I went over to the alarm beside the kitchen door and jerked the connections loose.
“Now,” I told her, “we can get some sleep.”
I didn’t really expect to get any. I expected to stay awake the rest of the night, worrying about the refrigerator. But I did drop off, although not for very long.
At six-thirty Belsen turned on his orchestra and brought me out of bed.
Helen sat up, with her hands against her ears.
“Oh, not again!” she said.
I went around and closed the windows. It cut down the noise a little.
“Put the pillow over your head,” I told her.
I dressed and went downstairs. The refrigerator was in the kitchen and everything seemed to be all right. There were a few of the bugs running around, but they weren’t bothering anything.
I made myself some breakfast; then I went to work. And this was the second day running I’d gone early to the office. If this kept up, I told myself, the neighborhood would have to get together and do something about Belsen and his symphony.
Everything went all right. I sold a couple of policies during the morning and lined up a third.
When I came back to the office early in the afternoon a wild-eyed individual was awaiting me.
“You Marsden?” he demanded. “You the guy that’s got an agate boulder?” –
“That’s what I’m told it is,” I said.
The man was a little runt. He wore sloppy khaki pants and engineer boots. Stuck in his belt was a rock hammer, one of those things with a hammer on one end of the head and a pick on the other.
“I heard about it,” said the man, excitedly and a bit belligerently, “and I can’t believe it. There isn’t any agate that ever ran that big.”
I didn’t like his attitude. “If you came here to argue…”
“It isn’t that,” said the man. “My name is Christian Barr. I’m a rockhound, you understand. Been at it all my life. Have a big collection. President of our rock club. Win prizes at almost every show. And I thought if you had a rock like this…”
“Yes?”
“Well, if you had a rock like this, I might make an offer for it. I’d have to see it first.”
I jammed my hat back on my head.
“Let us go,” I said.
In the garden, Barr walked entranced around the boulder, He wet his thumb and rubbed the smooth places on its hide. He leaned close and inspected it. He ran a speculative hand across its surface. He muttered to himself.
“Well?” I asked.
“It’s an agate,” Barr told me, breathlessly. “Apparently a single, complete agate. Look here, this sort of pebbled, freckled surface–well, that’s the inverse imprint of the volcanic bubble inside of which it formed. There’s the characteristic mottling on the surface one would expect to find. And the fractures where the surface has been nicked show subconchoidal cleavage. And, of course, there is the indication of some banding.”
He pulled the rock hammer from his belt and idly banged the boulder. It rang like a monstrous bell.
Barr froze and his mouth dropped open.
“It hadn’t ought to do that,” he explained as soon as he regained some of his composure. “It sounds as if it’s hollow.”
He rapped it once again and the boulder pealed.
“Agate is strange stuff,” he said. “It’s tougher than the best of steel. I suppose you could make a bell out of it if you could only fabricate it.”
He stuck the hammer back into his belt and prowled around the boulder.
“It could be a thunderegg,” he said, talking to himself, “But no, it can’t be that. A thunderegg has agate in its center and not on the surface. And this is banded agate and you don’t find banded agate associated with a thunderegg.”
“What is a thunderegg?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. He had hunkered down and was examining the bottom portion.
“Marsden,” he asked, “how much will you take for it?”
“You’d have to name a figure,” I told him. “I have no idea what it’s worth.”
“I’ll give you a thousand as it stands.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. Not that I didn’t think it was enough, but on the principle that it’s never wise to take a man’s first figure.
“If it weren’t hollow,” Barr told me, “It would be worth a whole lot more.”
“You can’t be sure it’s hollow.”
“You heard it when I rapped it.”
“Maybe that’s just the way it sounds.”
Barr shook his head. “It’s all wrong,” he complained. “No banded agate ever ran this big. No agate’s ever hollow. And you don’t know where this one came from.”
I didn’t answer him. There was no reason for me to.
“Look here,” he said, after a while. “There’s a hole in it. Down here near the bottom.”
I squatted down to look where his finger pointed. There was a neat, round hole, no more than half an inch in diameter; no haphazard hole, but round and sharply cut, as if someone might have drilled it.
Barr hunted around and found a heavy weed stalk and stripped off the leaves. The stalk, some two feet of it, slid into the hole.
Barr squatted back and stared, frowning, at the boulder.
“She’s hollow, sure as hell,” he said.
I didn’t pay too much attention to him. I was beginning to sweat a little. For another crazy thought had come bumbling along and fastened onto me:
_That hole would be just big enough for one of those bugs to get through!_
“Tell you what,” said Barr. “I’ll raise that offer to two thousand and take it off your hands.”
I shook my head. I was going off _my_ rocker linking up the bugs and boulder–even if there was a bug-size hole drilled into the boulder. I remembered that I likewise had linked the bugs with the refrigerator–and it must be perfectly obvious to anyone that the bugs could not have anything to do with either the refrigerator or the boulder.
They were just ordinary bugs–well, maybe not just ordinary bugs, but, anyhow, just bugs. Dobby had been puzzled by them, but Dobby would be the first, I knew, to tell you that there were many insects unclassified as yet. This might be a species which suddenly had flared into prominence, favored by some strange quirk of ecology, after years of keeping strictly under cover.
“You mean to say,” asked Barr, astonished, “that you won’t take two thousand?”
“Huh?” I asked, coming back to earth.
“I just offered you two thousand for the boulder.”
I took a good hard look at him. He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d spend two thousand for a hobby. More than likely, I told myself, he knew a good thing when he saw it and was out to make a killing. He wanted to snap this boulder up before I knew what it was worth.
“I’d like to think it over,” I told him, warily. “If I decide to take the offer, where can I get in touch with you?”
He told me curtly and gruffly said goodbye. He was sore about my not taking his two thousand. He went stumping around the garage and a moment later I heard him start his car and drive away.
I squatted there and wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have taken that two thousand. Two thousand was a lot of money and I could have used it. But the man had been too anxious and he’d had a greedy look.
Now, however, there was one thing certain. I couldn’t leave the boulder out here in the garden. It was much too valuable to be left unguarded. Somehow or other I’d have to get it into the garage where I could lock it up. George Montgomery had a block and tackle and maybe I could borrow it and use it to move the boulder.
I started for the house to tell Helen the good news, although I was pretty sure she’d read me a lecture for not selling for two thousand.
She met me at the kitchen door and threw her arms around my neck and kissed me.
“Randall,” she caroled, happily, “It’s just too wonderful.”
“I think so, too,” I said, wondering how in the world she could have known about it.
“Just come and look at them,” she cried. “The bugs are cleaning up the house!”
“They’re what!” I yelled.
“Come and look,” she urged, tugging at my ann. “Did you ever see the like of it? Everything’s just shining!”
I stumbled after her into the living room and stared in disbelief that bordered close on horror.
They were working in battalions and they were purposeful about it. One gang of them was going over a chair back, four rows of them in line creeping up the chair back, and it was like one of those before-and-after pictures. The lower half of the chair back was so clean it looked like new, while the upper half was dingy.