Big Money

Charley Anderson

“Misser Andson Misser Andson, telegram for Misser Andson.” Charley held out his hand for the telegram, and standing in the swaying aisle read the strips of letters pasted on the paper: DOWN WITH FLU WIRE ME ADDRESS SEE YOU NEXT WEEK JOE. “A hell of a note,” he kept saying to himself as he wormed his way back to his seat past women closing up their bags, a greyhaired man getting into his overcoat, the porter loaded with suitcases. “A hell of a note.” The train was already slowing down for the Grand Central.

It was quiet on the grey underground platform when he stepped out of the stuffy pullman and took his bag from the porter, lonely-looking. He walked up the incline swinging his heavy suitcase. The train had given him a headache. The station was so big it didn’t have the crowded look he’d remembered New York had. Through the thick glass of the huge arched windows he could see rain streaking the buildings opposite. Roaming round the station, not knowing which way to go, he found himself looking in the window of a lunchroom.

He went in and sat down. The waitress was a little dark sourfaced girl with rings under her eyes. It was a muggy sort of day, the smell of soap from the dishwashing and of hot grease from the kitchen hung in streaks in the air. When the waitress leaned over to set the place for him he got a whiff of damp underclothes and armpits and talcumpowder. He looked up at her and tried to get a smile out of her. When she turned to go get him some tomatosoup he watched her square bottom moving back and forth under her black dress. There was something heavy and lecherous about the rainy eastern day.

He spooned soup into his mouth without tasting it. Before he’d finished he got up and went to the phonebooth. He didn’t have to look up her number. Waiting for the call he was so nervous the sweat ran down behind his ears. When a woman’s voice answered, his own voice dried up way down in his throat. Finally he got it out: “I want to speak to Miss Humphries, please… Tell her it’s Charley Anderson… Lieutenant Anderson.” He was still trying to clear his throat when her voice came in an intimate caressing singsong. Of course she remembered him, her voice said, too sweet of him to call her up, of course they must see each other all the time, how thrilling, she’d just love to, but she was going out of town for the weekend, yes, a long weekend. But wouldn’t he call her up next week, no, towards the end of the week? She’d just adore to see him.

When he went back to his table the waitress was fussing around it. “Didn’t you like your soup?” she asked him. “Check… Had to make some phonecalls.” “Oh, phonecalls,” she said in a kidding voice. This time it was the waitress who was trying to get a smile out of him. “Let’s have a piece of pie and a cup of coffee,” he said, keeping his eyes on the billoffare. “They got lovely lemonmeringue pie,” the waitress said with a kind of sigh that made him laugh. He looked up at her laughing feeling horny and outafterit again: “All right, sweetheart, make it lemonmeringue.”

When he’d eaten the pie he paid his check and went back into the phonebooth. Some woman had been in there leaving a strong reek of perfume. He called up the Century Club to see if Ollie Taylor was in town. They said he was in Europe; then he called up the Johnsons; they were the only people left he knew. Eveline Johnson’s voice had a deep muffled sound over the phone. When he told her his name she laughed and said, “Why, of course we’d love to see you. Come down to dinner tonight; we’ll introduce you to the new baby.”

When he got out of the subway at Astor Place it wasn’t time to go to dinner yet. He asked the newsvendor which way Fifth Avenue was and walked up and down the quiet redbrick blocks. He felt stuffy from the movie he’d killed the afternoon in. When he looked at his watch it was only halfpast six. He wasn’t invited to the Johnsons’ till seven. He’d already passed the house three times when he decided to go up the steps. Their names were scrawled out, Paul Johnson — Eveline Hutchins, on a card above the bell. He rang the bell and stood fidgeting with his necktie while he waited. Nobody answered. He was wondering if he ought to ring again when Paul Johnson came briskly down the street from Fifth Avenue with his hat on the back of his head, whistling as he walked. “Why, hello, Anderson, where did you come from?” he asked in an embarrassed voice. He had several bags of groceries that he had to pile on his left arm before he could shake hands. “Guess I ought to congratulate you,” said Charley. Paul looked at him blankly for a moment; then he blushed. “Of course… the son and heir… Oh, well, it’s a hostage to fortune, that’s what they say…”

Paul let him into a large bare oldfashioned room with flowing purple curtains in the windows. “Just sit down for a minute. I’ll see what Eveline’s up to.” He pointed to a horsehair sofa and went through the sliding doors into a back room.

He came back immediately carefully pulling the door to behind him. “Why, that’s great. Eveline says you’re goin’ to have supper with us. She said you just came back from out there. How’d things seem out there? I wouldn’t go back if they paid me now. New York’s a great life if you don’t weaken… Here, I’ll show you where you can clean up… Eveline’s invited a whole mess of people to supper. I’ll have to run around to the butcher’s… Want to wash up?”

The bathroom was steamy and smelt of bathsalts. Somebody had just taken a bath there. Babyclothes hung to dry over the tub. A red douchebag hung behind the door and over it a yellow lace negligee of some kind. It made Charley feel funny to be in there. When he’d dried his hands he sniffed them, and the perfume of the soap filled his head.

When he came out of the door he found Mrs. Johnson leaning against the white marble mantel with a yellowbacked French novel in her hand. She had on a long lacy gown with puff sleeves and wore tortoiseshell readingglasses. She took off the glasses and tucked them into the book and stood holding out her hand.

“I’m so glad you could come. I don’t go out much yet, so I don’t get to see anybody unless they come to see me.”

“Mighty nice of you to ask me. I been out in the sticks. I tell you it makes you feel good to see folks from the other side… This is the nearest thing to Paree I’ve seen for some time.”

She laughed; he remembered her laugh from the boat. The way he felt like kissing her made him fidgety. He lit a cigarette.

“Do you mind not smoking? For some reason tobaccosmoke makes me feel sick ever since before I had the baby, so I don’t let anybody smoke. Isn’t it horrid of me?”

Charley blushed and threw his cigarette in the grate. He began to walk back and forth in the tall narrow room. “Hadn’t we better sit down?” she said with her slow irritating smile. “What are you up to in New York?”

“Got to get me a job. I got plans… Say, how’s the baby? I’d like to see it.”

“All right, when he wakes up I’ll introduce you. You can be one of his uncles. I’ve got to do something about supper now. Doesn’t it seem strange us all being in New York?”

“I bet this town’s a hard nut to crack.”

She went into the back room through the sliding doors and soon a smell of sizzling butter began to seep through them. Charley caught himself just at the point of lighting another cigarette, then roamed round the room, looking at the oldfashioned furniture, the three white lilies in a vase, the shelves of French books, until Paul, red in the face and sweating, passed through with more groceries and told him he’d shake up a drink.

