Free Tales From Gavagan's Bar by L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt Page B

Gross?"
     
                  "The usual—a Boilermaker, with a long shot. That reminds me, I knew a man once—"
     
                  "What is he, a gangster?" said Mr. Witherwax. "I don't want to get mixed up in nothing, only do him a favor. Bring him down here and give him a drink on me. Tell him the Devil died on Tuesday night, and we're holding the wake."
     
                  Mr. Cohan smiled a smile of sly superiority through his folds of fat as he set out the ingredients of the Boilermaker. "No, he would not be a gangster. It's worse even than that. He lost his dragon."
     
                  "A friend of my uncle Pincus was kicked in the belly by a kangaroo once," said Mr. Gross. "He—"
     
                  "I don't care whether he lost a dragon or found a mermaid," said Mr. Witherwax, desperately. "Bring him down here and give him a drink."
     
                  The bartender, with the shrug of a man who has done his duty and will not be responsible for the consequences, stepped to the end of the bar. As he spoke to Murdoch, the latter turned a thin and melancholy face toward the first comers, then nodded. There was no trace of previous potations in his gait; but he would have a double Zombie, thanks. As he lifted his glass in salute, Mr. Gross gazed at him with fatherly interest.
     
                  "Is it true," he asked, "that you lost your dragon?"
     
                  Murdoch choked on the last mouthful, set down his glass and looked at Mr. Gross with pain. "If it only was my dragon, I wouldn't care," he said, "but it was borrowed."
     
                  "That's right, and I misspoke meself," said Mr. Cohan, heartily. "I remember it was right here at this bar that you loaned it off that magician felly, and him drinking his own special drink."
     
                  Murdoch reached for another swallow. He drizzled some of it on his chin as the door opened, then gave a sigh of relief at the sight of a stranger.
     
                  Witherwax returned his gaze to the drunken owl, which stared back glassily. "I haven't never seen a dragon, and I don't expect to," he said. "Didn't St. George or somebody get rid of the last one?"
     
                  "He did not," said Mr. Cohan, having supplied the new arrival with beer. "This here, now, animal we're talking about I seen it with me own eyes; and it was as dragon as could be; and it belonged to that magician felly Abaris."
     
                  "Still does," said Murdoch in a rueful tone. "That is—well, I don't know why I let myself get mixed up—I didn't like him—oh, what the hell!" He took a long pull at his double Zombie.
     
                  Witherwax turned his gaze to Mr. Cohan. "Who is this guy that owns a dragon? One of them scientists?"
     
    # ★ #
     
                  A magician, I'm telling you [said the bartender]. He gave me his card once; maybe I got it here. Theophrastus V. Abaris [he lined the syllables out slowly] ; you would have seen him yourself, Mr. Gross. He used to come in on Thursday nights when you did. A big, greasy tub of lard, not honest fat from the wife's cooking like myself. Pale as a corp he was, with his hair hanging down over his coat collar and a little squeaky voice like a choirboy. It's not easy you could miss him if you seen him once.
     
                  One of them real solitary drinkers he was [Cohan continued], that never buy one for the bartender nor get one on the house, neither. Not that he wasn't friendly; he could talk the tail off a brass monkey, only you couldn't understand half of what he said. I ast him once what he done for a living, and all he said was something that sounded like some kind of religion—I misremember the name.
     
                  ["Pythagorean," said Murdoch, gloomily, and took another