Tales From Gavagan's Bar (30 page)

             
"No fault of yours, but you've had a funny accident. The lightning in that thundershower hit a trolley wire and tore it loose, and the wire came right down on your car and short-circuited through it. It caught fire, and the firemen couldn't get near it because of the charged wire. Pretty well burned out. Hope you had it insured."

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Mr. Cohan set a Boilermaker down in front of Mr. Gross, who was holding Professor Thott, Mr. Witherwax, and Mr. Keating from the library, if not exactly spellbound, at least immobile.

             
". . . so the next day," he said, "a flock of trucks drove up and unloaded those statues on my Uncle Max's lawn. So my Uncle Max is stuck with ten cast-iron statues of an ugly guy named Hercules, wearing a second-hand tiger, all because he couldn't leave well enough alone. So when I heard about it I said to myself, Adolphus Gross, let that be a lesson to you to leave well enough alone, and I done it ever since."

             
He paused for effect, sipped the rye, and took a gulp of the beer.

             
Witherwax said: "The trouble is if everybody did that, we wouldn't get anywhere."

             
"I only meant—" began Gross. Witherwax was not to be stopped.

             
"For instance," he said, "I was reading in a book how somebody invented distilling. If they left well enough alone, we'd be drinking wine or beer and there wouldn't be any gin, and Mr. Cohan couldn't mix me another dry Martini. Oh, Mr. Cohan!"

             
The voice of the bartender, who was farther down, talking to a customer, became louder, as though he were indicating to Witherwax that the cause of the delay was inescapable: "No, I'm telling you I have not seen her tonight, nor last night, nor
             

             
the night before that. And if ye want to talk to the rubber plant, it's your own right, because everything is free in Gavagan's saving and excepting the liquor. Jim, get Mr. Holland that step now."

             
He came down the bar toward Witherwax, but like the three other habitues of Gavagan's, that gentleman was watching in fascination as the bar boy produced a small kitchen stepladder, on which the neatly-dressed young man climbed to place his head on a level with the small rubber tree that grew in a pot on the bracket just above the window-curtain.

             
"Althea!" he said distinctly, "I'm here." He gazed at the rubber tree.

             
"Who is he?" asked Witherwax.

             
"It's a Martini you're wanting?" said Mr. Cohan. "Him? Oh, that's Mr. Holland, and all that money of his doing him no more good than if it was made of mud."

             
"Is he crackers?" asked Gross.

             
The young man had climbed down again and apparently caught this remark, for he shook his head with a melancholy smile. Witherwax said: "Ask him to have a drink with us. Nobody should be that sad in Gavagan's."

             
Before Mr. Cohan could proffer the invitation, Professor Thott stepped over to the young man. "Sir," he said, "I offer the proper apologies for the apparent rudeness of one of my companions and request that any injury be dissolved in a libation."

             
The young man hesitated, considered, said: "I suppose I might as well," and followed Thott to where the others were waiting. Introductions were made; he would have a double Stinger. It was not until he had taken the first sip from it that he turned toward the circle of expectant faces.

             
"I don't blame you for thinking I'm bats," he said. "I don't even mind. Perhaps I am. But she was real. You've seen me with her, haven't you, Mr. Cohan?"

             
"That I have," said Mr. Cohan. "And as decent a girl as I ever put eyes on. You would be sitting all the time at the corner table there, and minding your own business that had the world and all to do with each other
.
Holland swallowed the rest of his double Stinger at a gulp and pushed his glass back for a refill. Witherwax cleared his throat. "If you could tell us . . ." he said.

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I don't know that it will be much help, to me or to you [said Holland], but I'll try. I'm looking for the girl I'm in love with, and I'm afraid I'll never find her because I think she's a—dryad.

             
[He let the last word drop separately and searched th
e faces of Thott, Witherwax, Gross, and Keating, as though to see whether anyone was being scornful or skeptical. No one was. Holland drank from his replenished glass and began again.]

             
I'll tell you and see what you think. I have a little money, you know. It's handled by one of those investment trusts, which shifts some of it from one holding to another once in a while. I believe that money should be as responsible as any other part of our economy, so instead of just sitting around drawing dividends or going in for racing cars and chorus girls, I've made a hobby of checking up on the firms my money is invested in, taking an active part as a stockholder, and informing myself well enough so that I can ask intelligent questions of management at meetings.

             
A little while back, the trust informed me that they had put me rather heavily into the Acme Real Estate firm—not a controlling interest, but a strong minority—and so, as usual, I went around to see how they operated. I found they were a management corporation, specializing in office buildings, so I continued my checking by going around to the buildings to see how well they were run.

             
One of them was the Ogonz Building, over on Lattimer Street; fifteen-story job. When I went over it, there were two things that struck me particularly—seemed to give the place a personality of its own, which most office buildings lack. One was the immense flagpole on the roof, surmounted by a big golden eagle. You can't see it at all from most of the adjacent streets because you can't get enough—what's that word sculptors use when they stand back from their statues to see
how they're coming?

