_Justice
Is a
Woman_
_Also by Helen Haberman_
How About Tomorrow Morning?
_Justice
Is a
Woman_
Helen Haberman
Prentice-Hall, Inc.
New York
_Copyright, 1947, by_
PRENTICE-HALL, INC.
_70 Fifth Avenue, New York_
_All rights reserved, including the right to
reproduce this book, or portions thereof,
in any form, except for the inclusion of
brief quotations in a review._
Printed in the United States of America
To
Gorham Munson
The characters in this novel are fictional and imaginary. Resemblance
to any actual person, living or dead, is coincidental.
_PART I_
_Chapter 1_
The two men who stepped out of the elevator ahead of Larry dropped
their voices and talked in a whisper as if they were in the
safe-deposit vault of a bank. Larry recognized the reaction because he
had often experienced it himself on the tower floor of 40 Wall Street
where Arthur H. Bemrose had his offices. The cold ribbon of gray marble
floor and walls did it--the neat gold arrow painted on the outside
hallway and the carefully designed block lettering which pointed to the
law firm of HAYNES and BEMROSE. The two men walked on past the door of
Arthur’s office, and Larry, standing in front of the clouded glass, his
hand on the doorknob, took on their respectful mood. It usually made
him feel as if he had an extra thousand dollars in his pocket just to
walk into these offices. During his time at law school Judge Haynes
had been God, Jesus Christ himself, to almost every student. Larry had
grown up in the fall-on-your-face-and-worship-Haynes tradition. Now
Judge Haynes was dead, and Arthur H. Bemrose, from Larry’s own class
at law school, was carrying on the practice. Larry could still feel
the Judge somewhere around as he entered the reception room. He could
picture him in dark robes which overwhelmed his spare frame and could
recall his low, precise voice, even though it was more than six years
since the Old Man had died.
Without looking to see if there were any clients of the firm waiting,
Larry gave his name to the boy at the reception room window. Mr.
Bemrose would be tied up a while, the boy explained, inviting him to
sit down. Larry pinched a wilting carnation in the buttonhole of his
overcoat, and shook the melted snow off his hat. He stopped for a
moment at the antique table in the center of the room. The Judge had
found the table in Italy one summer. Twenty years of accumulated dust
clung to its elaborate carving, and Arthur Bemrose, probably out of
respect to the Judge’s memory, had left it just as it was when the Old
Man died, unpolished, impassive, and dead-centered in the room.
Larry picked up a law journal to read while he was waiting for Arthur,
and deposited his overcoat on a chair that wobbled, probably another
museum piece that had belonged to Judge Haynes. The chair steadied
itself, and Larry sat down with care on the next one, resigned to a
long wait. He had no sooner opened this week’s issue of the advance
sheets, which reported court decisions before the bound volumes came
out, than the Judge’s old clerk, Tim Hoxter, called to him from where
he must have been sitting all the time across the room.
As he rushed over to shake hands with Hoxter, a Haynes fixture in the
old days, a faithful adjunct in an alpaca coat who had trailed the Old
Man with legal papers for twenty-five years, Larry couldn’t take his
eyes off the girl sitting next to Hoxter, wondering if she could be
his daughter, and how, if she were, Tim had managed to keep her quiet
all these years. She was the last person Larry expected to find among
the relics of Judge Haynes in the tradition-ridden reception room of
HAYNES and BEMROSE, an improbable client to be waiting for Arthur H.
Bemrose, who specialized in corporate work, and incongruously young to
be connected with old Tim.
“Will he be tied up much longer?” Tim complained. “She can’t wait.
She’s on her lunch hour.” He nodded to the girl and introduced them.
“Miss McVail. Her grandmother was an old friend of mine from out in
Iowa,” he explained. “Lucy, this is Mr. Frank.”
Larry watched to see if the girl’s handsome gray eyes would go on, but
they looked up at him coldly unlit, as if he might be to blame because
she had to wait for Arthur H. Bemrose. Larry noted gratefully that Miss
McVail did not fidget while she waited. Her spine conformed placidly
to the rungs of her chair, and she remained calm except for the eyes,
which stubbornly refused to show any emotion, and with their lack of
expression somehow managed to reproach him. It was as if she said, “I’m
beautiful when I’m turned on, but if this lawyer I’m waiting to see is
your friend, I’m not going to make any effort for you.”
“How long have you been waiting, Tim?” Larry asked.
The old man leaned forward confidentially. “She’s having trouble with
a no-good brother about some money the grandmother left her. I figure
that Arthur----”
The old man was getting deaf. He must be close to eighty.
“Busy at your office, are you?” Tim strained toward him.
Larry brought his mouth close to Hoxter’s ear. “Not enough to give the
income tax people any serious trouble, but doing all right. I can’t
kick.”
“They tell me that Arthur has hung on to most of the old practice.” Tim
straightened proudly. “It sure would have tickled the Judge. I’ve been
telling Lucy the store he set by Arthur.”
“He’s done a lot better than hang on,” Larry shouted, looking around
to make sure no one else had walked in. “If you can believe the
newspapers, he’s picked up a few clients of his own.”
The old man smiled. Apparently he did read the newspapers. “I hear he’s
in pretty thick down there,” he admitted. “I hear that Tom Newton’s
always sending for him----”
“He has to go down to Washington about three times a week.” Larry held
up three fingers by way of clarification and moved his lips slowly so
that Tim had time to read them.
“Manages to handle both, does he?”