Charley sat down on the couch and stretched out his legs. It was quiet in the highceilinged room. There was something cozy about the light rustle and clatter the Johnsons made moving around behind the sliding doors, the Frenchy smell of supper cooking. Paul came back with a tray piled with plates and glasses and a demijohn of wine. He laid a loaf of frenchbread on the marbletopped table and a plate of tunafish and a cheese. “I’m sorry I haven’t got anything to make a cocktail with… I didn’t get out of the office till late… All we’ve got’s this dago wine.”

“Check… I’m keepin’ away from that stuff a little… Too much on my mind.”

“Are you round town looking for a job?”

“Feller goin’ in on a proposition with me. You remember Joe Askew on the boat? Great boy, wasn’t he? The trouble is the damn fool’s laid up with the flu and that leaves me high and dry until he gets down here.”

“Things are sure tighter than I expected… My old man got me into a grainbroker’s office over in Jersey City… just to tide me over. But gosh, I don’t want to wear out a desk all my life. I wouldn’ta done it if it hadn’t been for the little stranger.”

“Well, we’ve got something that’ll be worth plenty if we ever get the kale to put in to develop it.”

Eveline opened the sliding doors and brought in a bowl of salad. Paul had started to talk about the grain business but he shut his mouth and waited for her to speak.

“It’s curious,” she said. “After the war New York… Nobody can keep away from it.”

A baby’s thin squalling followed her out of the back room. “That’s his messcall,” said Paul. “If you really want to see him,” said Eveline, “come along now, but I should think it would be just too boring to look at other people’s babies.” “I’d like to,” said Charley. “Haven’t got any of my own to look at.” “How are you so sure?” said Eveline with a slow teasing smile. Charley got red and laughed.

They stood round the pink crib with their wineglasses in their hands. Charley found himself looking down into a toothless pink face and two little pudgy hands grabbing the air. “I suppose I ought to say it looks like Daddy,” he said. “The little darling looks more like our Darwinian ancestor,” said Eveline coldly. “When I first saw him I cried and cried. Oh, I hope he grows a chin.” Charley caught himself looking out of the corner of his eye at Paul’s chin that wasn’t so very prominent either. “He’s a cheerful little rascal,” he said.

Eveline brought the baby a bottle from the kitchenette next the bathroom, then they went into the other room. “This layout sure makes me feel envious,” Charley was saying when he caught Eveline Johnson’s eye. She shrugged her shoulders. “You two and the baby all nicely set with a place to live and a glass of wine and everything… Makes me feel the war’s over… What I’ve got to do is crack down an’ get to work.”

“Don’t worry,” said Paul. “It’ll happen soon enough.”

“Well, I wish people would come. The casserole’s all ready,” said Eveline. “Charles Edward Holden is coming… He’s always late.”

“He said maybe he’d come,” said Paul. “Here’s Al now. That’s his knock.”

A lanky sallow individual came in the door from the street. Paul introduced him to Charley as his brother Al. The man looked at Charley with a peevish searching grey eye for a moment. “Lieutenant Anderson… Say, we’ve met before someplace.”

“Were you over on the other side?”

The lanky man shook his head vigorously. “No… It must have been in New York… I never forget a face.” Charley felt his face getting red.

A tall haggardfaced man named Stevens and a plump little girl came in. Charley didn’t catch the girl’s name. She had straight black bobbed hair. The man named Stevens paid no attention to anybody but Al Johnson. The little girl paid no attention to anybody but Stevens. “Well, Al,” he said threateningly, “have recent events changed your ideas any?”

“We’ve got to go slow, Don, we’ve got to go slow… we can’t affront every decent human instinct… We’ve got to stick close to the workingclass.”

“Oh, if you’re all going to start about the workingclass I think we’d better have supper and not wait for Holden,” said Eveline, getting to her feet. “Don’ll be so cross if he argues on an empty stomach.”

“Who’s that? Charles Edward Holden?” asked Al Johnson with a tone of respect in his voice.

“Don’t wait for him,” said Don Stevens. “He’s nothing but a bourgeois muckraker.”

Charley and Paul helped Eveline bring in another table that was all set in the bedroom. Charley managed to sit next to her. “Gee, this is wonderful food. It all makes me think of old Paree,” he kept saying. “My brother wanted me to go into a Ford agency with him out in the Twin Cities, but how can you keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?”

“But New York’s the capital now.” It was teasing the way she leaned toward him when she spoke, the way her long eyes seemed to be all the time figuring out something about him.

“I hope you’ll let me come around sometimes,” he said. “It’s goin’ to be kinder hard sleddin’ in New York till I get my feet on the ground.”

“Oh, I’m always here,” she said, “and shall be till we can afford to get a reliable nurse for Jeremy. Poor Paul has to work late at the office half the time… Oh, I wish we could all make a lot of money right away quick.”

Charley smiled grimly. “Give the boys a chance. We ain’t properly got the khaki off our skins yet.”

Charley couldn’t keep up with the conversation very well so he leaned back on the sofa looking at Eveline Johnson. Paul didn’t say much either. After he’d brought in coffee he disappeared altogether. Eveline and the little girl at the head of the table both seemed to think Stevens was pretty wonderful, and Al Johnson who sat next to Charley on the sofa kept leaning across him to make a point with Eveline and shake his long forefinger. Part of the time it looked like Al Johnson and Stevens would take a poke at each other. What with not following their talk, after all he wasn’t onto the town yet, and the good food and the wine Charley began to get sleepy. He finally had to get up to stretch his legs.

Nobody paid any attention to him so he strolled into the kitchenette where he found Paul washing the dishes. “Lemme help you wipe,” he said. “Naw, I got a system,” said Paul. “You see Eveline does all the cooking so it’s only fair for me to wash the dishes.”

“Say, won’t those birds get in trouble if they talk like that?” Charley jerked his thumb in the direction of the front room.

“Don Stevens is a red so he’s a marked man anyway.”

“Mind you, I don’t say they’re wrong but, Jesus, we got our livin’s to make.”

“Al’s on the World. They’re pretty liberal down there.”

“Out our way a man can’t open his face without stirrin’ up a hornetsnest,” said Charley, laughing. “They don’t know the war’s over.”

When the dishes were done they went back to the front room. Don Stevens strode up to Charley. “Eveline says you are an aviator,” he said, frowning. “Tell us what aviators think about. Are they for the exploiting class or the workingclass?”

“That’s a pretty big order,” drawled Charley. “Most of the fellers I know are tryin’ to get into the workin’class.”

The doorbell rang. Eveline looked up smiling. “That’s probably Charles Edward Holden,” said Al. Paul opened the door. “Hello, Dick,” said Eveline. “Everybody thought you were Charles Edward Holden.”

