by Kin Platt
The trouble with me is, once I get started talking about this stuff I can’t shut up. All anybody has to do to get bored is to ask me some innocent question about some house.
“That brings us to Federal,” I said, still trying to wrap it up for Mr. Snowden. “Right after the Revolutionary War. Everything was graceful and delicate and classical. But by then we were so fed up with King George, Thomas Jefferson started his classical Roman style. Then the Greeks through their war for independence against the Turks started the Greek Revival. That was good for twenty years. From 1820 to 1840. Then it got murdered.”
He was enjoying it. “By whom?”
“The Victorians,” I said. “From 1836 to 1900. They threw everything into the pot: Gothic, Tudor, Old English, Italian, French, Oriental. You can still see a lot of those crazy minarets and Moorish towers and arches around. The onion-domed style. Then they added all those wild wooden icicles and wedding-cake brackets and decorated the parapets with fishscale slates. That was called American Gothic. Sometimes Steamboat Gothic and Carpenter Gothic. You won’t have any trouble identifying those.”
Mr. Snowden nodded and smiled. “I’ve seen several of that kind.” He glanced at his watch. “There’s time for just a little more, if you can spare it.”
“The roofs might tell you,” I said. “On Georgian, low-gabled for a classic pediment, or a gambrel. That’s the one with four slopes or planes instead of two. Sometimes they become hipped or, as on Federal, almost flat.
“On Georgian, there’s usually some kind of deck on the roof. A balustrade, a captain’s walk, or a cupola. The chimney is plain or has a simple cap on it.”
“Don’t forget the windows,” Mr. Snowden reminded me.
“Well, at the start they were small and unequal size on the sashes. Then they got bigger. Early Georgian had 18 to 24 panes. Later they became equal and double hung. With Georgian, framed by an architrave. Sometimes a small flat cornice. The big houses had pediments. Later Georgian even put triangular caps on their dormers. And then they started to go in big for quoins.”
“Quoins?” he repeated.
“Blocks at the side and corners of buildings. They’re raised, and run at staggered intervals. You see them on banks and—” I pointed to the side of the school wall where we had them. “It was supposed to be done in stone, but a lot of them used grooved planks for their wooden fronts.” I remembered one thing more. “The door entablature for very Late Georgian might have triglyphs or mutules.” He looked blank. “The decorative block is the triglyph. Three vertical grooves in a Doric frieze. The mutule is a projecting block above it. Under a Doric cornice,” I added.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked off across the school playground into the distance.
“That’s very interesting,” he said finally. Then, “How would you define nylon?”
“Huh?” I said.
“Nylon,” he repeated.
I stared at him but he just stood there waiting.
“Well,” I said haltingly, “it’s kind of a plastic, I guess, sort of. One of those new things they make.”
He shook his head. “I was hoping you’d say that nylon is a synthetic thermoplastic fiber. It’s made by condensing adipic acid and hexamethylenediamine.”
“Is that the real definition?”
He nodded.
“I’d never know that one,” I said. “Those words a mile long.”
His smile looked genuine. “You know a lot of big ones yourself,” he said. “You just explained words like entablature, pediment, triglyph, mutules. Not many boys your age know those words either.”
I tried to explain it. “It’s like I told you. Ever since I got interested in old houses-”
“Science is old, too,” he said.
“Houses mean more to me,” I said. “They’re more interesting.”
“You might find something interesting about science,” he said. “Let’s take chromosomes.”
“Chromosomes? Like—”
“Like chromosomes,” he said. “You probably know they carry the genes of heredity.”
“Maybe I’m supposed to know,” I said. “Only I don’t always remember. I flunked.”
He shrugged. “It just wasn’t important to you. Is being a boy important to you?”
I just looked at him.
“You might not have been,” he said. “You could have been born a girl.”
I thought that one over.
“That’s where the chromosomes did you a big personal favor,” Mr. Snowden said.
“How?” I wanted to know.
“If the last remaining pair had remained double instead of splitting up, you’d have been a girl.” He reached for the door. “Now suppose we go inside and get started on our science lesson.”
“I think I already had mine.” I said and followed his broad back inside.
Mr. Snowden picked another good topic for class discussion. Snakes.
He knew a lot about copperheads. I found out I was right about them not appearing on Long Island. They’d been extinct there for about thirty years. Like rattlers. But I was wrong about the rest. You could find them in Florida, all right, but mostly the northern part. You could also find them in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and all the way from southern Massachusetts to Texas in the South, Oklahoma in the West and Illinois in the North.
It’s the same family as the moccasin but that’s the one you’d find in the swampy sections of Florida.
Well, I told myself, so what? Maybe those two guys picked one copperhead up on their way north to see Mrs. Teska. It was either that or this copperhead on my lawn sure got himself lost.
After class, Mr. Snowden stopped me for a second to ask how Sinbad and me were getting on. I told him fine. Absentmindedly, while we were talking, I got that silver dollar of Mrs. Teska’s out of my pocket and started flipping it up and catching it. Heads to tails, and so on. I missed the last toss. Mr. Snowden picked up the coin as it rolled, and looked at it for a second.
