Bagombo Snuff Box by Kurt Vonnegut Read Free Book Online Page A

it.”
    Any Reasonable Offer
    “Does that mean you don’t want it after all?” I asked.
    “No, not exactly. We’ll simply have to live with it a little
while to see what can be done about it, if anything.”
    “Could you tell me specifically what it was you didn’t like?”
I asked.
    “If you can’t see it,” said Mrs. Peckham, “no one could possibly
point it out to you.”
    “Oh.”
    “We’ll let you know,” said the Colonel.
    Three days passed, with their normal complement of calls
from Dela-hanty and Mrs. Hellbrunner, but without a sign from Colonel Peckham
and his lady.
    As I was closing my office on the afternoon of the fourth
day, Hurty called me.
    “When the hell,” he said, “are those Peckham people going to
come to a boil?”
    “Lord knows,” I said. “There’s no way I can get in touch
with them. He said he’d call me.”
    “You can get in touch with them anytime of night or day.”
    “How?”
    “Just call my place. They’ve been out here for the past
three days, taking the newness out of it. They’ve damn well taken something
out of me, too. Do the liquor and cigars and food come out of your commission?”
    “If there is a commission.”
    “You mean there’s some question about it? He goes around here
as though he has the money in his pocket and is just waiting for the right time
to give it to me.”
    “Well, since he won’t talk with me, you might as well do the
pressuring. Tell him I’ve just told you a retired brewer from Toledo has
offered seventy-five thousand. That ought to get action.”
    ‘All right. I’ll have to wait until they come in from
swimming, for cocktails.”
    “Call me back when you’ve got a reaction, and I’ll toot out
with an offer form all ready to go.”
    Ten minutes later he did. “Guess what, brain-box?”
    “He bit?”
    “I’m getting a brand-new real estate agent.”
    “Oh?”
    “Yes indeedy. I took the advice of the last one I had, and a
red-hot prospect and his wife walked out with their noses in the air.”
    “No! Why?”
    “Colonel and Mrs. Peckham wish you to know that they couldn’t
possibly be interested in anything that would appeal to a retired brewer from
Toledo.”
    It was a lousy estate anyhow, so I gaily laughed and gave my
attention to more substantial matters, such as the Hellbrunner mansion. I ran a
boldface advertisement describing the joys of life in a fortified castle.
    The next morning, I looked up from my work to see the ad,
torn from the paper, in the long, clean fingers of Colonel Peckham.
    “Is this yours?”
    “Good morning, Colonel. Yessir, it is.”
    “It sounds like our kind of place,” said the voice of Mrs.
Peckham.
    We crossed the simulated drawbridge and passed under the
rusty portcullis of their kind of place.
    Mrs. Hellbrunner liked the Peckhams immediately. For one
thing, they were, I’m pretty sure, the first people in several generations to
admire the place. More to the point, they gave every indication of being about
to buy it.
    “It would cost about a half-million to replace,” said Mrs.
Hellbrunner.
    “Yes,” said the Colonel. “They don’t build houses like this
anymore.”
    “Oh!” gasped Mrs. Peckham, and the Colonel caught her as she
headed for the floor.
    “Quick! Brandy! Anything!” cried Colonel Peckham.
    When I drove the Peckhams back to the center of town, they
were in splendid spirits.
    “Why on earth didn’t you show us this place first?” said the
Colonel.
    “Just came on the market yesterday,” I said, “and priced the
way it is, I don’t expect it’ll be on the market very long.”
    The Colonel squeezed his wife’s hand. “I don’t expect so, do
you, dear?”
    Mrs. Hellbrunner still called me every day, but now her tone
was cheery and flattering. She reported that the Peckhams arrived shortly after
noon each day, and that they seemed more in love with the house on each visit.
    “I’m treating them just like Hellbrunners,” she said
craftily.
    “That’s