We swapped the usual remarks about our not having changed a bit, although I could not say it sincerely of Alfred. While he had kept his slim, straight shape, he had pouches under his eyes. His sandy hair was graying; although, like me, he was still in his early thirties.
"Have you got it?" he asked.
"Yes, yes. It's in that—"
He had already grabbed my big suitcase and started for the old camp. He went up the slope at a pace that I almost had to run to keep up with. When he saw me lagging, he stopped to wait. Being out of condition, I came up panting.
"Same old place," I said.
"It's run down a bit," he said, "since the days when my folks entertained relays of friends and relatives all summer. In those days, you could hire help to keep it up—not that Mike doesn't do two men's work."
The trail was somewhat overgrown, and I stumbled on a clump of weeds. Alfred gave me a wry grin.
"I have an understanding with Nature," he said. "I leave her alone, and she leaves me alone. Seriously, any time you want to help us clear out the trails, I'll give you a corn hook and tell you to go to it. It's all you can do here to keep ahead of the natural forces of growth and decay."
Camp Ten Eyck was a big two-story house, made of huge hand-hewn logs, with fifteen or sixteen rooms. There was a tool kit beside the front door, with tools lying about. Mike and Alfred had evidently been replacing a couple of porch boards that had begun to rot.
Most Adirondack camps are of wood, because lumber is relatively cheap there. The Adirondack climate, however, sees to it that a wooden house starts to fall apart almost as soon as it is completed. Some of the big logs that made up the sides of Camp Ten Eyck had spots so soft that you could stick your thumb into them.
While I caught my breath, Alfred said: "Look, I'll show you your room; but first would you please get it out? I want to see it."
"Oh, all right," I said. I set the suitcase on one of those old-fashioned window seats, which filled the corners of the living room, and opened it. I handed Alfred the box.
"You'll notice it's properly packed," I said. "My sister once sent us a handsome antique luster vase from England, in just a flimsy carton, and it got smashed to pieces."
Alfred cut the cords with shaking hands. He had to go out to get a chisel from his tool chest to pry up the wooden lid. Then he burrowed into the excelsior.
While he worked, I looked around. There were the same old deerskins on the couches and window seats, the same deer heads staring glassily from the walls, the same stuffed fox and owl, the same silver-birch banisters with the bark on, and the same lichens on whose white nether surfaces amateur artists had scratched sylvan scenes.
I was surprised to see that the big, glass-fronted gun case was empty. As I remembered it from the thirties, the case had held an impressive array of rifles, shotguns, and pistols, mostly inherited by Alfred from his father and grandfather.
"What happened to all your guns?" I said. "Did you sell them?"
"The hell I did!" he said, working away, "You know that no-good cousin of mine, George Vreeland? I rented the place to him one year, and when I got back I found that he had simply sold most of the guns to the natives." (Alfred always snarled a little when he said "natives," meaning the year-round residents of the country.)
"What did you do about it?
"Nothing I could do. George was gone before I got back, and-the last I heard he was in California. Then, when I was away last winter, one of our local night workers made off with the rest, including my sailing trophy. I know who did it, too."
"Well?"
"Well, what? No matter how good my proof was, do you suppose I could get the goddam natives to convict him? After what happened to me with Camaret?"
"What about Camaret? I don't know this story."
"Well, you knew I'd been married?"
"Yes. Mike mentioned it."
Alfred Ten Eyck gave me a brief account of his short-lived union with Mélusine Camaret. He said nothing about his own sexual inadequacy, for which I cannot blame him.
"The day after she flew the coop," he said, "I was walking along the street in Gahato, bothering absolutely nobody, when Big Jean comes up and says: 'Hey! What you do wit my leetla girl, hein?' And the first thing I know, he knocks me cold, right there in the street."
(That was not quite how the folk in Gahato remembered the event. They say that Alfred answered: "Now look here, you dumb Canuck, I don't know what that floozie of yours has been telling you, but—" and then Camaret hit him.)
"Well," Alfred went on, "when I came to, I swore out a warrant and had the trooper run Jean in. But the jury acquitted him, although half the village had seen him slug me. I heard they figured that if Big Jean wanted to belt his son-in-law, that was a family fight and none of their business."
(The villagers' version was that, since Jean Camaret was built like a truck and had a notoriously violent temper, anyone fool enough to pick a fight with him deserved what he got.)
Waving an arm to indicate the surrounding mountains, Alfred glowered at me. "They can't forget that, fifty years ago, everything you could see from here was Ten Eyck property, and they had to get a Ten Eyck's permission to so much as spit on it. Now the great Ten Eyck holdings are down to this one lousy little island, plus a few lots in Gahato; but they still hate my guts."
(In fact, several members of the Ten Eyck family still held parcels of land in Herkimer County, but that is a minor point. Alfred did not get on well with most of his kin.)
"I think you exaggerate," I said. "Anyway, why stay here if you don't feel comfortable?"
"Where should I go, and how should I earn a living? Jeepers! Here I at least have a roof over my head. By collecting a few rents on those shacks on Hemlock Street in Gahato—when the tenants don't talk me out of them with hard-luck stories—and now and then selling one of the remaining lots, I get by. Since I can't sell them fast enough to get ahead of my expenses and build up some investments, I'm whittling away at my capital; but I don't seem to have any choice. Ah, here we are!"
Alfred had unwrapped the page from Le Figaro, which enfolded the lamp. He held up his treasure.
It was one of those hollow, heart-shaped things, about the size of the palm of your hand, which they used for lamps in Greek and Roman times. It had a knob-shaped handle at the round end, a big hole in the center top for refilling, and a little hole for the wick at the pointed or spout end. You can buy any number of them in Europe and the Near East, since they are always digging up more.
Most such lamps are made of cheap pottery. This one looked at first like pottery, too. Actually, it was composed of some sort of metal but had a layer of dried mud all over it. This stuff had flaked off in places, allowing a dull gleam of metal to show through.
"What's it made of?" I asked. "Ionides didn't seem to know, when he gave me the thing in Paris."
"I don't know. Some sort of silver bronze or bell metal, I guess. We'll have to clean it to find out. But we've got to be careful with it. You can't just scrub an antique like this with steel wool, you know."
"I know. If it has a coating of oxide, you leave it in place. Then they can put it in an electrolytic tank and turn the oxide back into the original metal, I understand."
"Something like that," said Alfred.
"But what's so remarkable about this little widget? You're not an archaeologist—"
"No, no, that's not it. I got it for a reason. Did you have any funny dreams while you were bringing this over?"
"You bet I did! But how in hell would you know?"
"Ionides told me that might happen."
"Well then, what's the gag? What's this all about?"
Alfred gave me another glare from his pale-gray eyes. "Just say I'm fed up with being a loser, that's all."