Tales From Gavagan's Bar by L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt Page B

all.
     
                  Then I came over here. It seems quite a few people had seen Van with his monsters—not as many as the first time but enough to make a good deal of conversation—so that practically everybody in the place was buying Van a drink and trying to get him to talk about it. You can imagine what happened. He was as boiled as a fifteen-minute egg by the time I got him out of here, and next morning he had three pets instead of two.
     
                  Only it was worse this time. The new one didn't look like anything I remembered seeing in the drawings; it didn't look like anything I ever saw; and Dr. Tobolka, I don't think it looked like anything you ever saw. It looked like an enormous centipede, with the head of a cat. Van called me up and I went over again and saw it. The office had been after him again, and he told them he was sick. I stayed with him a while, trying to work out something more from the books; but while I was out getting something to eat, he got so he couldn't take the stares of the three animals any more, summoned a taxi by telephone, and was off here to Gavagan's again. It was the only place where he felt safe.
     
                  ["The poor felly said he would clean the cuspidors if he could only stay here in a blanket on the floor," said Mr. Cohan. "I put it up to Gavagan myself, but he wouldn't hear a word of it."]
     
                  I hadn't heard from him [continued Willison], but I worked my way into his place on maybe the fifth day after it started. The office had sent around a basket of fruit and then one of flowers by a special messenger. I had to knock four or five times before he let me in and then it was with a suspicious look, peeking around the corner of the door. He hadn't shaved in God knows when; and there was a fifth in his hand, about three-quarters empty. By that time there were six of these animals in the room, all of them but the first two looking as though they had been put together out of spare parts of real animals and beasts from a child's picture book. I couldn't get near any of them; but I was spared the trouble, because Van waved the bottle at me, said: "See?" took a swig, and fell down across the bed, with all those incredible creatures looking at him. They didn't eat; they didn't do anything but just jostle each other and look.
     
                  He collapsed across the bed, and I looked at him and thought. He was obviously on the way out in some direction; and if I could do anything to help him, I figured it would be pure gain. There were the parts of an evening newspaper strewn around the place, so I picked them up and found in them the ad for a Caribbean cruise. I called the line, the ship was sailing in three-quarters of an hour, and fortunately they had a vacant cabin, since there had been a cancellation. I got him into a cab and took him down to the pier and poured him aboard; and I've always been sorry, because the ship turned out to be the Trinidad Castle.
     
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                  "That's the one that was lost?" inquired Witherwax.
     
                  "Correct," said Willison. "Ran on a reef in the Bahamas during a hurricane and went down with everybody on board."
     
                  "I doubt it," suddenly said the stocky little man who had described himself as T obolka.
     
                  "I beg your pardon," said Willison, with some disfavor.
     
                  "I beg yours. No offense meant, old man. I wasn't questioning your word, merely the accuracy of your data. When you mentioned a blue spectral tarsier, I said there might be a connection with a case I know of; now I'm certain of it. Your friend Van Nest did not go down on the Trinidad Castle. If Mr. Cohan will kindly provide me with another Daiquiri, I'll explain."
     
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                  [He turned round with a gesture.] Gentlemen, the story