All the king's men

Chapter Six

It was late March in 1937 when I went to see Miss Littlepaugh in the foul, fox-smelling lair in Memphis, and came to the end of my researches. I had been on the job almost seven months. But other things had happened during that period besides my researches. Tom Stark, a sophomore, had made quarterback on the mythical All Southern Eleven and had celebrated by wrapping an expensive yellow sport job around a culvert on one of the numerous new speedways which bore his father's name. Fortunately, a Highway Patrol car, and not some garrulous citizen, discovered the wreck, and the half-empty bottle of evidence was, no doubt, flung into the night to fall in the dark waters of the swamp. Beside the unconscious form of the Sophomore Thunderbolt lay another form, conscious but badly battered, for in the yellow expensive sport job Tom had had with him a somewhat less expensive yellow-headed sport job, named, it turned out, Caresse Jones. So Caresse wound up in the operating room of the hospital and not in the swamp. She obligingly did not die, though in the future she never would be much of an asset in a roadster. But her father was less obliging. He stamped and swore that he was going to have blood, and breathed indictments, jail, publicity, and lawsuits. His fires, however, were pretty soon banked. Not that it didn't cost some nice change. But in the end the whole transaction was conducted without noise. Mr. Jones was in the trucking business, and somebody pointed out to him that truck ran on state road and that truckers had a lot of contacts with certain state departments.

Tom wasn't hurt a bit, though he lay up in hospital unconscious for three hours while the Boss, pale as a starched sheet, and with his hair hanging and his eyes wild and sweat running down his cheeks, paced the floor of the waiting room and ground one fist into the palm of the other hand while his breath made a labored sound like the breath of his son in the room beyond. Then Lucy Stark got there–it was about four in the morning then–her eyes red but tearless and a stunned look on her face. They had quite a row. But that was after the word had come out that Tom was all right. Up till then he had paced the floor breathing hard, and she had sat and stared straight into the blankness. But when the word came, she got up and went over to stand before him, and say, "You must stop him." Her voice was scarcely above a whisper.

He stood there staring heavily, uncomprehendingly into her face, then put one hand out to touch her, like a bear touching something with a clumsy exploratory paw, and said, through dry lips, "He's–he's going to be all right, Lucy. He's all right."

She shook her head. "No," she said, "he's not all right."

"The doctor–" he took a lurching step toward her–"the doctor said–"

"No, he's not all right," she repeated. "And won't be. Unless you make him."

The blood suddenly flushed heavily into his cheeks. "Now look here, if you mean stopping football–if you–" That was an old story between them.

"Oh, it's not just football. That's bad enough, thinking he's a hero, that there's nothing else in the world–but it's everything that goes with it–he's wild and selfish and idle and–"

"No boy of mine's going to be a sissy, now. That's what you want!"

"I would rather see him dead at my feet than what your vanity will make him."

"Don't be a fool!"

"You will ruin him." Her voice was quiet and even.

"Hell, let him be a man. I never had any fun growing up. Let him have some fun! I want him to have some fun. I used to see people having fun and never had any. I want him to–"

"You will ruin him," she said, with her voice as quiet and even as doom.

"God damn it!–look here–" he began, but by that time I had sneaked out the door and had closed it softly behind me.

But Tom's accident wasn't all that happened that winter.

There was Anne Stanton's project of getting state money for the Children's Home. She got a good handout, and was pleased as punch with herself. She claimed she was about to get a two-year grant, which was badly needed, she said, and was probably right, for the springs of private charity had nigh dried up about 1929 and weren't running more than a trickle even seven years or so later.

There were stirrings down in the Fourth District, where MacMurfee still had things by the short ones. His representative got up in Congress in Washington, which was far off but not as far off as the moon, and aired his views about the Boss and made headlines over the country; so the Boss bought himself a big wad of radio time and aired his views of Congressman Petit and treated the nation to a detailed biography, in several installments, of Congressman Petit, who, it developed from the work of the Boss's research department, had thrown a grenade in a glass house. The Boss didn't answer anything Petit had said, he simply took care of the sayer. The Boss knew all about the so-called fallacy of the _argumentum ad hominem__. "It may be a fallacy," he said, "but it is shore-God useful. If you use the right kind of _argumentum__ you can always scare the _hominem__ into a laundry bill he didn't expect."

Petit didn't come off too well, but you had to hand it to MacMurfee, he never quit trying. Tiny Duffy didn't quit trying, either. He was hell-bent on selling the Boss on the idea of throwing the basic contract for the hospital to Gummy Larson, who was a power in the Fourth District and would no doubt persuade MacMurfee, or, to speak more plainly, would sell him out. The Boss would listen to Tiny about as attentively as you listen to rain on the roof, and say, "Sure, Tiny, sure, we'll talk about it some time," or, "God dam it, Tiny, change your record." Or he may say nothing in reply, but would look at Tiny in a massive, deep-eyed, detached, calculating was, as though he were measuring him for something, and not say a word, till Tiny's voice would trail off into silence so absolute you could hear both men's breathing, Tiny's breath sibilant, quick, and shallow for all his bulk, the Boss's steady and deep.

The Boss, meanwhile, was making that hospital his chief waking thought. He took trips up East to see all the finest, biggest ones, the Massachusetts General, the Presbyterian in New York, the Philadelphia General, and a lot more. "By God," he would say, "I don't care hoe fine they are, mine's gonna be bigger, and any poor bugger in this state can go there and get the best there is and not cost him a dime." When he was off on his trips he spent his time with doctors and architects and hospital superintendents, and never a torch singer or bookmaker. And when he was back home, his office was nothing but a pile of blueprints and notebooks full of his scribbling and books on architecture and heating systems and dietetics and hospital management. You would come in, and he would look up at you and begin talking right in the middle of a beat, as though you had been there all the time, "Now, up at the Massachusetts General they've got–" It was his baby, all right.

But Tiny wouldn't give up.

One night I came into the Mansion, saw Sugar-Boy, who was lounging in the high, chastely proportioned hall with a sheet of newspaper across his knee, a dismantled.38 in his hand, and a can of gun oil on the floor, asked him where the Boss was, watched him while his lips tortured themselves to speak and the spit flew, realized from the jerk of his head that the Boss was back in the library, and went on back to knock on the big door. As soon as I opened the door I ran right into the Boss's eyes like running into the business end of a double-barreled 10-gauge shotgun at three paces, and halted. "Look!" he commanded, heaving his bulk up erect on the big leather couch where he had been propped, "look!"

And he swung the double-barrel round to cover Tiny, who stood at the hearthrug before him and seemed to be melting the tallow down faster than even the log fire on the bricks would have warranted.

"Look," he said to me, "this bastard tried to trick me, tried to smuggle that Gummy Larson in here to talk to me, gets him all the way up here from Duboisville and thinks I'll be polite. But the hell I was polite." He swung to Tiny again. "Was I, was I polite?"

Tiny did not manage to utter a sound.

"Was I, God damn it?" the Boss demanded.

"No," Tiny said, as from the bottom of a deep well.

"I was not," the Boss said. "I didn't get across that doorsill." He pointed at the closed door beyond me. "I told him if I ever wanted to see him I'd send for him, and to get the hell out. But you–" and he snapped out a forefinger at Tiny–"you–"

"I thought–"

"You thought you'd trick me–trick me into buying him. Well, I'm not buying him. I'm going to bust him. I've bought too many sons-of-bitches already. Bust 'em and they'll stay busted, but buy 'em and you can't tell how long they'll stay bought. I bought too many already. I made a mistake not busting you. But I figured you'd stay bought. You're scared not to."

"Now, Boss," Tiny said, "now, Boss, that ain't fair, you know how all us boys feel about you. And all. It ain't being scared, it's–"

"You damned well better be scared," the Boss said, and his voice was suddenly sweet and low. Like a mother whispering to her child in the crib.

But there was new sweat on Tiny.

"Now get out!" the Boss said in a more positive tone.

I looked at the door after it had been closed upon the retreating form, and said, "You certainly do woo your constituency."

"Christ," he said, and sank back on the leather of the couch and shoved some of the blueprints aside. He reached up and tried to unbutton his collar, fumbled, got impatient and snapped off the button and jerked the tie loose. He twisted his heavy head a little from side to side, as though the collar had been choking him.

"Christ," he said, almost pettishly, "can't he understand I don't want him messing round with this thing? And he shoved at the blue prints again.

"What do you expect?" I asked. There's six million dollars involved. Did you ever see the flies stay away from the churn at churning time?"

"He better stay away from this churn."

"He's just being logical. Obviously, Larson is ready to sell out MacMurfee. For a contract. He is a competent builder. He–"

He lunged up to a sitting position, stared at me and demanded, "Are you in on this?"

"It is nothing to me," I said, and shrugged. "You can build it with your bare hands for all of me. I merely said that, given his premises, Tiny is logical."

"Can't you understand?" he demanded, searching my face. "Damn it, can't you understand either?"

"I understand what I understand."

"Can't you understand?" he demanded, and heaved up from the couch, and the instant he was on his feet, from the slight sway of his posture, I knew he had been drinking. He stepped to me and seized my lapel, and shook me a little, fixing his eyes upon my face–now close to him, I could see that they were bloodshot–and saying, "Can't you understand either? I'm building that place, the best in the country, the best in the world, and a bugger like Tiny is not going to mess with it, and I'm going to call it the Willie Stark Hospital and it will be there a long time after I'm dead and gone and you are dead and gone and all those sons-of-bitches are dead and gone, and nobody, no matter he hasn't got a dime, can go there–"

"And will vote for you," I said.

"I'll be dead," he said, "and you'll be dead, and I don't care whether he votes for me or not, he can go there and–"

"And bless your name," I said.

"Damn it!" he shook me hard, crumpling my lapel in his big hand, "you stand there grinning like that–get that grin off your face–get it off or I'll–"

"Listen," I said, "I'm not any of your scum, and I'm still grinning when I please."

"Jack–hell, Jack–you know I don't mean that–it's just you stand there and grin. Damn it, can't you understand? Can't you?" He held the lapel and thrust the big face at me, his eyes gouging into mine, saying, "Can't you? Can't you see I'm not going to let those bastars muck with it? The Willie Stark Hospital? Can't you see? And I'm going to get me the damned best man there is to run it. Yes, sir! The best there is. Yes, sir, up in New York they told me to get him, he was the man. And, Jack, you–"

"Yeah?" I asked.

"You're going to get him."

I disengaged myself from the grasp on my lapel, straightened it, and dropped into a chair. "Get who?" I asked.

"Dr, Stanton," he said "Dr. Adam Stanton."