Good for the old man. His mind wasn’t hard of hearing. He was sharp
enough to realize that it took some doing for Arthur H. Bemrose to be
in solid down in Washington and to pal around with Tom Newton, the
Attorney-General, while with the left hand he managed to swing a Wall
Street practice.
“Weren’t you two fellows in the same class at law school?”
Larry nodded and sat down next to Tim, thinking about the night many
years ago that Arthur Bemrose had first received a message from Judge
Haynes to come and see him.
* * * * *
It was toward the end of their last year in law school, and the rest of
them had been playing poker in Cy O’Malley’s room. Bemrose showed up
late that evening and made it in about two strides from the door to the
card table, his pants flopping around his ankles like excited pigeons.
“Just talked to Judge Haynes in Albany,” Arthur had reported briskly.
“He phoned to find out if I’ll be his law secretary next year.”
The game broke up temporarily. Cy rushed over and pumped Arthur’s hand,
and Tremont Friendly, dropping his usual punctilious manner, jumped up
to pummel Arthur’s back. There was an envious buzz around him.
“Nice going, boy.”
“Gee, fellow, that’s great.”
“Imagine the luck of some guys!”
Larry remembered standing in a kind of daze by himself until Arthur
broke away from the others and came over to him. “What’s the matter,
Larry? Don’t you think it’s a good offer?”
Even in those days Arthur used to talk things over with him, not
always taking his advice, of course, but using him to discover how his
ideas sounded out loud. He was still doing it today, in spite of the
difference in their incomes.
Back there in Cy’s room almost twenty years ago, Larry had said, “It’s
a great offer, kid. You’d better grab it.”
That wasn’t the moment to tell Arthur that he’d often had the notion
they might hang out a joint shingle someday, BEMROSE and FRANK. Arthur
would supply the brilliant big ideas, and he would look after the
details. Already in those days, at twenty-three, Larry had sensed his
own limitations. He was cut out to be an office lawyer. He didn’t have
what it took for big trial work. With Bemrose the front man, going to
court, they’d make out all right. He sensed that Arthur functioned
better when he was around, felt easier when Larry was on hand and he
could talk things out with him.
“I don’t think Judge Haynes will pay me much,” Arthur pointed out
practically. “He didn’t mention money over the phone. I have to go up
there next Thursday. He said he would discuss the details when he saw
me.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the money,” Larry advised. “It will mean a lot
to your future. How many fellows have a chance----”
That’s what he said out loud to Arthur Bemrose, but all the time he was
thinking about how much better it would be for him, Larry Frank, if
they had offices on either side of the same glass partition and could
go to lunch together, or talk over a cross-examination when Arthur came
back in the late afternoon from court. Back to the offices of BEMROSE
and FRANK.
Arthur stood at the poker table strained and flushed, and Larry urged
him to sit down and take a hand. He finally did let them deal him into
the game, but his attention wandered from the cards. “Are you sure I
can swing it, Larry?” he asked while he was waiting for Tremont to
call the hand. “You know his reputation. He’s supposed to be hell on
secretaries.”
Bemrose laid down a pair of nines, and Tremont reached for the pot.
While someone dealt, Arthur said quietly so that the others couldn’t
hear, “Suppose I take it, Larry, and the Judge finds out I’m not good
enough.”
“You’ll be good enough, kid,” Larry assured him, discarding then and
there the pipe dream about BEMROSE and FRANK. If he didn’t find another
congenial fellow with whom he could share an office, he’d start in
practice for himself. It would be slower without Bemrose maybe, but
he’d make out, and after all, no one was depending on him for a living.
His older brother took care of the folks, and Larry had no one to think
about supporting but himself.
Larry lost interest in the poker game that evening and quit early. For
the rest of the week, whenever he thought of Bemrose going up to Albany
to see Judge Haynes, he felt that maybe he ought to try and talk Arthur
out of taking the job. But he never did. It would have been putting his
own interests ahead of Bemrose’s, and that wasn’t the way Larry Frank
liked to operate.
* * * * *
Aloud to Tim Hoxter in the law offices of HAYNES and BEMROSE, Larry
said, “At school the fellows always figured that someone like Justice
Brandeis would make him an offer if the Old Man didn’t. They were
always looking for _Law Review_ men, and Bemrose was the editor of _Law
Review_ in our time.”
Tim Hoxter nodded. “The Judge and his wife took him right in and
started treating him like a son. That must be why he stayed with the
Old Man after he left the bench. The Old Man was afraid he wouldn’t
stay, you know.” Tim paused. “He figured that Arthur might be restless
and want to start in practice for himself. It would have killed the
Judge to see him go. He was all wrapped up in that young fellow. I
never could figure it out. He and Mrs. Haynes kept everybody else at
arm’s length. They weren’t the kind to ever want a son.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Larry said.
“How’s that?” Tim sat up straighter.
“Don’t you remember? Mrs. Haynes liked cats,” Larry shouted.
Tim shook his head. “Cats or no cats, she was the cold type. I think it
was the Judge. The Judge made her take him in to live with them. The
Judge was always telling everybody that Bemrose was good--” The hand on
Tim’s knee was a relief map of heavy blue veins. “What makes him good,
Larry? Ever figure it out?”
“I guess you’ve never watched him handle a jury. He has it all over
Dunninger. When Bemrose finishes with a witness, there isn’t a thought
in the fellow’s head that hasn’t been undressed, waiting for Bemrose to
pluck it in the nude.” Larry looked to see if Miss McVail responded,
but she was assiduously tending a cuticle. Not a pale eyelash flickered
in the blonde fringe around her extraordinary gray eyes.