When he handed it back to me, he said: “Are you an expert on old coins, too?”
I told him, not really. I just had a few of these.
“Any idea how much that’s worth?” he asked.
When I told him a dollar, he shook his head.
“Guess again,” Mr. Snowden said. Everybody else had left the classroom and he was gathering his books, too.
“It’s only a silver dollar,” I explained.
“Not that one.”
I didn’t know anything about old coins. It looked to me just like any other silver dollar in my hand. Like those I had home in my chest of drawers.
“How much is it worth?” I asked him.
He finally picked up his books. “Maybe three hundred,” he said.
“Three hundred dollars?”
He nodded. When he started walking to the door I followed him, dragging my feet. As we went out the door he pointed to the date on it. “That says 1851,” he said. “Certain years are worth more. That happens to be a rare coin. It’s in good condition. In perfect condition it might be worth more. Maybe a thousand.”
“A thousand dollars?”
“For perfect condition,” he said. “You don’t carry that kind around in your pocket. Where the markings are worn it loses value.”
I explained I was carrying it around for a good luck piece. He seemed to understand that.
“Just remember, the more you carry it that way, the less luck you’ll have when you try to cash it in.”
We were walking down the corridor now but I wasn’t really walking. I was floating. Slow motion.
“I’m rich,” I yelled. “I got nine more just like this at home.”
He smiled. “Don’t get your hopes up. Chances are the others are just what you think. Silver dollars.”
My face fell at that, I guess. My feet were definitely on the ground now.
“There are books on the subject,” he said, trying to cheer me up. “I have one myself you can borrow. I’m kind of
a collector, in a small way. Or you can bring your fortune in to any numismatist.” He saw I didn’t know that word. “Numismatics is the study of coins and medals. There’s a coin dealer in the village. He can tell you exactly what your silver dollars are worth.”
“What’s the most you can get for one?” I asked.
“Well, 1804 would be very good year. I know because I’ve spent a lot of time looking for that one.”
“How much is that one worth?”
He told me. “Thirty thousand dollars.”
I felt like a dope. All my life I’d been studying houses. If I knew half as much about old coins I probably could have now been a millionaire.
Mr. Snowden set his books down on the low brick ledge that coursed the side entrance. Because it was hot he took off his coat, opened his white short-sleeved shirt and loosened his tie. His arms were thick and heavy. A light bluish tattoo ran inside his left forearm.
He slung his coat over his shoulders and picked up his books again. He had big hands with very thick fingers.
“You’re built pretty good for a science teacher,” I said. It was the kind of dumb remark I get off once in a while.
“I did a lot of swimming in college,” he said. “And played some football.”
“There’s pretty good swimming out here in the bay,” I told him. “If you watch out for the current.”
“I might try that,” he said. “By the way, where might Scuttle Point be?”
“Near Dead Man’s Cove,” I told him. “North, north-east.” I pointed out the direction. My mind made a quick jump. “If you’re looking for the River Queen, you’re a little late.”
His serious brown eyes showed a brief flicker of interest. “The River Queen,” he repeated thoughtfully. “The ship that burned around here?”
I nodded. “The gambling ship.”
“So you know about old ships, too,” he said smiling.
“Not much,” I admitted. “I just happened to find out about this one the other night. On TV.”
“I see,” he said. “And why would I be looking for it?”
“You might be able to find an old 1804 silver dollar.”
He looked at me blankly.
“They probably used silver dollars for gambling on those old gambling ships,” I pointed out.
“They still use them today,” he said. “Reno, Vegas. All over Nevada. Not just on gambling ships.”
I didn’t know that. “Well, anyway, the River Queen probably had a lot of them. And that’s where she was last seen, you know. Off Scuttle Point and Dead Man’s Cove where she anchored.”
“That must have been a long time ago,” he said.
I remembered the date. I had it written down inside my pocket in my memo book. “1920.”
“That’s a long time,” he said quietly.
“They never found the ship,” I said, getting excited. “It just disappeared in the fog. At night. I saw the newsreel. It was all on fire.”
“Queer,” he said. “A gambling ship in these parts.”
Just the way I felt.
“I bet if somebody found that ship, he’d find a fortune,” I said. “They wouldn’t even have to be 1804 silver dollars. There’d be enough with just the regular ones.”
“Gamblers used gold, too,” he said. “Dollar gold pieces. Quarter and a Half Eagles. Eagles and Double Eagles. A Double Eagle is twenty dollars gold.”
“That makes it even better,” I said. “I bet there was a million dollars on that ship.”
He frowned a little. Or maybe he was just squinting in the sun. “There probably was,” he said. “At one time. Considerably less by the time the River Queen went down.”
“How do you figure that, Mr. Snowden?”
“If I were going to burn my own ship, I’d remove some of the money from it first.”
“Is that what happened?”
“Just a guess,” he admitted. “I remember reading about it. Nobody knew exactly how the fire started. And they never found the ship. So it’s all a mystery. Even to his disappearance.”