I almost bounced right out of the chair. The ash off my cigarette fell down my shirt front. "How long have you been having these symptoms?" I asked. "You been seeing any pink elephants?"

"You get Stanton," he said.

"You are hearing voices," I said.

"You get him," he repeated dourly.

"Boss," I said, "Adam is an old pal of mine. I know him like a brother. And I know he hates your guts."

"I'm not asking anybody to love me. Not even you."

"We all love you," I mimicked Tiny, "you know how all us boys feel."

"Get him," he said.

I stood up, stretched, yawned, moved toward the door. "I am leaving," I declared. "Tomorrow, when you are in possession of your faculties, I'll hear what you've got to say."

And I shut the door behind me

Tomorrow, when he was in full possession of his faculties, I heard what he had to say, and it was: "Get Stanton."

So I went to the shabby little monastic apartment where the grand piano glittered like a sneer in the midst of near-squalor and the books and paper piled on chairs and the old coffee cup with dried dregs inside which the colored girl had forgotten to pick up, and where the friend of my youth received me as though he were not a Success and I were not a Failure (both spelled with capital letters), laid his hand on my shoulder, pronounced my name, looked at me from the ice-water-blue, abstract eyes which were a reproach to all uncertain, twisted, and clouded things and were as unwavering as conscience. But the smile on his face, unsealing almost tentatively the firm suture of the mouth, put a warmth in you, a shy warmth like that you discover with surprise in the winter sunshine in late February. That smile was his apology for being what he was, for looking at you the way he did, for seeing what he saw. It did not so much forgive you, and the world, as ask forgiveness for himself for the crime of looking straight at whatever was before him, which might be you. But he didn't smile often. He smiled at me not because I was what I was but because I was the Friend of His Youth.

The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you. He sees in his mind a face which does not exist any more, speaks a name–Spike, Bud, Snip, Red, Rusty, Jack, Dave–which belongs to that now nonexistent face but which by some inane and doddering confusion of the universe is for the moment attached to a not too happily met and boring stranger. But he humors the drooling, doddering confusion of the universe and continues to address politely that dull stranger by the name which properly belongs to the boy face and to the time when the boy voice called thinly across the late afternoon water or murmured by a campfire at night or in the middle of a crowded street said, "Gee, listen to this–'On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble; His forest fleece the Wrekin heaved–' " the Friend of Your Youth is your friend because he does not see you any more.

And perhaps he never saw you. What he saw was simply part of the furniture of the wonderful opening world. Friendship was something he suddenly discovered and had to give away as a recognition of and payment for the breathlessly opening world which momently divulged itself like a moonflower. It didn't matter a damn to whom he gave it, for the fact of giving was what mattered, and if you happened to be handy you were automatically endowed with all the appropriate attributes of a friend and forever after your reality is irrelevant. The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he hasn't the slightest concern with calculating his interest or your virtue. He doesn't give a damn, for the moment, about Getting Ahead or Needs Must Admiring the Best, the two official criteria in adult friendships, and when the boring stranger appears, he puts out his hand and smiles (not really seeing your face) and speaks your name (which doesn't really belong to your face), saying, "Well, Jack, damned glad you came, come on in, boy!"

So I sat in one of his broken-down easy chairs, after he had cleared the books out, and drank his whisky, and waited for the moment when I was going to say, "Now, listen here, I'm going to tell you something and don't you start yelling till I finish."

He didn't yell till I had finished. Not that I took long to finish. I said, "Governor Stark wants you to be director of the new hospital and medical center."

He didn't, to be precise, yell then. He didn't make a sound. He looked at me for nearly a minute, with an unsmiling clinical eye as though my symptoms merit special attention; then he slowly shook his head. "Better think it over," I said, "maybe it's not as bad as it sounds, there may be some angles–" But I let my voice trail off, watching him shake his head again and smile now with the smile which did not forgive me but humbly asked me to forgive him for not being like me, for not being like everybody else, for not being like the world.

If he had not smiled. If he had smiled but had smiled a confident, to-hell-with-you, satirical smile. Or even a smile forgiving me. If he had not smiled the smile which humbly, but with dignity, begged me to forgive him, then things might have been different. But he smiled that way out of the fullness of whatever it was he had, out of the depth of the idea he lived by–whatever the hell it was or whyever the hell he lived that way–and things were the way they turned out to be. Giving that smile, he was like a man who stops to give a beggar a buck and in opening his wallet lets the beggar catch sight of the big roll. If the beggar hadn't seen the big roll he would never have followed the man down the street, waiting for the block without the street lamp. Not so much because he wants the roll as because he now cannot endure the man who has it and gave him a buck.

For as he smiled and said, "But I'm not interested in the angles," I did not feel that shy warmth as of the winter sunshine which I had always felt before when he smiled, but suddenly felt something else, which I didn't have a name for but which was like the winter itself and not the winter sunshine, like the stab of an icicle through the heart. And I thought: _All right, you smile like that–you smile like that–__

So, even as the thought vanished–if a thought can ever be said to vanish, for it rises out of you and sinks back into you–so I said, "But you don't know what the angles are. For instance, the Boss expects you to write your ticket."

"The Boss," he repeated, and on the words his upper lip curled more than customary to expose the teeth, and the sibilance seemed exaggerated, "need to expect to buy me. I have–" he looked about the room at the clutter and near-squalor–"everything I want."

"The Boss isn't any fool. You don't think he was trying to buy you?"

"He couldn't," he said.

"What do you think he was trying to do?"

"Threaten me. That would be next."

"No," I nodded, "no that. He couldn't scare you."

"That is what he seems to depend on. The bribe or the threat."

"Guess again," I said.

He rose from his chair, took a couple of restless paces across the frayed green carpet, then swung to face me. "He needn't think he can flatter me," he said, fiercely.

"Nobody can flatter you," I said, softly, "nobody in the world. And do you know why?"

"Why?"

"Listen, pal, there was a man name Dante, who said that the truly proud man knew his own worth could never commit the sin of envy, for he could believe that there was no one for him to envy. He might just as well have said that the proud man who knew his own worth would not be susceptible to flattery, for he would believe that there was nothing anybody else could tell him about his own worth he didn't know already. No, you couldn't be flattered."

"Not by him, anyway," Adam said grimly.

"Not by anybody," I said. "And he knows it."

"What does he try for, then? Does he think I–"

"Guess again," I said.

He stood there in the middle of the frayed green carpet and stared at me, head slightly lowered, with the slightest shade–not of doubt or perturbation–over the fine abstract blue of the eyes. It was just the shade of question, of puzzlement.

But that is something. Not much, but something. It is not the left to the jaw and it does not rock them on their heels. It does no make the breath come sharp. It is just the tap on the nose, the scrape across with the rough heel of the glove. Nothing lethal, just a moment's pause. But it is an advantage. Push it.

So I repeated, "Guess again."

He did not answer, looking at me, with the shade deeper like a cloud passing suddenly over blue water.

"All right," I said, "I'll tell you. He knows you are the best around, but you don't cash in on it. So obviously, you don't want money, or you would charge folks something like the others in the trade or would hang on to what you do take. You don't want fun, or you would get some, for you are famous, relatively young, and not crippled. You don't want comfort, or you would quit working yourself like a navvy and wouldn't live in this slum. But he knows what you want."

"I don't want anything he can give me," Adam affirmed.

"Are you sure, Adam?" I said. "Are you sure?"

"Damn it–" he began, and the blood was up in his cheeks.

"He knows what you want," I cut in. "I can put it in a word, Adam."

"What?"

"You want to do good," I said.

That stopped him. His mouth was open like a fish's gaping for air.

"Sure," I said, "that's it. He knows your secret."

"I don't see what–" he began, fiercely again.

But I cut in, saying, "Easy now, it's no disgrace. It's just eccentric. That you can't see somebody sick without having to put your hands on him. That you can't see something rotten inside him without wanting to take a knife in your strong, white, and damned welleducated fingers, pal, and cut it out. It is merely eccentric, pal. Or maybe it is a kind of supersickness you've got yourself."

"There's a hell of a lot of sick people," he said glumly, "but I don't see–"

"Pain is evil," I said, cheerfully.

"Pain is _an__ evil," he said, "but it is not evil–it is not evil in itself," and took a step toward me, looking at me like an enemy.

"That's the kind of question I don't debate when I've got the toothache," I retorted, "but the fact remains that you are the way you are. And the Boss–" I delicately emphasized the word _Boss__–"knows it. He knows what you want. He knows your weakness, pal. You want to do good, and he is going to let you do good in wholesale lots."

"Good," he said, wolfishly, and twisted his long, thin upper lip, "good–that's a hell of a word to use around where he is."

"Is it?" I asked casually.

"A thing does not grow except in its proper climate, and you know what kind of a climate that man creates. Or ought to know."

I shrugged. "A thing is good in itself–if it is good. A guy gets ants in his pants and writes a sonnet. Is the sonnet less of a good–if it good, which I doubt–because the dame he got the ants over happened to be married to somebody else, so that his passion, as they say, was illicit? Is the rose less of a rose because–"

"You are completely irrelevant," he said.

"So I am irrelevant," I said, and got out of the chair. "That's what you always used to say when I got in a corner in an argument a thousand years ago when we were boys and argued all night. Could a first-class boxer whip a first-class wrestler? Could a lion whip a tiger? Is Keats better than Shelley? The good, the true, and the beautiful. Is there A God? We argued all night and I always won, but you–you bastard–" and I slapped him on the shoulder–"you always said I was irrelevant. But little Jackie is never irrelevant. Nor is he immaterial, and–" I looked around, scooped up my hat and coat–"I am going to leave you with that thought and–"

"A hell of a thought it is," he said, but he was grinning now, he was my pal now, he was the Friend of My Youth.

But I ignored him anyway, saying–"You can't say I don't put the cards on the table, me and the Boss, but I'm hauling out, for I catch the midnight to Memphis, where I am going to interview a medium."

"A medium?" he echoed.

"An accomplished medium maned Miss Littlepaugh, and she is going to give me word from the Other Shore that the Boss's hospital is going to have a dark, handsome, famous, son-of-a-bitch of a director named Stanton." And with that I slammed his door and was running and stumbling down the dark stairs, for it was the kind of apartment house where the bulb burns out and nobody ever puts a new one in and there is always a kiddie car left on a landing and the carpet is worn to ribbons and the air smells dankly of dogs, diapers, cabbage, old women, burnt grease, and the eternal fate of man.