“My niece’s boy went to court the other day and heard him.” Tim
Hoxter’s voice cracked. “He’s a fine boy. Studying law at N.Y.U. He
puts Arthur in a class with John W. Davis. Maybe that’s going too far.
But he must be good. For the young ones.”
Larry smiled, recalling an old saw from law school. Under forty-five a
lawyer is a bright young man. At sixty he shows promise, and by seventy
he’s a respected member of the bar.
Tim leaned back in his chair fretfully and nodded at Miss McVail who
industriously continued to ply the cuticle of one finger with the
thumbnail of the other hand. “Better ask at the window again, Larry.
Tell that young fellow she’s on her lunch hour.”
“Maybe we should leave and phone him tomorrow.” Miss McVail studied an
old-fashioned gold watch suspended by a ribbon from her coat lapel.
Her voice was a toneless gray as she looked past Larry. “Oh, there’s
someone----”
Larry recognized Arthur’s secretary, motioning to Tim and the girl to
come inside. As Miss McVail disappeared through a door in the direction
of Arthur’s office, Larry took note of the snugly made hips, shapely
and small like her neatly indented waist, and wondered how much of the
set-up Arthur H. Bemrose would inventory, or whether, with him, it was
always strictly business. It probably was, or he wouldn’t be rattling
around alone in that three-story house the Judge had left him. In
six years he should have located something female and decorative to
brighten up the mausoleum. Let’s see. Arthur was going on forty-three
now. He might begin to think about settling down. Whatever his bond
with the Old Man which put the law first and women second while Haynes
was alive, it should have ended with the Judge’s funeral. But from
hearing Bemrose talk about women Larry always had the idea that Arthur
thought he was doing _them_ a favor to spend time with them, and
that, given his choice, he’d rather devote the same number of hours to
practicing law. He apparently never picked a woman who had a chance
of being able to compete in interest with his practice. His taste ran
to flashy, dark divorcées who patronized the local bridge clubs. They
lasted with him three months, six months, sometimes almost a year.
Until they brought up the subject of marriage, was Larry’s guess. He
had a hunch that Arthur H. Bemrose concentrated on the purely social
type because he wanted to prove something to himself. He probably
insisted on being convinced that a woman was good for bed or a wasted
evening and not much else. As long as he specialized in women who had
similar views about men, he could hang on to the theory. Larry thought
that when the Judge died, Arthur might look around for someone who at
least was a good listener, someone to fill the hours he used to spend
talking to the Judge. She wouldn’t have to be a great brain for that.
All she’d have to do was listen. Larry thought of the McVail girl in
there with him. She didn’t look as if she’d talk a man to death. Not
if the way she acted in the reception room was a sample. Well, what
the hell was it to him what Bemrose did about his sex life? Larry
thought of himself and Bessie. There was no use trying to sell marriage
to Arthur H. Bemrose because he and Bessie were more than reasonably
contented, or because Bemrose had inherited a big, empty house. There
were plenty of fouled up marriages, and living alone in an empty house
wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to him.
The boy at the reception window called out to say that Mr. Bemrose
would only be tied up a few more minutes. Larry leafed through the
advance sheets, but none of his own cases were reported, and he seldom
enjoyed reading law for the sake of reading law. It was his father, not
Larry, who had decided he ought to be a lawyer. His father had acted
in the tradition of many men who had emigrated to this country and
thought the eldest son should be a business man and provide for the
family while the other sons concentrated on surrounding the family name
with the prestige of the professions. In legal circles the name, Frank,
still wasn’t surrounded by an aura, but Larry’s father never lived to
find that out, and it suited Larry fine to earn a modest living at the
law. Without straining. His friend, Arthur H. Bemrose, strained enough
for two of them, and produced results when he strained.
Restlessly Larry got up to have a look at the famous Haynes letters
in the lighted breakfront cabinet, occupying an entire wall of the
reception room, where Arthur had them embalmed. These were the more
noteworthy originals of the Haynes-Didier letters, published in three
volumes a year ago for fifteen dollars a boxed set. Larry bought
them at the time but couldn’t wade through the first volume. The old
duffers, Judge Haynes and his French colleague, Didier, had liked
to toss Greek and Latin quotations across the ocean, probably with
posterity in mind, and Larry hadn’t gone in for a Latin declension
since high school.
The cabinet reminded Larry of a mental Kremlin where the Old Man’s
brains were on public view. He squinted at one of the yellowed sheets
dated April 10, 1881 and tried to decipher the fading characters of
the text, recalling, as he read, that once before he had been puzzled
by this particular letter. His entire generation at the bar had grown
up in the belief that Haynes was a great labor judge, a man who
recognized the right of labor to organize when his contemporaries had
used the word, labor, from the bench in about the tone reserved today
for the word, fascist.
But in spite of his reputation as a great labor judge, Haynes had
written in confidence to his friend, Didier: _“Your friend, the common
man, is a fumbling pleasure-loving dolt. He delights in the sloth of
his overstuffed ignorance._”
If he really felt that way and still turned himself inside out to
give labor a break in his court, you had to hand it to the Old Man,
Larry reflected. Back in those days it couldn’t have been profitable,
politically, to hold pro-labor views. He must have done it for
something rooted inside, some prodigal instinct for fairness that
had flourished in spite of the snobbish New England background. The
interesting fact was that a man who had privately tagged millions of
his fellow citizens as “fumbling pleasure-loving dolts” lived out his
years publicly as champion of the dolt, as a leading friend and patron
of doltism. Known to the world as “labor’s friend,” the chances were
that Judge Haynes had never gotten around to shaking the hand of a man
in overalls, Larry reflected.
