Magistrate in his chambers. He had known him for fifteen years, and the
Judge, a crude, bloated murderer of the language, always called him
“Cons’ler.”
The Magistrate confessed quite frankly that his hands were tied by
politics. Just before he had come to court, his instructions were
telephoned to him. The Judge’s lumpy shoulders framed a question. With
all the reporters hanging around, what could he do? Cons’ler could see
for himself. Okay, he’d reduce the sentence. Three days. It was the
best he could offer. And if Cons’ler kept his mouth shut about changing
the sentence, he’d appreciate the favor.
It left a bad taste in the mouth, like day-old garlic. Larry decided
he should have done as Bemrose suggested and put up a fight for the
judicial appointment in his district. He would have made a better
judge than some of those lousy punks on the bench. Bemrose had hit it
on the thumb. He should have raised hell for being passed over by the
organization.
Supposing they did give him the appointment, though. He would be tied
down to the Magistrates’ Courts for years. He ought to stay away and
try to develop a higher type of practice. It was a nice idea, if he
knew where to start. Not with some of the clients who came to _him_ for
advice.
He reached across his study table for a recent biography of Woodrow
Wilson, but decided he couldn’t tackle anything serious. On the way
to the kitchen to fix himself a drink, he picked up a current issue
of _Time_ and put it on the arm of his easy chair, planning to look
through it later.
It wasn’t only the day in that scruffy court which depressed him,
Larry decided, sipping his highball. He felt blue because Janice had
sailed yesterday. She called him early in the week to say that Larry’s
friend, Mr. Diamond, didn’t hold out much hope of getting her a visa.
He had been turned down in a similar case by his friend at the State
Department. Anyway, she had been thinking over her talk with Larry and
felt that maybe she had better stick around and attempt to straighten
things out with Bemrose. She had tried to reach him, but his office
said he was in Washington. As soon as he came back----
For a day or so Larry speculated optimistically on how a marriage with
Janice might round out Bemrose’s rather Spartan professional existence
and also give her a reason for taking root in the United States. The
day before yesterday, when he had convinced himself that everything
would work out with them, she called to say that _Everett’s_ had
received clearance for her passport and papers and booked passage for
her to sail the same night. There was no possible out. She had tried
but hadn’t been able to reach Bemrose. However, Larry better not tell
him so. It might only upset him. When she returned, provided he weren’t
tied up with any female clients, they might be able to straighten
things out.
With reluctance Larry agreed not to say anything, although it was a
damnfool promise on the face of it. When he heard from Bemrose, he knew
how stupid it was to let her talk him into it. Bemrose was put out
because Janice had sailed, and suspicious because she had talked to
Larry, not to him. Hadn’t she left a message for him or her address?
Larry lied down the line, handing out the death sentence. The pinched,
off-key voice at the other end told him Bemrose was suffering.
Larry would have shaken Janice, if she were there, for causing him
unnecessary pain. She could have reached him long distance if she had
really been interested. Maybe she was just piqued, and that whole
performance at his office had been an act.
Lousy. The situation seemed tied in a package marked nonreturnable.
Bemrose’s routine must have been to wait until Janice came around. When
she hadn’t turned up all these weeks, he apparently had decided to
forget his injuries and go to her. Now that she had refused to wait and
gone ahead with her own plans, it might make him angry enough to----
All Larry hoped was that Bemrose wouldn’t try to get even on the
rebound. He tried to explain to him that Janice’s orders had come
suddenly, without _Everett’s_ even bothering to warn her. In the rush
of departure, she had probably forgotten to leave a message when she
called and found that Arthur was out of town.
What made Larry think she _had_ phoned him, Bemrose wanted to know,
pouncing on this information.
Larry eased his way out by saying it was only natural that she should
call, no matter whether or not they had been seeing each other. She
wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, he lied, angrier and angrier
with Janice as he tried to cover up for her.
It was a dangerous trip and it was wartime, he explained to Bemrose.
She wouldn’t just leave. She would try to reach him and say that she
was going overseas.
Her safety must have worried Bemrose, too, Larry figured, because he
was quick to pooh-pooh her danger. The authorities wouldn’t allow
her to travel unless it were safe, he contended. But Larry knew that
Bemrose realized no one could be safe in a combat zone.
It was going to be difficult for Bemrose to live with himself for the
next few weeks. If he were in love with Janice and had been waiting for
her to come round, he must detest himself now because he had waited
too long and she was out of reach. He must realize, Larry knew, that a
letter, a cable, or a transatlantic phone call could hardly be expected
to change the situation. There was too much to explain. Janice Baldwin
had let him bluff the hand. While Bemrose held the chips, he had lost.
