Tales From Gavagan's Bar
red.
     
    # ★ #
     
                  "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?"
     
    # ★ #
     
                  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

Similar Books

Enemies & Allies

Kevin J. Anderson

Savage Lands

Clare Clark