Wrack and Rune Page 14

  Nute Lumpkin picked his mauve silk handkerchief off the broken rocker seat, folded it carefully, tucked it into his breast pocket so that a precise inch of the edge stuck out, made Miss Horsefall a low bow, and got.

  Chapter 15

  “WHAT IN TIME DO you s’pose he done that for?” the old woman muttered as Lumpkin drove off with his carload of junk. “Them things ain’t no good to him.”

  “Just another of his little nastinesses, I expect,” Shandy replied.

  “Huh. Bein’ nasty’s ’bout all he’s good for. Goin’ to seem queer not having nothin’ o’ Spurge’s around the place. Henny’ll mind it worse’n me. Him an’ Spurge always got on real good.”

  “Hey, tootsie!” From the parlor was coming a mighty roar. “Vere you bane?”

  “Button up, you ol’ rip,” Miss Hilda yelled back. “I’m comin’ fast as these worn-out pins o’ mine will carry me. If it ain’t one dratted man wantin’ somethin’ he ain’t entitled to, it’s another.”

  “I think this is where we tiptoe gently away,” Shandy murmured to the two young Ameses, who’d been trying to keep the ancient Swede under control. “Let’s go see what your father’s up to.”

  As they left the house he remarked, “I’m surprised none of you has mentioned the gold.”

  “What gold?” Laurie asked.

  “Fergy told me the archaeological party has turned up a gold coin right about where Cronkite Swope found that piece of helmet and started this whole shemozzle.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Fergy may have been, though I hardly think so. According to him, a coin of some appropriate date and description was found buried at the stone. Fergy claims there was general pandemonium among the savants, though he himself couldn’t see why. I suppose it’s possible, though most improbable, that Dr. Svenson swarmed up a tree in his elation and thus sustained his injury. In any case, one might have expected he’d allude in one way or another to the find, but obviously he hasn’t. He seems to have his mind on—er—other matters.”

  “Maybe that whack on the head gave him amnesia,” Laurie suggested.

  “Or maybe the archaeologists agreed to keep still about the gold so they wouldn’t start another stampede,” said Roy. “How come Fergy knew? When we came by, they had cops out there keeping everybody away.”

  “They still have,” Shandy replied. “I had a hard time convincing the guards that I was part of the archaeological team. Understandably, I suppose, since of course I’m not. President Svenson gave me the bum’s rush as soon as I got to the stone, so I might as well have saved myself the trouble. Anyway, Fergy claims he sneaked down that path Swope made through the brambles, which you tell me is being guarded by Bashan.”

  “Yeah?” Roy scratched his ear much as Tim would have done. “Dad and Bashan must have been arguing about politics or something and didn’t notice him.”

  “Fergy’s that fat man with the orange beard and the neon suit, isn’t he?” said Laurie. “He’d be a hard man not to notice, I should think.”

  “Dad could have kept Bashan under control long enough to let Fergy through without being gored if he wanted to. Does he like the guy, Professor?”

  “He knows Fergy’s been a good neighbor to the Horsefalls, at any rate.”

  “And Dad’s a little miffed with the president right now for spending so much time on this Orm business when they were supposed to be working on a speech for the National Fertilizer Symposium on ‘Phosphates I Have Known.’ Dad was asked to give it, but of course he can’t handle public speaking, so he asked the president to stand in for him. Dr. Svenson said he’d give the speech if Dad would help him write it. You know how great he is on a platform. So Dad’s spent hours and hours writing up notes and now he can’t get the president even to look at them, which he’d promised to do right after the wedding because the symposium’s next weekend.”

  “Oh well, I daresay the president will come through with flying phosphates, but I can understand your father’s annoyance,” said Shandy, who’d been put in similar fixes once or twice himself. “Maybe you can get Tim to go home and sack in for a while. He did put in an awfully long and trying day yesterday. Spurge’s death took a jolt out of him, too. By the way, since nobody else seems to be talking about that gold piece, I suggest you—er—follow precedent. I’ve already asked Fergy and his lady friend to keep quiet, though I’m afraid that may be a case of locking the stable after the bull is thrown. Let me go on ahead and chat with your father for a minute, if you don’t mind. After that, I suppose I may as well go and beard the berserker in his lair. I still want to know what in Sam Hill Dr. Svenson was doing up in that tree.”