“Well, maybe I am,” said a nattilydressed young man with slightly-bulging blue eyes who appeared in the doorway. “I’ve been feeling a little odd all day.”

Eveline introduced the new guy by his military handle: “Captain Savage, Lieutenant Anderson.” “Humph,” said Stevens in the back of the room. Charley noticed that Stevens and the young man who had just come in stared at each other without speaking. It was all getting very confusing. Eveline and the bobbedhaired girl began to make polite remarks to each other in chilly voices. Charley guessed it was about time for him to butt out. “I’ve got to alley along, Mrs. Johnson,” he said.

“Say, Anderson, wait for me a minute. I’ll walk along the street with you,” Al Johnson called across the room at him.

Charley suddenly found himself looking right in Eveline’s eyes. “I sure enjoyed it,” he said. “Come in to tea some afternoon,” she said. “All right, I’ll do that.” He squeezed her hand hard. While he was saying goodby to the others he heard Captain Savage and Eveline gig gling together. “I just came in to see how the other half lives,” he was saying. “Eveline, you look too beautiful tonight.”

Charley felt good standing on the stoop in the spring evening. The city air had a cool rinsed smell after the rain. He was wondering if she… Well, you never can tell till you try. Al Johnson came out behind him and took his arm. “Say, Paul says you come from out home.”

“Sure,” said Charley. “Don’t you see the hayseed in my ears?”

“Gosh, when Eveline has two or more of her old beaux calling on her at once it’s a bit heavy… And she like to froze that poor little girl of Don’s to death… Say, how about you and me go have a drink of whiskey to take the taste of that damn red ink out of our mouths?”

“That’ud be great,” said Charley.

They walked across Fifth Avenue and down the street until they got to a narrow black door. Al Johnson rang the bell and a man in shirtsleeves let them into a passage that smelt of toilets. They walked through that into a barroom. “Well, that’s more like it,” said Al Johnson. “After all I only have one night off a week.”

“It’s like the good old days that never were,” said Charley.

They sat down at a small round table opposite the bar and ordered rye. Al Johnson suddenly waved his long forefinger across the table. “I remember when it was I met you. It was the day war was declared. We were all drunk as coots down at Little Hungary.” Charley said jeez, he’d met a lot of people that night. “Sure that’s when it was,” said Al Johnson. “I never forget a face,” and he called to the waiter to make it beer chasers.

They had several more ryes with beer chasers on the strength of old times. “Why, New York’s like any other dump,” Charley was saying, “it’s just a village.” “Greenwich Village,” said Al Johnson.

They had a flock of whiskeys on the strength of the good old times they’d had at Little Hungary. They didn’t like it at the table any more so they stood up at the bar. There were two pallid young men at the bar and a plump girl with stringy hair in a Bulgarian embroidered blouse. They were old friends of Al Johnson’s. “An old newspaperman,” Al Johnson was saying, “never forgets faces… or names.” He turned to Charley. “Colonel, meet my very dear friends… Colonel… er…” Charley had put out his hand and was just about to say Anderson when Al Johnson came out with “Charles Edward Holden, meet my artistical friends…”

Charley never got a chance to put a word in. The two young men started to explain the play they’d been to at the Washington Square Players. The girl had a turnedup nose and blue eyes with dark rings under them. The eyes looked up at him effusively while she shook his hand. “Not really… Oh, I’ve so wanted to meet you, Mr. Holden. I read all your articles.” “But I’m not really…” started Charley. “Not really a colonel,” said the girl. “Just a colonel for a night,” said Al with a wave of his hand and ordered some more whiskies.

“Oh, Mr. Holden,” said the girl, who put her whiskey away like a trooper, “isn’t it wonderful that we should meet like this?… I thought you were much older and not so good-looking. Now, Mr. Holden, I want you to tell me all about everything.”

“Better call me Charley.”

“My name’s Bobbie… you call me Bobbie, won’t you?” “Check,” said Charley. She drew him away down the bar a little. “I was having a rotten time… They are dear boys, but they won’t talk about anything except how Philip drank iodine because Edward didn’t love him any more. I hate personalities, don’t you? I like to talk, don’t you? Oh, I hate people who don’t do things. I mean books and world conditions and things like that, don’t you?” “Sure,” said Charley.

They found themselves at the end of the bar. Al Johnson seemed to have found a number of other very dear friends to celebrate old times with. The girl plucked at Charley’s sleeve: “Suppose we go somewhere quiet and talk. I can’t hear myself think in here.” “Do you know someplace we can dance?” asked Charley. The girl nodded.

On the street she took his arm. The wind had gone into the north, cold and gusty. “Let’s skip,” said the girl, “or are you too dignified, Mr. Holden?” “Better call me Charley.” They walked east and down a street full of tenements and crowded little Italian stores. The girl rang at a basement door. While they were waiting she put her hand on his arm. “I got some money… let this be my party.” “But I wouldn’t like that.” “All right, we’ll make it fifty-fifty. I believe in sexual equality, don’t you?” Charley leaned over and kissed her. “Oh, this is a wonderful evening for me… You are the nicest celebrity I ever met… Most of them are pretty stuffy, don’t you think so? No joie de vivre.” “But,” stammered Charley, “I’m not…”

As he spoke the door opened. “Hello, Jimmy,” said the girl to a slicklooking young man in a brown suit who opened the door. “Meet the boyfriend… Mr. Grady… Mr. Holden.” The young man’s eyes flashed. “Not Charles Edward…” The girl nodded her head excitedly so that a big lock of her hair flopped over one eye. “Well, sir, I’m very happy to meet you… I’m a constant reader, sir.”

Bowing and blushing Jimmy found them a table next to the dancefloor in the stuffy little cabaret hot from the spotlights and the cigarettesmoke and the crowded dancers. They ordered more whiskey and welshrabbits. Then she grabbed Charley’s hand and pulled him to his feet. They danced. The girl rubbed close to him till he could feel her little round breasts through the Bulgarian blouse.

“My… the boy can dance,” she whispered. “Let’s forget everything, who we are, the day of the week…”

“Me… I forgot two hours ago,” said Charley, giving her a squeeze.

“You’re just a plain farmerlad and I’m a barefoot girl.”

“More truth than poetry to that,” said Charley through his teeth.

“Poetry… I love poetry, don’t you?”

They danced until the place closed up. They were staggering when they got out on the black empty streets. They stumbled past garbagepails. Cats ran out from under their feet. They stopped and talked about free love with a cop. At every corner they stopped and kissed. As she was looking for her latchkey in her purse she said thoughtfully: “People who really do things make the most beautiful lovers, don’t you think so?”

