cups and saucers. She read the documents as slowly as she had listened
to him, Larry decided. Quietly she studied the long legal sheets,
tracing each line with a square-ended finger. Cool and slender. Quiet
and slender. Gray-blonde and slender. Larry noted and enjoyed her pale,
attenuated beauty.
“Where shall I sign?” she asked at last.
“You’re sure that you haven’t any questions? Mr. Bemrose wanted you to
understand all the details.”
“As long as you and Mr. Bemrose think it’s all right--” She nodded. “I
trust you.”
Larry handed her a fountain pen, and she wrote her name in thin, tall
letters that were squared off in a heavy line at the bottom.
She handed the agreement back to him.
“That’s your copy. Keep it,” he said. “Now sign this one to send to
your brother.”
She repeated her signature, obedient as a fourth-grader.
“We didn’t discuss the fee. Do you think Mr. Bemrose--” A shadow
crossed the pale eyes. “Well, you know what I mean. He has such
important clients.”
“Not you. He’ll be easy on you,” Larry reassured her. “It’s a
peculiarity of his, but very often even with his rich clients, he keeps
down the fee. I’ve heard him refuse to take a cent from men who would
pay anything he asked.” Larry tapped his thigh sharply with a pack of
cigarettes and shook one out.
“He must be well off, turning down fees from people who can afford to
pay--” Marge Daugherty said. She dribbled a spoonful of tea into her
full cup, cooling it. “He’s young to be so rich, isn’t he? Or did he
come into the money? Tim Hoxter told us----”
Larry laughed. “All he ever inherited was a sister with t.b. He has a
brother who never held a job in his life and a father in Albany who
drives a truck when he can find some work. The mother keeps house for
all of them on what Mr. Bemrose sends her.”
Larry got up and walked to the table where Ed Daugherty had gone back
to the lamp. “That’s a nice job you’re doing,” he remarked.
Daugherty ran his fingers over the glowing wood, warming himself.
“I went home with him to Albany one Christmas vacation and met
the family,” Larry explained to Mrs. Daugherty. “Bemrose has been
supporting them since he was sixteen. He worked his way through college
and law school besides. I don’t know how he ever did it. I couldn’t,
but I have a brother who did just about the same--took care of my
folks, sent me through school. Some people seem to have the capacity.”
“If he had such a struggle, I don’t see how he can turn down fees.”
Marge Daugherty clamped her lips.
“He’s not married, Marge,” Lucy said, so quietly that even a
preposterous suggestion would have sounded reasonable, coming from her.
“A man who isn’t married----”
“I guess it’s fun for him to work on big cases,” Larry speculated. “Fun
for almost any lawyer,” he added. “The money doesn’t matter too much.
He has a taste for hobnobbing with big shots. He lived around them for
years when he made his home with Judge Haynes. They hire him for their
lawyer, and first thing you know he’s their pal. He hangs out with half
the people in Washington who count.”
“That’s the trouble with the New Deal crowd,” Ed Daugherty snapped.
Larry looked up startled, as though a clump of quiet woodland fern had
suddenly acquired powers of speech.
Ed pulled a pipe out of his back pocket and reamed it. “Maybe your
friend Bemrose is after power, like all the rest of them.”
“No, he just likes to help people, like he helped Miss McVail.”
She blushed. “He certainly has been nice to me.” The moving gray-blonde
lashes shadowed her cheeks. “The day I went to his office the phone
hardly stopped ringing, but he found time for my case just the same.”
“When he helps people and they put their confidence in him, he feels
good. That’s all there is to it. The money is secondary with him,”
Larry explained, conscious of going into needless detail, yet wanting
to clarify it for himself. “With taxes what they are, money isn’t
as important as it used to be. A man has to find other reasons for
working, and Bemrose enjoys feeling useful. He’s like a lot of other
people that way, only he knows better than most how to make himself
useful.”
“But if his clients _have_ the money and want to pay him, I still don’t
see why--” Marge Daugherty laughed, eyeing Larry shrewdly.
“Oh, Marge, what difference does it make? That’s Mr. Bemrose’s
business,” Lucy said. She got up and walked to the hall. “Phil said
yesterday he would pick me up at eight-thirty. I wonder if he forgot
about our date.”
“It’s all right with _me_.” Marge Daugherty brought her forefinger
sharply against her bosom. “As long as he doesn’t charge _you_ a big
fee.”
“He won’t,” Lucy whispered. “Didn’t you hear what Mr. Frank said?” Her
eyes apologized to Larry.
