant finger at Don—“money is money, no matter how old it is. Right? Damned right! Old dollar bills, old gold pieces. Time after time. You weren’t very cautious, old buddy. So now — just what is this ‘Spanish Treasure’ that you’ve been tapping? Let’s have the details, son, or else I’ll be mighty unhappy. And when I’m unhappy, Mary is too …”

That was very true, Don had realized for some time now. And if Mary couldn’t protect herself, how could the youngsters escape?

“I’m tired of scraping along on ten per cent, you see, Don. I got that great old American ambition: I want to be in business for myself. And you are going to provide the capital. So — again, and for the last time — let’s have the details.”

Was this the time to tell him? And, hard upon the thought, the answer came: Yes, the time was now, time to tell the truth. At once his heart felt light, joyous; the heavy weight (long so terribly, constantly familiar) was removed from him.

“Mr. Elwell — the old gentleman who slipped on the ice; you were right about that, Walter—” Walter’s face slipped into its familiar, smug smile. “Mr. Elwell was a math teacher at the high school down the block. Imagine It — a genius like him, pounding algebra into the heads of sullen children! But he didn’t let it get him down, because that was just his living. What he mainly lived for were his space-time theorems. ‘Elwell’s Equations,’ we called them—”

Walter snorted. “Don’t tell me the old gimp was a time traveler and left you his time machine?”

“It wasn’t a machine. It was only a — well, I guess it was a sort of map, after all. He tried to explain his theories to me, but I just couldn’t understand them. It was kind of like chess problems — I never could understand them, either. So when we arranged that I was going to visit 1880, he wrote it all down for me. It’s like a pattern. You go back and forth and up and down and after a while—”

“After a while you’re in 1880?”

“That’s right.”

Walter’s face had settled in odd lines. “I thought you were going to try not telling me what I’d figured out for myself,” he said in the cutting exaggeration of his normally exaggerated Southern drawl. This was the first time he had used it on Don, though Don had heard it used often enough on Mary and the kids. “The map, and all those clues you were stupid enough to leave in your pockets, and the stupidest of all — carving your own squiggle signature into all those dozens of old wooden Indians. Think I can’t add?”

“But that was Canal Street, 1880, and this is now,” said Don in a carefully dismal-sounding voice. “I thought it was safe.”

Walter looked at him. Walter — who had never earned an ethical dollar in his life, and had scarcely bothered to make a pretense of supporting his wife since Don’s work had started to sell — asked, “All right, why 1880—and why wooden Indians?”

Don explained to him how he felt at ease there, how the air was fresher, the food tastier, how the Russians were a menace only to other Russians, how — and the sachems! What real, sincere pleasure and pride he got out of carving them.

They were used! Not like the silly modern stuff he turned out now, stuff whose value rested only on the fact that self-seekers like Edgar Feld were able to con critics and public into believing it was valuable.

Walt scarcely heard him. “But how much money can you make carving wooden Indians?”

“Not very much in modern terms. But you see, Walt — I invest.”

And that was the bait in the trap he’d set and Walt rose to it and struck. “The market! Damn it to hell, of course! ” The prospect of the (for once in his whole shoddy career) Absolutely Sure Thing, the Plunge which was certain to be a Killing, of moving where he could know without doubt what the next move would be, almost deprived Walter of breath.

“A tycoon,” he gasped. “You could have been a tycoon and all you could think of was—”

Don said that he didn’t want to be a tycoon. He just wanted to carve wooden—

“Why, I could make us better than tycoons! Kings! Emperors! One airplane—” He subsided after Don convinced him that Elwell’s Equation could transport only the individual and what he had on or was carrying. “Lugers,” he muttered. “Tommy-guns. If I’m a millionaire, I’ll need bodyguards. Gould, Fisk, Morgan — they better watch out, that’s all.”

He slowly refocused on Don. “And I’ll carry the map,” he said.

He held out his hand. Slowly, as if with infinite misgivings, Don handed over to him the paper with Elwell’s 1880 Equation.

Walter looked at it, lips moving, brows twisting, and Don recalled his own mystification when the old man had showed it to him.

“… where X is one pace and Y is five-sixth of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle of which both arms are X in length … ”

“Well,” said Walter, “now let’s get down to business.” He rose, went off toward the living room, returned in a minute. Following him was a man with the tense, set face of a fanatic. He looked at Don with burning eyes.

“Anders!” cried Don.

“Where is the Equation?” Anders demanded.

“Oh, I got that,” Walter said.

He took it out, showed a glimpse, thrust it in his pocket. He stepped back, put a chair between him and the WIS man.

“Not so fast,” he said. “I got it and I’m keeping it. At least for now. So let’s talk business. Where’s the cash?”

As Anders, breathing heavily, brought out the roll of bills, “Oh, Walter, what have you done?” Don moaned. “Don’t throw me in the bramble-bush, Brer Wolf!”

“Here is the first part of it,” said Anders, ignoring his former WIS associate. “For this you agree to return to Canal Street, 1880, and destroy — by whatever means are available — the infamous firm of Demuth’s. In the unlikely case of their continuing in the business after the destruction—”

“They won’t. Best goon job money can buy; leave it to me.”

Anders hesitated.

Walter promptly said, “No, you can’t come along. Don’t ask again. Just him and me. I’ll need him for bird-dogging. I’ll get in touch when we come back. As agreed, I bring back copies of the New York papers showing that Demuth’s was blown up or burned down. On your way.”

With one single hate-filled glance, not unmixed with triumph, at Don, Anders withdrew. The door closed. Walter laughed.

“You aren’t—” Don began.

“Not a chance. Think I’m crazy? Let him and his crackpot buddies whistle for their money. No doubt you are wondering how I put two and two in a vertical column and added, hey, Donny boy? Well, once I figured out that the ‘Prospector’ was Elwell, and saw the WIS membership card in your pocket, I remembered that he and you used to go to those WIS meetings together, and I got in touch with them. They practically told me the whole story, but I wanted confirmation from you. All right, on your feet. We’ve got a pea patch to tear up.”

While Walt was shaving, Don and Mary had a few minutes together.

“Why don’t you just go, Don?” she begged. “I mean for good — away where he can’t find you — and stay there. Never mind about me or the children. We’ll make out.”

“But wouldn’t he take it out on you and them?”

“I said don’t worry about us and I mean it. He’s not all bad, you know. Oh, he might be, for a while, but that’s just because he never really adjusted to living up North. Maybe if we went back to his home town — he always talks about it — I mean he’d be different there—”