Fancies and Goodnights - Collier John - Страница 3

«We are putting in the stopper,» said the jinn.

Frank cursed, begged, prayed, and implored. «Let me out!» he cried. «Let me out. Please let me out. Do let me out. I'll do anything. Let me out, do.»

The jinn, however, had other matters to attend to. Frank had the infinite mortification of beholding these other matters through the glassy walls of his prison. Next day he was picked up, whisked through the air, and deposited in the dirty little shop, among the other bottles, from which this one had never been missed.

There he remained for an interminable period, covered all over with dust, and frantic with rage at the thought of what was going on in his exquisite palace, between his jinn and his faithless charmer. In the end some sailors happened to drift into the shop, and, hearing this bottle contained the most beautiful girl in the world, they bought it up by general subscription of the fo'c'sle. When they unstoppered him at sea, and found it was only poor Frank, their disappointment knew no bounds, and they used him with the utmost barbarity.

DE MORTUIS

Mr. Rankin was a large and rawboned man on whom the newest suit at once appeared outdated, like a suit in a photograph of twenty years ago. This was due to the squareness and flatness of his torso, which might have been put together by a manufacturer of packing cases. His face also had a wooden and a roughly constructed look; his hair was wiglike and resentful of the comb. He had those huge and clumsy hands which can be an asset to a doctor in a small upstate town where people still retain a rural relish for paradox, thinking that the more apelike the paw, the more precise it can be in the delicate business of a tonsillectomy.

This conclusion was perfectly justified in the case of Dr. Rankin. For example, on this particular fine morning, though his task was nothing more ticklish than the cementing over of a large patch on his cellar floor, he managed those large and clumsy hands with all the unflurried certainty of one who would never leave a sponge within or create an unsightly scar without.

The doctor surveyed his handiwork from all angles. He added a touch here and a touch there till he had achieved a smoothness altogether professional. He swept up a few last crumbs of soil and dropped them into the furnace. He paused before putting away the pick and shovel he had been using, and found occasion for yet another artistic sweep of his trowel, which made the new surface precisely flush with the surrounding floor. At this moment of supreme concentration the porch door upstairs slammed with the report of a minor piece of artillery, which, appropriately enough, caused Dr. Rankin to jump as if he had been shot.

The Doctor lifted a frowning face and an attentive ear. He heard two pairs of heavy feet clump across the resonant floor of the porch. He heard the house door opened and the visitors enter the hall, with which his cellar communicated by a short flight of steps. He heard whistling and then the voices of Buck and Bud crying, «Doc! Hi, Doc! They're biting!»

Whether the Doctor was not inclined for fishing that day, or whether, like others of his large and heavy type, he experienced an especially sharp, unsociable reaction on being suddenly startled, or whether he was merely anxious to finish undisturbed the job in hand and proceed to more important duties, he did not respond immediately to the inviting outcry of his friends. Instead, he listened while it ran its natural course, dying down at last into a puzzled and fretful dialogue.

«I guess he's out.»

«I'll write a note — say we're at the creek, to come on down.»

«We could tell Irene.»

«But she's not here, either. You'd think she'd be around.»

«Ought to be, by the look of the place.»

«You said it, Bud. Just look at this table. You could write your name —»

«Sh-h-h! Look!»

Evidently the last speaker had noticed that the cellar door was ajar and that a light was shining below. Next moment the door was pushed wide open and Bud and Buck looked down.

«Why, Doc! There you are!»

«Didn't you hear us yelling?»

The Doctor, not too pleased at what he had overheard, nevertheless smiled his rather wooden smile as his two friends made their way down the steps. «I thought I heard someone,» he said.

«We were bawling our heads off,» Buck said. «Thought nobody was home. Where's Irene?»

«Visiting,» said the Doctor. «She's gone visiting.»

«Hey, what goes on?» said Bud. «What are you doing? Burying one of your patients, or what?»

«Oh, there's been water seeping up through the floor,» said the Doctor. «I figured it might be some spring opened up or something.»

«You don't say!» said Bud, assuming instantly the high ethical standpoint of the realtor. «Gee, Doc, I sold you this property. Don't say I fixed you up with a dump where there's an underground spring.»

«There was water,» said the Doctor.

«Yes, but, Doc, you can look on that geological map the Kiwanis Club got up. There's not a better section of subsoil in the town.»

«Looks like he sold you a pup,» said Buck, grinning.

«No,» said Bud. «Look. When the Doc came here he was green. You'll admit he was green. The things he didn't know!»

«He bought Ted Webber's jalopy,» said Buck.

«He'd have bought the Jessop place if I'd let him,» said Bud. «But I wouldn't give him a bum steer.»

«Not the poor, simple city slicker from Poughkeepsie,» said Buck.

«Some people would have taken him,» said Bud. «Maybe some people did. Not me. I recommended this property. He and Irene moved straight in as soon as they were married. I wouldn't have put the Doc on to a dump where there'd be a spring under the foundations.»

«Oh, forget it,» said the Doctor, embarrassed by this conscientiousness. «I guess it was just the heavy rains.»

«By gosh!» Buck said, glancing at the besmeared point of the pickaxe. «You certainly went deep enough. Right down into the clay, huh?»

«That's four feet down, the clay,» Bud said.

«Eighteen inches,» said the Doctor.

«Four feet,» said Bud. «I can show you the map.»

«Come on. No arguments,» said Buck. «How's about it, Doc? An hour or two at the creek, eh? They're biting.»

«Can't do it, boys,» said the Doctor. «I've got to see a patient or two.»

«Aw, live and let live, Doc,» Bud said. «Give 'em a chance to get better. Are you going to depopulate the whole darn town?»

The Doctor looked down, smiled, and muttered, as he always did when this particular jest was trotted out. «Sorry, boys,» he said. «I can't make it.»

«Well,» said Bud, disappointed, «I suppose we'd better get along. How's Irene?»

«Irene?» said the Doctor. «Never better. She's gone visiting. Albany. Got the eleven-o'clock train.»

«Eleven o'clock?» said Buck. «For Albany?»

«Did I say Albany?» said the Doctor. «Watertown, I meant.»

«Friends in Watertown?» Buck asked.

«Mrs. Slater,» said the Doctor. «Mr. and Mrs. Slater. Lived next door to 'em when she was a kid, Irene said, over on Sycamore Street.»

«Slater?» said Bud. «Next door to Irene. Not in this town.»

«Oh, yes,» said the Doctor, «She was telling me all about them last night. She got a letter. Seems this Mrs. Slater looked after her when her mother was in the hospital one time.»

«No, »said Bud.

«That's what she told me,» said the Doctor. «Of course, it was a good many years ago.»

«Look, Doc,» said Buck. «Bud and I were raised in this town. We've known Irene's folks all our lives. We were in and out of their house all the time. There was never anybody next door called Slater.»

«Perhaps,» said the Doctor, «she married again, this woman. Perhaps it was a different name.»