Tales From Gavagan's Bar (8 page)

             
As near as I can make out, this business started with a day when everything went wrong at once. Van's latest girl threw him down; somebody got into his car and stole all the accessories; and a store to which he had made a big sale went broke, so he lost the commission. He went off on a bender that made the rest of them look like tea parties. It lasted three days; and the worst of it was that it wasn't public, either. He just kept buying bottle after bottle of whiskey and sat there in his room, loading up on it and reading these Oriental books. His landlady called me up on the third day; and I went up there and found the place a shambles, with bottles and books mixed up together all over the floor.

             
I got him into bed and picked up some of the things, and while I was doing it I noticed that Van hadn't been merely reading while he was on this particular hoot. The place was filled with papers on which he had apparently been sketching designs for new animal toys, and some of them would nearly turn your stomach to see.

             
[Mr. Gross said: "Just like my cousin Louie, the time he stole all them ants." Willison gave him a glance of withering firmness and went on.]

             
That was all I could do at the time, so I left. The next part of the story comes from Van himself. When he came to, about noon the next day, this thing was sitting on the foot of his bed. I only got a glance at it later, but it looked like some kind of monkey, only bigger, with eyes like saucers and enormously long fingers. I don't know whether it resembled any of the designs Van had made while he was pie-eyed or not. It had what you might call an evil expression.

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A stocky pug-nosed man with glasses, who had been consulting a Daiquiri, spoke up: "I think that would be the spectral tarsier."

             
"Yes?" said Willison, facing him. "Are they blue?"

             
"I know of one that was," said the stocky man. "But that . . . Sorr
y to interrupt your story, old man. There may be a connection. Go on."

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Van had never had d.t.'s before [Willison continued], and his first idea was that this was something that had escaped from a zoo. But with his hangover and all, he didn't like
the idea of trying to capture it. An animal like that can give you a nasty bite. So he got himself a Bromo-Seltzer and some clothes, figuring that when he was outside, he'd call up the zoo or the S.P.C.A. and have it taken away. This spectral what-is-it just sat there quietly on the foot of the bed, following Van with its eyes.

             
It was so quiet that he thought he'd slip out for a cup of coffee before phoning. But when he opened the door, with his reflexes not under very good control, the thing leaped down and was through it like a flash. Van expected it to run. It didn't; it came hopping along down the hall and then down the stairs, always keeping about the same distance behind him. Every time he turned around toward it, it would retreat, and then follow him again as soon as he went on. It seemed attached to him.

             
That made Van think—as well as he could think through the fumes of his hangover—that he might be having a case of heebie-jeebies and not really seeing this thing at all. So he decided to ignore it and started down the street. Then he began to notice other people when he passed them, they'd do a double-take and give a grunt or a squeak or something; and when he looked over his shoulder, there the thing was, coming along behind him; and other people seemed to be seeing it too. He began to walk faster and faster. Pretty soon he passed a girl who was going in the same direction he was; and when the animal hopped past her feet, she looked down at it and let out a good loud shriek. That did for what was
left of poor Van's nerves, and he started to run.

             
You know how it is when anyone runs down the street. People look to see who's chasing who, and with a little encouragement, they'll join in. This time they had lots of encouragement, with that monster coming along behind Van in big jumps. Some yelled: "It's after him!" and, in about half a minute, he had twenty or thirty helpful citizens rolling along behind.

             
Sheer force of habit, he said later, brought him here to Gavagan's, and he dived in, to get away
from all those people and that animal. You remember the day, Mr. Cohan?

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"Indeed and I do," said the bartender. "The poor felly came through the door there, like one of them fancy ice-skaters you see in the show, and stood hanging onto the bar. 'It
's brandy you need, my lad,' I said, and poured one for him while the rest of them people come milling around, some of them inside and some out, after this animal. But no animal did they see, because none had come in with him. All they saw was Mr. Van Nest having a drink of brandy and his hand shaking. Some of them said it got away over the roofs; but you're telling me that's not true now,- aren't you, Mr. Willison?"

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Another rye and soda [said Willison]. No, it certainly isn't true. The thing just disappeared. A couple of the people who had followed came in to ask Van about it, and they got to talking. Well, there's only one way you can conduct a conversation in
a bar—that is, with a drink in your hand. Presently Van was drinking a Yellow Rattler and feeling better, and then they began treating each other and he felt better still, and the first thing he knew it was evening, and he'd spent the afternoon in here.

             
Now I won't say he was really drunk, not like he had been the day before; and besides, Mr. Cohan wouldn't permit it. But you can't work all day on brandy and Yellow Rattlers and nothing to eat without getting a little high. What did you say? Oh, he had a roast pork sandwich. So he had a roast pork sandwich and a couple more drinks, and went home and
had a couple of nightcaps; and then I guess he was a little more than high. So he tumbled into bed; it was late when he got there.

