over. Richter was a Fifty-seventh Street art dealer with Berlin
connections. Anyone with a name like that might have been suspect in
wartime, and when Janice heard him brag to another passenger about the
time he had dined with Goering, she drew the obvious conclusion. One
afternoon when she was alone at the bar, Richter turned up. He was
going to stop for a drink but saw her and changed his mind. Another
time he rather pointedly left the sun deck when she sat down two
steamer chairs away. The purser tried to introduce them the first day
at sea when they were both in line waiting to change some bills, but
Richter fumbled in his pocket, muttered something about forgetting his
stateroom key, and hastily left the line. Her own stateroom was in the
corridor that ran directly past the purser’s desk, and on the third day
out, she emerged from the passageway just as Richter was handing the
officer a wrapped cylinder about six inches in diameter and two feet
long. Richter cautioned him that the bulky package must be locked up.
The purser said it was too long to fit in the safe, but he might find
room in a storage closet that had a safety catch. Richter explained
that the package contained valuable art which had been entrusted to
him by an important client. Then he saw Janice, who had been standing
quietly at the corridor exit, and without leaving the package or
finishing his conversation, he hurried back to his stateroom. The
purser shrugged, and swung closed the door of the safe.
That same night after a movie in the recreation hall on B deck, Janice
stopped to chat with Richter’s confidant, a sun-dried Italian business
man of about fifty. He told her that on previous business trips to
New York he had visited Richter’s Fifty-seventh Street gallery which
specialized in old masters. The Italian himself didn’t care for old
French or Dutch, but Richter had told him on this trip that he was
bringing back some Brueghels. Now _there_ was a painter. The Italian
rubbed the fake buttonhole of his lapel. No one had ever handled
crowds like Brueghel. Especially Brueghel the Elder. Crowds, comedy,
and color. Brueghel was _one_ old master the Italian wouldn’t mind
collecting himself. He sighed. It was his misfortune not to have
the price for art. If this filthy war ever ended-- But by that time
the Germans or the rich Americans, like Richter’s client, would own
everything.
Then Richter _had_ a client for whom he was buying the Brueghels? While
Janice questioned the Italian, another screen of her brain showed the
Brueghel painting of a Flemish feast day which she had seen and loved
in Vienna. The Italian mentioned the name of Richter’s New York client,
Signor Way. Way, Way. Janice tried to pin him down, but he admitted
that his memory for foreign names was terrible. The name was something
that meant a path or a way, he feebly recalled. Richter told him the
client had made his money in Wall Street.
Could it be anyone named Signor Shore, Janice had asked.
It was not impossible, the Italian admitted, rubbing the false
buttonhole.
Goering. Brueghel. Janice wondered what the Nazis would want of a
humorous painter. Rubens and his undulating nudes perhaps, but not
a satirist. She made the jumps quickly. Brueghel. Vienna. New York.
Wall Street. Davis Shore. The Nazis selling art for cash, Richter the
intermediary for an American collector who put up the money. It was a
little raw to lift a Brueghel from the wall of a Vienna museum, but
Goering or even Hitler himself might have confiscated the painting from
a private collection, arranged with Richter to sell it and have the
proceeds deposited in Mexico or the Argentine. It sounded fantastic.
Self-consciously Janice looked at Bemrose. However, it was no more
incredible than some other well-known Nazi deals, she said defensively.
The name of Shore was the wildest kind of guess, of course, except that
she had remembered Arthur telling her about a collection of Flemish
paintings at Shore’s Long Island place. She might be dead wrong about
Shore, Janice told him, but she didn’t think she was mistaken about
Richter. He _had_ bragged about visiting Goering, and-- Well, one
look at him with his bull neck and fishbowl glasses. Besides he had
definitely tried to avoid her, and that in itself was suspicious.
She had thought of going straight to the F.B.I. and putting the whole
thing in their laps--Janice reached for the card of notes she had given
Larry in the taxi, and he handed them to her. Here was the evidence,
she explained. She had jotted down exactly what was said by Richter,
the purser, and the Italian whose name was Terelli. Naturally she
had no idea how Richter had made out with the paintings at customs.
He couldn’t possibly have smuggled in a cylinder two feet long. Maybe
the F.B.I. picked him up at the pier. But if by any chance he got the
pictures past customs unopened-- That’s why she had called Larry for
advice. She wasn’t sure whether to go to the F.B.I. directly, although
her instinct told her to go----
Larry kept an eye on Bemrose. “When she told me Shore might be mixed
up in it, I thought she better see you first. I knew you wouldn’t want
Shore’s name to come into it unless we were absolutely sure----”
Bemrose had been taking notes while Janice talked. He reread them and
excused himself from the room. Janice, trying to decipher her pencil
scrawls, put on green harlequin frame glasses to make out the writing
on the dogeared card.
