Anthology - SEP by Fantasy;Science Fiction

Author:Fantasy;Science Fiction
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-09-01T14:53:17+00:00

J

THE LOST CONTINENT

by Geoffrey Household

Atlantis? It's of more interest to poets and mystics than to archaeologists. The lost continent is only a fable. We have no proof; you're looking at the best there is. No, not me. In the case behind my desk.

A puma, you think? Have you just been to the zoo? Well, then, why do you call it a puma rather than a lion or a leopard? Yes, you're quite right. One could swear it was dug up in Peru or Ecuador. But an ivory puma is impossible. No pumas in the Old World. No elephants in the New World.

I'll tell you its history, though I warn you it is very unsatisfactory. It has no ending. You go out where you came in. You'll just say to hell with me and Jim Hawkes and all those visionary swordsmen who conquered the Americas and carefully destroyed or displaced every blessed thing they ought to have preserved for us.

But like all good stories it is really that of a man's character—a grubby little man with bad teeth and no education, who cared as little for money and as much for truth as any dedicated scholar rediscovering the past for the wages of a manual worker.

At first Jim Hawkes was not allowed in when he turned up at the side door of the museum and asked to see me. They thought he had samples in his little bag. That was what he looked like—a salesman peddling cheap pens on commission. Yet there was something honest and earthy about him which was hard to distrust. He was a real Cockney too—with the Londoner's genius for summing up doormen and minor officials and getting his own way in spite of them.

While he remembered to be on his best behavior he addressed me as "sir." When he got excited he called me "guv'nor." At that first interview he sensibly gave a thumbnail sketch of his background before coming to business, but I can't distinguish between what he said then and all I learned about him later. It's enough that he had passed twenty years

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