I stood in the dark street and looked back at the building. The shade of a window was up and I looked in where a heavy, bald man in shirt sleeves sat at a table in what is called a "dinette" and slumped above a plate like a sack propped in a chair, while a child stood at his elbow, plucking at him, and a woman in a slack colorless dress and hair stringing down brought a steaming saucepan from the stove, for Poppa had come home late as usual with his bunion hurting, and the rent was past due and Johnnie needed shoes and Susie's report card wasn't any good and Susie stood at his elbow, plucking at him feebly, and staring at him with her imbecilic eyes and breathing through her adenoids, and the Maxfield Parrish picture was askew on the wall with its blues all having the savage tint of copper sulphate in the glaring light from the unshaded bulb hanging from the ceiling. And somewhere else in the building a dog barked, somewhere else a baby was crying in automatic gasps. And that was Life and Adam Stanton lived in the middle of it, as close as he could get to it; he snuggled up to Life, breathing the cabbage smell, stumbling on the kiddie car, bowing to the young just-married, gum-chewing, hand-holding couple in the hall, hearing through the thin partition the sounds made by the old woman who would be dead (it was cancer he had told me) before summer, pacing the frayed green carpet among the books and broken-down chairs. He snuggled up to Life, to keep warm perhaps, for he didn't have any life of his own–just the office, the knife, the monastic room. Or perhaps he didn't snuggle to keep warm. Perhaps he leaned over Life with his hand on the pulse, watching from the deep-set, abstract, blue clinical eyes, slightly shadowed, leaning ready to pop in the pill, pour the potion, apply the knife. Perhaps he had to be close in order to keep a reason for the things he did. To make the things he did be themselves Life. And not merely a delightful exercise of technical skill which man had been able to achieve because he, of all the animals, had a fine thumb.

Which is nonsense, for whatever you live is Life. That is something to remember when you meet the old classmate who says, "Well, now on our last expedition up the Congo–" or the one who says, "Gee, I got the sweetest little wife and three of the swellest kids ever–" You must remember it when you sit in hotel lobbies or lean over bars to talk to the bartender or stand in a dark street at night, in early March, and stare into a lighted window. And remember little Susie in there has adenoids and the bread is probably burned, and turn up the street, for the time has come to hand me down that walking cane, for I got to catch that midnight train, for all my sin is taken away. For whatever you live is Life.

As I turned away, there was the wild burst of music from up in the building, louder than the baby's cry, shaking the mortar out of the old brick work. It was Adam's piano.

I caught the train for Memphis, stayed three days, had my séance with Miss Littlepaugh, and returned. With some photostats and an affidavit in my brief case.

Upon my return I found the call in my box. It was Anne's number, then Anne's voice on the wire, and, as always, the little leap and plunk in my heart like a frog jumping into a lily pool. With the ripples spreading round.

It was her voice saying she had to see me. I told her that was easy, she could see me all the rest of her life. But she ignored that little joke, as no doubt it deserved, and said for me to meet her right away. "At the Crescent Cove," I suggested, and she agreed. The Crescent Cove was Slade's place.

I was there first, and had a drink with Slade himself in the midst of soft lights and sweet music and the gleam of chromium, and looked at Slade's yellow-ivory bullet head and expensive tailoring and at the reigning blond at the cash register, and remembered wistfully the morning long ago in Prohibition, when in the back room of his fly-bitten speakeasy Slade, with hair on his head than and not a dime in his pocket, had refused to fall in with Duffy's attempt to force beer on Cousin Willie from the country, who was, it turned out, Willie Stark, and who wanted orange pop. That had fixed Slade for ever. So now I had my drink, and looking at him, marveled how little is required for a man to be lost or saved.

And I looked up into the mirror of the bar and saw Anne Stanton come in the door. Or rather, her image come through the image of the door. For the moment I did not turn to face the reality. Instead, I looked at the image which hung there in the glass like a recollection caught in the ice of the mind–you have seen, in winter in the clear ice of a frozen stream, some clean bright gold and red leaf embedded to make you think suddenly of the time when all the bright gold and red leaves had been on the trees like a party and the sunshine had poured down over them as though it would never stop. But it wasn't a recollection, it was Anne Stanton herself, who stood there in the cool room of the looking glass, above the bar barricade of bright bottles and siphons across some distance of blue carpet, a girl–well, not exactly a girl any more, a young woman about five-feet-four with the trimmest pair of nervous ankles and smallish hips which, however, looked as round as though they had been turned on a lathe, and a waist just the width to make you wonder if you could span it with your hand, and all of this done up in a swatch of gray flannel which pretended to a severe mannish cut but actually did nothing but scream for attention to some very unmannish arrangements within.

She was standing there, not quite ready to start patting the blue carpet with an impatient toe, turning her smooth, cool face (under a light-blue felt hat) slowly from one side to the other to survey the room. I caught the flash of blue in her eyes in the mirror. When she was just behind me, she said, "Jack."

I didn't look round. "Slade," I said, "this strange woman keeps following me round, and I thought you ran a respectable place. What the hell are you going to do about it?"

Slade had swung round to look at the strange woman, whose face was all at once chalk-white and whose eyes were uttering sparks like a couple of arc lights. "Lady," Slade said, "now look here, lady–"

Then the lady suddenly overcame the paralysis which had frozen her tongue and the blood hit her cheeks. "Jack Burden!" she said, "if you don't–"

"She knows your name," Slade said.

I turned around to face the reality which was not something caught in the ice of the mind but was something now flushed, feline, lethal, and electric and about to blow a fuse. "Well, I declare," I said, "if it isn't my fiancée! Say, Slade, I want you to meet Anne Stanton. We're going to get married."

"Gee," Slade said, his pan as dead as something in the sink next morning, "I'm glad ter–"

"We're getting married in twenty-hundred-and-fifty," I said. "It will be a June wedding, with–"

"It will be a March murder," Anne said, "right now." Then she smiled, and the blood subsided in her cheeks, and she put out her hand to Slade.

"Glad ter meetcha," Slade said, and though the face which he exhibited might well have belonged to a wooden Indian, the eyes in it didn't miss any of the details suggested by the coat suit. "How about a drink?" he asked.

"Thank you," Anne said, and settled on a Martini After the drink, she said, "Jack, we've got to go," thanked Slade again, and led me away into the night full of neon lights, gasoline fumes, the odor of roasted coffee, and the honk of taxis.

"You have a wonderful sense of humor," she said.

"Where are we going? I sidestepped her remark.

"You are such a smart aleck."

"Where are we going?"

"Aren't you ever going to grow up?"

"Where are we going?"

We were walking aimlessly down the side street past the swinging doors of the bars and oyster joints and past newsstands and old women selling flowers. I bought some gardenias, gave them to her, and said, "I reckon I am a smart aleck, bit it is just a way to pass the time."

We walk on another half block, threading through the crowd that drifted and eddied in and out of the swinging doors.

"Where are we going?"

"I wouldn't be going anywhere with you," she said, "if I didn't have to talk to you."

We were passing another old woman selling flowers. So I took another bunch of gardenias, laid down my four bits, and shoved the blossoms at Anne Stanton. "If you can't be civil," I said, "I'm going to smother you in these damned things."

"All right," she said, and laughed, "all right, I'll be good." And she swung on to my arm and matched her step to mine, holding the flowers in her free hand, her bag tucked under the off elbow.

We kept step, not talking for a half block. I looked down, watching her feet flick out, one-two, one-two. She was wearing black suède shoes, very severe, very mannish, and she clicked the pavement with authority, but they were small and the fine ankles flickered, one-two, one-two, hypnotically.

Then I said, "Where are we going?"

"To walk," she said, "just walk. I'm too restless to be still."

We walked on, down toward the river.

"I had to talk to you," she said.

"Well, talk then. Sing. Spill."

"Not now," she said soberly and looked up at me and I saw in the light of the street lamp that her face was very serious, even worried. The flesh seemed smoothed back, even painfully taut over the wonderful perfection of the bone structure of her face. There wasn't any waste material in that face, and always there was a hint in it of a trained-down, keyed-up intensity, though an intensity kept under the smooth surface of calm, like a flame behind glass. But the intensity was keyed up more than usual, I could see. And I had the feeling that id you turned the wick up a fraction the glass might crack.

I didn't reply, and we took a few more paces. Then she said, "Later. Now just walk."

So we walked. We had left the streets where the bars and pool-rooms and restaurants were, and the blare or whimper of music from beyond the swinging doors. We passed down a grubby, dark street where a couple of boys scurried along by the walls of the houses, uttering short, lost-sounding, hollow calls, like marsh birds. The shutters were all closed on these houses, with here and there a tiny chink of light showing, or perhaps the faint sound of voices. Later in the spring, when the weather turned, people would be sitting out on the sidewalk stoops here in the evenings, talking back and forth, and now and then, if you were a man passing, one of the women would say in a conversational tone, "Hey, bud, you want it?" For this was he edge of the crib section, and some of these houses were cribs. But at this season, at night, whatever kinds of life were in those houses–the good life and the bad life–were still withdrawn deep inside the old husks of damp, crumbling brick or flaking wood. A month from now, in early April, at the time when far away, outside the city, the water hyacinths, would be covering every inch of bayou, lagoon, creek, and backwater wit a spiritual-mauve to obscene-purple, violent, vulgar, fleshy, solid, throttling mass of bloom over the black water, and the first heartbreaking, misty green, like girlhood dreams, on the old cypresses would have settled down to be leaf and not a damned thing else, and the arm-thick, mud-colored, slime-slick moccasins would heave out of the swamp and try to cross the highway and your front tire hitting one would give a slight bump and make a sound like _kerwhush__ and a tiny thump when he slapped heavily up against the underside of the fender, and the insects would come boiling out of the swamps and day and night the whole air would vibrate with them with a sound like an electric fan, and if it was night the owls back in the swamps would be _whoo__ing and moaning like love and death and damnation, or one would sail out of the pitch dark into the rays of your headlights and plunge against the radiator to explode like a ripped feather bolster, and the fields would be deep in that rank, hairy or slick, juicy, sticky grass which the cattle gorge on and never get flesh over the ribs for that grass is in that black soil and no matter how far the roots could ever go, if the roots were God knows how deep, there would never be anything but that black, grease-clotted soil and no stone down there to put calcium into that grass–well, a month from now, in early April, when all those things would be happening beyond the suburbs, the husks of the old houses in the street where Anne Stanton and I were walking would, if it were evening, crack and spill out onto the stoops and into the street all that life which was now sealed up within.