He signaled for her not to worry, relieved that she knew when to stand
up to them and wasn’t always a good little girl.
He made himself comfortable in a chair next to Ed. “I suppose you voted
for Willkie,” he said, wondering about the Phil who was calling for
her and still thinking that Bemrose might have tried inviting her to
dinner. She had a nice simplicity that was lacking in so many of the
hard, lacquered women Bemrose took out. The difference might appeal to
him if he gave her a chance. Larry wondered if Bemrose had ever known a
thoroughly nice, unselfish woman.
“Yes sir, Willkie should have won,” Ed said. “Now they’ve got him
wasting his time going over there to see Churchill. If we don’t watch
out, first thing you know----”
“Do you mean you’re against Lend-Lease?”
“Well, I don’t know. We’re supposed to be neutral.” Ed obstinately bit
at his pipe.
“If England goes under, we’ll have a real fight on our hands. My
friend, Bemrose, thinks there’s a chance she might.”
“There’s three thousand miles of ocean for the Nazis to cross, and
we’ve got a big navy, haven’t we?” Ed asked.
“The Czechs thought they were okay, nothing could touch them, and so
did the Poles. I’m not saying we should get into the War, but I’d like
to see Congress stop stalling and pass Lend-Lease.”
“Hugh Johnson has the right idea. He calls this free handout
lollipopping all over the world, and that’s what it is,” Ed maintained.
“Ed’s pretty conservative,” Marge observed.
“Is that the bell, Lucy?” Marge picked up the cat and slipped it behind
the kitchen door. “You answer it, dear.”
But Lucy had already disappeared down the long, floral hall.
While she was out of the room, her aunt explained that Lucy McVail
had studied nursing in Des Moines but left early in her training to
take care of her grandmother who broke her hip and was alone on the
farm. When her grandmother died after months and months in bed, the
Daughertys wrote Lucy to come to New York. They couldn’t afford to send
her through nursing school, but they paid for her course at a business
college, and she found a job in a few weeks.
“She’s a nice girl, not like girls in New York, but a sweet
disposition,” her aunt volunteered. “Ed and I never had children, and
it’s a change for us to have someone young around. I get a kick out of
her boy friends.”
Ed pursed his lips, and his wife added hastily, “Oh, she’s a good girl.”
“I think she should be a nurse, now she has the money for it,” Ed
interjected. “Those stenographers where she works are a hard-boiled,
Broadway bunch. She should be in a more refined atmosphere. She don’t
know how to act sophisticated. She don’t know how to talk fast. Have
you noticed how she takes her time with every word? It’s all right on a
farm where there’s no hurry, but in a big office----”
“When they have a figure like that, they don’t waste it in a hospital
emptying bedpans, do they, Mr. Frank?” Mrs. Daugherty winked
suggestively. “At least in business she has a chance to meet someone.
The fellow who’s taking her out is a salesman from her office. How
come that friend of yours never married? Mr. Bemrose. He can’t be any
youngster.”
“Marge!” Her husband sh-shed her.
Lucy McVail was following a sleekly combed man into the room, her
blonde head showing above his. He was around thirty, and Larry was
surprised to see that he had a small black mustache which could have
been plagiarized from Arthur H. Bemrose except that it was a neater,
better barbered edition.
“Mr. Kenyon, Mr. Frank,” Lucy introduced them.
Phillip Kenyon’s wide, warm grin was a handshake. “We better push
along, Lucy,” he said. “They say the line goes around the block.”
“What are you seeing?” Marge wrinkled her nostrils inquisitively.
“_Philadelphia Story._ At the Music Hall.”
“Oh, I hear it’s swell.” Marge reproached her husband with a sigh. “You
two better run along.”
“I’ll walk to the subway with you,” Larry offered.
“Don’t rush.” Ed folded his polishing rag: “I’m finished with this job.
In a little while we can listen to the news.”
“Thanks, but I think I’d better go.”
Lucy brought Larry his coat, and Phil Kenyon held hers as if it were
sable instead of tweed, looking compliments in five figures. Crossing
Ninety-first Street, they drew away from Larry into an invisible
circle. She clung to Phil’s arm, letting him screen her from the storm,
and he tucked her hand inside the wool lining of his glove.
“I looked for you tonight at five,” he said.
“I know.” She sounded regretful. “Mr. Anderson started to dictate, and
I didn’t get away until six-thirty. I tried your extension----”
“Mr. Kenyon works at the Green Network, too,” she explained to Larry.
They had things to talk about.
