McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (56 page)

 
          
 
"I think I'll ask twenty thousand
dollars," I said. "I only paid six thousand dollars but this is a day
when I feel like asking twenty thousand dollars for everything I sell."

 
          
 
Amanda smiled again. She had a very winning
smile, possibly the more winning because it was so rare.

 
          
 
"You are very whimsical," she said.

 
          
 
"Sometimes it works, to an extent,"
I said.

 
          
 
"Not if one has had a proper
upbringing," Amanda said.

 
          
 
"It was nice to meet you," I said.
"I'd like to leave you with one thought."

 
          
 
"Which is?"

 
          
 
"Maturity isn't necessarily progressive.
You might lose it, at some point."

 
          
 
"People tell me I've had it since I was
nine," Amanda said.

 
          
 
"All the more reason you might finally
get bored with it," I said. "Maybe I'll just come by, when I'm in
town. Check out your maturity level, once in a while. Anything might
happen."

 
          
 
Amanda smiled again, a smile with a touch of
resignation in it.

 
          
 
"Anything might, but so far not much
has," she said.

 
          
 
Ponsonby lived in a classic Georgian house, on
a block in
Georgetown
which was entirely occupied by houses
exactly like his. Architecturally it was probably the most consistent block in
America
. In that block, the Federal period lived
again, in more ways than one. The housemaid who asked for my hat—I had taken to
wearing my hat almost constantly, when in
Washington
—asked for it so quietly that I didn’t hear
her. She left me in a small room, in which there was no object that had been
made after 1806, except the lightbulbs. Before I could properly assess that
fact an equally soft-spoken young secretary appeared. She was dressed in a
variant of a middy blouse, a dark skirt, and sensible shoes. The secretary led
me upstairs to a large sitting room, where, besides the lightbulbs, the only
objects made after 1806 were several hundred truncheons, in polished walnut
racks along the walls.

 
          
 
Ponsonby was clearly a perfectionist. His
truncheons didn't dangle. Each rested horizontally, in a grooved rack. Space
had been left for a couple of rather smoky portraits of eighteenth-century
Ponsonbys, but otherwise the wall space was totally filled with truncheons.

 
          
 
While I was glancing over some of the lesser
truncheons, Ponsonby lumbered in. Although not particularly large, he seemed to
lumber.

 
          
 
"Good morning," I said. "You certainly
have some wonderful truncheons."

 
          
 
"It is no longer morning and these
truncheons are of no consequence whatever," Ponsonby said. "My better
truncheons are in the study, where we will now proceed."

 
          
 
He was right, too. In the study, in equally
well-polished racks, were more than a thousand truncheons. Even knowing nothing
about truncheons, I could tell that these were superior.

 
          
 
"I shall come immediately to the point,”
Ponsonby said, lighting a cigarette with a somewhat shaky hand. "Do you
still possess the Luddite truncheon?”

 
          
 
"Yes I do,” I said.

 
          
 
Ponsonby was silent for a bit. He was not
exactly in a trance, but neither did he seem in a happy or a communicative
mood. The news that I still had the truncheon, far from cheering him up, seemed
to have made him feel even
more bleak
.

 
          
 
"It’s rather depressing,'* he said
finally. "I was meant to have that truncheon. Woodrow Eberstadt had no
business keeping it all his life, and Lou Lou most emphatically had no business
selling it to anyone but me."

 
          
 
"May I make a point?” I said.

 
          
 
Ponsonby merely looked at me.

 
          
 
"Lou Lou hates your guts,” I said.
"
That's the point. You were the last person she would
have offered the truncheon to."

 
          
 
It was true. Lou Lou Eberstadt was a little
Boston
lady with a face like a dried-up apple, but
that had not kept her from expostulating at great length on her dislike of Jake
Ponsonby.

 
          
 
"Lou Lou was never stable,” Ponsonby
replied, his ego having automatically deflected the criticism.

 
          
 
"The truncheon's in my car," I said.
"I'll bring it in and show it to you if you like.*'

 
          
 
I brought it in and laid it on a rather wobbly
Colonial side table. I had it wrapped in felt, and I unfolded the felt
carefully, as if I were about to display the Hope diamond.

 
          
 
As truncheons go, the Luddite truncheon was a
crude piece of work. All it had to recommend it was extreme rarity. There were
only two like it in
America
, and half a dozen in
England
.

 
          
 
Ponsonby didn't touch it, but as he looked at
it he began to shake. There was a little silver bell on the side table and he
seized it and rang it violently. Almost immediately the soft-spoken maid
appeared with a glass of whiskey on a silver tray. Evidently she had been
standing in the next room, waiting for Ponsonby to ring the bell that meant
whiskey.

 
          
 
"It’s rather sad," Ponsonby said.
"Woodrow had only a common intelligence. He was wrong repeatedly,
throughout his life, and he would never accept correction. Now it has come to
this."

 
          
 
Though I had not observed him drinking, the glass
of whiskey was empty. He was still shaking, but more gently.