But now the street was blank, and dim, with a leaning lamppost at the end of the block, and the cobbles oily-greasy-glimmering in its rays and the houses shuttered, and the whole thing looked like a set for a play. You expected to see the heroine saunter up, lean against the lamppost and light a cigarette. She didn't come, however, and Anne Stanton and I walked straight through the set, which you knew was cardboard until you put out your hand to touch the damp, furry brick or spongy stucco. We walked on through without talking. Perhaps for the reason that if you are in a place like that which looks like a cardboard stage set and is so damned _q-u-a-i-n-t__, whatever you say will sound as though it had been written by some lop-haired, swivel-hipped fellow who lived in one of those cardboard houses in an upstairs apartment (overlooking the patio–Oh, Jesus, yes, overlooking the patio) and wrote a play for the Little Theater which began with the heroine sauntering into a dim street between rows of cardboard houses and leaning against an askew lamppost to light a cigarette. But Anne Stanton was not that heroine, so she didn't lean against the lamppost and didn't say a word, and we kept on walking.

We walked on down till we came to the river, where the warehouses were and the docks fingered out into the water. The metal roofs of the docks glimmered dully in the rays of the street lamps. Above the pilings of the docks a thick tangle of mist coiled and drifted, broken here and there to show the sleek, velvety, motionless water, which glimmered darkly like the metal of the roofs, or like a seal's black, water-slick fur. A few docks down, the stubby masts of freighters were barely visible against the dark sky. Somewhere downstream a horn was hooting and moaning. We moved along beside the docks, looking out into the river, which was tufted and matted over the blackness with the scraggly, cirrus, cottony mist. But the mist stayed close to the surface of the river, and to look out over it made you think of being on a mountain at night and looking for miles out over clouds below. There were a few lights over on the far shore.

We came to an open pier which I remembered as the place where excursion boats picked up their crowds in summer afternoons for the moonlight ride up the river–big, jostling, yelling, baby-carrying, pop-and-likker-drinking, sweating crowds. But there wasn't any big side-wheeler there now, white as wedding cake, cranky and improbable, with red and gilt decorations, and no calliope was playing "Dixie" and no whistles blowing. The place was as still as a tomb and as blank as Gobi on a moonless night. We walked out to the end of the pier, leaned on the railing, and looked across the river.

"All right," I said.

She didn't answer.

"All right," I repeated, "I thought you wanted to talk."

"It's Adam," she said.

"What about Adam? I asked, evenly.

"You know–you know perfectly well–you went there and–"

"Look here," I said, and I felt my blood getting up and my voice taking on an edge, "I went there and made him a proposition. He's a grown man and if he doesn't like it he doesn't have to take it. There's no use blaming me and–"

"I'm not blaming you," she said.

"You just started to jump me," I said, "but if Adam can't make up his own mind and can't take care of himself, you needn't blame me."

"I'm not blaming you, Jack. You're so jumpy and touchy, Jack." She laid her hand on my arm, on the rail, and patted me, and I felt the head of steam in me drop a few pounds of pressure.

"If he can't take care of himself, then you–" I began.

But she cut in, quick and sharp, "He can't. That's the trouble."

"Now, look here, all I did was to offer him a proposition."

Her hand, which had been laid on my forearm to soothe me and pat down the steam pressure, suddenly clamped on me, driving the fingers damned near to the bone. I jumped, an even as I jumped, I heard her say, in a low, tense voice, almost a whisper, "You can make him take it."

"He's a grown man and he–" I began.

But she cut in again, "You've got to make him–you've got to!"

"For God's sake!" I said.

"You've got to," she repeated, in that same voice, and I was sure that the fingers clenched on my arm were bringing blood.

"You were just now giving me hell because I merely offered him the proposition," I said, "and now you say I've got to make him take it."

"I want him to take it," she said, and her fingers fell away from their grip.

"Well, I'm damned," I observed in the direction of the great interstellar darkness, and then peered into her face. There wasn't much light–I could see the face, an unnatural chalk-white, and the eyes were just dark gleams–but I could tell that she meant what she said. "So you want him to take it?" I said slowly. "And you're Governor Stanton's daughter and Adam Stanton's sister, and you want him to take it?"

"He's got to," she said, and I saw her small gloved hands clench on the railing, and felt sorry for the railing. She stared out over the coiling carpet of the river mist, as from the mountain out over the clouds hiding the dark world.

"Why?" I asked.

"I went up there," she said, still looking out over the river, "to talk to him about it. I wasn't sure he ought to when I went up. I wasn't sure then, but when I saw him I was."

Something about what she was saying disturbed me, like an offstage noise or something caught out of the tail of your eye or an itch that comes when your hands are full and you can't scratch. I was listening to what she was saying, and it wasn't that. It was something else. But I couldn't catch what. So I shoved it onto the back of the stove, and listened to what she was saying.

"When I saw how he was," she was saying, "I knew. I just knew. Oh, Jack, he was all worked up–it wasn't natural–just because he had been asked. He has cut himself off from everything–from everybody. Even from me. Not really, but it's not like it used to be."

"He's awful busy," I objected lamely.

"Busy," she echoed, "busy–yes, he's busy. Ever since he was in medical school, he has worked like a slave. There's just something driving him–driving him. It's not money and it's not reputation and it's not–I just don't know what–" Her voice drifted off.

"It is very simple," I said. "He wants to do good."

"Good," she echoed. Then, "I used to think so–oh, he does good–but–"

"But what?"

"Oh, I don't know–and I shouldn't say it–I shouldn't–but I almost think that the work–even the doing good–everything is just a way to cut himself off. Even from me–even me–"

Then she said, "Oh, Jack, we had an awful row. It was awful. I went home and cried all night. You know how we've always been. And to have a terrible row. You know how we've been? You know?" She insisted, and clutched my arm, as though to make me agree, to make me tell her how they had been.

"Yes," I said, "I know." I looked at her and was afraid for a second she was going to cry again, but she didn't, and I should have known it, for she was the kind that did her crying on the midnight pillow. If she did any.

"I told him," she was saying, "I told him that if he wanted to do any good–really do any good–here was the time. And the way. To see that the Medical Center was run right. And even expanded. And all that. But he just froze up and said he wouldn't touch the thing. And I accused him of being selfish–of being selfish and proud–of putting his pride before everything. Before doing good–before his duty. Then he just glared at me, and grabbed me by the wrist and said I couldn't understand anything, that a man owed himself something. I said it was his pride, just his pride, and he said he was proud not to touch filth, and if I wanted him to do that I could just–" She stopped, took a breath and, I guessed, a new grip on her nerve to say what she was about to say. "Well, what he was going to say was that I could get out. But he didn't say it. I'm glad–" she paused again–"I'm glad he didn't say it. At least, he didn't say it."

"He didn't mean it," I said.

"I don't know–I don't know. If you had seen his eyes blazing and his face all white and drawn. Oh, Jack–" she grabbed my arm again, and shook me as though I were holding back an answer–"why won't he do it? Why is he this way? Doesn't he see he ought to? That he's the man and he's got to? Why, Jack? Why?"

"To be perfectly brutal," I said, "it is because he is Adam Stanton, the son of Governor Stanton and grandson of Judge Peyton Stanton, and the great-grandson of General Morgan Stanton, and he has lived all his life in the idea that there was a time a long time back when everything was run by high-minded, handsome men wearing knee breeches and silver buckles or Continental blue or frock coats, or even buckskin and coonskin caps, as the case may be–for Adam Stanton isn't any snob–who sat around a table and candidly debated the good of the public thing. It is because he is a romantic, and he has a picture of the world in his head, and when the world doesn't conform in any respect to the picture, he wants to throw the world away. Even if that means throwing out the baby with the bath. Which," I added, "it always does mean."

That held her for a moment. She turned her face from me and looked out over the misty river again. The she murmured, "He ought to take it."

"Well," I said, "if you want him to do it, you've got to change the picture of the world inside his head. If I know Adam Stanton." And I did know Adam Stanton, and at that moment I could see his face with the skin drawn back tight over the bone and the strong mouth like the neatly healed wound and the deep-set blue eyes blazing like pale ice.

She hadn't answered me.

"That's the only way," I said, "and you might as well settle for that."

"He ought to do it," she whispered, looking over the river.

"How much do you want him to?"

She swung to me, and I peered into her face. Then she said, "As much as I want anything."

"You mean that?" I said.

"I mean it. He's got to. To save himself." She grabbed my arm again. "For himself. As much as for everybody else. For himself."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure," she said, fiercely.

"I mean sure that you want him to do it? More than anything?"

"Yes," she said.

I studies her face. It was a beautiful face–or if not beautiful, better than beautiful, a tense, smooth, spare-modeled, finished face, and it was chalk-white in the shadow and in the eyes were dark gleams. I studied her face, and for a moment just did that and let all the questions just slide away, like something dropped into the mist and water below us to slide away in the oily silence of the current.

"Yes," she repeated, whispering.

But I kept on peering into her face, really looking at it for the first time, after all the years, for the close, true look at a thing can only be one snatched outside of time and the questions.

"Yes," she whispered, and laid her hand on my arm, lightly this time.

And at the touch I came out of what I had been sunk in.

"All right," I said, shaking myself, "but you don't know what you are asking for."

"It doesn't matter," she said. "Can you make him?"

"I can," I said.

"Well, why didn't you–why did you wait–why–"

"I don't think–" I said slowly–"I don't think I would have ever done it–at least, not this way–if you, you yourself, hadn't asked me."

"How can you do it?" she demanded, and the fingers closed on my arm.

"It is easy," I said, "I can change the picture of the world he carries around in his head."

"How?"

"I can give him a history lesson."

"A history lesson?"

"Yes, I am a student of history, don't you remember? And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost. But Adam, he is a scientist, and everything is tidy for him, and one molecule of oxygen always behaves the same way when it gets around two molecules of hydrogen, and a thing is always what it is, and so when Adam the romantic makes a picture of the world in his head, it is just like the picture of the world Adam the scientist works with. All tidy. All neat. The molecule of good always behaves the same way. The molecule of bad always behaves the same way. There are–"

"Stop it," she ordered, "stop it, and tell me. You are trying not to tell me. You are talking so you won't tell me. Now, tell me."

"All right," I said. "You remember I asked you about Judge Irwin being broken?" Well, he was. His wife wasn't rich, either. He just thought she was. And he took a bribe."

"Judge Irwin?" she echoed. "A bribe?"

"Yes," I said. "And I can prove it."

"He–he was father's friend, he was–" She paused, straightened herself, swung her face from me and looked out over the river, then, after a moment, in a sturdy voice, as though not to me but to the whole wide world over there beyond the mist: "Well, that doesn't prove anything. Judge Irwin."

I didn't reply. I, too, stared out over the coiling mist, in the dark.

I was aware, though I didn't look when she turned toward me again.

"Well, say something," she said, and I heard the tension in her voice.

But I didn't say anything. I stood there waiting; and waiting, I could hear, in the silence, the tiny suck and lapping about the piles down in the mist.