Charley woke up first. Sunlight was streaming in through an uncurtained window. The girl was asleep, her face pressed into the pillow. Her mouth was open and she looked considerably older than she had the night before. Her skin was pasty and green and she had stringy hair.

Charley put his clothes on quietly. On a big table inches deep in dust and littered with drawings of funnylooking nudes, he found a piece of charcoal. On the back of a sheet of yellow paper that had a half a poem written on it he wrote: Had a swell time… Goodby… Goodluck. Charley. He didn’t put his shoes on until he got to the bottom of the creaky stairs.

Out on the street in the cold blowy spring morning he felt wonderful. He kept bursting out laughing. A great little old town. He went into a lunchroom at the corner of Eighth Street and ordered himself a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon and hotcakes and coffee. He kept giggling as he ate it. Then he went uptown to Fortysecond Street on the el. Grimy roofs, plateglass windows, grimy bulbs of electriclight signs, fireescapes, watertanks all looked wonderful in the gusty sunlight.

At the Grand Central Station the clock said eleventhirty. Porters were calling the names of westbound trains. He got his bag from the checkroom and took a taxi to the Chatterton House. That was where Joe Askew had written he ought to stay, a better address than the Y. His suitcase cut into his hand as it was heavy from blueprints and books on mechanical drawing, so he jumped into a taxi. When the clerk at the desk asked for a reference he brought out his reserve commission.

The place had an elevator and baths and showers at the ends of the dimlylit halls, and a lot of regulations on the back of the door of the little shoebox of a room they showed him into. He threw himself on the cot with his clothes on. He was sleepy. He lay giggling looking up at the ceiling. A great little old town.

As it turned out he lived a long time in that stuffy little green-papered room with its rickety mission furniture. The first few days he went around to see all the aviation concerns he found listed in the phonebook to see if he could pickup some kind of temporary job. He ran into a couple of men he’d known overseas, but nobody could promise him a job; if he’d only come a couple of months sooner. Everybody said things were slack. The politicians had commercial aviation by the short hairs and there you were, that was that. Too damn many flyers around looking for jobs anyway.

At the end of the first week he came back from a trip to a motor-building outfit in Long Island City, where they half-promised him a drafting job later in the summer, that is if they got the contract their Washington man was laying for, to find a letter from Mrs. Askew: Joe was a very sick man, double pneumonia. It would be a couple of months before he could get to the city. Joe had insisted on her writing though she didn’t think he was well enough to worry about business matters, but she’d done it to ease his mind. He said for Charley to be sure not to let anybody else see his plans until he got a patent, better get a job to tide over until they could get the thing started right.

Tide over, hell; Charley sat on his sagging bed counting his money. Four tens, a two, a one and fiftythree cents in change. With the room eight dollars a week that didn’t make his summer’s prospects look so hot.

At last one day he got hold of Doris Humphries on the phone and she asked him to come on up next afternoon. At the Humphries’ apartment it was just like it had been at the Bentons’ the night he went there with Ollie Taylor, except that there was a maid instead of a butler. He felt pretty uncomfortable because there were only women there. Doris’s mother was a haggard dressedup woman who gave him a searching look that he felt went right through him into the wallet in his back pocket.

They had tea and cakes, and Charley wasn’t sure if he ought to smoke or not. They said Ollie Taylor had gone abroad again, to the south of France, and as Ollie Taylor was the only thing he had in common with them to talk about, that pretty well dried up the conversation. Dressed in civies it wasn’t so easy talking to rich women as it had been in the uniform. Still Doris smiled at him nicely and talked in a friendly confidential way about how sick she was of this society whirl and everything, that she was going out and get her a job. That’s not so easy, thought Charley. She complained she never met any interesting men. She said Charley and Ollie Taylor — of course Ollie was an old dear — were the only men she knew she could stand talking to. “I guess it’s the war and going overseas that’s done something to you,” she said, looking up at him. “When you’ve seen things like that you can’t take yourself so seriously as these miserable loungelizards I have to meet. They are nothing but clotheshangers.”

When Charley left the big apartmenthouse his head was swimming so he was almost bagged by a taxicab crossing the street. He walked down the broad avenue humming with traffic in the early dark. She’d promised to go to a show with him one of these nights.

When he went to get Doris to take her out to dinner one evening in early May, after the engagement had been put off from week to week — she was so terribly busy, she always complained over the phone, she’d love to come but she was so terribly busy — he only had twenty bucks left in his wallet. He waited for her some time alone in the drawingroom of the Humphries’ apartment. White covers had been hung on the piano and the chairs and curtains and the big white room smelt of mothballs. It all gave him a feeling he’d come too late. Doris came in at last looking so pale and silky and golden in a lowcut eveningdress it made him catch his breath. “Hello, Charley, I hope you’re not starved,” she said in that intimate way that always made him feel he’d known her a long time. “You know I never could keep track of the time.”

“Gosh, Doris, you look wonderful.” He caught her looking at his grey business suit. “Oh, forgive me,” she said. “I’ll run and change my clothes.” Something chilly came into her voice and left it at once. “It’ll take only a minute.” He felt himself getting red. “I guess I oughta have worn eveningclothes,” he said. “But I’ve been so busy. I haven’t had my trunk sent out from Minnesota yet.” “Of course not. It’s almost summer. I don’t know what I was thinking about. Wits woolgathering again.”

“Couldn’t you go like that, you look lovely.”

“But it looks so silly to see a girl dressed up like a plush horse with a man in a business suit. It’ll be more fun anyway… less the social engagement, you know… Honestly I’ll be only five minutes by the clock.”

Doris went out and half an hour later came back in a pearl-grey streetdress. A maid followed her in with a tray with a cocktailshaker and glasses. “I thought we might have a drink before we go out. Then we’ll be sure to know what we are getting,” she said.

He took her to the McAlpin for supper; he didn’t know anyplace else. It was already eight o’clock. The theatertickets were burning his pocket, but she didn’t seem in any hurry. It was halfpast nine when he put her in a taxi to go to the show. The taxi filled up with the light crazy smell of her perfume and her hair. “Doris, lemme say what I want to say for a minute,” he blurted out suddenly. “I don’t know whether you like anybody else very much. I kinder don’t think you do from what you said about the guys you know.”

“Oh, please don’t propose,” she said. “If you knew how I hated proposals, particularly in a cab caught in a traffic jam.”

“No, I don’t mean that. You wouldn’t want to marry me the way I’am now anyway… not by along shot. I gotta get on my hindlegs first. But I’m goin’ to pretty soon… You know aviation is the comin’ industry… Ten years from now… Well, us fellers have a chance to get in on the ground floor… I want you to give me a break, Doris, hold off the other guys for a little while…”

“Wait for you ten years, my, that’s a romantic notion… my grandmother would have thought it was lovely.”

