Tales From Gavagan's Bar (27 page)

             
All the same, that big bruiser started going through my stuff in a way that made me plenty troubled. Pretty soon they hit my portable Singer. On most inspections, they'd pass it up. The Russian prodded it, and the border guard said: "Come here. He wants you to open it."

             
I don't know how I managed to walk over and open up the machine. The Russian looked at it, frowned, and then pointed his gun at my stomach and said something else. The guard translated it for me. "He says it has a secret compartment and you are to open that, too."

             
I knew they had me then, but there wasn't any chance of making a break with that gun on me, so I pressed the stud that opened up the compartment. I was never more surprised in my life, and I guess they weren't either. Instead of the documents I had put in there, the compartment was full of neatly wrapped Czech cream cakes, together with this sausage I have here.

             
That puzzled the hell out of my Russian friend. He wanted to know why I was carrying sausage and cream cakes out of the country in this secret way, and I couldn't think of any very good answer, except that I sometimes got hungry along the road. He turned around to yell at the other guard, the one with the old fellow. And then he got another shock, and so did I. The old guy was gone.

             
Well, they had a big yak about it. I don't understand more than a few words of Russian, but between what I do know and the guard's pantomime, I could get it that he was pretending he had only turned his head to watch me open up the compartment and the old fellow had vanished.

             
After a while the Russian gave it up and snapped
something that the border guard translated for me as: "You are obviously carrying more food than you are entitled to under the rationing program of the People's Republic, and therefore your cream cakes are confiscated. But you may keep the sausage, which is named for the fascist monster Bismarck, and is no longer permitted."

             
The Russky apparently just didn't want sausage that day. I had to put my luggage back in the compartment, and when I crossed the border, the last thing I saw was the three of them licking their fingers as they wolfed down cream cakes.

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Smith mopped his hand across his brow at the memory of a harrowing experience, and said: "I will return Dr. Tobolka's compliment with the Slivovitz, Mr. Cohan. Now, there's the story. I saved my skin, but I didn't save the reports, which doesn't matt
er in the case of most of them. But that one on the Prodnice installations was pretty vital. It's perfectly obvious that this old fellow Veles pulled some kind of sleight of hand performance and exchanged the sausage and cream cakes for my documents, but the question is how did he do it and where are they now? I haven't been able to trace him, but I know professional magicians have associations and that sort of thing, and he must be in touch somewhere with other Czech magicians. That's why I want one, and I think the sausage is intended as a clue."

             
"Of course it was," said Dr. Tobolka. "Obviously."

             
"What do you mean?" asked Smith.

             
"Simply this: Veles is one of the oldest of our legends, far back before the time of King Krok. He watches over the forests, flocks, and foods of the Bohemian people.
Foods,
Mr. Smith."

             
Smith choked over his Slivovitz. "Come now, Dr. Tobolka!" he snorted. "You mean I was driving a hitchhiking kobold?"

             
"Not kobold. A god."

             
"Could be," Keating said. "He sure vanished into thin air, didn't he? And how about that switcheroo on the documents!" Smith said, "Misdirection."

             
Suddenly, both Mr. Keating and Dr. Tobolka opened their eyes and their mouths and began to talk, alternately, like a
smooth-working crosstalk team.

             
Keating said, "What was the Austrian name of that place where you said the map came from—"

             
And Tobolka said, "Worsten. The German word for—"

             
"Sausages! And Veles was the god of—"

             
"Food!"

             
They both turned to Smith, and Dr. Tobolka said: "Mr. Smith, the sausage is more than a clue. I'll bet anything the map is inside it—or it has some note that tells where the map is."

             
Smith sipped and considered. "All right. All right. It's worth trying. Got a knife, Mr. Cohan?"

             
Mr. Cohan rummaged under the bar and came up with an all-purpose piece of cutlery, which Smith poised over the sausage.

             
"Not that way," said Keating. "If the map or a note is in there, you'll cut it in half. Cut it open lengthwise."

             
Smith grasped the handle firmly and drew the knife through the sausage in a long, firm longitudinal cut.

             
The sausage separated into halves, revealing two cross-sections of pure meat, brownish-red with numerous white patches and a network of little white lines connecting them. Just what would be expected in a sausage of this kind. There was no note or piece of paper. Keating's face fell, Tobolka looked disappointed, but Smith goggled at the spectacle. "My God!" he said.

             
"What's the matter?" asked Tobolka.