As Larry considered what must be Bemrose’s mood of
hating-himself-and-the-world, he slumped deeper in his chair and the
copy of _Time_ fell to the study floor. A man in Bemrose’s situation
might turn around and do some damnfool thing to get even. There was
nothing new about a man, driven by jealousy, acting irrationally
against his own interests.
Larry stood up, contracted his shoulder blades until they almost
touched, and shut the window. He felt chilly in spite of the warm May
night. He might be catching a spring cold. Whether it was that, or his
day downtown, or the pigheadedness of Janice and Bemrose, his spirits
were clammy.
On his way to the bathroom for an aspirin he stooped to pick up the
magazine. The hollow rooms further depressed his spirits. He began to
wish that Bessie’s class were over and she would come home.
Bed looked good to him as he walked through the bedroom and saw the
turned-down sheets. He undressed, built his pillows into a wall so
that he could read in bed, and made up his mind to turn out the light
as soon as his eyes felt heavy. Skimming the foreign news, he turned
to _Time’s_ section on national affairs and saw Bemrose’s picture. The
story, captioned “Transatlantic Braintruster,” credited him with the
basic plan for Lend-Lease. His clear mental blueprint had enabled a
government lawyer to draft the Lend-Lease bill in an hour and forty
minutes, the story said.
Bemrose, 43, whose recreation is poker, has an agile, trained mind
(Columbia Law and Columbia) which makes him a favorite of New York
utilitymen and statesofficials.
Tweedy, mustached, no socialite but an Albany truck driver’s son, he
wears easily the mantle of his erudite fosterfather and former law
partner, Judge Winthrop Haynes.
Bemrose made a softspoken, backdoor entrance to diplomacy through
his intimate, Attorney-General Newton. His suave handling of British
bigwigs will result in future liaison assignments, it is said.
Larry let the magazine slide off the bed. So that’s what had kept
Bemrose too busy to see him these past weeks and too preoccupied to
straighten things out with Janice. They had called him pigheaded while
he was figuring ways to keep the British on their feet.
Larry dialed Arthur’s number, jubilant at the news and anxious to
congratulate him right away. The old closed-mouth. He’d like to punch
him for becoming an international figure and keeping it quiet, for
doing his heavy thinking solo, and pretending to hand Janice an option
on the war. The so-and-so.
A Negro houseman who had worked for Judge Haynes answered. “Sorry, sir,
Mr. Bemrose is in Washington tonight. He’s dining at the White House.”
Larry snapped the light and slid under the covers, determined to fall
asleep before Bessie came home and asked him what kind of day it had
been.
_Chapter 7_
Two doors west of Third Avenue on Eighty-second Street, Larry turned
into the walk leading to Bemrose’s house. The muted stone dwellings on
this quiet street looked as if they might belong to Boston Symphony
subscribers who wore shawl-collared brocade evening wraps to the
concerts.
Larry smoothed the flaps of his coat pockets before he rang the bell.
He wondered if Bemrose had invited any of the poker crowd to this
party, and if it weren’t a stag, why he hadn’t asked him to bring
Bessie along.
The door opened, and the houseman reached for Larry’s sun-tanned straw
with the paisley band.
“You’ll find them in there, sir,” he said. “There’s _quite_ a
gathering. Yes _sir_, quite a gathering.”
After the tiled hallway, the drawing room felt sultry. Larry nibbled
through the outer layers of the crowd and saw Lucy McVail, serene in
gray chiffon, before the rococo hearth, her skirt fluttering free
of her narrow hips. The scalloped brown fireplace seemed pleased to
include her in its composition with the worn brocade wall. She stood
alone, part of the room but not of the people, an island of tidiness
in a disorganized surf. Her remoteness from the others seemed to bind
her to the old house. A fluff of gray-blonde hair had damped down on
her cheek, Larry noted, and her pale eyes looked out with the innocent
speech of a solo flute.
Bemrose hadn’t seen Larry come in. There was time to hang back and
enjoy the quiet picture that Lucy made, undisturbed by waves of
tension which needled the room. The rest of the guests sounded like an
orchestra before a concert, each tuning up on his own without regard
for the others.
Above their alcoholic discord Bemrose’s voice rose stridently as he
discussed the recent Nazi landing on Crete. “You’ll see. Those bastards
will use it as a base. Next thing you know we’ll have air attacks on
Egypt----.”