The thought amused him. He couldn’t help but contrast the Old Man’s
views with those of Arthur H. Bemrose, truck driver’s son, born
enough of a common man to want to forget it. For keeps. No bending
over backwards by Bemrose to understand the common man. He knew all
he wanted to know at first hand. Consequently, Arthur H. Bemrose
specialized in the _uncommon_ man, the no-dolt, especially when he
practiced law. Counsellor to the uncommon man. That was the firm’s
reputation today. Bemrose doesn’t take every case. He handpicks his
clients. How often Larry had heard other lawyers discuss this enviable
prerogative of a successful lawyer.
Shifting uneasily away from the cabinet of letters, Larry returned
to his chair along the wall, wondering how Miss McVail was making
out inside with Bemrose. She was probably impressed as hell with
the ballroom-sized office, but not letting on, hiding behind the
say-nothing gray eyes and giving him the impression that she spent
every other lunch hour with Wall Street lawyers. A self-possessed one,
Miss McVail. Bemrose ought to make something of it.
The thought was interrupted by Bemrose’s secretary who came out to tell
him that his brief was typed, the brief for the Court of Appeals, which
Bemrose was helping him polish. The secretary invited him to come into
Mr. Bemrose’s office and take a look at the revisions.
“He’s just finishing with a client. He’ll be free to work with you in a
few minutes, Mr. Frank. Meanwhile you can go over the brief and study
the changes he’s suggested.”
Outside the door of Arthur H. Bemrose’s private office, Larry paused a
moment before knocking. The low Bemrose voice, familiar to blue ribbon
juries, was pitched even lower than usual out of consideration for Tim,
whose deafness shut out high sound frequencies. Larry had often noticed
that Bemrose used his voice with a studied cadence which gave time for
important points to come through.
He must have just been making such a point to Miss McVail. Larry heard
her complain, “You don’t know my brother, Mr. Bemrose. He’ll leave
town, and then we’ll never be able to----”
“Why don’t you write the letter for her, Arthur?” Tim Hoxter suggested.
“You can let her send it, but you draft it for her.”
The extra heavy cream in Bemrose’s voice rose to the top. “A fine idea,
Tim. I’ll try to put it tactfully,” he promised Miss McVail. “Let’s
have one more try, and see if we can’t phrase it so that he’ll want to
answer this time.”
“You don’t know my brother,” the girl insisted. “When we were young,
he’d do things for me, but now----”
“I take it you need the money,” Bemrose said briskly, cutting through
her objections.
The girl must have nodded.
“Then why not let Tim and me advise you on the best way to handle it?”
Tim and me. Larry smiled. Winning her confidence through Tim whom she
already trusted. A good Bemrose tactic.
Larry scratched at the half-opened door and apologized for breaking
in on them. Instantly Bemrose was on his feet and had his arm around
him. This special quality of warmth was almost unique with Arthur H.
Bemrose. In a busy, cynical world, he was one of the few persons around
who had the power to convince Larry that he was genuinely glad to see
him, that his greeting was more than a formality, and when he said,
“How are you?” he really gave a damn about the answer. This warmth of
Arthur’s, Larry reflected, was one of the sure things in his life, like
the greenness of trees, or the thirst-quenching property of fresh water.
Bemrose introduced him to Miss McVail, gave him a chance to greet Tim
again, and handed Larry a sheaf of typewritten pages from his table.
They constituted the new draft of the brief. Quickly Bemrose pointed
out the major revisions he had suggested and settled Larry in a small
adjoining office where he could go over them undisturbed.
“Don’t just accept my changes,” he cautioned. “Make sure they’re what
_you_ want. I dictated the revision in a hurry and may have slipped up
on something you specially wanted to stress.”
Larry smiled. It was Arthur’s gracious way of giving him an out in case
he didn’t check with his suggestions.
He settled down and started to read the brief, but in a few moments
his attention wandered through the door which Bemrose had thoughtfully
left open. Bemrose was taking a phone call, and Miss McVail had moved
her chair away from his desk a little as though she were swimming for
shallow water. Maybe Bemrose _was_ too much for a girl from--where was
it?--Iowa?
Larry overheard enough of the phone conversation to know that Tom
Newton, the Attorney-General, was calling Bemrose from Washington.
There was some subtle sparring while Newton apparently tried to
persuade him to stay over on his next trip and take the sleeper back to
New York. It had to do with meeting some Senator down there, a friend
of Newton’s. Bemrose pretended to be in no sweat about obliging his
pal, the Attorney-General. It wasn’t going to be easy to change his
plans. He made that clear. Before he got through, Newton must have been
begging him.
Arthur put down the phone and came in to bum a cigarette from Larry.
“That was Tom, looking for some free legal advice,” he said with an
easy, self-contented smile.
Larry looked up and gave him a light. “Well, Tom’s not a bad lawyer.
Someday you may want to ask _him_ for some legal advice.”
* * * * *
Through the open door he had a good view of Arthur H. Bemrose’s
enormous room--the heavy walnut desk with carved rope edge and morocco
top, the lawn of billiard green carpet, the stained oak walls,
woodburning fireplace and gold draperies. The Old Man’s room had been
shabby by comparison, filled with black leather and horsehair. This
Fifth Avenue decorator’s job might alarm some of the firm’s older
clients but it must go down easy with the Washington boys. Larry tried
to concentrate on his brief, soothed by the quiet answers Miss McVail
gave Bemrose as he probed for details about her family that might be
pertinent to settling the grandmother’s estate. Her quiet ought to
appeal to him, Larry mused. With his hectic practice, he should be able
to use a little peace and quiet at home.