“I mighta known you’d kid about it. Well, here we are.”

Charley tried to keep from looking sour when he helped Doris out. She squeezed his hand just for a second as she leaned on it. His heart started pounding. As they followed the usher into the dark theater full of girls and jazz she put her small hand very lightly on his arm. Above their heads was the long powdery funnel of the spotlight spreading to a tinselly glitter where a redlipped girl in organdy was dancing. He squeezed Doris’s hand hard against his ribs with his arm. “All right, you get what I mean,” he whispered. “You think about it… I’ve never had a girl get me this way before, Doris.” They dropped into their seats. The people behind started shushing, so Charley had to shut up. He couldn’t pay any attention to the show.

“Charley, don’t expect anything, but I think you’re a swell guy,” she said when, stuffy from the hot theater and the lights and the crowd, they got into a taxi as they came out. She let him kiss her, but terribly soon the taxi stopped at her apartmenthouse. He said goodnight to her at the elevator. She shook her head with a smile when he asked if he could come up.

He walked home weak in the knees through the afterthetheater bustle of Park Avenue and Fortysecond Street. He could still feel her mouth on his mouth, the smell of her pale frizzy hair, the littleness of her hands on his chest when she pushed his face away from hers.

The next morning he woke late feeling pooped as if he’d been on a threeday drunk. He bought the papers and had a cup of coffee and a doughnut at the coffeebar that stank of stale swill. This time he didn’t look in the Business Opportunities column but under Mechanics and Machinists. That afternoon he got a job in an automobile repairshop on First Avenue. It made him feel bad to go back to the overalls and the grease under your fingernails and punching the timeclock like that but there was no help for it. When he got back to the house he found a letter from Emiscah that made him feel worse than ever.

The minute he’d read the letter he tore it up. Nothing doing, bad enough to go back to grinding valves without starting that stuff up again. He sat down on the bed with his eyes full of peeved tears. It was too goddamned hellish to have everything close in on him like this after getting his commission and the ambulance service and the Lafayette Escadrille and having a mechanic attend to his plane and do all the dirty work. Of all the lousy stinking luck. When he felt a little quieter he got up and wrote Joe for Christ’s sake to get well as soon as he could, that he had turned down an offer of a job with Triangle Motors over in Long Island City and was working as a mechanic in order to tide over and that he was darn sick of it and darned anxious to get going on their little proposition.

He’d worked at the repairshop for two weeks before he found out that the foreman ran a pokergame every payday in a disused office in the back of the building. He got in on it and played pretty carefully. The first couple of weeks he lost half his pay, but then he began to find that he wasn’t such a bad pokerplayer at that. He never lost his temper and was pretty good at doping out where the cards were. He was careful not to blow about his winnings either, so he got away with more of their money than the other guys figured. The foreman was a big loudmouthed harp who wasn’t any too pleased to have Charley horning in on his winnings; it had been his habit to take the money away from the boys himself. Charley kept him oiled up with a drink now and then, and besides, once he got his hand in he could get through more work than any man there. He always changed into his good clothes before he went home.

He didn’t get to see Doris before she went to York Harbor for the summer. The only people he knew were the Johnsons. He went down there a couple of times a week. He built them bookshelves and one Sunday helped them paint the livingroom floor.

Another Sunday he called up early to see if the Johnsons wanted to go down to Long Beach to take a swim. Paul was in bed with a sorethroat but Eveline said she’d go. Well, if she wants it she can have it, he was telling himself as he walked downtown, through the empty grime of the hot sundaymorning streets. She came to the door in a loose yellow silk and lace negligee that showed where her limp breasts began. Before she could say anything he’d pulled her to him and kissed her. She closed her eyes and let herself go limp in his arms. Then she pushed him away and put her finger on her lips.

He blushed and lit a cigarette. “Do you mind?” he said in a shaky voice.

“I’ll have to get used to cigarettes again sometime, I suppose,” she said very low.

He walked over to the window to pull himself together. She followed him and reached for his cigarette and took a couple of puffs of it. Then she said aloud in a cool voice, “Come on back and say hello to Paul.”

Paul was lying back against the pillows looking pale and sweaty. On a table beside the bed there was a coffeepot and a flowered cup and saucer and a pitcher of hot milk. “Hi, Paul, you look like you was leadin’ the life of Riley,” Charley heard himself say in a hearty voice. “Oh, you have to spoil them a little when they’re sick,” cooed Eveline. Charley found himself laughing too loud. “Hope it’s nothin’ serious, old top.” “Naw, I get these damn throats. You kids have a good time at the beach. I wish I could come too.”

“Oh, it may be horrid,” said Eveline. “But if we don’t like it we can always come back.” “Don’t hurry,” said Paul. “I got plenty to read. I’ll be fine here.”

“Well, you and Jeremy keep bachelor hall together.”

Eveline had gotten up a luncheonbasket with some sandwiches and a thermos full of cocktails. She looked very stylish, Charley thought, as he walked beside her along the dusty sunny street carrying the basket and the Sunday paper, in her little turnedup white hat and her lightyellow summer dress. “Oh, let’s have fun,” she said. “It’s been so long since I had any fun.”

When they got out of the train at Long Beach a great blue wind was streaming off the sea blurred by little cool patches of mist. There was a big crowd along the boardwalk. The two of them walked a long way up the beach. “Don’t you think it would be fun if we could get away from everybody?” she was saying. They walked along, their feet sinking into the sand, their voices drowned in the pound and hiss of the surf. “This is great stuff,” he kept saying.

They walked and walked. Charley had his bathingsuit on under his clothes; it had got to feel hot and itchy before they found a place they liked. They set the basket down behind a low dune and Eveline took her clothes off under a big towel she’d brought with her. Charley felt a little shy pulling off his shirt and pants right in front of her but that seemed to be on the books.

“My, you’ve got a beautiful body,” she said. Charley tugged uneasily at the end of his bathingsuit. “I’m pretty healthy, I guess,” he said. He looked at his hands sticking out red and grimed from the white skin of his forearms that were freckled a little under the light fuzz. “I sure would like to get a job where I could keep my hands clean.” “A man’s hands ought to show his work… That’s the whole beauty of hands,” said Eveline. She had wriggled into her suit and let drop the towel. It was a paleblue onepiece suit very tight. “Gosh, you’ve got a pretty figure. That’s what I first noticed about you on the boat.” She stepped over and took his arm. “Let’s go in,” she said. “The surf scares me, but it’s terribly beautiful… Oh, I think this is fun, don’t you?”

