Tales From Gavagan's Bar (13 page)

             
"Don't you any more?" inquired Brenner, thrusting his head forward dangerously.

             
Witherwax interjected: "Say, mister, ain't I seen you somewhere?"

             
"If you haven't, it's because you were looking the other way, Mr. Witherwax. I work in the reference department at the public library. My name's Keating," he finished with a touch of self-consciousness.

             
More names were pronounced, and Mr. Cohan became occupied with another round. Witherwax said: "Do you really know something about there was an Atlantis, Mr. Keating, like this Donnelly says?"

             
"Not like Donnelly, no. I agree with Dr. Brenner there. But maybe some kind of Atlantis, or something like that. A funny thing happened at the library recently, and it's left me feeling uncertain about a lot of things. Not that I want to contradict you—" he made a propitiatory gesture toward D
oc Brenner "—but let me tell you about it. You remember the head of reference, Mr. Mestor?"

             
"The old guy with the flower in his buttonhole, that knows so much about everything?" said Witherwax.

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That's the one. His name was Laban Mestor, but we
always called him "Methuselah" around the library. He was the senior member of the staff; been there for thirty-odd years, but was pretty spry and looked as though he were only around fifty-five. I guess he was probably one of the most wonderful reference librarians in the world on anything that touched on history or geography or language or philosophy. The technical reference questions bored him, and he used to pass them on to someone else when he could. But any facts in his field of interest he carried right in his head. Even pretty unimportant facts.

             
I remember one day somebody wanted to know something about a gang of early American criminals named the Thayers. They took the question up with old Mestor, and without
             
batting an eyelash he came back: "Why, yes; they were hanged in Buffalo, New York, in 1825, while Lafayette was visiting the place." He couldn't find any reference book to prove it, though, and somebody had to write to Buffalo. But he turned out to be perfectly right.

             
That was the usual way with Mestor. He knew books and what was in them very well, but beyond that he had a whole reference library in his head. I'm in the technical section myself.

             
There was another funny thing about Mestor, and it has a bearing on what happened—I think. I gather he lived alone; don't believe he had any home life at all. Well, when he was off duty, he didn't go around with a lot of other learned old ducks as you might think. He liked young people. He used to go around with any of us and tip over a few drinks.
Whenever he could get the company. And once he got started, he'd take two drinks to your one, and then start telling stories. Perfectly startling ones. I've had him in here a few times and when he got oiled, he even astonished Mr. Cohan.

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Mr. Cohan
said: "Would that be the tall old felly with the big eyebrows and the joint off the thumb of him, Mr. Keating?"

             
"That's the one," said Keating. "Kind of wall-eyed, as though he were continually surprised by what he was looking at."

             
"Sure, he was the one," said Mr. Cohan. "I mind him saying something about Ireland once, and me asking him how he knew, and he says he's been all round the Lakes of Killarney in a jaunting-car."

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Yes, [continued Keating] that was his method. Especially in his cups. The information he had was always personal. The stories he told happened to someone else, but he learned them on the ground, so to speak. I remember when he was talking about handl
ing a sailing ship on a lee shore in a storm one night. I asked him how he knew. He said that when he was a young man he had spent three years on a whaling voyage to Greenland. I checked up his description afterward by the
Kedge Anchor,
and as nearly I could make out he was
perfectly right, as usual. But it was that whaling voyage and the Babylonian tablet that made us get up the list.

             
The Babylonian tablet was one of the series the library set out in the lobby in showcases for a "Reading and Writing Through the Ages" exhibit. Polly Rixey had charge of it. You must have seen her around the library, Mr. Witherwax. She's that blonde girl who always wore her hair piled on top of her head.

             
Mestor liked her pretty well and let her know it. I don't mean he made any obvious passes at her, because he was a gentlemanly old coot. But he was always making opportunities to talk to her, and when she went up the iron grillwork stairs back in the stacks, the chances were that he would be somewhere around the bottom, trying to take a peek at her legs. A lot of girls would have been annoyed— when the others saw him standing there, they used to go around and take another way up—but not Polly. She seemed to take it as a compliment.

             
She was what you sometimes call a teaser. Not quite on the make, and always perfectly ladylike. But she enjoyed giving the impression things were different. I remember her telling a couple of the other girls how to behave when you go out with an older man—she didn't know I was listening. She said: "You smile at him and listen to everything he says and never interrupt, and if he puts his hand on your knee, go right on eating. He can't really get fresh in a restaurant, and he'll take you out again." There are girls that get a big kick out of that—persuading an older man to make a play for them, especially if he's in a dignified position, and not the kind you'd expect to take an interest in legs. Polly worked on old Mestor that way, and the operation was a success.

