NEWSREEL LII 4 страница

an unidentified stranger

destination unknown

hat pulled down over the has he any? face

CHARLEY ANDERSON

It was a bright metalcolored January day when Charley
went downtown to lunch with Nat Benton. He got to the
broker's office a little early, and sat waiting in an empty
office looking out through the broad steelframed windows
at the North River and the Statue of Liberty and the bay
beyond all shiny ruffled green in the northwest wind,
spotted with white dabs of smoke from tugboats, streaked
with catspaws and the churny wakes of freighters bucking
the wind, checkered with lighters and flatboats, carferries,
barges and the red sawedoff passengerferries. A schooner
with grey sails was running out before the wind.

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Charley sat at Nat Benton's desk smoking a cigarette
and being careful to get all his ashes in the polished brass
ashreceiver that stood beside the desk. The phone buzzed.
It was the switchboard girl. "Mr. Anderson . . . Mr.
Benton asked me to beg you to excuse him for a few more
minutes. He's out on the floor. He'll be over right away."
A little later Benton stuck in the crack of the door his thin
pale face on a long neck like a chicken's. "Hullo, Charley
. . . be right there." Charley had time to smoke one more
cigarette before Benton came back. "I bet you're starved."
"That's all right, Nat, I been enjoyin' the view."

"View? . . . Sure. . . . Why, I don't believe I look
out of that window from one week's end to the other. . . .
Still it was on one of those darned red ferries that old
Vanderbilt got his start. . . . I guess if I took my nose
out of the ticker now and then I'd be better off. . . .
Come along, let's get something to eat." Going down in
the elevator Nat Benton went on talking. "Why, you are
certainly a difficult customer to get hold of."

"The first time I've had my overalls off in a year," said
Charley, laughing.

The cold stung when they stepped out of the revolving
doors. "You know, Charley, there's been quite a little talk
about you fellers on the street. . . . Askew-Merritt went
up five points yesterday. The other day there was a feller
from Detroit, a crackerjack feller . . . you know the Tern
outfit . . . looking all over for you. We'll have lunch to-
gether next time he's in town."

When they got to the corner under the el an icy blast of
wind lashed their faces and brought tears to their eyes.
The street was crowded; men, errandboys, pretty girl
stenographers, all had the same worried look and pursed
lips Nat Benton had. "Plenty cold today."Benton was
gasping, tugging at his coatcollar. "These steamheated of-
fices soften a feller up." They ducked into a building and
went down into the warm hotrolls smell of a basement

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restaurant. Their faces were still tingling from the cold
when they had sat down and were studying the menucards.

"Do you know," Benton said, "I've got an idea you
boys stand in the way of making a little money out there."
"It's sure been a job gettin' her started," said Charley as
he put his spoon into a plate of peasoup. He was hungry.
"Every time you turn your back somethin' breaks down
and everythin' goes cockeyed. But now I've got a wonder-
ful guy for a foreman. He's a Heinie used to work for the
Fokker outfit."

Nat Benton was eating rawroastbeef sandwiches and
buttermilk. "I've got no more digestion than . . .""Than
John D. Rockefeller," put in. Charley. They laughed.

Benton started talking again. "But as I was saying, I
don't know anything about manufacturing but it's always
been my idea that the secret of moneymaking in that line
of business was discovering proper people to work for you.
They work for you or you work for them. That's about
the size of it. After all you fellers turn out the product out
there in Long Island City, but if you want to make the
money you've got to come down here to make it. . . .
Isn't that true?"

Charley looked up from the juicy sirloin he was just
about to cut. He burst out laughing. "I guess," he said.
"A man'ud be a damn fool to keep his nose on his draftin'-
board all his life." They talked about golf for a while,
then when they were having their coffee, Nat Benton said,
"Charley, I just wanted to pass the word along, on account
of you being a friend of old Ollie's and the Humphries
and all that sort of thing . . . don't you boys sell any of
your stock. If I were you I'd scrape up all the cash you
could get ahold of for a margin and buy up any that's
around loose. You'll have the chance soon."

"You think she'll keep on risin'?"

"Now you keep this under your hat . . . Merritt and
that crowd are worried. They're selling, so you can expect

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a drop. That's what these Tern people in Detroit are wait-
ing for to get in cheap, see, they like the looks of your
little concern. . . . They think your engine is a whiz.
. . . If it's agreeable to you I'd like to handle your brok-
erage account, just for old times' sake, you understand."

Charley laughed. "Gosh, I hadn't pictured myself with
a brokerage account . . . but by heck, you may be right."