Her arm felt very silky against his. He could feel her bare thigh against his bare thigh. Their feet touched as they walked out of the hot loose sand onto the hard cool sand. A foaming wide tongue of seawater ran up the beach at them and wet their legs to the knees. She let go his arm and took his hand.

He hadn’t had much practice with surf and the first thing he knew a wave had knocked him galleywest. He came up spluttering with his mouth and ears full of water. She was on her feet laughing at him holding out her hand to help him to his feet. “Come on out further,” she shouted. They ducked through the next wave and swam out. Just outside of the place where the waves broke they bobbed up and down treading water. “Not too far out, on account of the seapussies…” “What?” “Currents,” she shouted, putting her mouth close to his ear.

He got swamped by another roller and came up spitting and gasping. She was swimming on her back with her eyes closed and her lips pouted. He took two strokes towards her and kissed her cold wet face. He tried to grab her round the body but a wave broke over their heads. She pushed him off as they came up sputtering. “You made me lose my bathingcap. Look.” “There it is. I’ll get it.” He fought his way back through the surf and grabbed the cap just as the undertow was sucking it under. “Some surf,” he yelled.

She followed him out and stood beside him in the shallow spume with her short hair wet over her eyes. She brushed it back with her hand. “Here we are,” she said. Charley looked both ways down the beach. There was nobody to be seen in the earlyafternoon glare. He tried to put his arm around her. She skipped out of his reach. “Charley… aren’t you starved?” “For you, Eveline.” “What I want’s lunch.”

When they’d eaten up the lunch and drunk all the cocktails they felt drowsy and a little drunk. They lay side by side in the sun on the big towel. She made him keep his hands to himself. He closed his eyes but he was too excited to go to sleep. Before he knew it he was talking his head off. “You see Joe’s been workin’ on the patent end of it, and he knows how to handle the lawyers and the big boys with the big wads. I’m afraid if I try to go into it alone some bird’ll go to work and steal my stuff. That’s what usually happens when a guy invents anything.”

“Do women ever tell you how attractive you are, Charley?”

“Overseas I didn’t have any trouble… You know, Aviaterr, lewtenong, Croix de Guerre, couchay, wee wee… That was all right but in this man’s country no girl you want’ll look at a guy unless he’s loaded up with jack… Sure, they’ll lead you on an’ get you half-crazy.” He was a fool to do it but he went to work and told her all about Doris. “But they’re not all like that,” she said, stroking the back of his hand. “Some women are square.”

She wouldn’t let him do anything but cuddle a little with her under the towel. The sun began to get low. They got up chilly and sandy and with the sunburn starting to tease. As they walked back along the beach he felt sour and blue. She was talking about the evening and the waves and the seagulls and squeezing his arm as she leaned on it. They went into a hotel on the boardwalk to have a little supper and that just about cleaned his last fivespot.

He couldn’t think of much to say going home on the train. He left her at the corner of her street, then walked over to the Third Avenue el and took the train uptown. The train was full of fellows and girls coming home from Sunday excursions. He kept his eye peeled for a pickup but there was nothing doing. When he got up into his little stuffy greenpapered room, he couldn’t stay in it. He went out and roamed up and down Second and Third avenues. One woman accosted him but she was too fat and old. There was a pretty plump little girl he walked along beside for a long time, but she threatened to call a cop when he spoke to her, so he went back to his room and took a hot shower and a cold shower and piled into bed. He didn’t sleep a wink all night.

Eveline called him up so often in the next weeks and left so many messages for him that the clerk at the desk took him aside and warned him that the house was only intended for young men of irreproachable Christian life.

He took to leaving the shop early to go out with her places, and towards the end of July the foreman bounced him. The foreman was getting sore anyway because Charley kept on winning so much money at poker. Charley moved away from the Chatterton House and took a furnished room way east on Fifteenth Street, explaining to the landlady that his wife worked out of town and could only occasionally get in to see him. The landlady added two dollars to the rent and let it go at that. It got so he didn’t do anything all day but wait for Eveline and drink lousy gin he bought in an Italian restaurant. He felt bad about Paul, but after all Paul wasn’t a particular friend of his and if it wasn’t him he reckoned it would be somebody else. Eveline talked so much it made his head spin but she was certainly a stylishlooking rib and in bed she was swell. It was only when she talked about divorcing Paul and marrying him that he began to feel a little chilly. She was a good sport about paying for dinners and lunches when the money he’d saved up working in the shop gave out, but he couldn’t very well let her pay for his rent, so he walked out on the landlady early one morning in September and took his bag up to the Grand Central station. That same day he went by the Chatterton House to get his mail and found a letter from Emiscah.

He sat on a bench in the park behind the Public Library along with the other bums and read it:

CHARLEY BOY,

You always had such a heart of gold I know if you knew about what awful luck I’ve been having you would do something to help me. First I lost my job and things have been so slack around here this summer I haven’t been able to get another; then I was sick and had to pay the doctor fifty dollars and I haven’t been really what you might call well since, and so I had to draw out my savingsaccount and now it’s all gone. The family won’t do anything because they’ve been listening to some horrid lying stories too silly to deny. But now I’ve got to have ten dollars this week or the landlady will put me out and I don’t know what will become of me. I know I’ve never done anything to deserve being so unhappy. Oh, I wish you were here so that you could cuddle me in your big strong arms like you used to do. You used to love your poor little Emiscah. For the sake of your poor mother that’s dead send me ten dollars right away by special delivery so it won’t be too late. Sometimes I think it would be better to turn on the gas. The tears are running down my face so that I can’t see the paper any more. God bless you.

EMISCAH

My girlfriend’s broke too. You make such big money ten dollars won’t mean anything and I promise I won’t ask you again.

Charley, if you can’t make it ten send five.

Charley scowled and tore up the letter and put the pieces in his pocket. The letter made him feel bad, but what was the use? He walked over to the Hotel Astor and went down to the men’s room to wash up. He looked at himself in one of the mirrors. Grey suit still looked pretty good, his straw hat was new and his shirt was clean. The tie had a frayed place but it didn’t show if you kept the coat buttoned. All right if it didn’t rain; he’d already hocked his other suit and his trenchcoat and his officers’ boots. He still had a couple of dollars in change so he had his shoes shined. Then he went up to the writingroom and wrote to Joe that he was on his uppers and please to send him twentyfive by mail P.D.Q. and for crissake to come to New York. He mailed the letter and walked downtown, walking slowly down Broadway.

The only place he knew where he could bum a meal was the Johnsons’ so he turned into their street from Fifth Avenue. Paul met him at the door and held out his hand. “Hello, Charley,” he said. “I haven’t seen you for a dog’s age.”