             
When he came to, toward noon the next day, this spectral monkey-thing was there again. And this time there was another monster with it, a thing like a lizard with a long tail and thin fingers and something that looked like a big ruff around its neck, as you sometimes see in old ance
stor portraits. It was a dark maroon red.

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"Chlemydosaurus kingi,
the frilled lizard," said the pug-nosed man, "in an interesting chromatic variation." "You know about it?" asked Willison.

             
"Yes. My name's Tobolka. I'm a biologist." He held out hi
s hand. "May I buy you another?"

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Thanks, I will have one [said Willison]. I don't want you to get the idea that Van was stupid. He could put two and two together, even with the bells ringing in his head; and he was perfectly certain that if he got
out on the street again those two horrors would be right with him. So he called me up and asked me to come over.

             
By time I got there, he was working on a pint he had sent out for to steady his nerves. The animals were there all right, both of them. I saw them. They were about so big. Every time I tried to approach one, it was out of reach like a flash; and then it would settle down and look at Van. He seemed depressed.

             
"I can't understand what makes this happen," he kept saying.

             
I told him about putting him to bed a couple of nights before and the shape I'd found the room in, with the books and weird animal drawings scattered around. "What kind of Hindu magic have you got mixed up with?" I asked him.

             
That made him more depressed than ever. "That's just the trouble," he said. "I haven't any idea. A good many of these books deal with the occult and materialization phenomena in one form or another, but I'm afraid I had rather a lot to
drink that day, and I don't know what I tried to do."

             
We agreed that the only sensible thing to do was to reverse the process, so I went out and got something to eat on a tray; and then we sat down with his books. Those two animals watched us all the time. I couldn't make head or tail of what I was reading, and he couldn't seem to find anything that was of the least use. About five o'clock I gave up and went home, arranging for dinner to be sent up to him. The only thing we were hopeful about was that the animals might go away during the night. He had finished the pint, but that wasn't anything to a fellow of Van's capacity, and you could call him reasonably sober.

             
But he called up the next morning to say that they were still here on the foot of his bed, staring at him. What was worse, the office was calling. They didn't mind his staying out a couple of days, but this made five now, and he was due for a trip through the Middle West. The idea of going out on a sales trip with those two beasts mixed up with his samples didn't strike him as the way to win friends and influence people.

             
I went over after dinner, and we talked the whole thing upside and down. Finally, I said: "Look here. There are two parts of this business that may be connected. Aren't those two some of the animals you drew while you were having that toot?"

             
He dug out the drawings; and although his hand had been pretty unsteady when he made them, this frilled lizard and spectral monkey were recognizable.

             
"All right," I said. "You remember the first one disappeared when you went into Gavagan's? Now I'll get a taxi and shoot you over there quick; and while you're gone, I'll destroy these drawings."

             
He said it seemed far-fetched, but couldn't think of anything better; and the second day of consulting his books hadn't turned up anything, so he agreed. I had the cab waiting with its engine running when he came dashing downstairs with the two monsters after him. The lizard one rode on top. I went back up and dug out every one of those
drawings he'd made and burned them, for good measure adding some designs he'd made for toys that didn't look like monsters at all.

             
Then I came over here. It seems quite a few people had seen Van with his monsters—not as many as the first time but enough to make a good deal of conversation—so that practically everybody in the place was buying Van a drink and trying to get him to talk about it. You can imagine what happened. He was as boiled as a fifteen-minute egg by the time I got him out of here, and next morning he had three pets instead of two.

             
Only it was worse this time. The new one didn't look like anything I remembered seeing in the drawings; it didn't look like anything I ever saw; and Dr. Tobolka, I don't think it looked like anything you ever saw. It looked like an enormous centipede, with the head of a cat. Van called me up and I went over again and saw it. The office had been after him again, and he told them he was sick. I stayed with him a while, trying to work out something more from the books; but while I was out getting something to eat, he got so he couldn't take the stares of the three animals any more, summoned a taxi by telephone, and was off here to Gavagan's again. It was the only place where he felt safe.

             
["The poor felly said he would clean the cuspidors if he could only stay here in a blanket on the floor," said Mr. Cohan. "I put it up to Gavagan myself, but he wouldn't hear a word of it."]

             
I hadn't heard from him [continued Willison], but I worked my way into his place on maybe the fifth day after it started. The office had sent around a basket of fruit and then one of flowers by a special messenger. I had to knock four or five times before he let me in and then it was with a suspicious look, peeking around the corner of the door. He hadn't shaved in God knows when; and there was a fifth in his hand, about three-quarters empty. By that time there were six of these animals in the room, all of them but the first two looking as though they had been put together out of spare parts of real animals and beasts from a child's picture
book. I couldn't get near any of them; but I was spared the trouble, because Van waved the bottle at me, said: "See?" took a swig, and fell down across the bed, with all those incredible creatures looking at him. They didn't eat; they didn't do anything but just jostle each other and look.