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sounded a little out of breath. “I’m sure there’s a shoebox here someplace . . .”
    â€œDon’t go to any trouble on my account, Mr. Gaunt!” Brian called back, hoping like mad that Mr. Gaunt would go to as much trouble as was necessary.
    â€œMaybe that box is in one of the shipments still en route,” Mr. Gaunt said dubiously.
    Brian’s heart sank.
    Then: “But I was sure . . . wait! Here it is! Right here!”
    Brian’s heart rose—did more than rise. It soared and did a backover flip.
    Mr. Gaunt came back through the curtain. His hair was a trifle disarrayed, and there was a smudge of dust on one lapel of his smoking jacket. In his hands he held a box which had once contained a pair of Air Jordan sneakers. He set it on the counter and took off the top. Brian stood by his left arm, looking in. The box was full of baseball cards, each inserted in its own plastic envelope, just like the ones Brian sometimes bought at The Baseball Card Shop in North Conway, New Hampshire.
    â€œI thought there might be an inventory sheet in here, but no such luck,” Mr. Gaunt said. “Still, I have a pretty good idea of what I have in stock, as I told you—it’s the key to running a business where you sell a little bit of everything—and I’m quite sure I saw . . .”
    He trailed off and began flipping rapidly through the cards.
    Brian watched the cards flash by, speechless with astonishment. The guy who ran The Baseball Card Shop had what his dad called “a pretty country-fair” selection of old cards, but the contents of the whole store couldn’t hold a candle to the treasures tucked away in this one sneaker box. There were chewing-tobacco cards with pictures of Ty Cobb and Pie Traynor on them. There were cigarette cards with pictures of Babe Ruth and Dom DiMaggio and Big George Keller and even Hiram Dissen, the one-armed pitcher who had chucked for the White Sox during the forties. LUCKY STRIKE HAS GONE TO WAR! many of the cigarette cards proclaimed. And there, just glimpsed, a broad, solemn face above a Pittsburgh uniform shirt—
    â€œMy God, wasn’t that Honus Wagner?” Brian gasped. His heart felt like a very small bird which had blundered into his throat and now fluttered there, trapped. “That’s the rarest baseball card in the universe!”
    â€œYes, yes,” Mr. Gaunt said absently. His long fingers shuttled speedily through the cards, faces from another age trapped under transparent plastic coverings, men who had whacked the pill and chucked the apple and covered the anchors, heroes of a grand and bygone golden age, an age of which this boy still harbored cheerful and lively dreams. “A little of everything, that’s what a successful business is all about, Brian. Diversity, pleasure, amazement, fulfillment . . . what a successful life is all about, for that matter . . . I don’t give advice, but if I did, you could do worse than to remember that . . . now let me see . . . somewhere . . . somewhere . . . ah! ”
    He pulled a card from the middle of the box like a magician doing a trick and placed it triumphantly in Brian’s hand.
    It was Sandy Koufax.
    It was a ’56 Topps card.
    And it was signed.
    â€œTo my good friend Brian, with best wishes, Sandy Koufax,” Brian read in a hoarse whisper.
    And then found he could say nothing at all.
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    He looked up at Mr. Gaunt, his mouth working. Mr. Gaunt smiled. “I didn’t plant it or plan it, Brian. It’s just a coincidence . . . but a nice sort of coincidence, don’t you think?”
    Brian still couldn’t talk, and so settled for a single nod of his head. The plastic envelope with its precious cargo felt weirdly heavy in his hand.
    â€œTake it out,” Mr. Gaunt invited.
    When Brian’s voice finally emerged from his mouth again, it