Then she said, "Jack–was my–was my father–was–"

I didn't answer.

"You coward!" she said, "you coward, you won't tell me."

"Yes," I said.

"Did he take a bribe? Did he? Did he?" She had grabbed my arm and was shaking me, hard.

"Not that bad," I said.

"Not that bad, not that bad," she mimicked, and burst out laughing, hanging on my arm. The she suddenly released me, thrust my arm from her as though it were foul, and shrank back. "I don't believe it," she announced.

"It's true," I said. "He knew about Irwin and protected him. I can prove it. I have documents. I'm sorry, but it's true."

"Oh, you're sorry! You're sorry. You dug it all up, all the lies–for that man–for that Stark–for him–and you–you're so sorry." And she began to laugh again, and swung away, and was running down the pier, laughing and stumbling as she ran.

I ran after her.

I was just about to grab her, at the end of the pier, when the cop stepped out of the shadow of the warehouse, and said, "Hey, buddy!"

Just then, Anne stumbled and I grabbed her by the arm. She swayed in my grasp.

The cop approached. "What's up?" he demanded. "What you runnen that dame fer?"

"She's hysterical," I said, talking fast, "I'm just trying to take care of her, she's had a few drinks, just a couple, and she's hysterical, she's had a great shock, a grief–"

The cop, heavy, squat, hairy, took one waddling stride toward us, then leaned and whiffed her breath.

"–she's had a sock, and it has upset her so she took a drink, and she's hysterical. I'm trying to get her home."

His beefy, black-jowled face swung toward me. "I'll get you home," he allowed, "in the wagon. If you ain't careful."

He was just talking. I knew he was just talking to hear himself, for it was late and he was bored and dull. I knew that, and should have said, respectfully, that I would be careful, or have said, laughing and perhaps winking, that sure, Captain, I'd get her home. But I didn't say either thing. I was all keyed up, and she was swaying in my clutch, making a kind of sharp, broken noise with her breathing, and his God-damned beefy, black-jowled face was there in front of me. So I said, "The hell you will."

His eyes bugged out a little at that, the jowls swelled with black blood, and he lunged one step closer, fingering his stick, saying, "The hell I won't, I'm gonna right now, both of you, by God!"

Then he said, "Come on," prodded me with the stick, and repeated, "Come on," herding me toward the end of the pier, where no doubt, the box was he would use to call.

I took two or three steps forward, feeling the prod of the stick in the small of my back, dragging Anne, who hadn't said a word. Then I remember, "Listen here, if you want to be on the force in the morning, you better listen to me."

"Listen, hell," he rejoined and jabbed my kidney a little harder.

"If it weren't for the lady," I said, "I'd let you go on and bust yourself. I don't mind a ride to headquarters. But I'll give you a chance.

"Chance," he echoed, and spat from the side of his mouth, and jabbed again.

"I'm going to reach into my pocket," I said, 2not for a gun, just for my wallet, so I can show you something. Did you ever hear of Willie Stark?"

"Sure," he said. And jabbed.

"You ever hear of Jack Burden," I asked, "the newspaper fellow who is a sort of secretary to Willie?"

He reflected a moment, still prodding me on. "Yeah," he said then, grudgingly.

"Then maybe you'd like my card," I said, and reached for the wallet.

"Naw, you don't," he said, and let the weight of the stick lie across my lifted forearm, "naw you don't, I'm gitten it myself."

He reached in for the wallet, took it, and started to open it. As a matter of principle.

"You open that," I said, "and I'll bust you anyway, call the wagon or not. Give ii here."

He passed it over to me. I drew out a card, and handed it to him.

He studied it in the bad light. "Jeez," he said, with a slight hissing sound like the air escaping from a child's balloon, "how wuz I to know you wuz on the payroll?"

"You damned well better find out next time," I said, before you get gay. Now call me a cab."

"Yes, sir," he said, hating me with the pig's eyes out of the swollen face. "Yes, sir," he said, and went to the box.

Suddenly Anne pulled herself loose from me, and I thought she was going to run. So I grabbed her again. "Oh, you're so wonderful," she said, in a harsh whisper, "so wonderful–you're grand–you bully the bullies–you cop the cops–you're wonderful–"

I stood there holding her, not listening, aware only of a weight in my middle like a cold stone.

"–you're so wonderful–and clean–everything is so wonderful and clean–"

I didn't say anything.

"–you're so damned wonderful–and clean and strong–oh, you're a hero–"

"I'm sorry I acted like a son-of-a-bitch," I said.

"I can imagine to what particular thing you are referring," she whispered in mock sweetness, underscoring the _particular__, setting it meticulously in my hide like a banderilla. Then she swung her face from me, and wouldn't look at me, and the arm I clutched might as well have belonged to a dummy in a show window, and the cold stone in my stomach was a stone in a deep well covered with slime, and the pig's eyes in the swollen, black-jowled face came back and hated me in the dull, mist-streaked night, and a horn moaned down the river, and in the cab Anne Stanton sat back in one corner, very straight and as far from me as possible, and the light from the street lamps we passed would flicker across her white face. She would not speak to me. Until we came to a street with a car track on it. Then she said, "Get out. You can catch some car here. I don't want you to take me home."

So I got out.

Five nights later I heard Anne Stanton's voice on the telephone.

It said, "Those things–those papers you said you had–send them to me."

I said, I'll bring them."

It said, "No. Send them."

I said, "All right. I've got extra photostat of one thing. Tomorrow I'll get photostat of the other paper and send them together."

It said, "A photostat. So you don't trust me."

I said, "I'll send them tomorrow."

Then there was the click, in the little black tube. Then the tiny, windy, humming sound which is the sound of space falling away from you, and of infinity, and of absolute nothingness.

Every night when I came into my room, I would look at the telephone. I would say to myself: _It is going to ring__. Once, even, I was sure that it had rung, for the tingle and stab of its ringing was in all my nerves. But it hadn't rung. I had merely fallen asleep. Once I picked up the thing and held it to my ear, listening to the tiny, humming sound which is the sound of the various things I have already mentioned.

Every night, at the desk in the lobby, I asked if there have been any numbers left for me. Yes, sometimes there were numbers. But never the right number.

Then I would go up to my room, where the telephone was and the brief case with the photostat and the affidavit from Memphis. I hadn't given that to the Boss yet. I hadn't even told him about it yet. Not that I was thinking about not giving it to him. I would give it to him. That was in the cards. But not yet. Not quiet yet. After the telephone had rung.

But it didn't ring.

Instead, after about a week, one night as I turned the corner of the corridor, I saw a woman sitting on the bench down beyond my door. I fumbled for my key, inserted it in the lock, and was about to enter when I was aware that the woman stood beside me. I swung toward her. It was Anne Stanton.

She had made no sound on the deep carpet. Not with her light foot.

"You gave me heart failure," I said, and swung the door wide, and added, "Come in."

"I thought you were so careful about my reputation," she said. "At least you claimed to be. Once."

"I remember," I said, "but come in anyway."

She walked into the room and stood in the middle of the floor with her back to me while I shut the door. I noticed that she had a brown manila envelope in her hand, with her bag.

No turning to me, she stepped to the desk by the wall and flung down the envelope. "There it is," she said. "The photostats. I brought them back. But I would have brought back the originals if you had trusted me with them."

"I know it," I said.

"It was awful," she said, still not turning to me.

I went across to her and touched her shoulder. "I'm sorry," I said.

"It was awful. You don't know."

I didn't know how awful. So I stood there just behind her and didn't dare to touch her again, even with the weight of my finger.

"You don't know," she said.

"No," I said, "I don't."

"It was awful." The she turned to put her wide eyes on me, and I had the impression of stumbling into a well. "It was awful," she said. "I gave them to him–those things–and he read them and then he just stood there–he didn't move–he didn't make a sound–and his face was white as a sheet and I could hear him breathing. Then I touched him–and he looked at me–he looked at me a long time. Then he said–he looked at me and said, 'You." That was what he said, 'You." Looking at me."

"God damn it," I said, "God damn it, what's he blaming you for, why doesn't he blame Governor Stanton?"

"He does," she said. "Oh, he blames him. That is what is so awful. The way he blames him. His father. You remember–you remember, Jack–" she reached out and laid her hand on my forearm–"you remember–our father–how he was–how he used to read to us–how he loved us–how he taught Adam and how proud he was on him–how he took all that time to teach Adam himself–oh, Jack, he sat there in front of the fire and I was a little girl and he would read to us and I put my head against his knee–oh, Jack–you remember?"

"I remember," I said "Yes," she said, "yes–and mother was dead and father did all he could–he was so proud of Adam–and now Adam–and now–" She released my arm, and stepped back and lifted her hands, putting her fingers to her forehead in a distracted gesture. "Oh, Jack, what Have I done?" she whispered.

"You did what you thought you ought to do," I said firmly.

"Yes," she whispered, "yes, that was it."

"It's done now," I said.

"Yes, it is done," she said, out loud, and her jaw closed with an expression which suddenly made her look like Adam, the mouth firm and sealed, the skin drawn and tight on the flesh, and she lifted her head to stare the world down, and I felt like bursting into tears. If that had been my habit.

"Yes," I said, "it's done."

"He'll do it," she said.

And I almost demanded, What, do what? For, for the moment, I had forgotten the reason that I had told Anne the facts, the reason that I had given her the photostats, the reason that she had shown them to her brother. I had forgotten that there was a reason. But I remembered now, and questioned, "You persuaded him?"

"No," she shook her head slowly, "no, I didn't say anything. I gave those things to him. He knew."

"What happened?"

"What I told you. He looked at me hard, and said 'You.' Just like that. Then I said, 'Adam, don't say it that way, you mustn't, Adam, you mustn't!' And he said, 'Why?' And I said, 'Because I love you, because I love him, love Father.' And he kept on looking at me, then said, 'Love him!' Then, 'Damn his soul to hell!' I called out, 'Adam, Adam,' but he turned his back on me, and walked across the room to his bedroom door and went in and shut the door. Then I went out and walked by myself, in the dark, for a long time. So I could sleep. For three days I didn't hear from him. Then he asked me to come to see him. I went, and he gave me back those things." She pointed to the manila envelope. "He told me to tell you that he would do it. To arrange it. That was all."

"That was a good deal," I said.

"Yes," she said, and moved past me toward the door. She put her hand to the knob, turned it, and drew the door ajar. She looked back at me, and said, "Yes, it was a good deal."

And went out.

But she stood with her hand on the doorjamb. "One thing," she said.

"What?" I asked.

"A favor," she said, "to me. Before you ever use those things, those papers, show them to Judge Irwin. Give him a chance. At least, a chance."