             
"It's the map! In sausage meat! See, here are the antiarcraft positions, and the bunkers holding ammunition, and the shell-loading plant, and there's the outer guard post. Those little white lines have it all."

             
Tobolka said: "In the Bohmerwald, it is not good to be a skeptic."

             
Smith picked up the paper that he had earlier unwrapped from the sausage and began to assemble it again. Halfway through this task, he stared at his companions and once more mopped his brow with his hand, as though to get rid of some pressure within. He said: "But how in God's name am I going to convince Army Intelligence that this damn thing is
it?"

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"Would you be sure about needing another, Mr. Walsh?" said Mr. Cohan in a tone that caused the regular customers to look around in the expectation of seeing someone placed on the Indian list.

             
"Course," said the stoutish, palish, baldish young man. "Wouldn' say so urrwise. Need 'nother whiskey. Whiskey chaser. Gotta get two men drunk."

             
Mr. Cohan placed both hands on the bar. "Mr. Walsh," he said severely, "in Gavagan's we will sell a man a drink to wet his whistle, or even because his old woman has pasted him with a dornick, but a drink to get drunk with I do not sell. Now I'm telling you you've had enough for tonight, and in the morning you'll be thanking me."

             
Walsh solemnly closed one eye, then the other, assumed an expression of intense foxiness, and placed a finger beside his nose. "Aw ri'," he said. "Take my business to a wholesaler." He almost missed the door going out.

             
"I've seen him somewhere before," said Doc Brenner. "Only, I thought it was at that conference on raising money for the community chest, and he was a delegate for one of the churches."

             
Mr. Gross said: "My uncle Pincus knew a pair of twins like that once, where one of them was a cop and pinched the other one for stealing food from the animals at the zoo. But that was because he couldn't speak the language."

             
Mr. Witherwax shook his head, clucking. "I read in a book once that the harder a man works, the harder he has to relax. Maybe this Walsh just got to working too hard for his church. I'll have another Manhattan, Mr. Cohan."

             
"Him work for a church?" said the bartender, stirring. "It would take the holy angels to get him near one. You would be thinking of the other brother. This one now is Lester Walsh, and his own mother would be ashamed of some of the things he does."

             
"You mean they're identical twins?" said Doc Brenner.

             
"It's like I told you," said Gross. "He was out there the day the bath house burned down, trying to hide in a blanket, and I seen the scar where the doctor cut them apart."

             
"Huh?" said Doc Brenner. "Do you mean the two Walshes were Siamese twins and separated by surgery?"

             
Witherwax said: "But they can't do that. I read about it somewhere, and it says they always die."

             
"They didn't this time," said Gross firmly. "Mr. Cohan, I want another Boilermaker, and you should tell Mr. Witherwax here that something he seen in a book ain't as good as something he seen with his own two eyes. Not that I see it myself when he wrecks the church sociable. Or the time he tried to hold a prayer meeting right here in Gavagan's, either. Ask Mr. Cohan; he'll remember that if you don't believe me."

             
"Indeed, and I do," said the bartender, heartily. "Gavagan himself was in here that night when Mr. Walsh comes in. And before he can even order a drink, a funny look comes over the face of him, and he says he's going to pray and will anyone join him."

             
Brenner looked at Witherwax and Witherwax looked at Brenner. The latter said: "Look her
e, maybe you better give us the story from the beginning. I don't quite understand."

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Like I said [said Gross]. Him and his brother Leslie was born connected together. My Aunt Sophie knew the family, and went around to see Mrs. Walsh in the hospita
l. She was one of them women suffragists or something, and she said she wasn't going to be the mother of no circus freaks, so she told
the doctors to cut them apart.

             
Don't ask me how they done it. All I knew about is what my Aunt Sophie told me, the one that had the delicatessen and got into all that trouble with the inspectors on account of the green snake. She used to say them two Walshes was that healthy you'd never know they were one person, sort of, and I know nobody thought there was anything nutsy about them till they was in school.

             
With twins like that, their people get a kick out of them; dressing them the same way and bringing them up to do the same things, so they're as much alike as possible. Old Mrs. Walsh used to do that with her kids. I remember I went over once to my Aunt Sophie's place to play with my cousin Pershing, and the Walshes was right down the street, so we went there. One of them, I forget which, you couldn't tell them apart even then, was out in the yard playing something with us. All of a sudden, he twisted up his face and began to bawl. We couldn't figure out why; neither one of us laid a hand on him.