Benchley, Peter Read Online Free PDF Page B

carefully.”
    “I am studying the container, not the contents. The liquid looks yellow, but it might be quite clear.
    Reinhardt glass often imparts its own hue to liquids.” Tupper returned the ampule to Gail. “Very nice. I’m prepared to offer you twenty dollars for it.”
    “Twenty dollars!” said Sanders. “But it’s-was “I know, that sounds like a lot. But as I said, in our little coterie there is a certain rivalry. I’d like very much to be the first to have a piece of Reinhardt’s work. Frankly, the piece isn’t worth more than ten dollars, but by offering you twenty I know I’m offering more than most of the others could pay.
    Someone like your acquaintance, Slake, couldn’t possibly go higher than ten dollars. I am making what could be called a pre-emptive bid.”
    “Would you mind if we draw off some of the liquid?”
    Gail said. “We’re interested in knowing what’s inside, even if you’re not.”
    “No,” Tupper said. “That’s quite impossible.
    To draw off the liquid, you would have to break an end of the piece. That would ruin its value.”
    “Then I’m afraid there’s no sale,” Sanders said.
    “Thirty dollars,” Tupper said, abandoning his deferential charm.
    “No,” said Sanders. “Not even for fifty.”
    “You’re making a mistake, you know. No one else will offer you anywhere near that much.”
    “Then I guess we’ll just have to keep the piece ourselves,” Sanders said. “After all, you said yourself that it’s quite a coup to have a piece of Reinhardt glass.”
    Tupper glared at him, then nodded to Gail, said good night and backed off the porch. A few yards down the path he parted some bushes, stepped into the underbrush, and was gone.
    “What the hell do you make of that?” Sanders said.
    Gail stood up. “Let’s go inside. If he could hang around in the bushes without our hearing him, God knows what else is creeping around out there.”
    They went into the cottage, and Sanders locked the door. “You believe him?”
    “No. Do you?”
    “Who knows from Reinhardt glass?”
    “If there’s such competition between glass nuts,”
    Gail said, “why would Slake have told him about the ampule? He’d have offered to buy it himself. No. I bet he isn’t interested in the glass. He’s after what’s inside.”
    “I wonder why he didn’t say so.”
    “I don’t know. I guess it’s pretty hard to pass yourself off as a liquid-collector.”
    “Have you got the rest of the stuff we found?”
    “Sure,” Gail said. “Why?”
    “Tomorrow, let’s see if we can find someone who knows something about the wreck. Maybe there’s an old manifest; at least that’d tell us what Goliath
    was carrying.”
    “There were no survivors?” Gail said.
    “One,” replied the bell captain, a corpulent, middle-aged Briton, “but he’s about gone by these days.”
    “Gone by?”
    The bell captain touched his head. “Dotty.
    He’d tell you volumes, but two thirds of it would be fancy. There is one man who might be able to help you, Romer Treece. He’s been on every wreck off Bermuda; found half of them himself. If anyone knows these waters, he does.”
    “Is he in the phone book?” Sanders asked.
    “He has no telephone. The only way to contact him is to go out to his home, on St. David’s Island.”
    “Okay. I saw some motorbikes out front.
    Are they for rent?”
    “The little ones-the mobilettes-yes.” The bell captain paused. “Mr. Sanders … do you know about St. David’s?”
    “What’s to know? I’ve seen it on the map.”
    “They’re not exactly … hospitable … out there. They don’t consider themselves Bermudians; they’re St. David’s Islanders.
    There’s a bridge, the Severn Bridge, connecting the island to the rest of Bermuda. They’d as soon it fell down and was never rebuilt.”
    Sanders laughed. “What are they, hermits?”
    “No, but they’re a proud people, and a bit bitter, too. They make their own rules, and the Bermuda