“I been movin’,” stammered Charley, feeling like a louse. “Too many bedbugs in that last dump… Say, I just stopped into say hello.”

“Come on in and I’ll shake up a drink. Eveline’ll be back in a minute.”

Charley was shaking his head. “No, I just stopped to say hello. How’s the kid? Give Eveline my best. I got a date.”

He walked to a newsstand at the corner of Eighth Street and bought all the papers. Then he went to a blindtiger he knew and had a session with the helpwanted columns over some glasses of needle beer. He drank the beer slowly and noted down the addresses on a piece of paper he’d lifted off the Hotel Astor. One of them was a usedcar dealer, where the manager was a friend of Jim’s. Charley had met him out home.

The lights went on and the windows got dark with a stuffy late-summer night. When he’d paid for the beer he only had a quarter left in his pocket. “Damn it, this is the last time I let myself get in a jam like this,” he kept muttering as he wandered round the downtown streets. He sat for a long time in Washington Square, thinking about what kind of a salestalk he could give the manager of that usedcar dump.

A light rain began to fall. The streets were empty by this time. He turned up his collar and started to walk. His shoes had holes in them and with each step he could feel the cold water squish between his toes. Under an arclight he took off his straw hat and looked at it. It was already gummy and the rim had a swollen pulpy look. “Now how in Christ’s name am I goin’ to go around to get me a job tomorrow?”

He turned on his heel and walked straight uptown towards the Johnsons’ place. Every minute it rained harder. He rang the bell under the card Paul Johnson — Eveline Hutchins until Paul came to the door in pyjamas looking very sleepy.

“Say, Paul, can I sleep on your couch?” “It’s pretty hard… Come in… I don’t know if we’ve got any clean sheets.” “That’s all right… just for tonight… You see I got cleaned out in a crapgame. I got jack comin’ tomorrow. I thought I’d try the benches but the sonofabitch started to rain on me. I got business to attend to tomorrow an’ I got to keep this suit good, see?” “Sure… Say, you look wet… I’ll lend you a pair of pyjamas and a bathrobe. Better take those things off.”

It was dry and comfortable on the Johnsons’ couch. After Paul had gone back to bed Charley lay there in Paul’s bathrobe looking up at the ceiling. Through the tall window he could see the rain flickering through the streetlights outside and hear its continuous beat on the pavement. The baby woke up and cried, there was a light in the other room. He could hear Paul’s and Eveline’s sleepy voices and the rustle of them stirring around. Then the baby quieted down, the light went out. Everything was quiet in the beating rain again. He went off to sleep.

Getting up and having breakfast with them was no picnic nor was borrowing twentyfive dollars from Paul though Charley knew he could pay it back in a couple of days. He left when Paul left to go to the office without paying attention to Eveline’s sidelong kidding glances. Never get in a jam like this again, he kept saying to himself.

First he went to a tailor’s and sat there behind a curtain reading the American while his suit was pressed. Then he bought himself a new straw hat, went to a barbershop and had a shave, a haircut, a facial massage and a manicure and went to a cobbler’s to get his shoes shined and soled.

By that time it was almost noon. He went uptown on the subway and talked himself into a job as salesman in the secondhand autosales place above Columbus Circle where the manager was a friend of Jim’s. When the guy asked Charley about how the folks out in Minne apolis were getting on, he had to make up a lot of stuff. That evening he got his laundry from the Chinaman and his things out of hock and went back to a room, with brown walls this time, at the Chatterton House. He set himself up to a good feed and went to bed early deadtired.

A few days later a letter came from Joe Askew with the twentyfive bucks and the news that he was getting on his feet and would be down soon to get to work. Meanwhile Charley was earning a small amount on commissions but winning or losing up to a century a night in a pokergame on Sixtythird Street one of the salesmen took him up to. They were mostly automobile salesmen and advertising men in the game and they were free spenders and rolled up some big pots. Charley mailed the twentyfive he owed him down to Paul, and when Eveline called him up on the telephone always said he was terribly busy and would call her soon. No more of that stuff, nosiree. Whenever he won, he put half of his winnings in a savings-bank account he’d opened. He carried the bankbook in his inside pocket. When he noticed it there it always made him feel like a wise guy.

He kept away from Eveline. It was hard for him to get so far downtown and he didn’t need to anyway because one of the other salesmen gave him the phonenumber of an apartment in a kind of hotel on the West Side, where a certain Mrs. Darling would arrange meetings with agreeable young women if she were notified early enough in the day. It cost twentyfive bucks a throw but the girls were clean and young and there were no followups of any kind. The fact that he could raise twentyfive bucks to blow that way made him feel pretty good, but it ate into his poker winnings. After a session with one of Mrs. Darling’s telephone numbers, he’d go back to his room at the Chatterton House feeling blue and disgusted. The girls were all right, but it wasn’t fun like it had been with Eveline or even with Emiscah. He’d think of Doris and say to himself goshdarn it, he had to get him a woman of his own.

He took to selling fewer cars and playing more poker as the weeks went on and by the time he got a wire from Joe Askew saying he was coming to town next day his job had just about petered out. He could tell that it was only because the manager was a friend of Jim’s that he hadn’t fired him already. He’d hit a losing streak and had to draw all the money out of the savingsaccount. When he went down to the sta tion to meet Joe he had a terrible head and only a dime in his pocket. The night before they’d cleaned him out at red dog.

Joe looked the same as ever only he was thinner and his mustache was longer. “Well, how’s tricks?” Charley took Joe’s other bag as they walked up the platform.

“Troubled with low ceilin’s, air full of holes.”

“I bet it is. Say, you look like you’d been hitting it up, Charley. I hope you’re ready to get to work.”

“Sure. All depends on gettin’ the right C.O… Ain’t I been to nightschool every night?”

“I bet you have.”

“How are you feelin’ now, Joe?”

“Oh, I’m all right now. I just about fretted myself into a nuthouse. What a lousy summer I’ve had… What have you been up to, you big bum?”

“Well, I’ve been gatherin’ information about the theory of the straight flush. And women… have I learned about women? Say, how’s the wife and kids?”

“Fine… You’ll meet ’em. I’m goin’ to take an apartment here this winter… Well, boy, it’s a case of up and at ’em. We are goin’ in with Andy Merritt… You’ll meet him this noon. Where can I get a room?” “Well, I’m stayin’ at that kind of glorified Y over on Thirty-eighth Street.” “That’s all right.”

When they got into the taxi, Joe tapped him on the knee and leaned over and asked with a grin, “When are you ready to start to manufacture?” “Tomorrow mornin’ at eight o’clock. Old Bigelow just failed over in Long Island City. I seen his shop. Wouldn’t cost much to get it in shape.”