 
          
 
"I am prepared to offer five thousand
dollars for the truncheon, as it sits," Ponsonby said.

 
          
 
"Come now, Mr. Ponsonby," I said.

 
          
 
He looked at me contemptuously.

 
          
 
"I do not need to come, now or at any
time," he said. "I am at home, as it happens."

 
          
 
"I'm sorry I bothered to come by," I
said. "I assumed you were a serious man."

 
          
 
I stopped, and we considered one another.

 
          
 
"The price is twenty thousand
dollars," I said.

 
          
 
Ponsonby immediately turned red—almost purple,
in fact

 
          
 
"Quite impertinent," he said.
"I made you a fair offer. I want that truncheon."

 
          
 
"I paid Mrs. Eberstadt more than you
offered," I said. "I think you're living in the past. Who knows what
this truncheon would fetch if I sent it to auction. You do have rivals, you
know."

 
          
 
Ponsonby sniffed. "None who can be taken
seriously," he said. "I have over seventeen hundred truncheons. My
rivals, as you flatteringly call them, mainly have only a few hundred."

 
          
 
"What about the Australian?" I said.
"He may not have as many truncheons as you do yet, but I imagine he has
more money. I have a feeling he wouldn't quibble over twenty thousand if I
offered him the Luddite truncheon."

 
          
 
The blood that had just rushed to Ponsonby's
head rapidly drained out, leaving him white and shaky again. He rang the
whiskey bell and the maid immediately stepped through the door with another
glass of whiskey.

 
          
 
Ponsonby looked at me again, not with renewed
respect— he had never had any respect—but with a new wariness. The fact that I
knew about Captain Kimbell, the fabulously wealthy Australian who was currently
tearing up the truncheon market, clearly shocked him.

 
          
 
"The man is a vulgarian," he said.

 
          
 
"I know, but he's very rich."

 
          
 
"I will raise my offer to six thousand
dollars," Ponsonby said, "though to do so
violates
principles that have guided me through a long and distinguished career as a
collector. As a rule, I never haggle."

 
          
 
I began to wrap the truncheon with the felt.

 
          
 
"I never haggle either," I said.
"I own the truncheon, and I didn't invite an offer. I set the prices on
the pieces I sell. If you want it for twenty thousand dollars, fine. If not,
I'll check out Captain Kimbell."

 
          
 
A look not unlike panic appeared on his face.
He knew quite well that he would probably never see a Luddite truncheon again,
if he let this one get away. He turned away from me and walked over to the
window, as if to compose
himself
.

 
          
 
I waited, and was sorry I did. When Ponsonby
turned again his manner had changed completely. He
smiled,
a terrible smile. After watching him flush and grow pale, this sudden baring of
teeth was so unexpected that the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

 
          
 
Obviously, he had thought his way through the
dilemma. I had been ahead of him, now he was ahead of me.

 
          
 
He picked up the phone and in a voice full of
the old contempt asked his secretary to bring up a check made out for twenty
thousand dollars.

 
          
 
"No thank you," I said, immediately.
"No check."

 
          
 
Ponsonby was still smiling his horrible smile.
He turned it on me, not much affected by my remaric.

 
          
 
I picked up the truncheon, which caused him to
stop smiling at once.

 
          
 
"What are you doing?" he asked
loudly.

 
          
 
"I'm taking my truncheon," I said,
"unless you're prepared to pay me in cash."

 
          
 
Ponsonby glared, and he was clearly not a man
who was used to having his glares ignored.

 
          
 
"Are you questioning my check?" he
asked.

 
          
 
"I think you're good for twenty thousand
dollars, all right," I said. "But if I took your check you'd stop
payment on it before I got around the block. Then I'd have to sue you to get my
truncheon back. I'd prefer to be paid in cash."

 
          
 
At that moment the young secretary walked in
with the check on a silver tray. She set the tray down and left the room.

 
          
 
I tucked the truncheon under my arm, ignoring
the check. I felt just slightly apprehensive. For all I knew Ponsonby, like
Cyrus Folmsbee, kept a neat Korean assassin in his employ for just such
occasions. I took one of my cards out of my shirt pocket—it had a nice little
cut of a 1906 Cadillac on it, plus my name and phone numbers and my address in
Houston
. On the back I wrote the name of my Houston
bank, and my account number. I laid the card on the tray beside the check.

 
          
 
"If you object to cash you can make a
wire transfer directly to this account," I said. "Then I’ll deliver
the truncheon.''

 
          
 
"Do you think I’m a fool?" he said.
"You would have my money but I would not have the truncheon."

 
          
 
"Oh, don't worry," I said.
"I'll be glad to get rid of this truncheon. I've owned it long enough.
Once I know the money's in my bank I'll ring your doorbell and hand it to your
secretary."

 
          
 
Ponsonby continued to glare, but I didn't stay
to be glared at. Three minutes later I was across the
Key
Bridge
and on my way out
Wilson Boulevard
toward the Little Bomber's.