When Arthur returned about five minutes later, he looked relieved.
“Nothing to it,” he reported. “Shore never heard of Richter. He buys
through the Valentine Galleries.”
Janice’s lips divided her jaw like a track of red metal. “You didn’t
phone him,” she objected. “You didn’t go and phone Shore without
telling us.”
“Why not? That was a serious charge, and I felt I had to ask him.
Maybe you don’t remember the Lusk committee after the last war, but I
do,” he reminded her. “Did you ever hear of the wholesale witchhunts
under our Attorney-General at that time, Mr. A. Mitchell Palmer?” He
frowned. “They blackjacked three hundred men whose only crime was being
foreigners. They broke in and searched homes without a warrant. They
made false arrests.” Bemrose slammed his hand against the corner of his
desk. “They did away with trials by imposing sentences _before_ trial.
They took prisoners, and when they had them locked up, they denied
them counsel and bail. They kept out reporters and wrote canned press
releases. There was a nasty non-liberal stink to the whole business,
and if we don’t watch out, we’ll have the same thing over again in this
War. That’s what happens in wartime. Everyone becomes suspect. The
thing rolls up like a snowball. If people start running to the F.B.I.
about everyone who talks with a foreign accent-- Or even every German
for that matter----”
“Richter isn’t every German,” Janice protested. She stuffed the notes
into the fur pocket of her coat and got up. “Forget it. Forget the
whole thing. I’ll handle it.”
Larry motioned her to wait. “Tell Arthur something about your trip,” he
said. “Tell him what you think about the way the War is going.”
Janice sat down again and described conditions in England when she
had left three weeks ago. “Larry says you might want to hook up with
Lend-Lease. There are plenty of openings in London. If you want to know
whom to see----”
“I have some Army feelers out. Thanks just the same.”
Larry felt a thickening of the tension. “Arthur would rather get a
commission,” he explained to her.
“I suppose you’re down in Washington most of the time.”
“Not all the time. Once in a while.”
“I wondered.”
“Why?”
“No one in New York seems to see much of you.”
“He’s been busy fixing over his house,” Larry said.
“What have you done to it?” Janice asked. “I saw the Storeys, and they
didn’t mention it being done over.”
“They haven’t been up. I haven’t gotten around to asking them.”
She must have noticed that Bemrose said I, not we. She must have
realized that he hadn’t as yet accepted fully the idea of his marriage.
“They were wondering why you didn’t invite them to that reception you
had last summer. They heard about it and naturally they wanted to meet
your wife.”
“I arranged it at the last minute,” Bemrose apologized. “Larry can tell
you----”
“It wasn’t a real party, just a few people,” Larry said.
“I bumped into Judd Harrison at the airline office the other day when I
went to pick up my tickets,” Janice said.
“I haven’t seen him for months.”
“I know. He wondered if you were hibernating.”
Bemrose’s lip jerked sharply, and the old distracting tic started.
“Judd thought maybe you were afraid to let your wife be seen by
eligible wolves. I told him you’d never have to worry about amateur
competition.” Janice thrust her open cigarette case toward him,
laughing with her eyes. “On me.”
She settled back, and for the first time since Larry walked in with her
this morning, things seemed easy between them.
“When is your friend Churchill going to kick out Franco?” Bemrose
taunted her.
“When he gets through using him.”
“Using him for what? To keep the German Army supplied?”
She slipped out of her coat and threw it over the rounded back of the
armchair. Her upper topography showed to advantage in a plain black
dress cut to a low V at the throat. “How do you know what Franco’s
going to do for him? Maybe England plans to base troops in Spain and
use them to clean up Italy.”
“You mean he’s going to take on _another_ war? He hasn’t his hands full
enough with Hitler?” Bemrose asked.
“Maybe that’s his plan for defeating Hitler,” Janice said.
“Where did you pick up that idea? In London?” Bemrose sounded
skeptical, his training in suspicion coming out.
“Why couldn’t I figure it out for myself? It makes good sense. I don’t
have to get all my ideas from other people. Once in a while I figure
things out for myself.”
“That’s what I thought when you went to Sweden without calling me,”
Bemrose said. “I thought you had things figured out.”
“I did call you. You were out of town.” She swallowed hard.