“We’ll go over there this afternoon. He might take a little stock.”

Charley shook his head. “That stock’s goin’ to be worth money, Joe… give him cash or notes or anythin’. He’s a halfwit anyway. Last time I went over there it was to try to get a job as a mechanic… Jeez, I hope those days are over… The trouble with me is, Joe, I want to get married and to get married like I want I got to have beaucoup kale… Believe it or not, I’m in love.”

“With the entire chorus at the Follies, I’ll bet… That’s a hot one… you want to get married.” Joe laughed like he’d split. While Joe went up to his room to clean up, Charley went round to the corner drugstore to get himself a bromoseltzer.

They had lunch with Merritt, who turned out to be a grey-faced young man with a square jaw, at the Yale Club. Charley still had a pounding headache and felt groggily that he wasn’t making much of an impression. He kept his mouth shut and let Joe do the talking. Joe and Merritt talked Washington and War Department and Navy Department and figures that made Charley feel he ought to be pinching himself to see if he was awake.

After lunch Merritt drove them out to Long Island City in an open Pierce Arrow touringcar. When they actually got to the plant, walking through the long littered rooms looking at lathes and electric motors and stamping and dyemaking machines, Charley felt he knew his way around better. He took out a piece of paper and started making notes. As that seemed to go big with Merritt he made a lot more notes. Then Joe started making notes too. When Merritt took out a little book and started making notes himself, Charley knew he’d done the right thing.

They had dinner with Merritt and spent the evening with him. It was heavy sledding because Merritt was one of those people who could size a man up at a glance, and he was trying to size up Charley. They ate at an expensive French speakeasy and sat there a long time afterwards drinking cognac and soda. Merritt was a great one for writing lists of officers and salaries and words like capitalization, depreciation, amortization down on pieces of paper, all of them followed by big figures with plenty of zeros. The upshot of it seemed to be that Charley Anderson would be earning two hundred and fifty a week (payable in preferred stock) starting last Monday as supervising engineer and that the question of the percentage of capital stock he and Joe would have for their patents would be decided at a meeting of the board of directors next day. The top of Charley’s head was floating. His tongue was a little thick from the cognac. All he could think of saying, and he kept saying it, was, “Boys, we mustn’t go off halfcocked.”

When he and Joe finally got Merritt and his Pierce Arrow back to the Yale Club they heaved a deep breath. “Say, Joe, is that bird a financial wizard or is he a nut? He talks like greenbacks grew on trees.”

“He makes ’em grow there. Honestly…” Joe Askew took his arm and his voice sunk to a whisper, “that bird is going to be the Durant of aviation financing.” “He don’t seem to know a Liberty motor from the hind end of a blimp.” “He knows the Secretary of the Interior, which is a hell of a lot more important.”

Charley got to laughing so he couldn’t stop. All the way back to the Chatterton House he kept bumping into people walking along the street. His eyes were full of tears. He laughed and laughed. When they went to the desk to ask for their mail and saw the long pale face of the clerk Charley nudged Joe. “Well, it’s our last night in this funeral parlor.”

The hallway to their rooms smelt of old sneakers and showers and lockerrooms. Charley got to laughing again. He sat on his bed a long time giggling to himself. “Jesus, this is more like it; this is better than Paree.” After Joe had gone to bed Charley stuck his head in the door still giggling. “Rub me, Joe,” he yelled. “I’m lucky.”

Next morning they went and ate their breakfast at the Belmont. Then Joe made Charley go to Knox’s and buy him a derby before they went downtown. Charley’s hair was a little too wiry for the derby to set well, but the band had an expensive englishleathery smell. He kept taking it off and sniffing it on the way downtown in the subway. “Say, Joe, when my first paycheck comes I want you to take me round and get me outfitted in a soup an’ fish… This girl, she likes a feller to dress up.” “You won’t be out of overalls, boy,” growled Joe Askew, “night or day for six months if I have anything to say about it. We’ll have to live in that plant if we expect the product to be halfway decent, don’t fool yourself about that.” “Sure, Joe, sure, I was only kiddin’.”

They met at the office of a lawyer named Lilienthal. From the minute they gave their names to the elegantlyupholstered blonde at the desk Charley could feel the excitement of a deal in the air. The blonde smiled and bowed into the receiver. “Oh, yes, of course… Mr. Anderson and Mr. Askew.” A scrawny officeboy showed them at once into the library, a dark long room filled with calfbound lawbooks. They hadn’t had time to sit down before Mr. Lilienthal himself appeared through a groundglass door. He was a dark oval neckless man with a jaunty manner. “Well, here’s our pair of aces right on time.” When Joe introduced them he held Charley’s hand for a moment in the smooth fat palm of his small hand. “Andy Merritt has just been singing your praises, young fellah, he says you are the coming contactman.” “And here I was just telling him I wouldn’t let him out of the factory for six months. He’s the bird who’s got the feel for the motors.” “Well, maybe he meant you birdmen’s kind of contact,” said Mr. Lilienthal, lifting one thin black eyebrow.

The lawyer ushered them into a big office with a big empty mahogany desk in the middle of it and a blue Chinese rug on the floor. Merritt and two other men were ahead of them. To Charley they looked like a Kuppenheimer ad standing there amid the blue crinkly cigarettesmoke in their neatlycut dark suits with the bright grey light coming through the window behind them. George Hollis was a pale young man with his hair parted in the middle and the other was a lanky darkfaced Irish lawyer named Burke, who was an old friend of Joe Askew’s and would put their patents through Washington for them, Joe explained. They all seemed to think Charley was a great guy, but he was telling himself all the time to keep his mouth shut and let Joe do the talking.

They sat round that lawyer’s mahogany desk all morning smoking cigars and cigarettes and spoiling a great deal of yellow scratchpaper until the desk looked like the bottom of an uncleaned birdcage and the Luckies tasted sour on Charley’s tongue. Mr. Lilienthal was all the time calling in his stenographer, a little mouselike girl with big grey eyes, to take notes and then sending her out again. Occasionally the phone buzzed and each time he answered it in his bored voice, “My dear young lady, hasn’t it occurred to you that I might be in conference?”

The concern was going to be called the Askew-Merritt Company. There was a great deal of talk about what state to incorporate in and how the stock was to be sold, how it was going to be listed, how it was going to be divided. When they finally got up to go to lunch it was already two o’clock and Charley’s head was swimming. Several of them went to the men’s room on their way to the elevator and Charley managed to get into the urinal beside Joe and to whisper to him, “Say, for crissake, Joe, are we rookin’ those guys or are they rookin’ us?” Joe wouldn’t answer. All he did was to screw his face up and shrug his shoulders.