Larry decided abruptly that he needed cigarettes from the stand next
to the subway. A masculine wind and Phil Kenyon swept her down the
stairs, and she turned and fluttered a mitten at him.
Larry felt as if he had seen a clean family movie. It seemed right,
sharply right, for those two. Happily ever after. He wished Arthur
Bemrose had something as good. He wished Bemrose knew just one
wholesome, unscheming woman who would be more interested in making a
home for him than what she would get out of it in security or social
position.
Arriving winded on the subway platform from a senseless habit of always
running down the steps, Larry waited to make sure that Lucy McVail and
her friend were on the train ahead.
_Chapter 4_
Larry shifted on the stiff sofa outside the dining room of the Downtown
Law Club, and shivering, slipped his hands under his pocket flaps. He
hated this morgue and remembered that Bemrose had joined because Judge
Haynes used to like the codfish cakes they served on Friday.
A burdened coat rack which crowded the small entrance hall hung over
Larry. He walked to the window, watching the wet March snow take on the
gray of the skyscrapers as it flurried ineffectually and blew to the
ground. The tail end of March, and time for Arthur Bemrose to terminate
his winter’s hibernation. Larry knew that he couldn’t have been solidly
busy for two months, but he was too busy to see anyone. Always just
leaving when Larry offered to drop around at the office. Too busy to
play poker with the gang. Over the phone he had grown sharper, shorter.
Before Larry could invite him to lunch the other day, Bemrose snapped
him off. If that’s how it was, if he thought he could get away from
whatever was bothering him by isolating himself-- It didn’t make sense.
When a man was miserable and had a friend he could talk to----
Larry paced the hall to the gilded iron door of the elevator. The
old car crept inch by inch up the shaft as though conquering an Alp.
Watching it, Larry wondered why Bemrose had phoned him this morning
after all the weeks of silence. “Have lunch with me at the Downtown
Club, I’m bringing a girl.” That’s all he had said.
Larry never could stand waiting. Especially here. Not just because many
of the lawyers who belonged to the club had more clients than he did.
It was the stuffiness. He took a breath, but didn’t get any air in his
lungs. It must feel like that in a submarine.
The elevator door creaked open, and Janice Baldwin stepped out with
Bemrose. Her sharply tailored suit of gray wool, the gray cap that
hugged her head and hemmed her straight hair, produced a trimness Larry
wouldn’t have associated with the rounded evening Janice. Only the
generous mouth linked daytime and evening editions, the widely spread
mouth and shiny black chips of eyes. They brightened the dim hall.
Shifting a bulky pouch bag to the other arm, she thrust her hand toward
him. It was a sharp, compact weapon. “You must be Larry Frank.”
Arthur grunted a greeting and handed his coat to the check girl. Larry
asked Miss Baldwin if she would like to leave her overshoes, and as
she bent down to tug at the zippers, she seemed suspicious of his
solicitude.
Bemrose’s tweedy heft preceded them to the dining room, and Larry began
to be glad he was along, deciding her trim five feet three inches
needed support if Bemrose began to throw his weight around.
At the table Larry waited for him to help Miss Baldwin out of her coat,
but he searched the menu and let her struggle alone. Self-consciously
Larry picked up his napkin and examined the dingy silver. At last he
leaned over and helped her free the sleeves of her suitcoat from her
snug woolen blouse.
“Your public,” Bemrose said irritably.
“Nice public.” She grinned at Larry and rattled the shiny amethyst
links on her arm. The pert head, angled in his direction, excluded
Bemrose.
Shifting his chair slightly, Larry disengaged her attention. He looked
beyond the row of tables that hugged the wall. The snow, now turned to
sleet, slapped peevishly against the glass. March was laughing up its
sleeve in a last spurt of vengeance before the soft arrival of spring.
Larry looked at Janice Baldwin, and her sense of being superlatively,
glowingly alive retrieved him from the dirty dullness outdoors.
When Bemrose shoved the menu toward her, she passed it on to Larry.
“You order for me,” she said sweetly.
Uneasily he turned to Bemrose. “You know what’s good here on Friday,”
he said. “Scallops? Bluefish? How about some codfish cakes?”
Janice Baldwin was a study of contrived blankness, and Arthur said
gruffly, “I’m having the fishcakes.”
“Is that all right with you?” Larry realized that she had succeeded in
making him responsible for her. The two of them against Bemrose. That
seemed to be the way she wanted them teamed up.
“Does he always decide what people should eat?” she wanted to know.
