Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

After a second, Stuart went on, “Yes, Bob, this is really something big. If the late old Mr. Martens’ ideas can be successfully developed — and I’m sure Phil, here will not expect you to divulge until we are ready to talk Terms — they will be really invaluable to people like manufacturers, fashion editors, designers, merchants, and, last but not least — advertising men. Fortunes can literally be made, and saved. No wonder that a dirty dog like this guy Shadwell is trying to horn in on it. Why, listen — but I’m afraid we’ll have to terminate this enchanting conversation. Bob has to go home and get the material in order—” (What material? Bob wondered. Oh, well, so far: $40 from Shadwell and a free lunch from Anhalt.)—“and you and I, Phil, will discuss those horses Mac said not to spare.”

Anhalt nodded. It seemed obvious to Rosen that the ad man was unhappy, unhappy about having given Peter Martens the brush-off while he was alive, unhappy about being numbered among the vultures now that he was dead. And, so thinking, Bob realized with more than a touch of shame, that he himself was now numbered among the vultures; and he asked about funeral arrangements. But it seemed that the Masonic order was taking care of that: the late Peter Martens was already on his way back to his native town of Marietta, Ohio, where his lodge brothers would give him a formal farewell: aprons, sprigs of acacia, and all the ritual appurtenances. And Bob thought, why not? And was feeling somehow, very much relieved.

On the uptown bus which he had chosen over the swifter, hotter, dingier subway, he tried to collect his thoughts. What on earth could he ever hope to remember about a drunken conversation, which would make any sense to anybody, let alone be worth money? “The Sources of the Nile,” the old man had said, glaring at him with bloody eye. Well, Shadwell knew the phrase, too. Maybe Shadwell knew what it meant, exactly what it meant, because he, Bob Rosen, sure as Hell didn’t. But the phrase did catch at the imagination. Martens had spent years — who knew how many? — seeking the sources of his particular Nile, the great river of fashion, as Mungo Park, Livingstone, Speke, and other half-forgotten explorers, had spent years in search of theirs. They had all endured privation, anguish, rebuffs, hostility…and in the end, just as the quest had killed Mungo Park, Livingstone, Speke, the other quest had killed old Peter Martens.

But, aside from insisting that there was a source or sources, and that he knew where , what had Peter said? Why hadn’t Bob stayed sober? Probably that fat blonde at the next table, she of the poisonously green drink and the rotten step-children, probably she retained more of the old man’s tale, picked up by intertable osmosis, than did Bob himself.

And with that he heard the voice of the waiter at the bar that noon: The lady left it … What lady? … The blond lady … Bob scrabbled in his pocket and came up with the note. On the sweaty, crumpled bit of paper, scrawled in his own writing, or a cruel semblance of it, he read: Ditx sags su Bimsoh oh —

“What the Hell! ” he muttered, and fell to, with furrowed face, to make out what evidently owed more to Bushmill’s than to Everhard Faber. At length he decided that the note read, Peter says, see Bensons on Purchase Place, the Bronx, if I don’t believe him. Peter says, write it down.

“It must mean something,” he said, half-aloud, staring absently from Fifth Avenue to Central Park, as the bus roared and rattled between opulence and greenery. “It has to mean something.”

“Well, what a shame,” said Mr. Benson. “But how nice it was of you to come and tell us.” His wavy-gray hair was cut evenly around in soupbowl style, and as there was no white skin at the back of his neck, had evidently been so cut for some time. “Would you like some iced tea?”

“Still, he Went Quickly,” said Mrs. Benson, who, at the business of being a woman, was in rather a large way of business. “I don’t think there’s any iced tea, Daddy. When I have to go, that’s the way I want to go. Lemonade, maybe?”

“There isn’t any lemonade if what Kitty was drinking was the last of the lemonade. The Masons give you a nice funeral. A real nice funeral. I used to think about joining up, but I never seem to get around to it. I think there’s some gin. Isn’t there some gin, Mommy? How about a nice cool glass of gin-and-cider, Bob? Kit will make us some, by and by.”

Bob said, softly, that that sounded nice. He sat half-sunken in a canvas chair in the large, cool living-room. A quarter of an hour ago, having found out with little difficulty which house on Purchase Place was the Bensons’, he had approached with something close to fear and trembling. Certainly, he had been sweating in profusion. The not-too-recently painted wooden house was just a blind, he told himself. Inside there would be banks of noiseless machines into which cards were fed and from which tapes rolled in smooth continuity. And a large, broad-shouldered young man whose hair was cut so close to the skull that the scars underneath were plain to see, this young man would bar Bob’s way and, with cold, calm, confidence, say, “Yes?”

“Er, um, Mr. Martens told me to see Mr. Benson.”

“There is no Mr. Martens connected with our organization and Mr. Benson had gone to Washington. I’m afraid you can’t come in: everything here is Classified.”

And Bob would slink away, feeling Shoulders’ scornful glance in the small of his shrinking, sweaty back.

But it hadn’t been like that at all. Not anything like that at all.

Mr. Benson waved an envelope at Bob. “Here’s a connivo, if you like,” he said. “Fooled I don’t know how many honest collectors, and dealers, too: Prince Abu-Somebody flies over here from Pseudo-Arabia without an expense account. Gets in with some crooked dealers, I could name them, but I won’t, prints off this en — tire issue of airmails, precancelled. Made a mint. Flies back to Pseudo-Arabia, whomp! they cut off his head!” And he chuckled richly at the thought of this prompt and summary vengeance. Plainly, in Mr. Benson’s eyes, it had been done in the name of philatelic ethics; no considerations of dynastic intrigues among the petrol pashas entered his mind.

“Kitty, are you going to make us some cold drinks?” Mrs. B. inquired. “Poor old Pete, he used to be here for Sunday dinner on and off, oh, for just years. Is that Bentley coming?”

Bob just sat and sucked in the coolness and the calm and stared at Kitty. Kitty had a tiny stencil cut in the design of a star and she was carefully lacquering her toenails with it. He could hardly believe she was for real. “Ethereal” was the word for her beauty, and “ethereal” was the only word for it. Long, long hair of an indescribable gold fell over her heart-shaped face as she bent forward towards each perfectly formed toe. And she was wearing a dress like that of a child in a Kate Greenaway book.

“Oh, Bentley,” said B., Senior. “What do you think has happened? Uncle Peter Martens passed away, all of a sudden, day before yesterday, and this gentleman is a friend of his and came to tell us about it; isn’t that thoughtful?”

Bentley said, “ Ahhh .” Bentley was a mid-teener who wore jeans cut off at the knees and sneakers with the toes, insteps, and heels removed. He was naked to the waist and across his suntanned and hairless chest, in a neat curve commencing just over his left nipple and terminating just under his right nipple, was the word VIPERS stenciled in red paint.

“Ahhh,” said Bentley Benson. “Any pepsies?”

“Well, I’d asked you to bring some,” his mother said, mildly. “Make a nice, big pitcher of gin-and-cider, Bentley, please, but only a little gin for yourself, in a separate glass, remember, now.” Bentley said, “Ahhh,” and departed, scratching on his chest right over the bright, red S.