  He walked up the rise to where shiny new wire had been strung between hastily planted fence posts. It did indeed seem a paltry barrier, yet the immense beast penned inside had been conditioned to know he’d get a disconcerting buzz if he touched the wire. Bashan was standing placidly enough in the middle of the enclosure. Beside him, on an outcropping boulder with his feet drawn up and his beard propped on his knees, sat a kobold straight out of Arthur Rackham. Tim and Bashan appeared perfectly content with each other’s company. Shandy was reluctant to intrude on their contemplations, but the day was wearing on and he did want to get back to Helen.

  Knowing Bashan pretty well himself, Shandy had no qualms about slipping under the wire. Bashan emitted a roar that would have scared the heart out of any bona fide trespasser, and charged at him. Shandy stepped aside, knowing Bashan didn’t really intend to trample him to death, and patted the bull’s vast flank.

  The roar must have registered on Tim’s defective eardrums, for he switched on his hearing aid and looked around. “Hi, Pete. What’s up?”

  “The president’s Uncle Sven was, briefly. He’s fallen out of a tree.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Good question. Either his memory or his vocabulary has failed him, and he can’t say. I thought I’d go down and ask the president.”

  “Stay here with Bashan. He’s safer company, by a damn sight.”

  “Granted, but duty calls. I don’t know if it’s struck you, Tim, but there’s one hell of a lot going on around here.”

  “I’d begun to suspect something was up,” his friend replied dryly. “Hell, Pete, I may be deaf but I’m not dumb. So that old hellion was up a tree? Chasing a wood nymph?”

  “I shouldn’t be at all surprised. Did you let Fergy in through here a while back?”

  “Fergy who?”

  “Henny’s neighbor, the chap who runs the Bargain Barn.”

  “Oh, that tub of lard? I always thought his name was Percy. Say, is there some new development down at the runestone? Outside that old coot hurling himself out of trees?”

  “They’ve found a Viking gold piece, according to Fergy.”

  “How the hell would he know? Probably a busted collar button.” Ames hitched up his pant leg and scratched his hairy shin. “Christ, Pete, if it actually was gold, Henny’s in for a worse time of it than he had last night. He can’t take much more of this punishment.”

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know, Tim. They have been trying to keep quiet about the gold. Miss Hilda hadn’t heard, and she’s been ministering to Dr. Svenson.”

  “God help the poor bugger.”

  On this pious note the two friends parted. Shandy picked his way down through the brambles to where Thorkjeld Svenson was still working with the archaeologists. They were picking daintily at the ground in front of the runestone, removing earth practically crumb by crumb. Shandy couldn’t imagine a more tedious job, yet none of the three looked bored.

  “President,” he said.

  “Arrgh,” Svenson replied without taking his eyes from the ground.

  “What happened to your Uncle Sven?”

  “Levitated.”

  “What?”

  “Down, up, down. Landed on his head. Good thing. Man his age. Might have broken a hip.”

  “Let’s run through that
again if you don’t mind. Your uncle was with you near the runestone, right?”

  “Ur.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Dr. Svenson was examining a coin we’d found,” said the younger and more enthusiastic of the archaeologists. “Marvelous thing. Norwegian, twelfth century.”

  “Possibly tenth,” said the elder. “Maybe not even Norwegian.”

  “That was when he was still on the ground, right?” said Shandy, anxious to keep his facts straight.

  “Right,” said the president.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Then all of a sudden he was up in that tree there,” said the younger archaeologist.

  “Or possibly the tree next to it,” said the elder archaeologist.

  “Then what?” said Shandy.

  “Then he was back on the ground, head first. Almost cracked his skull open on the runestone,” answered the younger archaeologist.

