Страница 211 из 262
"Let me see, now," said Packer. He leaned back in his chair and leafed catalogue pages rapidly through his mind. And suddenly he had it — Polaris 17b — a tiny stamp, almost a midget stamp, bright blue with a tiny crimson dot in the lower left-hand corner and its design a mass of lacy scrollwork.
"Yes," he said, opening his eyes, "I believe I may have one. I seem to remember, years ago…"
Pickering leaned forward, hardly breathing.
"You mean you actually…"
"I'm sure it's here somewhere," said Packer, waving his hand vaguely at the room.
"If you find it," offered Pickering, "I'll pay ten thousand for it."
"A strip of five," said Packer, "as I remember it. Out of Polaris VII to Betelgeuse XIII by way of — I don't seem to remember by way of where."
"A strip of five!"
"As I remember it. I might be mistaken."
"Fifty thousand," said Pickering, practically frothing at the mouth. "Fifty thousand, if you find it."
Packer yawned. "For only fifty thousand, Mr. Pickering, I wouldn't even look."
"A hundred, then."
"I might think about it."
"You'll start looking right away? You must have some idea."
"Mr. Pickering, it has taken me all of twenty years to pile up all the litter that you see and my memory's not too good. I'd have not the slightest notion where to start."
"Set your price," urged Pickering. "What do you want for it?"
"If I find it," said Packer, "I might consider a quarter million. That is, if I find it."
"You'll look?"
"I'm not sure. Some day I might stumble on it. Some day I'll have to clean up the place. I'll keep an eye out for it."
Pickering stood up stiffly.
"You jest with me," he said.
Packer waved a feeble hand, "I never jest," he said.
Pickering moved toward the door.
Packer heaved himself from the chair. "I'll let you out," he said.
"Never mind. And thank you very much."
Packer eased himself back into the chair and watched the man go out.
He sat there, trying to remember where the Polaris cover might be buried. And finally gave up. It had been so long ago.
He hunted some more for the tongs, but be didn't find them.
He'd have to go out first thing in the morning and buy another pair. Then he remembered that he wouldn't be here in the morning. He'd be up on Hudson's Bay, at Tony's summer place.
It did beat hell, he thought, how he could manage to lose so many tongs.
He sat for a long time, letting himself sink into a sort of suspended state, not quite asleep, nor yet entirely awake, and he thought, quite vaguely and disjointedly, of many curious things.
But mostly about adhesive postage stamps and how, of all the ideas exported by the Earth, the idea of the use of stamps had caught on most quickly and, in the last two thousand years, had spread to the far corners of the galaxy.
It was getting hard, he told himself, to keep track of all the stamps, even of the planets that were issuing stamps. There were new ones popping up all the blessed time. A man must keep everlastingly on his toes to keep tab on all of them.
There were some fu
He sat nodding in the chair, listening to a clock hidden somewhere behind the litter of the room, ticking loudly in the silence.
It made a good life, he told himself, a very satisfactory life. Twenty years ago when Myra had died and he had sold his interest in the export company, he'd been ready to curl up and end it all, ready to write off his life as one already lived. But today, he thought, he was more absorbed in stamps than he'd ever been in the export business and it was a blessing — that was what it was, a blessing.
He sat there and thought kindly of his stamps, which had rescued him from the deep wells of loneliness, which had given back his life and almost made him young again.
And then he fell asleep.
The door chimes wakened him and he stumbled to the door, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.
The Widow Foshay stood in the hall, with a small kettle in her hands. She held it out to him.
"I thought, poor man, he will enjoy this," she said. "It's some of the beef broth that I made. And I always make so much. It's so hard to cook for one."
Packer took the kettle.
"It was kind of you," he mumbled.
She looked at him sharply.
"You are sick," she said.
She stepped through the door, forcing him to step back, forcing her way in.
"Not sick," he protested limply. "I fell asleep, that's all. There's nothing wrong with-me."
She reached out a pudgy hand and held it on his forehead.
"You have a fever," she declared. "You are burning…"
"There's nothing wrong with me," he bellowed. "I tell you, I just fell asleep, is all."
She turned and bustled out into the room, threading her way among the piled-up litter. Watching her, be thought: — My God, she finally got into the place! How can I throw her out?-
"You come over here and sit right down," she ordered him. "I don't suppose you have a thermometer."
He shook his head, defeated.
"Never had any need of one," he said. "Been healthy all my life."
She screamed and jumped and whirled around and headed for the door at an awkward gallop. She stumbled across a pile of boxes and fell flat upon her face, then scrambled, screeching, to her feet and shot out of the door.
Packer slammed the door behind her and stood looking, with some fascination, at the kettle in his hand. Despite all the ruckus, he'd spilled not a single drop.
But what had caused the widow…
Then he saw it — a tiny mouse ru
"Thanks, my friend," he said.
He made his way to the table in the dining room and found a place where he could put down the kettle.
Mice, he thought. There had been times when he had suspected that he had them — nibbled cheese on the kitchen shelf, scurryings in the night — and he had worried some about them making nests in the material he had stacked all about the place.
But mice had a good side to them, too, he thought.
He looked at his watch and it was almost five o'clock and he had an hour or so before he had to catch a cab and he realized now that somehow he had managed to miss lunch. So he'd have some of the broth and while he was doing that he'd look over the material that was in the bag.
He lifted some of the piled-up boxes off the table and set them on the floor so he had some room to empty the contents of the bag.
He went to the kitchen and got a spoon and sampled the broth. It was more than passing good. It was still warm and he had no doubt that the kettle might do the finish of the table top no good, but that was something one need not worry over.
He hauled the bag over to the table and puzzled out the strangeness of the return address. It was the new script they'd started using a few years back out in the Bootes system and it was from a rather shady gentle-being from one of the Cygnian stars who appreciated, every now and then, a case of the finest Scotch.
Packer, hefting the bag, made a mental note to ship him two, at least.