“Now----”
“He’s your friend. Ask him what I’ve done,” she said. “He nearly bit my
head off when I met him downstairs a few minutes ago. And I didn’t keep
him waiting, I was there right on time.”
The garrulous ears darkened. “It’s not your fault,” Bemrose admitted.
“I should know better than to make a lunch date. All morning I’ve been
in a jam, the usual jam. This time it’s the bill I drafted for Newton.
The House Committee doesn’t seem to want it, and Newton insists that
I come down to Washington and meet with them. I know they’re making a
mistake. They should let it go to the Senate as is, then make their
changes when it comes back to them, but they’re not going to listen to
me. People only listen when it costs them more than they can afford.”
The statement contradicted Bemrose’s recent policy of not charging his
clients, but Larry let it ride. He turned to Miss Baldwin. “Arthur
likes things to go right the first time. Usually he doesn’t need more
than one try.”
“And he sulks when they don’t go right.”
“Do you remember in our second year at school you got mad because the
_Law Review_ turned down an article you wrote?” Larry asked Bemrose.
“I can still remember the subject. It was ‘Decisions.’ You were so put
out when the article was returned that you quit studying for about two
weeks. For you, that was like going on a hunger strike. We went to the
movies every night. We saw about fourteen B pictures.” Larry’s chuckle
came out easily from the bottom of his vest.
“Twenty-eight, you mean. Every show was a double feature.”
“That was when you almost decided to give up the law, wasn’t it?” Larry
asked.
Bemrose bungled a smile. “Too bad I didn’t before my emotions were
involved. Sometimes I envy the fellows who hate their jobs, the clock
watchers. They don’t care whether things go right or wrong. They go
home and forget about it, and they never get ulcers.”
“Like me. I’ll never have ulcers, or any of the other tension diseases
people get from worrying,” Larry said. He turned to Miss Baldwin. “I
like what you’ve been writing about England. I get a lot out of the way
you say it. Over here, people like me still have no idea----”
Her hair fell forward, screening her face. She stroked the cabochons
of her bracelet and talked down at the tablecloth. “I feel it. All my
friends over there have been bombed out. It’s the only thing I seem to
want to write about. I’d like to make everyone feel it. We’re sitting
on dynamite over here, but we don’t know enough to get off. If there
were only some way, short of bombing, that would make us feel the
urgency-- If a writer had the power and could show us that it’s close
to our last chance----”
“You’ll be going back, I suppose,” Larry said. It was inconceivable
that Janice Baldwin would sit out the War comfortably in New York.
“The British Consulate has promised to arrange transportation for me
in a month. They phoned yesterday.” Without turning her head, the eyes
moved sideways toward Bemrose.
His knife dropped and hit the table. “I thought you told me----”
“I said _if_ I could do it without upsetting _Everett’s_ schedule. You
know I promised Pat. You were right there.”
“Naturally she wants you to go. That’s how an agent collects ten
percent. Miss Baldwin is always letting her agent railroad her into
jobs she doesn’t want,” Bemrose complained to Larry.
“If you wanted me to stay here, you should have said so the other
night.” Janice’s eyes were bright and bitter, like a quinine-loaded
wine.
“I heard you tell Pat there wasn’t any new material over there. You
had already covered the story, and five hundred other reporters were
hanging around the British Isles for a news break. I thought you asked
her to get you out of it,” Bemrose said.
“The other night I may have felt that way.”
“You’d think she would be satisfied to stay in this country and pay
attention to her job. She’s always going places,” he grumbled.
“But it _is_ my job,” Janice Baldwin objected. “He doesn’t understand
that I’d like to sit home and do it, but I have to look at what’s going
on, not just read about it. That’s my particular gix. It’s the only
way I can work, being there on the spot and seeing things happen.”
She appealed to Larry. “Maybe other people can absorb it from the
newspapers, but I have to be on hand and see it myself. I was trained
that way. I’m an old time reporter. I always will be----”
“On the fly, going somewhere every minute. I don’t see how she
accomplishes anything. A person ought to have a base.” Bemrose’s
mustache jerked in a light staccato.
“For a man who thinks he’s anchored, you seem to spend most of your
time on trains,” she said crossly.
“I wanted to get back in time to go with you Wednesday night. At the
last minute Newton asked me to meet him on the hill. That’s practically
a command. I had every intention----”
They had been over it before. Her pat on his hand said skip it.
She left Bemrose alone with the back of her head and turned toward
Larry. “Tell me more about him at law school.” In a voice that dripped
apple blossoms.