  “Missed it by at least eight inches,” said the elder archaeologist.

  “Are you saying this happened all in—er—one movement, so to speak?”

  “Exactly,” said the younger archaeologist.

  “Or in a series of movements,” said the elder archaeologist. “I should be inclined to separate the incident into three distinct phases.”

  “What I said,” grunted Svenson. “Down, up, down.”

  “I see,” said Shandy. “And how far up did he go?”

  “Twelve or fifteen feet at least,” said the younger archaeologist.

  “Not more than eleven and a half,” said the elder archaeologist.

  “By either reckoning, an appreciable distance for a man his age to fall. You are agreed on that point?”

  “Have we determined Dr. Sven Svenson’s precise age?” asked the elder archaeologist.

  “Hundred and two last November,” grunted Thorkjeld Svenson. “Want a carbon dating?”

  The elder archaeologist glanced at Thorkjeld suspiciously, as if he suspected an attempt at levity, but agreed to accept the data as given. “I think we can safely concur with Professor Shandy’s theory that it was in fact an appreciable distance for a man Dr. Svenson’s age to have fallen. More remarkable, it seems to me, is the fact that anyone well into his hundred and third year should have been able to achieve so considerable a height in so short a time.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Shandy, prodding around the runestone. “Did you actually watch him ascending the tree?”

  “Hell, no,” growled Thorkjeld Svenson. “If I’d seen him, I’d have stopped him.”

  “Didn’t he tell you anything about how it happened?”

  “Said Orm threw him.”

  “Unscientific,” snapped the elder archaeologist.

  “He did give his head an awful whack,” said the younger archaeologist.

  Shandy cleared his throat. “Have any of you gentlemen read Robert Frost?”

  “Urgh,” said Thorkjeld Svenson.

  “What for?” said the elder archaeologist.

  “I started to,” the younger archaeologist confessed. “But I got to the one about ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,’ and it seemed like a betrayal of my profession. I couldn’t go on.”

  “M’yes, quite understandable. The point I wished to make is that in one of Frost’s poems there’s a reference to boys swinging on young birch trees. I’ve done it myself when I was younger and a good deal lighter. Birch saplings are extremely limber and springy. If you bend one down, then release it suddenly while holding fast to the trunk near the top, you can get whipped right up in the air. If you hang on, the weight of your body will pull you down again. If you don’t, you go flying. In winter when there’s snow on the ground to cushion your fall, it’s fun to let go. At least, we used to think so. If the ground is bare, you keep your hold and shinny down the trunk.”

  The elder archaeologist sneered. “Thank you for the dissertation, Professor. So your theory is that Dr. Svenson had a sudden urge to return to the amusements of his youth?”

  “There are lots of birch trees in Sweden, I believe,” said the younger archaeologist.

  “Ungh,” said the president, wrapping his left forepaw around a withy young tree not far from the runestone. “Birch.”

  “My point exactly,” said Shandy. “If you’ll stand aside for a moment?”

  He ferreted among the dead leaves and rabbit holes, and came up with a forked stick. “This explains Dr. Svenson’s sudden flight, I think. Somebody bent this nice young birch over and held down the tip by pinning it to the ground with this forked stick. The soil is deep and humusy here, so that would be no great feat. You’ll observe traces of leaf mold on both forks.”

  The elder archaeologist shrugged a very superior shrug. “Birch trees are not in my field.”

  “Naturally you wouldn’t have noticed,” said Shandy. “Your whole attention would have been quite properly focused on the runestone or, as it happened, on the coin you’d just found. As you see, this is not a white but a gray birch, so that would make it even less apt to attract your eyes. I submit that Dr. Svenson must have happened to lean against the bent sapling, perhaps to rest himself a bit. He may even have taken hold of the trunk. Was he actually holding the coin in his hand?”

  “No, I was holding it,” said the younger archaeologist. “He’d backed off a bit to get a better look. He’s extremely farsighted, I believe.”