The phone rang again, and this time Larry gathered that it was Jim
Carson of the _Evening Star_. Larry had read a story of his only
last week with a Moscow dateline. He must have just returned to this
country. He had read Carson ever since he had met him once at Bemrose’s
office, a slightly built man with deep scars in one cheek and missing
front teeth so that every time he talked he made static. From what
Bemrose was saying, Larry gathered that Carson wanted to change his
will. Arthur invited him for dinner at the University Club and made
Carson’s legal work incidental to hearing about Russia. He put himself
out to cultivate good newspapermen, and they didn’t come any better
than Jim Carson.
Before Bemrose hung up Larry heard him say, “If she’s a friend of
yours, I’ll talk to her, Jim. I’m writing it down. Baldwin, Janice
Baldwin. What did you say she writes for? Okay, I have it. Don’t worry.
I won’t let her put me out.”
Larry shoved aside the pages of his brief, deciding that he might as
well try to concentrate at the information desk in Grand Central. How
could a fellow keep up the clip at which Bemrose lived and not show
it? The same way a tennis champ could cover the court and look as if
he hadn’t moved, Larry figured. It was a trick of easiness they all
had, the good ones, whether on a tennis court, a putting green, in the
ring, or in a law office. To look at Arthur H. Bemrose in the tweed
suit that he bought extra big in order to have three inches leeway in
the vest, anyone would take him for a gentleman farmer who had nothing
but show dogs or a greenhouse on his mind. It wasn’t only the easy way
he handled himself. It was the way he looked. At law school Arthur
H. Bemrose had started a small, uneven mustache which had refused to
thicken in twenty years. Its untidiness went with his flappy, oversized
ears. His frame ambled and his arms hung loosely. With Bemrose for his
lawyer, a client could be in hot water and still feel at ease. Larry
wondered about Miss McVail, whether she had begun to let go a little.
He returned to reading his brief, this time from back to front, the
way he sometimes read a magazine or a newspaper when he had trouble
concentrating. One of the new point headings stopped him: _Mr. Alonzo
Iturbi alias Newcomb_. A Bemrose literary touch. Arthur H. was making
it sound like a murder mystery. It didn’t seem to Larry like the kind
of language that would win an appeal in a higher court, but judges were
human and probably liked to be entertained as much as other people.
There was this to be said for Bemrose’s instinct in such matters. He
had used it to advantage in Albany more than once, while this case was
only the third Larry had ever taken to the Court of Appeals. He wanted
to be sure his brief was a good one, as sure as a lawyer could ever be.
It was damned nice of Bemrose to look it over and take the trouble to
re-dictate the brief.
Larry saw Miss McVail edge forward in her chair as Arthur’s secretary
broke in on them, apologizing because Mr. Carson’s friend, the
magazine writer, was on the phone and sounded as if she had to talk
to Mr. Bemrose. Urgently. The carefully schooled secretary explained,
especially for Miss McVail’s benefit, that she knew Mr. Bemrose didn’t
wish to be interrupted when he was with a client, and she had tried to
take his calls for him, all those which seemed as if they could wait,
but this woman was persistent and----
Half-heartedly Miss McVail offered to wait. Bemrose rewarded her by
sounding almost peevish with Miss Baldwin, the writer. Larry caught
most of what Arthur was saying. He was insisting to the girl that there
_couldn’t_ be much public interest in another story about the Supreme
Court. The readers of her magazine wouldn’t care if their average age
were twenty-five and they all crooned like Bing Crosby, they must be
sick of those same nine men. Larry gathered from Arthur’s end of the
conversation that Janice Baldwin wanted to quote him on what Judge
Haynes would have thought of the present day court if he were alive.
Curtly Arthur told her that he wasn’t Conan Doyle and hadn’t any short
wave set tuned into the hereafter. He couldn’t presume to speak for the
dead. Besides, Judge Haynes had been his friend.
Finally she must have probed him about the current vacancy on the
court, the real reason for her call, Larry figured. Bemrose was close
enough to the top in Washington to furnish a pretty good dope story.
Her editor would be smart enough to know that. But the subtlety of her
approach had apparently been wasted on Bemrose. He told her that F.D.R.
hadn’t taken him into his confidence, and if she wanted to find out
about the next incumbent, she’d better try the White House herself.
Then, unexpectedly, he laughed, and Larry guessed that Miss Baldwin had
gotten through to him. “Sure I’ll mind, and so will Newton. Only call
us anyway.”
Miss McVail dandled her watch at him and suggested, when he had hung
up, that they finish another time.
“She’s on her lunch hour,” Tim reminded him in a shaky treble.
“She’s been more than considerate about the interruptions,” Arthur told
Tim. “I think we have enough facts to get started, and maybe if you
both can arrange to drop in one day next week-- This office tries to do
right by any friend of Tim’s, you know,” he told her gently.
When Larry went in to say goodbye to Hoxter, he saw that Arthur had
her by the hand and was letting it gush. The persuasive Bemrose charm
that trapped juries was turned on full. Trying to resist it was like
damming up Niagara, and Miss McVail was no engineer. She smiled, and
a light spread over her pale, amber skin. It was like one of those
breathtaking effects in a Fifth Avenue window, the kind display men
use to convey an atmosphere of quality. Inside Larry whistled, pleased
with himself for having waited out Miss McVail the past hour. He knew
when he saw her in the reception room that she had something. Something
beside trouble with her brother. His hunch had been right, and he felt
as if the market had gone up two points the day after he bought a block
of stock.