“You have just an hour to make the airport, Jan,” Larry reminded her.
“That isn’t long. We may get caught in traffic.”
“You know as well as I do that the British can’t afford to lose the
Mediterranean,” Janice addressed Bemrose. “How are they going to get
supplies through the Suez Canal if they lose their southern ports? Have
you ever stopped to think that with Greece gone----”
“But it’s playing off one dictator against another, and they’re nasty
boys to play with,” Bemrose protested.
“Why is he running down the British?” Janice appealed to Larry. “I
thought he was pushing for us to get in and fight with them.”
“We can be allies and not swallow all their policies. I don’t care much
for the way they’re handling the situation in India, do you?” Bemrose
slammed shut the drawer of his desk, although it was only open a few
inches.
“India is quite a subject. Let’s talk about it when I get back from
Hollywood,” Janice offered. “I’d like to come up anyway and spend an
evening with you. You can show me how you’ve done over your place, and
you can introduce me to Mrs. Bemrose.”
She was buttoned into her coat before Larry could reach her. As she
extended her hand to Bemrose, Larry remembered what a firm, compact
implement it could be.
“I’ll see you dressed in eagles on the next trip,” she predicted.
Bemrose followed them through the reception room to the corridor, but
Janice didn’t turn back. She grabbed Larry’s sleeve and raced him along
the slippery stone floor to the elevator.
* * * * *
The first cab, a Yellow, turned them down, but a Checker offered to
drive them to the airport if they would skip the Queensborough traffic
and use the twenty-five-cent Triboro bridge instead. Larry steadied a
cigarette between his lips, trying to keep the end dry before offering
it to Janice. She refused, flipping open the lid of her compact and
looking uncertainly into the mirror.
“First you bring up Shore. Then all that about no one seeing him. I
told you it doesn’t take much for him to go off--” Larry said.
“Phoning behind our backs, walking in two minutes later with the
answer. That may be the way he wins cases, but thank God I don’t have
to sit on the jury and listen to him.” She vengefully stroked the
straight, long mouth with purple lipstick.
“He’ll feel better the minute the Army takes him,” Larry said.
“Everything’s unsettled with him. He doesn’t know what to do about his
practice, whether to close the house, or where to put Lucy. He has no
idea where he’ll be sent if they give him a commission----”
“I can’t see him again. It takes too much out of me. For all he cares,
I could have stayed in Stockholm. It’s hard on me, Larry, very hard----”
Larry reached for her hand, and the small joints went limp in his fist.
“He was covering up, too. It was just as hard for him to see you.”
“I suppose he was right about Shore,” she said contritely.
“Probably.”
“I didn’t expect him to apologize for getting married, but I thought
he’d, well, I thought he’d be glad to see me. And he didn’t have to
blame me for walking out. I hung around for weeks waiting----”
“That stuff about Shore threw him.” Larry stroked the knuckles of her
hand.
“But before I even told him about Shore, when we first walked in--‘Good
to see you, my good girl,’ she mimicked. You’d think I was there
begging him to keep me out of jail.”
“I bet he didn’t close his eyes last night. Not after he heard you
were in town. When he saw you, he was thrown. He forgot to ask you
about the tax matter that came up when you were away,” Larry reminded
her. “That’s how much you could have stayed in Stockholm.”
“That’s right. You said last night he had trouble with my taxes.” The
black eyes widened. “He didn’t write me, did he?”
“I don’t know. Anyway his mind didn’t seem to be on taxes this
morning.” Larry grinned, and he squeezed her narrow shoulders.
“He remembered to cover up for Shore, his mind was clicking where Shore
was concerned,” she said bitterly. “I’m not going to drop it. I’m going
to turn Richter in.”
“Think it over, Jan,” Larry cautioned. “You’ll have enough on your mind
out in Hollywood without turning up spies.”
“And let Richter go on working for the Nazis?”
“I’ll see an F.B.I. man I know here in town. I’ll ask him if they have
a record on Richter,” Larry promised.
They swept across the bridge, and traveling high above the East River,
looked down at the stadium on Randall’s Island, ahead to Welfare with
its city of public hospitals set solidly in the moving water life of
tugboats, lighters, and barges. Larry always felt as though he owned it
from up here--the River and the streams of cars and drivers. Everything
except the bridge. The bridge, for all the delicacy of its steelwork,
had its own indestructible character. It owned him. He imagined that
even if he were Commissioner Robert Moses and had helped to build the
span, its flawless functioning would awe him. Larry wasn’t an atheist,
but he hadn’t been inside a house of worship in years. This perfect
steel image aroused whatever religious sparks lay dormant. He felt
more reverent about it than about an old church like St. Mark’s of the
Bouwerie around the corner from where he lived, the place where Peter
Stuyvesant was buried.