I agreed to that.

The big black Cadillac, the hood glistening dully under the street lamps–as I could see even from the back seat–eased down the street, making its expensive whisper under the boughs which had new leaves on them, for it was early April now. Then we got to a street where there were not any nice trees arching over.

"Here," I said, "that place on the right, just beyond that grocery."

Sugar-Boy put the Cadillac up to the curb, like a mother laying Little Precious down with a last kiss. The he ran around to open the door for the Boss, but he boss already on the curb. I uncoiled myself and stood beside him. "This is the joint," I remarked, and started in.

For we were going to see Adam Stanton.

When I told the Boss that Adam Stanton would take the job and that he had sent me a message to arrange things, the Boss had said, "Well." Then he had looked at me from toe to crown, and said, "You must be Svengali."

"Yeah," I had said, "I am Svengali."

"I want to see him," the Boss had said.

"I'll try to get him up here."

"Get him up here?" the Boss had said. "I'll go there. Hell, he's doing me a favor."

"Well, you're the Governor, aren't you?"

"You're damned right I am," the Boss had said, "but he is Doc Stanton. When do we go?"

I had told him it would have to be at night, that you never could catch him except at night.

So here we were, at night, entering the door of the crummy apartment house, climbing the dark stairs, stumbling over the kiddie car, inhaling the odor of cabbage and diapers. "He sure picked himself a place to live," the Boss said.

"Yeah," I agreed, "and lots of folks can't figure out why."

"I reckon I can," the Boss said.

And as I wondered whether he could or not, we reached the door, and I knocked, entered, and confronted the level eyes of Adam Stanton.

For a half moment, while Sugar-Boy was easing in, and I was shutting the door, Adam and the Boss simply took each other in, without a word. Then I turned and said, "Governor Stark, this is Dr. Stanton."

The Boss took a step forward and put out his right hand. Perhaps I imagined it, but I thought I noticed a shade of hesitation before Adam took it. And the Boss must have noticed it, too, for when Adam did put out his hand, the Boss, in the middle of the shake, before any other word had been spoken, grinned suddenly, and said, "See, boy, it's not as bad as you thought, it won't kill you."

Then, by God, Adam grinned, too.

Then I said, "And this is Mr. O'Shean," and Sugar-Boy lurched forward and put out one of his stubby arms with a hand hanging on the end of it like a stuffed glove, and twisted his face and began, "I'm pl-pl-pl-pl–"

"I'm glad to know you," Adam said. Then I saw his glance pick up the bulge under Sugar-Boy's left armpit. He turned to the Boss. "So this is one of your gunmen I've heard about?" he said, definitely not grinning now.

"Hell," the Boss said, "Sugar-Boy just carries that for fun. Sugar-Boy is just a pal. Ain't anybody can drive a car like Sugar-Boy."

Sugar-Boy was looking at him like a dog you've just scratched on the head.

Adam stood there, and didn't reply. For a second I thought the deal was about to blow up. The Adam said, very formally, "Won't you gentlemen have seats?"

We did.

Sugar-Boy sneaked one of his lumps of sugar out of the side pocket of his coat, put it into his mouth, and began to suck it, with his fey Irish cheeks drawn in and his eyes blurred with bliss.

Adam waited, sitting straight up in his chair.

The Boss, leaning back in one of the overstuffed wrecks, didn't seem to be in ant hurry. But he finally said, "Well, Doc, what do you think of it?"

"Of what?" Adam demanded.

"Of my hospital?"

"I think it will do the people of the state some good," he said. Then added, "And get you some votes."

"You can forget about the vote side of it," the Boss said. "There are lots of ways to get votes, son."

"So I understand," Adam said. Then he handed the Boss another big chunk of silence to admire.

The Boss admired it awhile, then said, "Yeah, it'll do some good. But not too much unless you take over."

"I won't stand any interference," Adam said, and bit the sentence off.

"Don't worry," the Boss laughed. "I might fire you, boy, but I wouldn't interfere."

"If that is a threat," Adam said, and the pale-blue blaze flickered up in his eyes, "you have wasted your time by coming here. You know my opinions of this administration. They have been no secret. And they will be no secret in the future. You understand that?"

"Doc," the Boss said, "Doc, you just don't understand politics. I'll be frank with you. I could run this state and ten more like it with you howling on every street corner like a hound with a sore tail. No offense. But you just don't understand."

"I understand some things," Adam said grimly, and the jaw set.

"And some you don't, just like I don't, but one thing I understand and you don't is what makes the mare go. I can make the mare go. And one more thing, now we are taking down our hair–" The Boss suddenly stopped, cocked his head, leered at Adam, then demanded, "Or are we?"

"You said there was one more thing," Adam replied, ignoring the question, sitting straight in his chair.

"Yeah, one more thing. But look here, Doc–you know Hugh Miller?"

"Yes," Adam said, "yes, I know him."

"Well, he was in with me–yeah, Attorney General–and he resigned. And you know why?" But he went on without waiting for the answer. "He resigned because he wanted to keep his little hands clean. He wanted the bricks but he just didn't know somebody has to paddle in the mud to make 'em. He was like somebody that just loves beefsteak but just can't bear to go to a slaughter pen because there are some bad, rough men down there who aren't animal lovers and who ought to be reported to the S. P. C. A. Well, he resigned."

I watched Adam's face. It was white and stony, as though carved out of some slick stone. He was like a man braced to hear what the jury foreman was going to say. Or what the doctor was going to say. Adam must have seen a lot of faces like that in his time. He must have had to look into them and tell them what he had to tell.

"Yeah," the Boss said, "he resigned. He was one of those guys wants everything and wants everything two ways at once. You know the kind, Doc?"

He flicked a look over at Adam, like a man flicking a fly over by the willows in the trout stream. But there wasn't any strike.

"Yeah, old Hugh–he never learned that you can't have everything. That you can have mighty little. And you never have anything you don't make. Just because he inherited a little money and the name Miller he thought you could have everything. Yeah, and he wanted the one last damned thing you can't inherit. And you know what it is?" He stared at Adam's face.

"What?" Adam said, after a long pause.

"Goodness. Yeah, just plain, simple goodness. Well you can't inherit that from anybody. You got to make it, Doc. If you want it. And you got to make it out of badness. Badness. And you know why, Doc?" He raised his bulk up in the broken-down wreck of an overstuffed chair he was in, and leaned forward, his hands on his knees, his elbows cocked out, his head outthrust and the hair coming down to his eyes, and stared into Adam's face. "Out of badness," he repeated. "And you know why? Because there isn't anything else to make it out of." Then, sinking back into the wreck, he asked, softly, "Did you know that, Doc?"

Adam didn't say a word.

Then the Boss asked, softer still, almost whispering, "Did you know that, Doc?"

Adam wet his lips and said, "There is one question I should like to ask you. It is this. If, as you say, there is only the bad to start with, and the good must be made from the bad, then how do you ever know what the good is? How do you ever recognize the good? Assuming you have made it from the bad. Answer me that."

"Easy, Doc, easy," the Boss said.

"Well, answer it."

"You just make it up as you go along."

"Make up what?"

"The good," the Boss said, "What the hell else are we talking about. Good with a capital G."

"So you make it up as you go along?" Adam repeated gently.

"What the hell else you think folks been doing for a million years, Doc? When your great-great-grandpappy climbed down out of the tree, he didn't have any more notion of good or bad, or right and wrong, than the hoot owl that stayed up in the tree. Well, he climbed down and he began to make Good as he went along. He made up what he needed to do business, Doc. And what he made up and got everybody to mirate on as good and right was always just a couple of jumps behind what he needed to do business on. That's why thing change, Doc. Because what folks claim is right is always just a couple of jumps short of what they need to do business. Now an individual, one fellow, he will stop doing business because he's got a notion of what is right, and he is a hero. But folks in general, which is society, Doc, is never going to stop doing business. Society is just going to cook up a new notion of what is right. Society is sure not ever going to commit suicide. At least, not that way and of a purpose. And that is a fact. Now ain't it?"

"Is it?" Adam said.

"You're damned right it is, Doc. And right is a lid you put on something and some of the things under the lid look just like some of the things not under the lid, and there never was any notion of what was right if you put it down on folks in general that a lot of them didn't start squalling because they just couldn't do any human business under that kind of right. Hell, look at when folks couldn't get a divorce. Look at all the good women got beat and the good men got nagged and couldn't do any human damned thing about it. Then, all of a sudden, a divorce got to be right. What next, you don't know. Nor me. But I do know this." He stopped, leaned forward again, the elbows again cocked out.

"What?" Adam demanded.

"This. I'm not denying there's got to be a notion of right to get business done, but by God, any particular notion at any particular time will sooner or later get to be just like a stopper put tight in a bottle of water and thrown in a hot stove the way we kids used to do at school to hear the bang. The steam that blows the bottle and scares the teacher to wet her drawers is just the human business that is going to get done, and it will blow anything you put it in if you seal it tight, but you put it in the right place and let it get out in a certain way and it will run a freight engine." he sank back again into the chair, his eyelids sagging now, but the eyes watchful, and the hair down over his forehead like an ambush.

Adam got up suddenly, and walked across the room. He stopped in front of the dead fireplace, with old ashes still in it, and some half-burned paper, though spring was on us, and there hadn't been any fire for a time. The window was up, and the night air came into the room, with a smell different from the diaper-and-cabbage smell, a smell of damp grass and the leaves hanging down from the arched trees in the dark, a smell that definitely did not belong there in that room. And all of a sudden I remembered once how into a room where I was sitting one night, a big pale apple-green moth, big as a bullbat and soft and silent as a dream–a Luna moth, the name is mine, and it is a wonderful name–came flying in. Somebody had left the screen door open, and the moth drifted in over the tables and chairs like a big pale-green, silky, live leaf, drifting and dancing along without any wind under the electric light where a Luna moth certainly did not belong. The night air coming into the room now was like that.

Adam leaned an elbow on the wooden mantelpiece where you could write your name in the dust and the books were stacked and the old, dregs-crusted coffee sat. He stood there as though he were all by himself.

The Boss was watching him.

"Yeah," the Boss said, watchful, "it will run a freight engine and–"

But Adam broke in, "What are you trying to convince me of? You don't have to convince me of anything. I've told you I'd take the job. That's all!" He glare at the bulky man in the big chair, and said, "That's all! And my reasons are my own."

The Boss gave a slow smile, shifted his weight in the chair, and said, "Yeah, your reasons are your own, Doc. But I just thought you might want to know something about mine. Since we're going to do business together."

"I am going to run the hospital," Adam said, and added with curling lips, "If you call that doing business together."