  “As presbyopia increases with age, he naturally would be,” Shandy agreed. “Anyway, the weight of his body, or merely the jar of his touching the tree, could be enough to loosen the forked stick from this peaty soil, and he’d have been catapulted into the air just as you described. Not being prepared, he either wouldn’t be holding the tree at all or wouldn’t have a firm enough grip to keep from being thrown off. Since you can’t seem to agree on which tree he fell out of, I suggest that he was never actually in either of them. He merely swished through their leaves, as it were, and came straight back down again. That’s why we don’t see any freshly broken branch.”

  “And he didn’t even knock off any leaves,” cried the younger archaeologist, “because they’re still so young and sappy.”

  “Quite,” said the elder archaeologist, giving his colleague an analytical once-over.

  “Ur,” said Thorkjeld Svenson. “Who?”

  “Who’s been in here, other than yourselves?”

  “You.”

  “Did you notice me messing around with birch trees?”

  “No.”

  “Then I daresay we can let me off the hook. Who else?”

  “Fat slob. Orange.”

  “That would have been Fergy of Fergy’s Bargain Bam. He told me he’d been here. I’m afraid he arrived just as you were all exclaiming over that gold coin you found. What did he do?”

  “Got the hell out.”

  “I see. He didn’t bend any birches en route?”

  “He couldn’t have,” said the younger archaeologist. “He wasn’t here that long. He just came into the clearing and President Svenson yelled—that is, requested him to leave—and he left.”

  “He would,” said Shandy. “Anyone else?”

  “Only the surveyors.”

  “Ah, yes, the surveyors. Did they happen to mention why they’re surveying?”

  “No, I don’t think they said anything except ‘Excuse us.’ We did, of course. They weren’t bothering us.”

  “Well, they’re bothering me,” Shandy snarled. “President, doesn’t it strike you as odd that a surveying team should show up here the same day Nute Lumpkin slaps a lawsuit on Henny Horsefall?”

  “No,” said the president.

  “Come to think of it, you’re right. I must go have a chat with those chaps. Did they see you find the gold, by the way?”

  “By gold, I presume you refer to the artifact,” said the elder archaeologist.

  “If you say so. Getting back to my question, were they here when it turned up?”

  “Who knows?�
�� said the younger archaeologist. “We were all in such a dither the Assyrian could have come down like the wolf on the fold and we’d never have noticed.”

  “To which Assyrian do you refer?” inquired the elder archaeologist.

  “Arrgh,” said Thorkjeld Svenson, settling the matter once and for all. “Go ask, Shandy.”

  “I shall, President. First let me ask how long you’ve been here. You didn’t stay all night, I gather.”

  “Sieglinde wouldn’t let me,” the archon of academe confessed. “Left on the bus with you. Had to hoist you aboard. Out like a light. Bad example for the students. Thought you were sloshed.”

  “I was tired, drat it! Did anybody stay to guard the runestone?”

  “Damn well better had. Headless Horsemen.”

  The elder archaeologist’s upper lip drew back in a sneer. Before he could make whatever nasty remark he was formulating, Shandy explained.

  “He means the Headless Horsemen of Hoddersville, a local workhorse association. They volunteered their services, as did the Lolloping Lumberjacks of Lumpkin Corners, and a good many other people.”

  “Get the Balaclava Blacks over here if we had anybody to ride ’em,” said the President wistfully. “Hell of a time for a riot. Nobody on campus who knows a mane from a crupper.”

  “I used to ride a little,” said the younger archaeologist.

  Tm afraid there’s nothing little about the Balaclava Blacks,” Shandy told him. “They were bred as draft horses, but they also have a remarkable amount of speed and—er—independence of spirit. We generally have some students who can handle them, but this year’s cavalry contingent have all been graduated or gone off to summer jobs. Last night we—er—called out the militia, as it were, and I’m proud to say our people gave a good account of themselves. Doubtless they’re girding their loins for another round right now. I hope so. The reporter who spilled the beans about the runestone is in the hospital, but no doubt news of the—er—artifact will get around one way or another. Tell me, weren’t you surprised to find it so close to the surface?”