             
Anyway, about the tablet. On this day I had been out to lunch with Mestor, and as we came in through the lobby, there was Polly Rixey, arranging the reading and writing exhibit. Of course, he had to stop to talk to her, and glanced at the tablet. "My dear," he said, "do you know you're perpetrating a fraud on the public? Your card says that's a hymn to the sun, but it isn't anything of the kind. That's the
legend of the childhood of Sargon the Great. Here—"

             
He picked it up and began to read: "Sharrukin, the mighty king, the king of Agade, am I! Lowly was my mother—" I forget how it all went, but he read it off as though it were in English. He was perfectly right, of course. When Polly took the tablet back to Professor Olmstead at the university, who had furnished the translation, he said he didn't know how such a stupid mistake had been made, probably because the other text had been on his desk at the time.

             
She went out to dinner with him that night, and let him feel her knee I suppose. The next day I met her in the stacks, and she giggled and said: "Do you know what it is now? I asked him how he could read that Babylonian tablet, and he said he spent two years on an archaeological expedition in Mesopotamia. We ought to keep track."

             
"Let's," said I. So we did. We not only put down all the places he'd been and times he said he'd been there as he told them to us, but we went around and got lists from the rest, too. I think I still have the general compilation.

             
[Keating fumbled in his pocket and produced a somewhat worn piece of paper, which he passed to Brenner. It was in tabular form.

             
Whaling voyage to Greenland
 
3 years

             
Living among the Tlingits
 
IV2
years

             
Studying in Vienna
 
9 months (?)

             
In the Argentine
 
1 year

             
There were sub-totals as the list went on, and a final "Grand total
—
228 years, 7 months."]

             
That's why we called him "Methuselah" Mestor [Keating continued]. You'd say he was just an amiable old liar, and so would I. So did I, and so did Polly. But there were two odd things about the list that didn't impress me till later. One was that there was never anything you could check in these travels of Mestor's. He didn't say what ship he'd been to Greenland in, for instance, and when you tried to press him on a point like that, he'd just talk about something else. You can't come down too roughly on the man you're having a sociable drink with, just to make him out a liar.

             
The other thing, I've mentioned already. About the information that accompanied the accounts of these imaginary travels being always accurate. I didn't think anyone ever caught him out.

             
[Brenner coughed: "Mr. Cohan, I'll have another, and so will Mr. Keating here. Are you going to tell me that he said he'd been to Atlantis? Or had some information about it?"]

             
No [said Keating], I'm not. Thanks for the drink. I'm going to tell you first about what happened one night when we were in here. Mr. Cohan will remember about it. Mestor and I had been having maybe three or four drinks. As we went out, he was saying something to me, looking at me as he did so, and not at the traffic, so he didn't notice a delivery truck that came around the corner on two wheels. I grabbed his arm and yanked him back on his tail on the sidewalk just in time. When we were back here in Gavagan's, getting some tonic for shaken nerves, he said "Roger, I think you have saved my somewhat unworthy life, and I want you to know I'm not ungrateful."

             
What can you say in a case like that? I was so embarrassed I wanted to paw the floor like a little boy, and he must have seen it, because he let the subject drop. But the next day, as I was sitting in the tower lunchroom, just about to start in on the apple I was having for dessert, old Mestor came poking in with his eyebrows wiggling. He said: "Roger, do you want to come with me a few minutes? I have something to show you."

             
I followed him, bringing my apple with me. He led the way downstairs to the basement, way in the back, where they keep uncatalogued newspaper files and things like that. He picked around in this wilderness of paper for a few moments and finally hauled out something from a shelf at the back. It looked exactly like one of those scrolls on which ancient manuscripts were written, and it had a rod through it, too. Only the material didn't seem to be paper.

             
Old Mestor laid it on a pile of newspapers which were in turn on a table. "Knowledge can be a very useful thing," he said, "and I wish to make some small, concrete expression of
my gratitude for your kindness last night. This is the
Apodict."

             
I had never heard of the
Apodict,
and when he began to unroll it, I didn't recognize the characters in which it was written, though they looked something like Greek. The most interesting thing, though, was that it was illustrated. The pictures were divided into frames, like in a comic strip. In fact, Mestor remarked on it. "The newspaper comic strip," he said, "is supposed to have begun with Outcalt's
Yellow Kid,
just before the turn of the century, but this is a good deal older. Also it serves a practical purpose. Now look at this series."