When Tim and the girl had gone, Arthur H. Bemrose, lost in looking at
the carpet, marked off the room’s length pigeon-toed, linking heel with
toe. “What do you know about Janice Baldwin?” he asked suddenly.
“She writes feature stories for _Everett’s_,” Larry offered. “I heard
you talk to Carson.”
Bemrose slid into an easy chair opposite Larry, and bore down on the
backs of his heels which were extended in front of him.
“Why do you want to know? Did she sound good looking?” Larry asked.
“I wouldn’t say good looking. She sounded smart.” Arthur laughed.
“Could you figure out what she wanted from what you heard? She wanted
me, as the only authentic living spokesman for Judge Haynes, that’s how
she put it, to give her a story on what the Old Man would have thought
of the Supreme Court. I should have told her that what the Old Man
would have had in mind wouldn’t fit the print.”
“Tim Hoxter wants you to take it up with the President,” Larry said.
“He thinks you ought to give him hell for packing the Court. You
ought to tell him it’s unconstitutional. He was giving me an earful
out there in the reception room about how Judge Haynes wouldn’t have
approved----”
“He’s a sweet old guy.”
“He has a sweet ward. If that’s what she is to him.”
“Miss McVail?” Arthur asked.
“I forgot. You go for brunettes.”
“What’s Miss McVail? A blonde?”
“Oh, my God.” Larry covered his ears.
“All right. Next time I’ll look,” Arthur promised.
“No, you won’t. You’ll never look.”
“The trouble with giving Miss Baldwin her story about the Court is that
it’s strictly law journal stuff,” Bemrose said. “I’ve often thought
about writing it, and someday I’ll get around to it, but when I do
it will be what _I_ think, Bemrose trying to stand on his own two
brains, and not what the Old Man-- Have you stopped to think, Larry,
how easy it is to grow up a spokesman when you’ve lived around a
great personality? Forty-two ought to be a good age to _stop_ being a
spokesman, even if there’s publicity in it.”
“I haven’t heard a word. I don’t listen to anyone who is too busy to
notice women like Miss McVail. I figure a fellow like that has a blind
spot, and eventually it’ll show in his work.” Larry pretended to be
busy with his brief. “You forgot the date.” Laboriously he printed J
A N U A R Y 1 5 , 1 9 4 1 across the cover page. “That writer, the
Baldwin woman, really called up to buzz you about the C.J., didn’t
she? She didn’t give a damn about the old stuff on a packed Court. She
probably wanted to find out how much you know, and figured that if you
hadn’t heard anything from the hill, then nobody----”
“Yep.”
Larry sensed his mood. If Arthur H. Bemrose had been told by the
President or by Tom Newton who would succeed Justice Hughes as Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, he wasn’t picking any confidants.
“Does it read all right?” Arthur pointed to the brief.
“You’ve cut the hell out of it,” Larry complained. “I thought this
stuff on page twenty was a pretty good argument----”
“Irrelevant. They’re interested in the law. There’s a big difference
between presenting it to the Appellate Division and to the Court of
Appeals.” He expounded on the jurisdiction of the Albany court.
“I’ll take the brief home and read it. You have your own work to
finish,” Larry offered.
“Stick around.”
Arthur let the phone clatter a few times before picking it up. He swung
a long, loose leg across his knee, and directed the operator to give
him the call. “Yes, Davis, did you receive the opinion?”
It must be Bemrose’s client, Davis Shore, president of Eastern Power
and Light. Bemrose had pulled the utility out of a jam, salvaged its
franchise by bearing down on his Washington connections. Without
Bemrose they probably still would have been cooling their heels in
Washington, waiting for someone with authority to talk to them.
“Skip it. What the hell, Davis. You have enough business to take up at
this meeting,” Arthur said.
“It isn’t stalling,” he insisted. “I’ll get around to it one of these
days. Anyway, we won, didn’t we? Your credit’s good.”
He hung up and turned to Larry. “That was Davis Shore trying to get me
to name a fee. They have a board meeting this afternoon.”
“Their stock’s selling at fifty-one,” Larry offered. “This sounds like
a damned good time to send him a bill.”
“I don’t think I’m going to charge him a fee,” Arthur said.
The talk downtown was that Bemrose had received one hundred grand for a
retainer before he even touched the case.
“You’re kidding,” Larry said. “You mean that your retainer covered the
fee.”
“I didn’t ask for a retainer. I never take one from a friend.”
“Then you’ll have to charge him a fee.”
“I don’t think so,” Arthur protested. “I’ve collected a couple of fees
this year. I’d be giving most of this one back in taxes.”
“I don’t get it. I just don’t get it,” Larry said. “Why did you take
the case? To pass the time?”
“Hell, no. It was a swell fight.”
“And you had so much fun you decided to throw away a hundred grand. You
know it was worth that to them. Every cent of it. Who do you charge if
you don’t charge Eastern Power and Light? Jesus Christ, I don’t get it.”
“You have to give eighty percent of it back today,” Bemrose pointed
out. “I’ll wait to charge them until I can hang on to the money. Right
now I’m more interested in being good. Once you get the reputation for
being good-- Look at the Old Man.”
“You do all right now.”