When he remembered about Janice, she was crying. The tears calmly
washed her unrouged cheeks.
“For a smart girl, you’re not being specially smart,” he said, offering
her his handkerchief.
The tears stopped, and she looked at him.
“Do you remember what I told you? You don’t run away,” Larry said. “You
ran away once, and you’re miserable because you did, but now you’re
doing it again, acting as if you’ve signed up for the track team the
rest of your life.”
A sob broke loose, and Larry figured from its unwilling harshness that
it was a symbol of weakness which had not been shaken from her in years.
“Maybe he’s happy,” she said humbly. “If he is, I haven’t any right----”
“For someone who’s happy, he is easily thrown. I wouldn’t say that he
acted happy when you walked in this morning.”
“It’s too late,” Janice said. “He’s all set. He has a wife, a home.
What would he want of me now?”
Larry shrugged. “It’s late for us to get into the War, too, but we’re
going to get into it just the same.”
“I know one of my troubles,” Janice admitted. “I keep doing second what
I really want to do first.”
“Which do you do first, the job?” Larry asked.
Her hair moved solemnly across her cheek. “When I’m like this, it
isn’t worth doing. When I’ve just seen him, even the War doesn’t
matter. All I want to do is stick around. That’s how I feel. The
trouble is I’m trained to work, not to feel.”
“Just once, why don’t you turn things around and let your feelings tell
you what to do?” Larry suggested. “It makes more sense than running
off carbon copies of a mistake. That man in Sweden knew you weren’t
feeling. There will be other men, and they’ll know it when they’re with
you. You can’t go on living logically, figuring everything out with
your bean, even if it’s a good bean.”
“I’ll get hurt. If I let myself go. I can’t risk it, Larry. I’d go to
pieces.” The tears started again.
Larry picked up his handkerchief from where she had left it on the seat
and blotted her eyes.
“Why not look at it this way, and then maybe you’ll stop resenting
him,” Larry advised. “With Bemrose the War really _is_ the thing. That
doesn’t mean that he didn’t miss you while you were gone, or that he
wasn’t tied in a knot when he heard last night that you were back in
this country. I was with him and saw his reaction. He damned near
went to pieces. Once Arthur is set in a job, maybe he’ll be able to
handle himself better. He’ll know more what to do about you, about
his marriage, and whatever else is bothering him. The thing that is
knocking him off base is not having it settled and not being in the
War.”
“The War comes first, and I’m second, or third, or tenth,” Janice said.
“Right now the War comes first,” Larry agreed. He saw that they were
curving off the parkway into a drive that circled the entrance to the
airport. “I’d let him know how it is with you. He’s going to settle
this Army thing any day, and while he’s changing his life around, you
ought to let him know. He’d want to know. He was probably looking for
some signs from you this morning, but you had all the flags down,”
Larry reminded her.
She reached into her pocket for three baggage checks.
Larry took them. “Now’s the time to talk to him, Jan. Don’t put it off
too long. Things move fast during a war.”
“As soon as I get back from the Coast,” she promised. “Before some
editor decides to send me to China.”
Larry helped her gently through the low door of the taxi. “I think
he always figured the job came ahead of him. With you, too. He’ll be
relieved to find out that some of you wants to hang around.”
Later when Larry saw her thin, small frame disappear up the ramp into
the monstrous silver hulk, he felt better than he had in months about
Janice. She might turn out to be more than an affair for Bemrose, if
his marriage continued to go sour and he needed an affair. The Janice
he had seen this morning had a little the look and sound of the real
thing.
_Chapter 12_
The last of January, a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, Larry walked into
a Rogers Peet clothing store on lower Broadway to pin gold leaves on
Bemrose’s uniform. Arthur sounded like a kid over the phone, kicked up
about getting a Major’s commission with orders to report for duty in
forty-eight hours. Larry had heard somewhere that it was traditional
for wives to pin on the insignia for the first time, and wondered why
Arthur hadn’t invited Lucy to do it. He was flattered to be selected
instead of Lucy for the ritual, and happy to hear Bemrose’s voice over
the phone. It sounded as if he had dropped twenty years since the last
time Larry had spoken to him.
As Larry entered the clothing store downtown, Bemrose was turning
slowly in front of a triple mirror while a salesman admired the fit of
his blouse.
