“Why, Doc,” asked Pard Powell, “why or yew at home in thuh middle
a thee afternoon on sitch a beautiful day? And why not in thuh great outdoor, a-breathin in a thuh sweet soft air? Not ta be found, a course, in thuh middle a town, but shorely we kin rint a couple a ponies and go fur a leetle ride along the river and inter the trees! Why, when I was livin on the boundless prairies as thuh adoptid child a thuh Red Skin People, why my hort beat loud with joy whiniver I buh-held a wild aminal or heard a sweet-singin bird, now —” Simultaneous with Eszterhazy’s suddenly becoming aware that two of the glass pieces of his experimental equipment were improperly connected, Pard Powell reached out and imperturbably connected them; almost at once remarking, “I needn’t tell you, Doctor, that silver and mercury are incompatible,” with no trace of dialect or accent in his voice.
“No,” said Eszterhazy. “No, you needn’t.” Their eyes met. “Nor need you tell me that it was from the Red Skin People that you learned the techniques of analytical chemistry, for I fear I would not believe you if you do.” Pard half-turned, made narrow his eyelids. Of a sudden, a certain English word flashed into Eszterhazy’s mind as though the very paragraph in the dictionary lay exposed before him. Glau-cous. 1. Of a pale yellow-green color. 2. Of a light blue-grey or bluish white color. 3. Having a frosty appearance. 4. . . . But never mind 4. It seemed to him that even as he looked, the pupil of the American’s eye turned from pale yellow-green to light bluish-grey to bluish white to pale yellow-green again; and . .. always . . . frosty. It was damnably odd. It was uncanny.
Not changing his gaze, Pard said, “Well, no, Doctor, of course not. You see, not only was I once a student, and a good one, too, of the Academy of the State of New Jersey; but I later owned the best pharmacy in Secaucus. If only I could have been content to go on compounding calomel and jalap pills for constipated house-frows and brown mixture for their coughing kids and tincture of cardamom for their flatulent husbands, I might be not merely prosperous now, which I am not: I might be rich. But one day it got to be too much for me, and just then along came a drummer in pharmaceuticals and I sold out — lock, stock, barrel, mortar, and pestle. And I went out West. And that is how Washington Parthenopius Powell metamorphosed into Pard Powell. Oh, to be sure, I have put a lot of fancy stitches into the splendid cloth on the embroidery hoop of my life. Well, why not? But don’t take it for granted that all the gorgeous touches are lies. They’re not. — Well. . . Not all.”
He gave his head a slight jerk, and all the mass of dark-red waving hair rose and fell. There was a flash from the glaucous eyes. He laid his hand upon his heart. “And as I puts it in my Fifth Epic Poem in Honor of William Walker the Last Conkwistadoree:
Thudding onward o’er the Plains of wide San Peedro Sula
From whence the dusky Spanish Dons extracted mucho moola,
We brothe the air that freemen breath and all our cry was ‘Freedom,’ We relished it like champagne wine, or Dutchmen relish Edam —
“Whut say we go fur a ride, Doc?”
Eszterhazy burst into laughter. “By all means, yes let us go for a ride. Let me, first, put some things in order here.” Not instantly remembering what the botanical specimens were which he picked up to dispose of, absentmindedly he gave them a sniff and was about to administer an exploratory, if cautious, lick, when Pard Powell cried aloud and dashed forward.
“Don’t eat them things, Doc! They’ull drive ya plumb loco! Them’s jimson weed!”
Astonished, aghast, Eszterhazy gazed at the plants. “Why . . . these were, allegedly, woven into crowns to garland the heads of he-goats in Hyperborea. What do you —”
The Far-vestern Yankee frontier poet said he hoped to Helen his pal Doc Elmer Estherhasty didn’t have him no goats there wherever. “Why looky thar if that ain’t the very flower outa the devil’s garden, Datura stramonium, or I’m a dirtbird!”
Lightning seemed to flash in the makeshift laboratory there in a small scullery-room at Schweitz’s hotel. “Surely a relative of the deadly nightshade, a prime ingredient in witches’ brew!”
Pard Powell pulled his long red-brown moustache. “Durn tootin! As well as Hyoscyamus niger, alias henbane; and — as you so closely perceive the nomenclaytcher—A tropa belladonna, or deadly nightshade. Anyone a them will make ya curdle your dander, make ya scamper and cavort and run ginerally mad. Or, as we so aptly puts it Out West, Loco! As well as which, it might well kill ya.”
There was a sort of ringing in Eszterhazy’s ears. He shook his head emphatically. “Is there any reason why i/ze-goats should be exempt from the effects?”
“None that I kin think of. . . shc-chickcns ain’t. Hen-bane. Git it?”
“Could the scent of the plants cause humans near it to think that they had heard a sound like music? Fifing? Or . . . piping?”
“Not that I — well, durn it, eph yew thenk that, time we got outa this stuffy ol’ suite! Let’s go for a ride!”
Somehow or other it happened that they made a few stops in the course of their ride. Professor Gronk was found deep in his plans at his workshop. Without looking up and as though the newcomers had been there all along, he said, “Straw would provide the heat for the ascendant aspects of the Autogondola-Invention. But straw would not fuel the engine. Wood is insufficiently concentrated, and hence too heavy. Coal, the same. Coke is better, but i.tilclass="underline" too heavy. I have as yet no method of
drawing the flammable gases out of the atmosphere.”
Scarcely pausing to consider that his question might be considered not serious and therefore resented, Dr. Eszterhazy asked, “What of clarified goose-grease?”
The Professor said that he had not been working with the problem of liquid fuel. “The engine is not set up for it. Then there is the problem of the integument. [“The... integument?”] Silk is unquestionably still the best. I have no silk. White absorbs too little heat, black absorbs too much heat, red alone will do. Silk. Red.” He spoke as though speaking very simply to children. “Of each piece,” he made measuring gestures, “such a size. Two hundred and sixty-four such a size pieces. The glue I have only to heat. The wicker I have already framed. The engine is ready. I require only a satisfactory fuel, hot and yet light. Also of red silk, two hundred and sixty-four pieces of such and such a size.” He turned upon his two visitors a look of such combined melancholy and appeal that they felt obliged to repeat the measuring gestures until he was convinced they understood.
“Well, Purfessur, that certainly is a wonderful thing,” said Pard Powell, slowly edging away. “I’ll sure think about that. I’ll sure be keepin my eye out for red silk. — Whut the Hell’s the little guy talkin about, Elmer?” he asked, once they were outside again.
Outside, in the scarcely paved streets between the old wooden houses, children clapped and sang and danced. A food vendor chanted to them, “ Delicate eating? Delicate eating? A nice portion of large beef-gut stuffed with chopped lung and rice, sauced with onion and garlic and red peppers in the Avar style? Two pennikks, only two pennikks, delicate eating?” But they did not pause for it. Eszterhazy assured his friend that it was an acquired taste. They cantered on. At the next corner they stopped in order for Pard to buy a bundle of the small flags of, of course, Scythia- Pannonia-Transbalkania, the sort which are flown, or, rather, waved, at parades. There was no parade due; but the vendor, a wizened cretin from the Friulian Alps, perhaps, did not know this. Nor — seeing that he was, after all, selling the flags — needed he care. “Be good souvenirs for back home. I’ll give ’em to the Injuns. They already got pitchers a them pie-faced Presidents.”