Larry tried to warn her. This was no time. Not when Bemrose was strung
up like a radio aerial.
The waiter arrived with their order, and the thick dishes clattering on
his aluminum tray drowned out Janice Baldwin. They settled down to the
fishcakes, Arthur jabbing his angrily.
“At law school did you all know he would be good?” she asked after a
few minutes.
Larry tucked his left hand into his trouser pocket while he ate with
the right. “Sure. We tried to tell him so, but he kept on working. The
way he worked, you’d think he was going to flunk out. Night after night
he’d grind, except the one time he got upset about the _Law Review_
turning down his article.”
“What did you think he should be doing?”
“Playing poker with us. What do you think?” Larry laughed. “You see law
school wasn’t enough. Not for Arthur. He got himself a job after class
clerking in a law office downtown.”
Silently Bemrose remashed his potatoes.
“Didn’t you try to talk him out of working like that? It couldn’t have
been good for him.”
Larry put both hands in his pockets and moved his chair back from the
table. “We were scared of him. He was better than we were, and we all
knew it. I guess we resented him, but we didn’t dare interfere. It
would have been like trying to stop a tornado. You know it’s going to
change the shape of almost everything that is in its path, but the
force is too great. You don’t dare try and stop it.”
She nodded, letting her food turn cold.
Her tense listening acted like caffeine. Not that Larry needed any
special stimulant to talk about Arthur H. Bemrose. What he was saying
seemed to make sense, although it had taken time and perspective to
understand. It was strange lately--Tim Hoxter, the Daughertys, other
people pumping him about Bemrose--a sign, maybe, that Arthur was
becoming famous.
“So he scared you and the rest of the boys. You didn’t know what he
was about, but you respected it. Or is respect the word?” She searched
Larry’s face. “You were afraid of it. It was stronger than you. You
didn’t know whether it was good or destructive, but you felt its
strength.”
“Why not hold it until the morning they print my obituary? Then you can
do a real job,” Bemrose interrupted. “Let’s order some dessert and get
out of here.”
Larry turned to Janice Baldwin. “All I can tell you is that we would
have given a right eye to be as smart as Bemrose.”
“What’s so goddam wonderful about being able to use your head? You were
all exposed to an education, and an expensive education. If any of you
had _wanted_ to work--” Bemrose threw the words bitterly at Larry.
Larry had been feeling sorry for Bemrose because he was in a jam with
the Baldwin girl, but now anger shot through him like strong whiskey.
His neck protruded with it, and sweat stood out on his forehead. He
tightened his fists until his finger joints hurt.
Larry pushed back his chair. “I have some time-killing to do for a
client uptown,” he said, rising. “Nice to have met you, Miss Baldwin.
I’ve admired your work. I wanted to ask you about the War.”
“Hold on, you haven’t had your coffee or dessert.” Bemrose violently
motioned to a waiter.
“I’ve had dessert,” Larry said. “Don’t bother.”
“Please.” Janice Baldwin put her hand on his sleeve. “It was my fault.
I was upset because he spoiled our plans the other night, and he was
just getting even.” Her eyes turned spaniel-soft toward his. “Stay,
Larry.”
It warmed him to hear her call him Larry. It warmed him to look at her
cheeks which were the red of a pomegranate, and to see her moist black
eyes directed toward him.
“Another time,” he said. “They’re expecting me back at the office.”
“Please--” Her intensity told him that she understood how deep the cut
went.
Larry felt sorry for her. A woman who, in a few minutes, had managed
to mess up a good, solid thing that had gone on for years between two
men. And without intending any harm. Bemrose had maneuvered her into
an unpretty position, and she apparently understood the implications,
every shading and counter-rhythm.
“All right.” He pulled back the chair as if to change his mind.
“Larry knows what he has to do.” Bemrose held to his fluke advantage,
anxious to prove that she was to blame. “I’ll be seeing you, fellow,”
he said, motioning to Larry as if it were a little matter they could
straighten out in five minutes alone, when there were no women around
intent on Creating a situation.
Larry left the table, and she turned on Bemrose. As Larry reached the
entrance hall, the high frequencies grew fainter, but he heard her
say, “I _didn’t_-- A decent, considerate guy. It’s your unspeakable
arrogance----”
Larry waited for the check girl to locate his coat, and glancing back
to the dining room, saw Bemrose take over. The ears were red all the
way across the room, and his upper lip must have had St. Vitus’s dance.
Janice Baldwin’s hanging black hair kept time with each arbitrary
phrase as he instructed her in how to treat his friends.