Bemrose pointed to some fullness under the left sleeve. He saw Larry,
grinned at him and straightened, looking two inches taller. The loose
flabby look he had in tweeds gave way to a tidy compactness, and there
was less lawyer’s stoop to his shoulders already, his frame broader
and squared off.
“Pretty snappy, huh?” the salesman asked. “The Major just walked right
into it. He was lucky to find it on such short notice.”
“Looks swell,” Larry said, not quite as familiar as the salesman with
this new Bemrose.
“Don’t you think they ought to take it in for me here?” Arthur pointed
to the left side.
“You always liked a loose coat.”
“But a blouse. A blouse should fit.”
He acted as if he had been wearing them all his life.
“Are you going to report for duty in it?” Larry asked.
“I called up Bill Turner. He’s a colonel at Governor’s Island. Bill
asked me how the telegram was addressed, and when I said to Major
Bemrose, he said, ‘You’re in! No if about it. Report in your uniform.’
I’m in a helluva hurry to get this one altered so I can wear it to
Maxwell Field tomorrow night.”
“How did you find out about the telegram?” Larry asked, when the
salesman had left them to look for a fitter.
“I was at a committee meeting at the University Club, and Miss Thompson
got me on the phone. She said, ‘Congratulations, Major Bemrose! I have
a telegram for you from Washington.’ I damn near dropped the phone.”
“What did you do? Call Lucy?”
“I grabbed a cab, and rushed down to the office to read the telegram
myself. After I called you, I phoned Lucy, Marge, Ed, the Storeys, and
Davis Shore. Then I got Newton and Harrison in Washington. I must have
gone a little nuts, I guess, and called about twenty people.”
“Are you going to be able to wind up everything in time?” Larry sat
down and rotated his hat on his kneecap.
“Miss Thompson will store the furniture and files. When I have a
chance, I’ll get the building to do something about the lease.” Bemrose
acted as if he were going to accept a Supreme Court appointment, not
like someone who was about to turn the key on a six figure income.
“And the house?”
“Lucy will close the place and go to live with Marge and Ed. Unless I
get orders near home, like Mitchell Field.”
“Then the Air Force took you?”
“What do you think?” Bemrose leaned down and shook Larry by the
shoulders. “Do you think I’m going to try court-martial cases in the
Judge Advocate’s office? _It’s the Air Force._ What do you think?”
“It’s great, boy.” What Larry meant was that it was great for Bemrose,
great for a guy who always had to be on the ground floor of the big
thing. The Air Force was going to draw the cream of the services. The
Air Force had been invented for a fellow like Arthur H. Bemrose.
The salesman pointed out the fullness below the armhole to the fitter
who got busy with chalk and pins. They promised to rush the job through
and give it to Bemrose first thing in the morning.
“But Mr. Frank made a special trip down to pin on my leaves. I can’t
ask him to come back again.”
“Then you want to purchase some insignia, Major?” The salesman
moistened his lips in anticipation of military sales he would roll up
if it were a long war.
“Sell me the works!” Bemrose said. “Only you may have to tell me where
they go.” It was the first hint that he hadn’t graduated from West
Point.
With stubby, fat fingers, the salesman affixed the U. S. insignia
above the notch in both lapels, and pinned the finely wrought wings
with central propeller below the notch.
“Now if you’ll just put these here.” The salesman handed Larry two
bright gilt leaves and pointed to the cross stitching on the shoulder
strap of the blouse.
Larry’s fingers felt stiff.
“Right in the center,” the salesman directed.
“That’s a little too near the collar, isn’t it?” Bemrose asked. “I
thought I read in the _Officers’ Guide_ that the rank insignia goes on
the shoulder one-half inch from the seam of the sleeve.”
“A fellow from the Quartermaster’s was around, and he told us--” the
salesman protested in a weak voice.
Larry inserted the pin at the place Bemrose indicated. He matched the
second leaf to the position of the first and flipped the safety catch.
“All the luck in the world!” He put out his hand.
“Now the missus’ll know where to put them for you,” the salesman said
cheerfully.
Outdoors Larry looked sideways at the uniforms in the window and
pictured himself in an ill-fitting G.I. version. Fear pinched and
shriveled his heart. When he thought of waking-working-sleeping without
the warmth of Bessie to give the days meaning, an icy fright cut off
his breath. When he considered the return to a little boy’s world of
doing-as-you-are-told and no Bessie around to talk things over with at
night, his bone marrow solidified.