Read Stairway to Forever for Free Online Page A

hinges.
    The interior he found to be some five and a half feet long, by about two feet wide and deep, and fitted with a hinged bar that could be swung up to prop open the lid. It contained numerous large and smaller cases of various shapes and constructions. Some were of metal-bound wood, some of tooled, dry-rotting leather; a couple of smaller ones seemed to be wrought of sheet metal, the lack of rust showing that metal to be nonferrous in nature.
    The largest chest within was about the size and shape of a GI footlocker, but with a convex lid. An experimental tug at one of its metal handles told Fitz that it either was bolted to the deck beneath, or contained something extremely dense and weighty; also, it was locked with another of those iron padlocks, so he turned his attention to the smaller caskets, for the nonce.
    A leather box secured by a pair of strap-and-buckle arrangements caught his eye so he lifted it out and bore it over to the octagonal table where light from the opened door spilled in. But the array of instruments, each fitted into carved openings in a wooden form, were an utter mystery to him. The largest of them did put him somewhat in mind of the ancient predecessor to the modern sextant called an astrolabe—he had once seen one in a museum and had seen others drawn in books—while yet another instrument looked vaguely like a navigators* parallel.
    The second case he chose, though much smaller, was infinitely heavier. It seemed to Fitz to be about the size and general shape of a .50 caliber ammunition box, though with a slightly convex lid. But when

    he had gotten the box upon the table and opened, he could only gasp and gawk, open-mouthed, at so graphic and thoroughly unexpected an explanation for the bulkless dead weight. Gold\
    After he had sunk, rubber-legged, into the inlaid chair and forced himself into a measure of composure, he dipped his still-trembling hands into the nearly brimftil box and found the treasure to all be in coin—some of them rather crudely made specimens, but coin, nonetheless. They seemed to vary in size from tiny things less than half the diameter and thickness of an American dime to pieces as large as or larger than a half-dollar coin, averaging out at about the size of a quarter-dollar or, possibly, a five-cent piece. He guesstimated the total weight at thirty to forty pounds.
    Thirty to forty pounds of gold! How many ounces was forty pounds? Let's see . . . sixteen times forty? No, no, precious metals used another scale, ahhh . . . troy weight, they called it, back when I was in school. Okay, twelve times forty is four hundred and eighty. How much is gold selling for, these days? Back during the war it was thirty-five dollars an ounce and some of the more morbid types in the Corps in the Pacific carried around a pair of pliers to take the gold teeth out of the jaws of dead Japs.
    But I think it's gone up in price since then. Somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and fifty dollars an ounce, last I heard ... I think. Good God Almighty damn! There's somewhere between fifty and seventy-five thousand dollars sitting here on this old table!
    "Sweet Jesus, I thank you," he breathed fervently. "It looks like a bit of the Luck of the Irish has finally come the way of Alfred O'Brien Fitzgilbert II."

    On the following morning, Fitz missed the biweekly sales meeting and pep rally for the first time since he had secured the job. He just phoned in that he was sick, pinching his nostrils shut to impart a nasal quality to his voice and forcing a few coughs for emphasis.
    That part of his scheme accomplished, Fitz carefully dressed in his shiny-suited "best," coaxed the elderly clunker he now called his car into life, then drove to have the tank filled at the overpriced filling station of Bates' Shopping Center, which offered thirty-day credit accounts to area residents.
    Two hours later, in the business section of the city he once had called his home, Fitz opened his old briefcase and