             
["Recul,"
said Thott; "or is it
receuil?
Speaking of things French, Mr. Cohan, I think I will vary my procedure by having a jorum of Hennessey."]

             
I got there about seven o'clock after having run over several other buildings, and the second thing that made an impression on me was the night elevator man. He looked like a cross between a gnome and a land mine, a solid figure with heavy hips, rather spindly shanks, knock knees, and a great mass of curly dark hair over a dark face. He was quite suspicious; wouldn't let me in at all until he'd checked by phone with the night man at Acme.

             
I didn't think that was too bad a characteristic in a man with his job, because places have been burglarized in just that way, so I let him see it was all right with me as he took me around. Of course, when we reached the roof and saw the flagpole, I exclaimed about it. His face went even darker than before and he muttered something.

             
"What's the matter?" I asked. "Don't you like it?"

             
He talked with a rather thick accent, but I gathered that he did like it, very much. What he was angry about was that orders had been given to cut the pole down. His rage over it seemed somewhat out of proportion, but as soon as he told me, I got mad, too. All the way down in the elevator, I kept getting madder at the thought of destroying that splendid pole with the golden eagle.

             
By the time he let me out, I was really simmering. I told him not to worry; that pole was going to stay there even if I had to throw somebody out of a job to keep it there. I meant it, too, and the next morning I went around to Acme and told the girl in the outer office that I wanted to see Sherwin, the president, about the flagpole on the Ogonz Building.

             
He's a big lemon-blonde businessman, very pompous, who sits back from his desk, just caressing the edge of it with his belly.

             
"You are interested in acquiring the pole?" he said. "We are taking it down, but it is a relic of some historical value." I said: "No, I'm just here to ask you not to take it down. I
like it there. By the way, if you look at your books, you'll find I'm a major stockholder in your company."

             
He puffed a couple of times and said: "Well, Mr. Holland, it's not very usual for stockholders to interfere with the minor details of management. I think you may trust our discretion in protecting your financial interests. As a matter of fact, both the direct cost of continually replacing the flag on that pole and the labor cost of having a man raise and lower it each day are appreciable items, on which we propose to effect a saving."

             
By this time I was really annoyed. I told him that my interest was not financial but personal, and if he effected any savings that way, I was going to buy up enough more Acme stock to have control, and he could go do his saving for somebody else. He huffed and puffed around so much over that, that in order to calm him down, I asked him what it was a relic of.

             
He was smooth. "I've addressed the Advertising Club on that topic at one of our little five-minute informal speeches," he said. "The flagpole on the Ogonz building is a single stick of cedar from the island of Samos in Greece. It was originally a mast on the Greek sailing training ship
Keraunos,
which was visiting this country when Greece was invaded and after the war was found too unseaworthy to make the return voyage. Mr. Pappanicolou, the restaurant man, was then owner of the Ogonz Building, and he secured the mast as a flagpole. I believe there is more to the story, which I do not seem to remember at the moment, but the night man at the Ogonz Building can inform you. He was one of the sailors on the
Keraunos."

             
I thanked him for that much and went away. Mr. Cohan, will you provide for me once more?

             
[Keating said into the interval: "Samos, eh? That's where they had the famous temple to Hera, isn't it? The one in the grove, where the priestesses were called dryads?"]

             
Whether they were or not [continued Holland, sipping]. Yes, I've looked it up myself since. Anyway, the pole stayed up, and it's still there, and all I've had to do is turn down
Sherwin's attempts to get me to lunch with him at the Advertising Club about once a week.

             
The next event in the series was that I went to a cocktail party at the Mahers and met Althea, Althea Dubois. I suppose most men think the girl they fall in love with is the most beautiful object on earth, but Althea really is. Slender and not very tall, with one of those triangular faces and rather light brunette hair. The moment I touched her hand, I knew this was it, and the next moment she was looking at me hard out of a pair of green eyes and saying: "Aren't you the Mr. Holland who stopped them from taking down the flagpole on the Ogonz Building?"

             
"Why, yes," I said. "Are you interested in it, too?"

             
"Very much," she said. "I'm so grateful to you for that, that I don't know how to tell you."

             
She had a little accent of some kind that I couldn't trace. It only made her all the more charming. I asked her if she were a native, and she said she wasn't, but she just loved the town and all the people and wouldn't go away now for anything. It didn't occur to me to ask her how she knew about my little duel with Sherwin; I was too interested in just talking to her, and she didn't seem to mind. So we kept right on without noticing that the party had thinned out, until we were the last ones there and the Mahers were making noises to indicate they wanted us to go home so they could have dinner. I asked Althea if she had a date and then took her to dinner at Gaillard's and we went on with the conversation, and when the waiters there began to behave the same way the Mahers had, I brought her over here.