“When I’m really good they’ll know about me. They’ll want me around,
and not just for business. When I really get to be good enough.”
“_Get_ to be, huh.” Larry shrugged. “I thought you were. I thought I
was. I thought it was all down in black and white in the Declaration of
Independence.”
Arthur knew what he was driving at. They had been trying to shell it
out for twenty years, ever since they were kids, that concept of men
being free and equal, but it wasn’t the kind of thing that was ever
settled with talk.
“You know it. I know it. The trouble is _they_ don’t know about us
being free and equal,” Arthur said. “Can you be anyone’s pal? _Can_
you?” He leaned over and tapped the desk irritably.
“Why not?” Larry said. “I’m _your_ pal----”
“And I’m Thomas Jefferson. I think Larry Frank is every bit as good as
the next guy.”
“Thanks.” Larry grinned and watched Arthur H. Bemrose get red in the
ears.
“I didn’t mean--” Arthur apologized.
“Go on, I was riding you.”
“When you’re getting started at the law, you have to do something big
for them to notice you. You can’t just plug along turning in a decent
job. You have to produce something brilliant. You have to pick your
chances.” He rocked a pencil between his fingers. “Once you’re good
enough----”
“I want to get it straight.” Larry’s narrow forehead pleated. “Who
doesn’t get a bill? Just Eastern Power and other million dollar
corporations, or that McVail girl that our friend, Tim, brought in?
What do you do about her?”
“I look after her all right,” Arthur assured him.
“Thanks, I feel better. I just wanted to make sure.”
Larry clipped together the pages of his brief. “I saw some pictures in
_Life_ this week of Shore’s Oyster Bay place. It looks like quite a
dump.”
“He asked me down for next weekend. I think I might try to get there.”
Bemrose walked to the window. It looked like snow again, and a haze
blotted out the River. The leaden water and sky blended with Jersey
factory smoke into a flat gray screen.
Larry picked up his papers and said goodbye.
Bemrose followed him into the reception room. “What has the
organization decided to do about you? Have they named you for the job?”
he questioned sharply.
“Named me? A lousy district leader? Of course not,” Larry said. “The
Hall’s going to stage a comeback.”
Arthur kicked through the pile of the carpet, unconvinced. “And if it
does----”
“Well, I won’t be taking trips to Washington and I won’t be pals with
Tom Newton, that’s a cinch. I’ll still be a two-bit politician.”
The minute Larry said it he was sorry.
Arthur H. Bemrose frowned and hesitated. “They could nominate you
when there’s a vacancy on the bench and they need someone from your
district. They don’t have to hold out on you because you’re honest.
This was one time they should have given you a break. If they keep
passing over the honest men-- The lousy bastards don’t deserve to come
back.”
Larry shrugged. “I better run along.”
“Why don’t you let me introduce you to Swanson?” Arthur insisted.
“You’ll stand a better chance with the labor crowd. Tammany isn’t
coming back. Look, it’s seven years that they’ve been out of office,
ever since the Seabury investigation ousted Jimmy Walker. What makes
you think----”
“I like it around Second Avenue, that’s why,” Larry said. “I have a
nice, colorful district where there’s very little discrimination.”
“Except against an honest man.”
“You never come down. You don’t know how it operates. Let me show you
around sometime.”
“Go on, get out,” Arthur said good-naturedly.
“Not until you tell me what I owe you for revising my brief.” Larry
shook a red paper envelope with strings that dangled, the professional
badge of the New York lawyer.
“Get out.”
“What do I owe you? Remember, I’m not your friend, Shore, and what
I pay isn’t going to make trouble for you with the internal revenue
department.”
“I’ll win it from you in poker,” Bemrose offered. “When is the gang
going to play?”
“The usual. Two weeks from Thursday. We’ll look for you.”
“I’ll be there. With poison.”
Larry shook the envelope. “Better change your mind and charge me. A man
can go broke working for nothing. Especially a lawyer can go broke.”
Arthur H. Bemrose waved him out, laughing. “When I charge fees again,
I’ll pick someone else to start with.”
The marble hall outside the offices of HAYNES and BEMROSE seemed
less formidable than a couple of hours ago. As Larry waited for the
elevator he couldn’t help thinking of all the suckers who still worked,
or kidded themselves into believing that they worked to make money.
Arthur H. Bemrose had other motives, different from making money, or
at least he thought he did. Maybe Bemrose had arrived at something.
With taxes what they were, maybe a man had to find some better reasons.
Maybe if he didn’t think of his work in other terms and do it for the
kind of tax-free currency that was around in January, 1941, he would
wake up someday and find out that he’d been taken. Larry figured that
as far as Arthur H. Bemrose was concerned it didn’t matter. Whatever
motives Bemrose might have, wherever he was headed, he, Larry Frank,
would stick around and observe.
_Chapter 2_
Larry had known all evening that Arthur was bothered about something.
The poker crowd must have felt it, too, because right after the game
broke up in Danny’s second floor dining room, they cleared out and left
Larry alone with him. He steered Bemrose to a quiet booth in the bar,
and Danny shuffled over to take their order.
“What is it tonight--Shelley or the Elizabethan poets?” Larry asked
Danny.
The bartender marked his place with his finger in a paper-backed
mystery story. “A guy’s gotta pass the time in this racket or he’ll go
nuts.”
“Any of the special left?” Larry asked.
“I showed him how to vote,” he boasted, when Danny had gone up to round
up the bottle of fifteen-year-old bourbon he put aside for him.
“I know. You placed his fingers on the levers and let him push,” Arthur
said.
