Read Online Masters of the Maze by Avram Davidson - Free Book Online Page B

the same. Peggy was, in this case, just the trigger, the catalyst. He fumbled in his files, came out with a little piece about the Chinese New Year’s Celebration in (of all places!) Chinatown. The paper dragons, he had realized, were actually paper lions, and were toted about by teen-aged boys who took turns and used a distinctive jerky sort of motion. He never found out what this was supposed to mean, but it seemed that a tradition carried on by kids and not old people was not likely to be dying off … There was more. It had a sort of nice, dry, observant feel to it. What was he going to do with it? He was still thinking in terms of
market.
This had no market, not as it was, not by N. Gordon, alias Pierce Taraval, Henry Dempsey, Jack Nydecker, Captain W. D. Lauterbach, etc. etc., and
sic
C. But it was sort of the thing he felt with increasing certainty that he would
like
to do — and do in Europe.
    And there he came to that again, like a passenger on a train forever returning to the same station. Once in Europe, he would be, so he was sure, liberated to write what he wanted. But the money to get to Europe could only be gotten by writing what he didn’t want — grammar or not. Almost, he thought, he could hold out long enough to raise the money, grind out the minimum number of articles — but not here. So, then, where? Not, certainly, even if he was sure where it currently was, at the home of his brother, Jerry, a cheerful tosspot who worked occasionally as a wool buyer. He’d never allow Nate to stay sober long enough. It was off season at all the beach resorts, but Nate would freeze to death at any place he could afford. No.
    • • •
    It had to be some place entirely different, some place not too far away, some place warmed or at least warmable, furnished — merely “furnishable” wouldn’t do — some place he could fit into with a minimum of effort and cost, allowing him to use all his nervous energy to accomplish for the last time the writing he still needed and had come to loath. And Darkglen seemed to fit the description to a nicety.
    Surprisingly, Jerry Gordon was still living at the same place and had still (or again) a connected telephone, and was home.
    “Jerry? Nate.”
    “Nate!”
— great good cheer. “I haven’t got the money to lend you for an abortion, but, tell you what, I’ll marry the girl for you instead, how’s that?”
    “Thanks a lot, but wait till you’re asked. No, I called to ask you who Joseph Bellamy is? Didn’t you once — ”
    He paused until there should have ceased the still recognizable and once very familiar sound of Jerry standing on his head and whistling
Dixie
, while the change and keys and pens and pencils and combs fell out of his pocket. Jerry, a trifle breathless, came back on the blower. “How’s that, weanling? As long as I still can, I’m safe. Better than yoga and
lots
more fun than A.A. Jo-seph Bel-lamy. He isn’t dead, is — ? No, hey. Well, not that I wish him — He’s not a bad old futz, but an old futz is really what he is. He’s Aunt Mabel’s brother. Remember Aunt Mabel? Six miles of hair and long mauve dresses? Before your time, I guess. Uncle Charley’s wife, before they both went down on the
Titanic
or the
Lusitania
or was it a motorboat on Lake George.
    “Anyway, Joe Bellamy has or had or has had more money than God and he lives in a house, if that’s the precise word, cross between Penn Station and the Chateau Frontenac, designed by the Brothers Grimm, way the
Hell
off in the woods. And a couple of years ago he wrote me a letter like something out of one of those old English novels where they have girls and crusty old guardians, you know? Anyway, it was all a fake, no pussy whatsoever, and he gave out with a lot of mysterious hints or so it seemed to
me,
but meanwhile there was all this great brandy up from the cellar and so I got crocked. Naturally. And the next morning the manservant, or, to be precise, some local Kallikak that