Larry moved into the vacancy around Lucy McVail. He judged by her eyes
which shifted slightly, like scraps of cloud gently moving, that she
was pleased to see him. He told her that she looked cool in spite of
the humid heat, and her pale eyes deepened in tone. A film as ephemeral
as her gray gown kept slipping between them, and made it difficult to
talk to her at first, but he was soon able to discuss her case and had
launched on some theories of his about inheritance law when Bemrose
elbowed in, accompanied by a man on the borderline of portliness who
looked as though he financed a health club to restrain an opinionated
waistline. The man’s rounded face, tomato pink, was crowned by a cap of
babyfine white hair, parted at the side and brushed across the forehead
like a small boy’s. Bemrose presented him. It was Davis Shore, the
utility man, recipient of Bemrose’s recent free-legal-services. Larry
backed away before there was a chance to introduce them while Shore,
with a false try at democracy, was saying to Lucy as he left, “I used
to run into a chap named McVail at the Knickerbocker Club. Any of your
people?”
Bemrose called after Larry to get a drink, but he pretended not
to hear. He watched Bemrose thread his way back to the door and
welcome Judd Harrison, a Washington attorney who had often pooled his
Washington influence with Bemrose’s in cases for anti-Administration
clients. These clients constituted the profitable Wall Street side
of Arthur’s practice. They were the business and financial men who,
without his help or Harrison’s, might not have been able to set up
appointments with the government agencies that had become vital to the
running of their companies.
Judd Harrison was about four feet ten, and Bemrose had to stoop to
shake hands with him. He joined Harrison in a champagne cocktail and
proposed a toast. Guiding Harrison to a serving table across the room,
he said in his low, easy voice, “Come over here and get one of your
cigars. I stocked up on them last night. Then I’ll take you over and
introduce you to the unlucky girl.”
The significance of Arthur’s remark did not reach Larry immediately.
He thought of the newspaper pictures he had seen of Harrison and the
oversized cigar with which he was always photographed. He thought of
the compensatory device used by undersized men who smoked oversized
cigars and chuckled to himself. A second later he realized what Bemrose
had said, “the unlucky girl,” and why Shore, Harrison, and the other
good client-friends, had been invited to a party on a hot night when
the season for entertaining was about over. Larry figured that he had
better look around and locate Lucy McVail’s uncle and aunt. They must
be here, and if they were, they couldn’t be feeling any too much at
home. From a corner near the bookshelves he heard Marge Daugherty’s
uncontrolled titter.
Marge had had a few drinks and was animated, intent, and looking up at
Ed Daugherty as if she could make him Charles Boyer just by looking
at him that way. Ed tried to unlock her glance by directing his eyes
everywhere except at her. He smiled with relief when he saw Larry walk
toward them.
Larry took Marge’s glass. “This needs attention.” He had it filled
with straight Scotch and asked the waiter for another like it. “Now.”
He toasted her and finished his whiskey at a gulp. “Tell me how it
happened. I’m trying to catch up. Things move fast around here.”
Marge shifted unsteadily to the other foot, and her husband shoved a
chair under her. She rolled her eyes at Larry. “Don’t have to tell. You
knew all the time.”
“No, I didn’t. Tell me. How long has it been going on?”
“A few weeks. He’s collecting the fee.” Her giggle became an incessant
staccato.
“Marge!” Daugherty said. “You’ve had too much to drink.”
“Let her have fun. This doesn’t happen in the family every day. Come
on, have another drink with me. How about you?” Larry asked Ed.
“I guess I could use another,” Ed admitted with excessive dignity.
Marge’s giggle had become permanent by the third refill, and Bemrose
came over to tend to it. “What’s funny?” he asked, looking critically
from Marge to Ed to Larry.
But before Larry had a chance to congratulate him, Judd Harrison
had joined the group, bringing with him an argument that must have
developed among some guests across the room. “Talk to those guys and
try to shut them up before they leave here,” he cautioned Bemrose. “I
swear they’re working for Vichy.”
Marge giggled, and Harrison looked at her curiously.
“Mr. and Mrs. Daugherty, my fiancée’s uncle and aunt.” Arthur frowned
as he introduced them.
“Drink, Mrs. Daugherty?” Harrison asked. “That’s a beautiful niece you
have. I understand they grow them like that in Iowa. Well, take care of
her. This fellow will never do her any good. I’ve known him--how many
years is it?”