“Whose disappearance?”
“The man who owned it.”
Mr. Snowden sure knew a lot about that ship. Especially for a stranger in our town. A newcomer anyway.
“Who owned it, Mr. Snowden?”
“Let me think,” he said. Then his eyes brightened. “A big time gambler. His name was Murdock.”
“Murdock? Are you sure?”
He thought a few seconds, then nodded.
“He used to run a famous gambling casino up at Saratoga. Big Nick Murdock.”
I never knew Captain Billy Murdock had any children.
I made up my mind I’d do some reading about that old River Queen.
Mr. Snowden and I had about run out of conversation. We said so long. He walked off in his long easy stride and I got my bike and headed into town, my mind working as fast as the pedals. It was funny thing how Mr. Snowden and I were interested in the same things.
Like old houses. Copperhead snakes. And the River Queen.
I had to find out for sure about that silver dollar in my pocket. And how much the others at home were worth. If they were all worth three hundred, which didn’t seem likely, I would still be short. That slip of paper in Mrs. Teska’s possession said Frank owed five thousand.
Mr. Snowden was a nice guy and probably could use the money, too. Teachers didn’t make much. I hoped we wouldn’t have to fight over who found the treasure first.
I could see a big problem coming up.
CHAPTER 18
The Old Man In The Old Coin Shop
The faded green weathered sign hanging stiffly on its iron bracket arm read: PETER NEWBURY. And underneath in smaller script letters: Dealer in Coins.
The building was one of the oldest we had. A genuine 17th century Garrison House, half timber, with the upper story overhang on all four sides. That was a reminder of Indian raids.
The date panel on the old Tudor Gothic chimney said: July ye 8th 1683 A.D.
The front door was made of two vertical boards. It was studded with wrought iron nails. The casement windows were leaded and diamond shaped. Just like the old days.
I was happy even before I met Mr. Peter Newbury.
He was a bright little pink-cheeked old man with white tufts of hair about his ears. He looked like a happy rabbit. His small nose even twitched when I came in.
He stood behind a waist-high counter between two glass cases filled with all kinds of coins and medals. Some were in open albums with circular cutouts, some in pages of big leather binders. They were stacked five to a line and ran eight lines deep.
Mr. Newbury watched while I took in the low-ceilinged room. The flooring boards were wide and ran the whole length of the shop. Above was the biggest summer beam I ever saw. The walls were vertical pine, colored a warm golden brown. There was even a small fireplace with a simple oak beam over it. The stairway at the rear was simple, too, the heavy newel post gently carved and just a few simply turned balusters. The pine boards glowed with age and wax. Everything was neat and without fuss. A real Puritan house.
I was wondering what it was like upstairs, when Mr. Newbury said in a high voice, “Well, speak up, lad. Are you considering lodging here or did you have other business?”
“It’s a great old house,” I said.
He grunted. “Could be. What would you know about it?”
I took out my silver dollar and put it down on the wide polished wood counter. He didn’t jump out of his shoes when he saw the date. He only looked at me keenly once and then went back to the coin.
“A lovely way to carry something of this sort around,” he murmured, one of those jeweler’s glass-pieces now at his eye. “You might have kicked it through the gutter or dragged it along on a piece of string.”
“I didn’t know it was valuable before,” I said.
“Really now! Fancy that, would you!” he chirped.
He breathed on the coin. He rubbed it lightly. He go
t out a magnifying glass and examined the edges. He looked at the back very carefully. He put it on a little scale and weighed it. “‘Didn’t know it was valuable,’ he says.”
I noticed Mr. Newbury held it very gently all the time at the edge between two fingers. Like he thought it might break.
Finally he said: “Well, it’s genuine, all right. It’s not a forgery.”
“A what?” I said. “I didn’t know you could forge coins. I thought it was just bills.”
He looked at me pityingly. “Just fancy that,” he said. “He didn’t know you could forge coins.” He talked like I wasn’t even there. Then he looked at me again quite sharply. “Now what would you say you do know, lad?”
“I know I got nine more of them silver dollars home,” I said. “Only I don’t know the dates of them offhand.”
“Well, fancy that,” Mr. Newbury said. “He doesn’t know the dates offhand.”
His accent was English. Or maybe Irish. It could have been Scotch, too. He was right. I didn’t know anything.
He took a little envelope and gently placed my valuable coin inside it. He set the envelope squarely between our hands. “Now what else would you like to know, my merry young gentleman?”
“Do you have a Carver armchair?” I said stupidly. It was one of the old chairs that went with this kind of house and it just slipped out of my mind and off my tongue.
Mr. Newbury reached behind him. Found an old clay pipe and some stringy tobacco out of an Old Dutch jar. He stuffed his pipe. Then he lit it. Then he tamped it down and lit it again. Then he shook out the match and looked at it a few seconds. I’m used to this kind of thing because I get it from my old man all the time. Especially when he can’t think up an answer right away. If I ever have to smoke, I guess it’ll be the pipe. For that reason.