“What if I did? He had never been near the polls.”
“And sometimes you wake up nights in a cold sweat.”
“Danny’s all right. He’s a literary character. One of the best boys in
the district.”
“I suppose he’s the reason you want us to keep the poker game down
here.”
“What would we get any better uptown? I like to see us give Danny the
business.”
The booth was dark, and Arthur Bemrose slumped against the partition.
Good, he was letting go. Larry felt useful. Bemrose would be talking it
out pretty soon, getting rid of whatever was eating him. One drink, and
he’d loosen up. Larry had been through it with him before.
Danny put down the bottle and some glasses. He read his book as he
uncorked the bourbon. “Three murders so far, and they ain’t started.”
From an ostentatiously flickering juke box came the voices of the
Andrews Sisters. Larry had put in a nickel for the record, hoping the
low, sedative tones would help numb the troubles of Arthur H. Bemrose.
But Arthur’s chest was scooped with fatigue, and his mustache straggled
sulkily.
“I saw that writer friend of Carson’s last night,” Larry said. “I saw
her and I heard her.”
“Janice Baldwin?”
Larry nodded.
“Where did you run into her? She was tied up at a dinner last night.”
Arthur stiffened.
“I was one of the fifteen hundred suckers who took tickets for the
dinner. British War Relief. Bessie works for them, and she dragged me.”
“And Bessie didn’t tell you she was going to be on the program?” Arthur
cross-examined him.
“If she’d told me, I wouldn’t have kicked about going out in the storm.
I stopped complaining when we got there and the Baldwin girl stood
up in a dress--” Larry described it with his hands, “It was a blue
number.” He drew a V from his shoulder to the third button of his vest.
“So you think she’s okay.” Arthur’s fingers whitened under the nail
from working his glass.
“At my age I don’t know any more, but I doubt if a fellow would have to
be urged. Don’t you?” Larry patted his wavy hair. “I forgot. You don’t
notice them.”
“Maybe I can fix you up,” Arthur offered. “She owes me something. I’ve
just done her a favor.”
“Go ahead. Bessie won’t mind. Bessie thinks she’s wonderful.”
“She wouldn’t if she knew her,” Bemrose said sullenly.
“What’s the matter? Did the Baldwin girl do anything to you?”
Bemrose shrugged.
“What is it? The story about the Court?”
“I guess that’s it,” Bemrose said. “Women with brains set me on edge.
This one has too many. She did what I guess she’d call ‘research’ on
Judge Haynes, and you’d think she had known the Old Man all his life.
It’s uncanny the way she brought him to life in her article. I don’t
think she had ever met him. I don’t even think she was in his courtroom
while he was alive.”
“But she caught him?”
“She captured that quality of his that was always difficult for
laymen to understand and made lawyers memorize every sentence of his
decisions. That instinct he had of what the law was. Not the immediate
political climate, or how public opinion might react at the moment,
but his long-term sense of what was written in the law and would still
be the law, for fundamental reasons of fairness and justice, long after
the political climate changed.”
“She must have managed to put the Old Man in her article after all. I
know you were going to try and talk her out of doing it.”
Bemrose nodded. “The article was finished when she showed it to me. She
plunged right in and tackled the soft coal case, a real hot potato.
By quoting that old decision of the Judge’s in _Wallingford vs.
Stevens_ she showed pretty clearly what he would have thought about
the government fixing the price on coal when it had just finished
prosecuting the oil companies for fixing prices on oil. She used his
language to make her point that what is wrong for individual oil men
is wrong for the government, that same argument Higgins used in his
appeal.”
“I didn’t read the decision. I never get around to them.”
“That’s what the Old Man probably _would_ have thought,” Arthur
admitted. “He wouldn’t care who got mad at him for thinking so, either.
What I can’t figure out is how a woman who isn’t a lawyer and who never
knew the Old Man-- This stuff is involved and fairly subtle. I don’t
see how----”
“You never like to admit that some women can use their heads like men,
do you? I’ve often wondered if you were ever burned.”
“My senior year at college there was a girl,” Bemrose said. “We were
engaged, and she was the last intelligent woman I trusted. She didn’t
like the idea of waiting three years until I finished law school and
another two or three years while I was getting established. That
lovely, crisp intellect of hers let her fall in love with a man who
could marry her right away. He happened to be fifteen years older,
and not too scintillating, with a yen for nursemaids on the side, but
he had the price of a respectable house in Scarsdale. Since then I’ve
tried to pick them without too many brains but more sensibility. Either
that, or the kind with no sensibility who are frankly out for business
and don’t confuse it with talk about aesthetics.”
Larry nodded sympathetically. “Did you okay the Baldwin girl’s article?”
“Yes.”
“And now you wish you hadn’t?”
Bemrose bore down on his palms which he had flattened on the table.
“When the Administration finds out that I okayed it--and she won’t
hesitate to let it be known that I was her authority--they’ll think I’m
sniping at the Court.”
“What if they do? Will it hurt you in Washington?”
“I don’t give a damn about that, but the Court’s okay. The mossbacks
obliged and died. The President got what he wanted. He didn’t have
to pack the Court or torture the Constitution. Anyway it isn’t the
Constitution that was tortured. It’s the economic ideas of a lot of
people who still haven’t caught up with the times and probably never
will.”
“Why don’t you ask her to show you the final proofs of her article?
Tell her you’ve thought of some last minute changes. If she’s going to
quote you as the authority for her article, she’ll want to keep you
happy. She needs you worse than you need her.”