The Boss laughed out loud. Then got up from the chair. "Doc," he said, "just don't you worry. I'll keep your little mitts clean. I'll keep you clean over, Doc. I'll put you in that beautiful, antiseptic, sterile, six-million-dollar hospital, and wrap you in cellophane, untouched by human hands." He stepped to Adam and slapped him on the shoulder. "Don't you worry, Doc." he said.

"I can take care of myself," Adam affirmed, and looked down at the hand on his shoulder.

"Sure you can, Doc," the Boss said. He removed his hand from the shoulder. Then his tone changed, suddenly businesslike and calm. "You will no doubt want to see all the plans which have been drawn up. They are subject to your revision after you consult with the architects. Mr. Todd, of Todd and Waters, will come to see you about it. And you can start picking your staff. It is all your baby."

He turned away and picked up his hat from the piano top. He swung back toward Adam and gave him a summarizing look, from top to toe and back. "You're a great boy, Doc," he said, "and don't let 'em tell you different."

Then he wheeled to the door, and went out before Adam could say a word. If there was any word to say.

Sugar-Boy and I followed. We didn't stop to say good night and thanks for the hospitality. That just didn't seem to be in the cards. At the door, however, I looked back and said, "So long, boy," but Adam didn't answer.

Down in the street, the Boss hesitated on the curb, beside the car. Then he said, "You all go on. I'm walking." He turned up the street, toward town, past the crummy apartment house and the little grocery and the boarding houses and the shotgun bungalows.

Just as I climbed in beside Sugar-Boy, in the place the Boss always took, I heard the burst of music from the apartment house. The window was open and the music was very loud. Adam was beating the hell out of that expensive piano, and filling the night air with racket like Niagara Falls.

We rolled down the street, and passed the Boss, who, walking along with his head down, didn't pay us any mind. We pulled on into one of the good streets with the trees arching overhead and the new leaves looking black against the sky, or pale, almost whitish, where the rays of a street lamp struck them. We were beyond the sound of Adam's music now.

I lay back and closed my eyes ant took the sway and dip of the car, which was soft and easy, and thought of the Boss and Adam Stanton facing each other across that room. I had never expected to see that. But it had happened.

I had found the truth, I had dug the truth up out of the ash pile, the garbage heap, the kitchen midden, the bone yard, and had sent that little piece of truth to Adam Stanton. I couldn't cut the truth to match his ideas. Well, he'd have to make his ideas match the truth. That is what all of us historical researchers believe. The truth shall make you free.

So I lay back and thought of Adam and the truth. And of the Boss and what he had said the truth was. The good was. The right was. And lying there, lulled in the Cadillac, I wondered if he believed what he had said. He had said that you have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have got to make it out of. Well, we had made some good out of some bad. The hospital, The Willie Stark Hospital, which was going to be there when Willie Stark was dead and gone. As Willie Stark had said. Now if Willie Stark believed that you always had to make the good out of the bad, why did he get so excited when Tiny just wanted to make a logical little deal with the hospital contract? Why did he get so heated up just because Tiny's brand of Bad might get mixed in the raw materials from which he was going to make some Good? "Can't you understand?" the Boss demanded of me, grabbing my lapel. "Can't you understand, either? I'm building that place, the best in the country, the best in the world, and a bugger like Tiny is not going to mess with it, and I'm going to call it the Willie Stark Hospital and it will be there a long time after I'm dead and gone and you are dead and gone and all those sons-of-bitches are dead and gone–" That was scarcely consistent. It was not at all consistent. I would have to ask the Boss about it sometime.

I had asked the Boss about something else once. The night after the impeachment blew up. The night when the great crowd that poured into the town stood on the lawn of the Capitol, trampling the flower beds beneath the great frock-coated and buckskin-clad and sword-bearing bronze statues which were History. When out of the tall dark doorway of the Capitol, under the blue glares of the spotlights Willie Stark walked out to stand at the top of the high steps, heavy and slow-looking, blinking in the light. He stood there, the only person up there on the wide expanse of stone, seeming to be lonely and lost against the mass of stone which reared behind him, standing there blinking. The long chant of "Willie–Willie–we want Willie," which had swelled up from the crowd, stopped as he came out. For an instant as he waited, there wasn't a sound. Then suddenly there was the great roar from the crowd, without any words. It was a long time before he lifted his hand to stop it. Then the roar died away as though under the pressure of his slowly descending hand.

Then he said, "They tried to ruin me, but they are ruined."

And the roar came again, and died away, under the hand.

He said, "They tried to ruin me because they did not like what I have done. Do you like what I have done?"

The roar came, and died.

He said, "I tell you what I am going to do. I am going to build a hospital. The biggest and the finest money can buy. It will belong to you. Any man or woman or child who is sick or in pain can go in those doors and know that all will be done that man can do. To heal sickness. To ease pain. Not as charity. But as a right. It is your right. Do you hear? It is your right!"

The roar came.

He said, "And it is your right that every child shall have a complete education. That no person aged and infirm shall want or beg for bread. That the man who produces something shall be able to carry it to market without miring to the hub, without toll. That no poor man's house or land shall be taxed. That the rich men and the great companies that draw wealth from this state shall pay this state a fair share. That you shall not be deprive of hope!"

The roar came. As it died away, Anne Stanton, who had her arm through mine and was pressed close by the weight of the crowd, asked, "Does he mean that, Jack? Really?"

"He's done a good deal of it already," I said.

"Yes," Adam Stanton said, and his lips curled back with the words, "yes–that's his bribe."

I didn't answer–and I didn't know what my answer would have been–for Willie Stark, up there on the high steps, was saying, "I will do this things. So help me God. I shall live in your will and your right. And if any man ties to stop me in the fulfilling of that right and that will I'll break him. I'll break him like that!" He spread his arms far apart, shoulder-high, and crashed the right fist into the left palm. "Like that! I'll smite him. Hip and thigh, shinbone and neckbone, kidney punch, rabbit punch, uppercut, and solar plexus. And I don't care what I hit him with. Or how!"

Then, in the midst of the roar, I leaned toward Anne's ear and yelled, "He damned well means that."

I didn't know whether or not Anne heard me. She was watching the man up there on the steps, who was leaning forward toward the crowd, with bulging eyes, saying, "I'll hit him. I'll hit him with that meat ax!"

The he suddenly stretched his arms above his head, the coat sleeves drawn tight to expose the shirt sleeves, the hands spread and clutching. He screamed, "Gimme that meat ax!"

And the crowd roared.

He brought both hand slowly down, for silence.

Then said, "Your will is my strength."

And after a moment of silence said, "Your need is my justice."

Then, "That is all."

He turned and walked slowly back into the tall doorway of the Capitol, into the darkness there, and disappeared. The roar was swelling and heaving in the air now, louder than ever, and I felt it inside of me, too, swelling like blood and victory. I stared into the darkness of the great doorway of the Capitol, where he had gone, while the roar kept on.

Anne Stanton was tugging at my arm. She asked me, "Does he mean that, Jack?"

"Hell," I said, and heard the savage tone in my own voice, "hell, how the hell do I know?"

Adam Stanton's lips curled and he said, "Justice! He used that word."

And suddenly, for the flicker of an instant, I hated Adam Stanton.

I told them I had to go, which was true, and worked my way around through the edge of the crowd, to the police cordon. Then I went around to the back of the Capitol, where I joined the Boss.

Late that night, back at the Mansion, after he had thrown Tiny and his rabble out of the study, I asked him the question. I asked, "Did you mean what you said?"

Propped back on the big leather couch, he stared at me, and demanded, "What?"

"What you said," I replied, "tonight. You said your strength was their will. You said your justice was their need. All of that."

He kept on staring ay me, his eyes bulging, his stare grappling and probing into me.

"You said that," I said.

"God damn it," he exclaimed, violently, still staring at me, "God damn it–" he clenched his right fist and struck himself twice on the chest–"God damn it, there's something inside you–there's something inside–"

He left the words hanging there. He turned his eyes from me and stared moodily into the fire. I didn't press my question Well, that was how it had been when I asked him a question, a long time back. Now I had a new question to ask him: If he believed that you had to make the good out of the bad because there wasn't anything else to make it out of, why did he stir up such a fuss about keeping Tiny's hands off the Willie Stark Hospital?

There was another little question. One I would have to ask Anne Stanton. It had come to me that night down on the pier at the mist-streaked river when Anne said that she had gone up to Adam Stanton's apartment "to talk to him about it"–about the offer of the directorship of the Willie Stark Hospital. She had said that to me, and at the moment, it had disturbed like an itch that comes when your hands are full and you can't scratch. I hadn't, in the press of the moment, defined what was disturbing, what was the question. I had simply pushed the whole pot to the back of the stove and left it to simmer. And there it simmered for weeks. But one day, all at once, it boiled over and I knew what the question was: How had Anne Stanton Known about the hospital offer?

One thing was a cinch. I hadn't told her.

Perhaps Adam had told her, and then she had gone up there "to talk to him about it." So I went to see Adam, who was furiously deep in work, his usual practice and teaching, and in addition, the work on the hospital plans, who hadn't been able, he said, to touch the piano in almost a month, whose eyes fixed on me glacially out of a face now thin from sleepless ness, and who treated me with a courtesy too chromium-plated to be given to the friend of your youth. It took some doing, on my part, in the face of that courtesy, to get my nerve up to ask him the question. But I finally asked it. I said, "Adam, that first time Anne came up to talk to you about–about the job–you know, the hospital–had you told–"

And he said, with a voice like a scalpel, "I don't want to discuss it."

But I had to know. So I said, "Had you told her about the proposition?"

"No," he said, "and I said I didn't want to discuss it."

"O. K.," I heard myself saying, in a flat voice which wasn't quite my own. "O. K."

He looked sharply at me, then rose from his chair and took a step toward me. "I'm sorry," he said, "I'm sorry, Jack. I'm on the edge." He shook his head slightly like a man trying to shake the fog of sleep out. "Not been getting enough shut-eye," he said. He took another step to me–I was leaning against the mantel–and looked into my face again and laid his hand on my arm, saying, "I'm really sorry, Jack–talking that way–but I didn't tell Anne anything–and I'm sorry."

"Forget it," I said.

"I'll forget it," he agreed, smiling wintrily, tapping my arm, "if you will."

"Sure," I said, "sure, I'll forget it. Yeah, I'll forget it. It didn't amount to anything anyway. Who told her. I guess I told her myself. It just slipped my mind that–"

"I mean forget about the way I acted," he corrected me, "blowing off the way I did."

"Oh," I said, "oh, that. Sure. I'll forget it."

Then he was peering into my face, with a question darkening his eyes. He didn't say anything for a moment. Then, "What did you want to know for?"

