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.”“Some of it, sir.”Putnam swings, takes him in with a squint.“So you know the dear widow Constance and Harcort Amory were the original executors.And Connie had the idea she was going to fight for every nickel she could get.After what we all thought was a generous settlement.Lifetime residence at Concord House, of course, here in Boston.Lifetime residence at the observatory when she visited.One hundred fifty thousand dollars lump sum and half Percy’s property and a nice healthy income.With all the rest, more than two million dollars, going to the observatory.Well, it seemed fair to everyone but Connie.I don’t suppose you give a damn about all this.”“I’d like to know it, sir,” he says.“It gives you the lay of the land.”“I suppose it does.And you could stop with the goddamned sir business, Barber, I’m not anybody’s boss.Not yours, anyway.” He leads them into a side room: tall windows, maroon velvet drapes, a fire rustling in the grate.“You want a drink or something? Scotch they have.”“Thank you.”Putnam picks up a telephone and barks the order, then directs them into two armchairs and says, confidentially, “Well, old Amory was a good man, you know, old Uncle Percy’s cousin and roommate and all that, but he couldn’t stand up to Connie.She wanted him to resign as executor, and so he did.And then the next person in line for her to take down was my brother George.And George is no dummy, he wanted no part of Connie, so he was happy to keep well out of it.Finally she settled on poor old Guy Lowell, who was old Uncle Percy’s third cousin, far enough down the line as to be possibly a little easier to bend.Stop me when this gets too sort of Caesarean for you.”“It’s just the names,” he says, “they keep turning up.”“We do have a sort of wagon circle, don’t we? Well, you stick to the old stuff.No one’s claiming any imagination in all this.”“Guy Lowell,” Alan says, “the executor.”“You are following.Guy Lowell, the executor.What Connie wanted, of course, was to fight old Percy’s wishes all the way down the line.Too much money was going to the observatory, she thought.That ought to be her money.But Guy wasn’t as much of a patsy as she had hoped.He fought her like hell.I won’t go into all the shenanigans, but they were outlandish and endlessly creative, and she made herself very much unpopular.She cut everyone’s salary out there, for one thing.”“She didn’t.”“Old V.M.didn’t tell you this.Of course.He wouldn’t.A gentleman to the end.She cut his salary while building that ridiculous marble temple to house Percy’s poor harassed bones.Brought all her friends out there every year to overrun the place and expect everyone to wait on her, hand and foot.I used to spend a fair amount of time out there, in fact.” Putnam turns a little shy.“Bit of an amateur astronomer myself, in fact.”“Oh,” Alan says.“But nothing like you, Mr.Barber.”“Well.” He blushes, looks away.Manages, finally, “I’m sure that’s not true.”But Putnam is only aiming a look of amused Brahmin incredulity at him.The drinks come borne by a gent in tails and white gloves, and Putnam lifts his glass to Barber.“Over the teeth, et cetera.Anyhow, we suffered Connie because we had to; she had her lifetime rights out there, after all.We went back and forth and back and forth, and speaking personally I’ve heard more about the judges in Coconino County, Arizona, than I ever care to.But we finally won, three years ago.Old Guy came through.But by then, with both sides suing and countersuing for nearly a decade, we’d spent more than a million dollars.” He swallows.“In legal fees, I mean.”“Holy moses.”“Jarndyce and Jarndyce hasn’t got a thing on us.And in the meantime poor old V.M.and Carl Lampland were stuck.No money to build new equipment.No money to update what they had.No money to hire new staff.And you know what I wanted them to do.”“No, sir.”“I wanted them to find that goddamned Planet X.”“You did.” So Slipher was right, he thinks.They all want a planet for themselves.Putnam grins.“I did.Percy’s old goose chase.V.M.’s, I think, always been a skeptic, though he keeps pretty mum.I don’t know what Lampland thinks.He’s got his own projects, atmospheric spectography, you know.So in the meantime while Guy was at work on Connie I got onto Uncle Abbott to shake some money out of his own tree to buy us a new telescope to give us a real shot at it.”“You mean Uncle Abbott Lawrence Lowell.”“Yes, I’m sorry.”“You mean the president of Harvard,” Alan supplies.“The very one.Although I only got ten thousand out of him.”He makes a show of surprise.“The whole family’s in on it.”“Think of it as a sort of memorial fund for Percy, really.I mean you think that’s real money, but in fact it’s not that much when you’re considering what we’ve put together.And still we’re cutting corners.Why do you think we’re having Mr.Sykes build the mounting? Why do you think V.M.’s designed the telescope itself? Because we’re doing this on the cheap, still.We’re still trying to get our hands on the money in accordance with our settlement with Connie.It’s all too complicated.And Clark and Sons already botched one of the mirrors, you know, ground the goddamned thing too thin.That was V.M.’s fault, I think, but anyway we ate that one, too.To the tune of six thousand dollars.” Putnam drinks.“That one I paid for.”“You did.”“Well, poor old Guy died last year, you know, and I took over.Which is why we’ve got this all coming together now, finally, sort of staggering along, I guess, but it’s almost there, isn’t it? How do you like the comparator, anyway?”He offers a hard grin.“It’s nice.I mean, it’s an instrument of torture, frankly, but it works just fine.”“I should hope so.That cost a pretty penny, too.A thousand even.Well, I tell you all this just to give you the background.Ideally you won’t give a damn about any of this.Just keep your head down and hunt.Speaking of which, Barber, I heard about our friend Morrow.”“Right,” Alan says.“Well, I’m sorry about that.”Putnam lunges back in his chair, adjusting his waistband.“So Dick Morrow used to be the kid down the street from us who’d build his own bicycle.Sort of a mechanical genius when you get down to it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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