The taxi from the Elizabeth station pulled up in front of a frame house on a quiet street. “The kid did real good in there last night,” the driver said.
“He’s still got it,” Sam said absently. He paid off the cab and walked up to the front porch. The house was jammed full of people, all in various stages of celebration. There was so much noise that Sam couldn’t tell whether the bell worked or not. He opened the door and went in. A fat little man lurched against him in the hall, grabbed his shoulder and said, “Greatest li’l ol’ battler ever was. Tipped me to bet on a knockout in the first. Spread twenny bucks around and got better’n five hunnert back.”
“Sure, sure,” said Sam, untangling Himself.
Most of the noise seemed to be coming from the kitchen. A tall slatternly girl blundered through the open door, grabbed Sam and kissed him wetly. “Wasn’ it wonnerful!” she sighed.
The kid was at the kitchen table, his gray knobbly face wearing a mild permanent grin. The table top was covered with bottles. His eyes were faraway.
“Everybody-have-’nother-drink, ” the kid said. His voice was high-pitched and he spoke so quickly that it was hard to follow him. “Gonna-be-champ-f’r-sure.”
Sam moved through the press of bodies and made himself a drink. He sipped it and watched the kid narrowly. Somebody blundered against the table and a bottle at the kid’s elbow tipped and fell. Without seeming to look the kid reached out and caught it an inch from the floor. Everybody applauded.
“Lookit that reaction time,” somebody shouted.
Sam pursed his lips. He’d watched the kid work out more than once. The kid was at that stage of punchiness where it was almost painful to watch his slow response to any stimulus. He moved around the table and with what was apparently a careless sweep of his arm sent another bottle plummeting. As before, the kid’s hand flashed out and he plucked the bottle out of the air and replaced it on the table.
Sam left the house, walking slowly, his head bent. He swung onto a bus and sat looking, unseeing, out the smeared window. At three-thirty he turned the corner on Forty-second and went into the Public Library.
At last he found the references he wanted. His hand began to tremble. Dr. Garfield A. Tomlinson — Pathologist. From the magazine index he located the Journal of American Medicine for February, 1946. Relation Between Hormone Theories and Tissue Entropy in Geriatrics. He read the article with great care. Much of it was meaningless to him, but he absorbed a few of the basic ideas.
It was no trick to find out that Dr. Tomlinson lived on R.F.D. 2 at Kingston, New York. His next step was to recontact Bull Willman.
“I was wondering where the kid trained for this last go, Bull.”
Bull frowned and inspected the wet end of his cigar. “He’s an old hand, not one of these kids you got to watch to see they get in shape. The kid always rounded himself out nice, usually right here at Conover’s. But this time he said he was going to the country. He didn’t say where. I tried once to get him through his wife but she said she didn’t know where he went.” Bull grinned suddenly. “Maybe I oughta send the whole stable to wherever he went, heh?”
“You’ve got yourself a property now, haven’t you?”
Bull shrugged. “Maybe yes, maybe no. If I’m smart I’ll sell the contract right now. For me it looks like the peak of the market. Freedon’ll kill him next fight.”
“How does a thousand dollars for one percent sound to you?”
“Like twice the market value. I got thirty percent of him. Who wants to buy?”
“I do.” He took out his money. “Here’s a hundred on account, the balance when the papers are ready for signature.”
Bull shook his head sadly. “Everybody’s crazy these days.” He took the money.
Chapter Two
Elixir of Death
Tomlinson lived in a rambling farmhouse. The lawn was overgrown with weeds and the fences sagged.
Sam Banth paid the man who had brought him out from Kingston. He walked up the drive carrying a small suitcase. He climbed the sagging porch steps and used the door knocker. After a long wait, just as he was about to try again, the door was yanked open. Sam, in one searching glance before he smiled, took in the straight tallness of her, the wood-smoke eyes which had sooted the lashes heavily, the ripe tautness across the front of the blue work shirt, the lorelei curve of flank which blue jeans couldn’t hide, the softness and petulance and discontent in the wide mouth. She was a big girl. A big restless unhappy girl with annoyance at him and the world showing plainly.
“Brushes?” she said. “Or chicken feed? Or maybe children’s encyclopedias.” Her voice was pleasantly deep, husky-harsh.
“None of those,” he said. “Dreams. I sell dreams to visions who come to doors.”
“Sell me one, brother. Mine haven’t been too good lately.”
“I’ve got a nice little item you might like. Acapulco, surf in the moonlight, dancing on the terrace, and a square-cut emerald the size of a walnut.”
Her manner changed. “We’re through playing now. What are you selling?”
“Are you Miss Tomlinson?”
“I was. Now I’m Mrs. Knight. But I’m not working at it.”
“I came to see your father.”
“Say hello to him for me. He’s been in the barn ever since I can remember. You can go around the house.” She started to slam the door. He put his foot in it.
“I don’t like that little trick,” she blazed. “Now what?”
“What do you want most in the world, Miss Tomlinson?”
“That’s a stupid question. Money. Enough to smother me.”
“What would you say if I told you that because I came here you’re going to have exactly that?”
“I would say you’ve got nails in your head, friend.”
He removed his foot. “You may now slam the door.” She did. He walked around the house, grinning.
The barn was a solid structure and appeared to be in far better shape than the house. A door had been cut into the large original door. He knocked.
The door opened. “Well?” said Dr. Tomlinson. “What is it? You disturbed me at a bad time. Are you selling something?”
“No. Mind if I come in?”
“You can stand right there and state your business.”
“You owe the federal government roughly fifty thousand dollars on the bet you collected last night, Dr. Tomlinson.”
Tomlinson gave a jump of surprise. “Goodness! I never thought — I never realized that— Oh dear, now I’ll have to do it all over again.”
“What you did to Kid Goth?” Tomlinson, in spite of his fussy and pedantic air, had a pair of keen blue eyes. He narrowed them. “Exactly what do you mean, young man?”
Sam Banth pushed by him and into the brightly lighted interior of the barn.
“Here! Yon can’t come in.”
Sam looked at the banked cages of experimental animals, at the tables of chemical apparatus, at the binocular microscope, at the shelves of texts and notebooks.
“Nice layout, Dr. Tomlinson.”
“I shall complain to your superiors. You have no right to force your way in here.”
Sam sighed, put his suitcase next to the microscope, pulled the chair away and turned it around. He sat down, crossed his legs, tapped a cigarette on his thumbnail and smiled gently up into the flushed face of Dr. Tomlinson.
“Independent research takes a lot of money.”
“Of course it does. But I don’t see how that—”
“Please, doctor. Let me hazard a series of guesses. Your funds are running low. You are at a critical and interesting stage in your experimentation. You have learned to apply new principles, apparently. The usual ways of getting funds are too slow. Maybe you’re so far off the beaten path no institution will give you a grant. Maybe they would if you showed them what progress you’ve made, but you’re not ready to do that yet. You contact Goth, manage in some way to give him a set of reflexes faster than any man ought to have, and then you bet all your funds and collect a small fortune. Then you were impractical enough to think you could come right back here, shut the door, and keep on with your work as if nothing had happened.”