Bemrose steered him away, quiet, competent again, and in command. “Show
me who was doing the talking,” he said to Harrison. “I want to keep
them away from Charlie Worden. Charlie’s with the State Department, and
he’s right over there waiting to be misinformed.”
Bemrose turned and explained to Larry, “We don’t want any pro-Vichy
talk to reach him. Charlie has a distasteful infirmity. He lets other
people make up his mind, and when he’s had a few drinks----”
“What’s eating that fellow and Arthur?” Ed shrugged.
“They aren’t having fun like us,” Marge said. “We’re having fun, aren’t
we?”
But Larry decided he had had enough. He must follow Bemrose and try
to talk to him. He must tell him it was wonderful that he was getting
married. Uncertainly Larry looked around, careful to avoid the
fireplace and Lucy.
“Where the hell did you get that?” A lanky man of around forty with
untonicked hair, a yellow tweed suit, and a bright knitted tie, lifted
the highball Larry had in his hand. “Just what I need,” he said,
putting out a bunch of red knuckles. “Steve Holmes, Kansas.”
“The artist?” Larry asked, standing up tall to him.
“Same.”
“Bemrose has one of yours at his office--wheat fields.”
“That’s it.” Holmes smiled.
A waiter passed a tray, and Holmes lifted off three drinks at a time,
handing one to Larry.
“Come along,” Larry said. “I want to hear Bemrose give some fellows a
piece of his mind.”
Holmes’ paw clamped Larry in place. “That pretty boy over there got
hold of me when I came in.” He nodded toward a bald blond who talked
with his hands. “Damned sterile atmosphere. Stick around,” Holmes urged.
Larry realized that except for Lucy McVail and her aunt, the party was
a stag. If Bemrose had invited Mrs. Shore-- Larry supposed there was
one--she hadn’t accepted. Nor Mrs. Harrison. Nor any other wives. That
made it all right about Bessie not being here.
“Where did he find the girl?” Holmes asked bluntly.
“In his office. She’s a client.”
Holmes whistled. “She looks as if she can use some warming up.”
“Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
“No, you tell me.” He kept Larry’s arm immobilized with one hand and
tilted his glass with the other. “Does she talk?”
Larry shrugged. “I think so. She listens.”
“Jeezuschris’, why would a guy like Bemrose want to sew himself up----”
Larry smiled at Holmes and blurted out, “There was a swell girl--from
Kansas.”
Holmes swooped on Larry, questioning.
“She’s a writer. She doesn’t live in Kansas now. Janice----”
Holmes was doubled up, grabbing his knee. “Don’t tell me he could have
had Jan Baldwin,” he moaned.
“Do you know her?” Larry asked, figuring that it wasn’t likely. Bemrose
would never have invited a friend of hers.
“Know her?” Holmes bent over. “I’ve been crazy in love with her since I
was three years old.”
It was a senseless coincidence, Janice following Bemrose around,
managing to get in tonight with this fellow, Holmes. But the party was
a disorganized, thrown together affair. Anything could happen.
The man that Holmes had tried to avoid walked toward them, swaying in
the artist’s direction. “Oh, hello.” He laughed self-consciously. “From
the back I thought you were Stokowski. Did you ever hear about the time
Stokie conducted in Los Angeles?”
He was telling his story with the polished enthusiasm of an anecdotist,
but this room somehow didn’t seem the setting for anecdotes. It buzzed
with the confusing Big Questions that were being asked without any
real hope of finding the answers. This fellow was off key with his
anecdotes, putting too much of himself into too little, Larry decided.
He hurried Steve Holmes toward the fireplace, and the overplump
womanish voice called after them. “You must ring me up for lunch, you
really must.”
Davis Shore had remained with Lucy McVail, and they hadn’t progressed
beyond the weather, from what Larry could overhear. Shore saw them
coming over and sidled away, nodding a thank you.
Larry watched Steve Holmes take Lucy on. Holmes stabbed at her with a
few phrases that seemed to hurt him as they came out. Lucy countered
with her remote smile. Apparently discouraged, the artist threw a bony
shoulder forward and rested uneasily on one foot, his wordless way of
saying “Yes, ma’am.”
It might have been the fog of Scotch whiskey that made him overly
critical of Lucy, but Larry began to lose patience with her remoteness.