"Nothing," I replied, "nothing. Just idle curiosity. But I recollect now. I told her myself. Yeah, and I guess maybe I shouldn't. I didn't mean to get her into it. Just let it slip. I didn't mean to cause any ruckus. I didn't think–" And all the while that cold, unloving part of the mind–that maiden aunt, that washroom mirror the drunk stares into, that still small voice, that maggot in the cheese of your selfesteem, that commentator on the ether nightmare, that death's head of lipless rationality at your every feast–all that while that part of the mind was saying: _You're making it worse, your lying is just making it worse, can't you shut up, you blabbermouth!__

And Adam, with whitening face, was saying, "There wasn't any ruckus. As you call it."

But I couldn't stop, as when your car come to the glare ice over the brow of the hill and hits it before you can get on the brake, and you feel the beautiful free glide and spin of the skid and almost burst out laughing, it is so fine and free, like boyhood. I was saying, "–not any ruckus exactly–just I'm sorry I sicked her on you–I didn't want to cause any trouble–it was just that–"

"I don't want to discuss it," he said, and the jaw snapped shut, and he swung from me and went to stand on the other side of the room, very stiff and military.

So I took my leave, and the chromium-plated courtesy was so bright and cold that my, "Be seeing you, boy," stuck in y throat, like old corn bread.

But he hadn't told Anne Stanton. And I hadn't told her. Who had told her? And at that point I could see no answer except that there had been some loose talk, some leak, and the news had got around. I guess I took that answer–if I really took it–because it was the easiest answer for me to take. But I knew, deep down, that the Boss wasn't given to loose talk except when he wanted to talk loose, and he would have known that one sure way to ruin the chance of ever getting Adam Stanton would be to let the gossip mill start grinding on the topic. I knew that all right, but my mind just closed up like a clam when that shadow came floating over. A clam has to live, hasn't it?

But I did find out who had told Anne Stanton.

It was a beautiful morning in middle May, and just that morning, at that hour, about nine-thirty, there was still some last touch of spring–by that time you had almost forgotten there had been a spring–a kind of milkiness in the air, and way off yonder, from my window, I could see a little white haze on the river, milky too. The season was like the fine big-breasted daughter of some poor spavined share-cropper, a girl popping her calico but still having a waist, with pink cheeks and bright eyes and just a little perspiration at the edge of her tow hair (which would be platinum blond in some circles), but you see her and know that before long she will be a bag of bone and gristle with a hag face like a rusted brush hook. But she looks enough to scare you now, if you really look at her, and that morning the season still had that look and feel even if you did know that by the end of June everything would be bone and gristle and hag face and a sweat-sticky sheet to wake up on and a taste in your mouth like old brass. But now the leaves on the trees hung down thick and fleshy and had not begun to curl yet. I could look down from my office window on the great bolls and tufts and swollen globes of green which were the trees of the Capitol grounds seen from the height of my window, and think of the deep inner maze of green in one of the big trees and of the hollow shadowy chambers near the trunk, where maybe a big cantankerous jay would be perched for a moment like a barbarous potentate staring with black, glittering, beady eyes into the green tangle. Then he would dive soundlessly off the bough and break through the green screen and be gone into the bright sunshine where suddenly he would be screaming his damned head off. I could look down and think of myself inside that hollow inner chamber, in the aqueous green light, inside the great globe of the tree, and not even a jaybird in there with me now, for he had gone, and no chance of seeing anything beyond the green leaves, they were so thick, and no sound except, way off, the faint mumble of traffic, like the ocean chewing its gums.

It was fine, peaceful, beautiful thought and I took my eyes off the green below and lay back in my swivel chair, with my heels on the desk, and shut my eyes and thought of swooping down and bursting through the green to the sudden green quietness inside. I lay back with my eyes closed and listen to the electric fan, which was humming like a dream, and could almost feel the wonderful swoop and then the poise inside. It was a fine idea. If you had wings.

Then I heard the racket outside in the reception room, and opened my eyes. Somebody had slammed a door. Then I caught the whir of a passage and Sadie Burke swung into my ken, making a great curve through my open door, and, all in one motion, slamming it behind her and charging on my direction. She stood in front of my desk and fought for air enough to say what she had to say.

It was just like old times. I hadn't seen her worked up that much since the morning when she had found out about the Nordic Nymph who had skated her way into the Boss's bed up in Chicago a long time back. That morning she had exploded out of the Boss's door, and had described a parabola into my office, with her black chopped-off hair wild and her face like a riddled plaster-of-Paris mask of Medusa except for the hot bituminous eyes, which were in full blaze with a bellows pumping the flame.

Well, since that morning there had, no doubt, been plenty of occasions when Sadie and the Boss had not exactly eye to eye. The Boss had had everything from the Nordic Nymph to the household-hints columnist on the _Chronicle__ in his life, and Sadie hadn't been exactly condoning–for Sadie did not have a condoning nature–but a peculiar accommodation had finally been reached. "Damn him," Sadie had said to me, "let him have his sluts, let him have them. But he'll always come back to me. He knows he can't get along without me. He knows he can't." And she had added grimly, "And he better not try." So, with her fury and her _God-damns __and her satire and her tongue-lashing–and she had a tongue like a cat-o'-nine-tails–and even with her rare bursts of dry-eyed grief, she seemed to take a kind of pleasure, wry and twisted enough God knows, in watching the development of the pattern in each new-old case, in watching the slut get bounced and the Boss come back to stand before her, grinning and heavy and sure and patient, to take his tongue-lashing. A long time back she herself had probably ceased to believe in the tongue-lashing or even to think what she was saying. The juicy epithets had long since lost their fine savor and a strident mechanical quality had crept into the rendering of the scene. Like a stuck phonograph record or a chicken-hungry preacher getting over the doxology. The word came but her mind wasn't on them.

But it was different that fine May morning. It was like old times, all right, with her bosom heaving and the needle of the steam gauge pricking deep into the red on the dial. Then she blew the plug.

"He's done it," she blew, "he's done it again–and I swear–"

"Done what?" I demanded, though I knew perfectly well what he had done. He had another slut.

"He's two-timing me," she said.

I lay back in my swivel chair and looked at her. The bright morning light was hitting her face square and without pity, but her eyes were magnificent.

"The bastard," she said, "he's two-timing me!"

"Now, Sadie," I said, lying back in my chair and sighting at her over the toes of my shoes crossed on the desk, "we went into that arithmetic a long time back. He's not two-timing you. He's two-timing Lucy. He may be one-timing you, or four-timing you. But it can't be two-timing." I was watching her eyes, and just saying that to see if it was possible to put a little more snap into them. It was.

For she said, "You–you–" Then words failed her.

"Me what?" I defended myself.

"You–you and your high-toned friends–what do they know–what do they know about anything–and you've got to mix them in."

"What are you talking about?"

"I may not be high-toned and maybe I live in a shack but it hadn't been for me he wouldn't be Governor this minute and he knows it and she better not get gay, for high-toned or not, I'll show her. By God, I'll show her!"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You know what I'm talking about," she affirmed, and leaned over the desk top toward me, shaking her finger at me, "and you sit there and smile that way and think you are so high-toned. If you were a man you'd get up and go in there and knock hell out of him. I thought she was yours. Or maybe he's fixed you up, too. Maybe he's fixed you up like he fixed up that doctor." She leaned farther toward me. "Maybe he's making you director of a hospital. Yeah, what's he making you director of?"

Under the flood of words and the savage finger and the snapping eyes, I jerked myself forward, dropped my feet to the floor with a crash, and lunged up to stand before her, while the blood pounded in my head to make me dizzy, as it does when you rise suddenly, and little red flecks danced before me and the words kept on. Then the words stopped on her question.

"Are you saying," I began firmly, "that–that–" I had been about to pronounce the name of Anne Stanton, for the name itself had been quite clearly in my mind, as though spelled out on a billboard, but all at once the name stuck in my throat and with surprise I discovered that I could not say it. So I continued, "–that she–she–"

But Sadie Burke was looking straight into my mind–at least, I had that feeling–and quick as a boxer she jabbed that name at me, "Yeah, she, she, that Stanton girl, Anne Stanton!"

I looked at Sadie in the face for a moment and felt so sorry for her I could cry. That was what surprised me. I felt so sorry for Sadie. Then I didn't feel anything. I didn't even feel sorry for myself. I felt as wooden as a wooden Indian, and I remember being surprised to discovered that my legs worked perfectly even if they were wooden, and were walking directly toward the hatrack, where my right arm, even if it was wooden, reached out to pick up the old Panama which hung there and put it on my head, and my legs then walked straight out the door and across the long reception room over the carpet which was deep and soft as the turf of a shaven lawn in spring and walked on out the door across the ringing marble slabs.

And out into a world which seemed bigger than it had ever seemed before. It seemed forever down the length of white, sun-glittering concrete which curled and swooped among the bronze statues and brilliant flower beds shaped like stars and crescents, and forever across the green lawn to the great swollen bulbs of green which were the trees, and forever up into the sky, where the sun poured down billows and surges of heat like crystalline lava to engulf you, for the last breath of spring was gone now and gone for good, the fine, big-breasted girl popping the calico, with the face like peaches and cream and the tiny, dewy drop of perspiration at the edge of the tow head of hair, she was gone for good, too, and everything from now on out was bone and gristle and the hag face like a rusty brush hook, and green scum on the shrunk pool around which the exposed earth cracks and scales like a gray scab.

It was a source of perpetual surprise to find how well the legs worked carrying me down the white concrete of the drive, and how even if it was forever down the drive and past the trees I was finally past them and moving down the street as though sustained in a runnel of crystalline lava. I looked with the greatest curiosity at the faces which I saw but found nothing beautiful or remarkable in then and was not assured of their reality. For it takes the greatest effort to believe in their reality and to believe in their reality you must believe in your own, but to believe in your own you must believe in theirs, but to believe in theirs you must believe in your own–one-two, one-two, one-two, like feet marching. But if you have no feet to march with. Or if they are wooden. But I looked down at them and they were marching, one-two, one-two.

They march a long time. But at the end of forever they brought me to a door. Then the door opened, and there, with the cool, white-shadowy room behind her, wearing a pale-blue, cool-crisp linen dress, her bare white long small arms hanging straight down against the pale blue, was Anne Stanton. I knew that it was Anne Stanton, though I had not looked into her face. I had looked into the other faces–all the faces I had met–I had looked into them with the greatest frankness and curiosity. But now I did not look into hers.

Then I looked into her face. She met my gaze quite steadily. I did not say anything. And I did not need to. For, looking and me, she slowly nodded._

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