CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE manager of the dime store, when Vickers sought him out, seemed to understand.
"You know," he said, "I understand just how you feel. I had a top like that myself when I was a kid, but they don't make them any more. I don't know why — they just don't, I guess. Got too many other high powered, new fangled kinds of toys. But there's nothing like a top."
"Especially those big ones," said Vickers. "The ones with the handle on them and you pumped them on the floor and they whistled."
"I remember them," the manager said. "Had one myself when I was a kid. Sat and played with it for hours, just watching it."
"Watching where the stripes went?"
"I don't recall I worried much about where the stripes might go. I just sat and watched it spin and listened to it whistle."
"I used to worry about where they went. You know how it is. They travel round and then they disappear, somewhere near the top."
"Tell me," asked the manager. "Where _do_ they go?"
"I don't know," Vickers admitted.
"There's another dime store down the street a block or two," the manager said. "Carries a lot of junky stuff, but they might have a top like that left over."
"Thanks," said Vickers.
"You might ask at the hardware store across the street, too. They carry quite a stock of toys, but I suppose they got them put away down in the basement. They only get them out at
Christmas time."
The man at the hardware store said he knew what Vickers wanted, but he hadn't seen one for years. The other dime store didn't have one, either. No, said the girl, chewing gum and nervously thrusting a pencil back and forth into the wad of hair above her ear, no, she didn't know where he might get one. She'd never heard of one. There were a lot of other things here if he wanted to get something for a little boy. Like those toy rockets or these — He went out on the sidewalk, watching the late afternoon crowd of shoppers in the little Midwestern town. There were women in print dresses and other women in sleek business suits and there were high school kids just out of class and businessmen out for a cup of coffee before they settled down to clean up the odds and ends of the day before they left for home. Up the street he saw a crowd of loafers gathered around his own car, parked in front of the first dime store. It was time, he thought, to feed that parking meter.
He reached into his pocket, looking for another dime, and he had one — a dime, a quarter and a nickel. The sight of the coins in his hand made him wonder about the money in his billfold, so he took it out and flipped it open and saw that all that he had left were two dollar bills.
Since he couldn't go back to Cliffwood, not right away at least, he had no place to call his home. He'd need money for lodging for the night and for meals and for gasoline to put into the car — but more than that, more than anything, he was in need of a singing top that had colored stripes painted on its belly.
He stood in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking about the top, arguing with himself, with all of his logical being telling him that he must be wrong about it. It is _not_ wrong, said the illogic within him. It _will_ work. It had worked once before, when he was a child, before Pa had taken the top away from him.
What would have happened to him if the top had not been taken and hidden away from him? He wondered if he would have gone again and again, once he had found the way, back into that fairyland and what might have happened there, who and what he might have met and what he would have found in the house hidden in the grove. For he would have gone to the house, he knew, after a time. Having watched it long enough and grown accustomed to it, he would have followed the path across the grove and gone up to the door and knocked.
He wondered if anyone else had ever watched a spinning top and walked into fairyland. And he wondered, if they had, what had happened to them.
The dime store manager had not done it, he was sure, for the dime store manager had said that he had never wondered where the stripes might go. He had just sat and watched and listened to the whistle.
He wondered why he, of all men, should find the way. And he wondered if the enchanted valley might not have been a part of fairyland as well and if somehow the girl and he might not have walked through another unseen gate. For surely the valley that he remembered was not the valley he had walked that morning.
There was only one way to find out, and that was to get a top.
A top, he thought. Somewhere, some place, somehow, I must find one.
But, of course, he had a top! Even while he frantically sought for one, he already had one. The handle would have to be straightened and it might need a bit of oil to clear away the rust and it would have to be painted.
More than likely it would be better than any other he could get, for it would be the original top that had sent him through before — and it pleased him to think that it might have certain special qualities, a certain mystic function no other top might have.
He was glad that he had thought of it, lying there, forgotten for the second time, in the glove compartment where he had tossed it after finding it again.
He walked up the street to the hardware store.
"I want some paint," said Vickers. "The brightest, glossiest paint you have. Red and green and yellow. And some little brushes to put it on with."
He figured, from the way the man looked at him, that he thought he was insane.
"What are you going to do, Jay?"
"I don't know. Just stay hid out, I guess."
"Why didn't you call me right away?" demanded Ann. "What are you way out West for? You should have come straight to New York. New York is the swellest place there is for someone to hide out. You might at least have called me."
"Now, wait a minute," Vickers said. "I called you, didn't I?"
"Sure. You called me because you're broke and want me to wire some money and you —»
"I haven't asked for any money yet."
"You will."
"Yes," he said, "I'm afraid I will."
"Aren't you interested in why I was trying to get hold of you?"
"Mildly," said Vickers. "Because you don't want me to get out from under your thumb. No agent wants their best author to get from under —»
"Jay Vickers," said Ann, "some day I'm going to crucify you and hang you up along the roadside as a warning."
"I would make a most pathetic Christ. You couldn't choose a better man."
"I'm calling you," said Ann, "because Crawford's practically frantic. The sky's the limit. I mentioned a fantastic figure and he didn't even shiver."
"I thought we disposed of Mr. Crawford," Vickers said.
"You don't dispose of Crawford," said Ann. Then she paused and silence hummed along the wires.
"Ann," said Vickers. "Ann, what's the trouble?"
Her voice was calm, but strained. "Crawford is a badly frightened man. I've never seen a man so thoroughly frightened. He came to me. Imagine that! I didn't go to him. He came into my office, puffing and panting and I was afraid I didn't have a chair in the place strong enough to hold him. But you remember that old oak one over in the corner, that old hunk over in the corner? It was one of the first sticks of furniture I ever bought for my office and I kept it as a sentimental piece. Well, it did the trick."
"What trick?"
"It held him," said Ann, triumphantly. "He'd have simply crushed anything else in the place. You remember what a big man he is."
"Gross," said Vickers. "That's the word you want."
"He said, 'Where's Vickers? And I said, 'Why ask me, I don't keep a leash on Vickers. And he says, 'You're his agent, aren't you? And I said, 'Yes, the last time I heard, but Vickers is a very changeable sort of man, there's no telling about him. He says, 'I've got to have Vickers. And so I told him, 'Well, go get him, you'll find him around somewhere. He said, 'The sky's the limit, name any price you want to, make any terms you want."