She wore the Victorian house becomingly, he decided, because it
represented her era. If someone like Professor or Mrs. Storey had been
around, they would have spotted the anachronism. Bemrose wouldn’t want
them around at this time. He wouldn’t want to defend his choice of
Miss McVail. Not that there weren’t many reasons for it. Larry could
see that much himself. Bemrose could always feel secure with Lucy
McVail and depend on her to be worshipful of him, gentle and selfless
and undemanding. Their marriage would be no competitive jockeying for
superiority, as with Janice Baldwin. She was a woman with whom to
settle down, with whom to be comfortable. Nevertheless these excellent
reasons were bound to sound like rationalization, Larry knew, to a man
like Professor Storey or to anyone else who could spot a real motive
from a secondhand one.
Bemrose was bringing the anecdotist over to meet Lucy, and Steve Holmes
pulled out hastily. Larry followed Steve as soon as he had grabbed a
drink off a passing tray, and in a stupor of heat, noise, and alcohol,
they circled the smoky room, inhaling wisps of talk.
“_They’re still picketing the White House ... goddamn saboteurs._”
“_Hard-boiled Harold should be good in the oil business._”
“_How can a fellow tell, the way they have priorities screwed up?_”
“_... Lady in the Dark, fifth row._”
“_A swell job. We wouldn’t have Lend-Lease if not for ...._”
“_Grew says it’s putting off an operation for cancer, and he’s one man
who ought to know about Japs._”
The bits of talk stuck to Larry like sweat. He listened and he kept on
drinking. The last two glasses were brandy, and his thinking blurred.
He wondered about Marge Daugherty stranded in the next room with Ed,
and he listened for her grating giggle. He shuddered when it reached
him, proclaiming that Marge was tied down permanently. Larry looked
around for Bemrose. He found him with the Vichyites, arguing in a voice
that was pitched too high, his lips tight as a trap, and realized that
it couldn’t be Vichy alone which had Bemrose worked up.
“Sonafabitch Darlan. If we don’t watch out, the French Navy--” Bemrose
was saying. “To hell with the pussyfooting. We’ll never be able to play
ball with them anyway.”
Steve Holmes pulled Larry out of the group around Arthur.
“Some other guy ought to lay her first,” Steve said. “Some guy ought to
heat up that hunk of marble for him. He needs a woman who can wring him
out. Look. One of these days he’s going to blow himself up.”
From the fireplace, Lucy nodded to them and smiled.
“Someone ought to heat her up,” Steve repeated. “She isn’t ready to
take on Bemrose.”
Larry told Steve to stick around before he rushed upstairs. As he
made it to the washbowl, Larry remembered that a skimpy lunch was the
last solid food he had eaten, and that in the past hour he had mixed
champagne, whiskey, and brandy. He couldn’t tell whether he was upset
at the heart or at the stomach, but he thought of Janice Baldwin and
wondered what she was doing. He thought of her huddled in an air raid
shelter, or queuing up for a canned news handout.
None of it made him feel better. Larry wet a cloth and put it to his
head, figuring that tomorrow it might be Janice’s turn to feel not so
good. He’d cable her about Bemrose. She was a reporter, and would want
to know the news when it was hot.
* * * * *
A couple of hours later Larry walked down Fifth Avenue with Steve
Holmes. They stopped for a light at Seventy-sixth Street, across the
street from the rough stone synagogue with the steep steps.
“I can’t get it,” Steve said for the seventh time since they had left
Bemrose’s. “After all these years without being sewed up, I don’t see
why--”
“She’ll take care of his house,” Larry said.
Steve’s sandy head twisted sideways in a question.
“The way he wants it,” Larry explained. “He’ll tell her and she’ll
listen. That’s the way he likes it. No competition.”
“Who else does he tell?”
“The clients. The client-friends. You know that business about not
charging them a fee if they’re his friends.”
From across the street he smelled the dank summer green of Central
Park. A breeze from the west carried broken dance tunes through the
darkness from the Mall.
Steve stopped. “Come to think of it, he never sent _me_ a bill. The
last time I got even. I shipped him a picture.”
Larry nodded. “Would you do _him_ a favor if he asked you to?”
“Ye-e-es,” Holmes drawled, uncertainly.
“The chances are he doesn’t want anything from us, but Davis Shore who
was there tonight-- Bemrose doesn’t take any money from him either.”
Steve whistled.
“A fellow like Shore could do him favors,” Larry speculated.
“Shore was the one talking to her when we came up?” Holmes asked.
“With the pink face.”
“He looked a little dry in the mouth trying to find something to say,”
Holmes observed. “Maybe he’s not making the client-friends happy,
getting hitched to her.” His head dropped forward, and he lengthened
his stride.