"I wouldn't like to see you wake up one morning and
find yourself out on the cold cold pavement, see, Charley."

After they'd eaten Nat Benton asked Charley if he'd
ever seen the stockexchange operating. "It's interesting to
see if a feller's never seen it," he said and led Charley
across Broadway where the lashing wind cut their faces
and down a narrow street shaded by tall buildings into a
crowded vestibule. "My, that cold nips your ears," he said.
"You ought to see it out where I come from," said Char-
ley. They went up in an elevator and came out in a little
room where some elderly parties in uniform greeted Mr.
Benton with considerable respect. Nat signed in a book and
they were let out through a small door into the visitors'
gallery and stood a minute looking down into a great
greenish hall like a railroadstation onto the heads of a
crowd of men, some in uniform, some with white badges,
slowly churning around the tradingposts. Sometimes the
crowd knotted and thickened at one booth and sometimes
at another. The air was full of shuffle and low clicking
machinesounds in which voices were lost. "Don't look like
much," said Nat, "but that's where it all changes hands."
Nat pointed out the booths where different classes of stocks
were traded. "I guess they don't think much about avia-
tion stocks," said Charley. "No, it's all steel and oil and
the automotive industries," said Nat. "We'll give 'em a
few years . . . what do you say, Nat?" said Charley bois-
terously.

Charley went uptown on the Second Avenue el and out
across the Queensboro Bridge. At Queens Plaza he got off

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and walked over to the garage where he kept his car, a
Stutz roadster he'd bought secondhand. The traffic was
heavy and he was tired and peevish before he got out to
the plant. The sky had become overcast and dry snow
drove on the wind. He turned in and jammed on his
brakes in the crunching ash of the yard in front of the
office, then he pulled off his padded aviator's helmet and
sat there a minute in the car after he'd switched off the
motor listening to the hum and whir and clatter of the
plant. "The sonsabitches are slackenin' up," he muttered
under his breath.

He stuck his head in Joe's office for a moment but Joe
was busy talking to a guy in a coonskin coat who looked
like a bond salesman. So he ran down the hall to his own
office, said, "Hello, Ella, get me Mr. Stauch," and sat
down at his desk which was covered with notes on blue
and yellow sheets. "A hell of a note," he was thinking,
"for a guy to be glued to a desk all his life."

Stauch's serious square pale face topped by a brush of
colorless hair sprouting from a green eyeshade was lean-
ing over him. "Sit down, Julius," he said. "How's tricks?
. . . Burnishin' room all right?""Ach, yes, but we haf
two stampingmachines broken in one day.""The hell you
say. Let's go look at them."

When Charley got back to the office he had a streak of
grease on his nose. He still had an oily micrometer in his
hand. It was six o'clock. He called up Joe. "Hello, Joe,
goin' home?""Sure, I was waiting for you; what was the
trouble?""I was crawlin' around on my belly in the
grease as usual."

Charley washed his hands and face in the lavatory and
ran down the rubbertreaded steps. Joe was waiting for him
in the entry. "My wife's got my car, Charley, let's take
yours," said Joe. "It'll be a bit drafty, Joe.""We can stand
it.""Goodnight, Mr. Askew, goodnight, Mr. Anderson,"

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said the old watchman in his blue cap with earflaps, who
was closing up behind them.

"Say, Charley," Joe said when they'd turned into the
stream of traffic at the end of the alley. "Why don't you
let Stauch do more of the routine work? He seems pretty
efficient.""Knows a hell of a lot more than I do," said
Charley, squinting through the frosted windshield. The
headlights coming the other way made big sparkling
blooms of light in the driving snow. On the bridge the
girders were already all marked out with neat streaks of
white. All you could see of the river and the city was a
shadowy swirl, now dark, now glowing. Charley had all he
could do to keep the car from skidding on the icy places
on the bridge. "Attaboy, Charley," said Joe as they slewed
down the ramp into the crosstown street full of golden
light.

Across Fiftyninth they had to go at a snail's pace. They
were stiff with cold and it was seven thirty before they
drove up to the door of the apartmenthouse on Riverside
Drive where Charley had been living all winter with the
Askews. Mrs. Askew and two yellowhaired little girls met
them at their door.

Grace Askew was a bleachedlooking woman with pale
hair and faint crowsfeet back of her eyes and on the sides
of her neck that gave her a sweet crumpled complaining
look. "I was worried," she said, "about your not having
the car in this blizzard."

Jean, the oldest girl, was jumping up and down singing,
"Snowy snowy snowy, it's going to be snowy."

"And, Charles," said Grace in a teasing voice as they
went into the parlor, that smelt warm of dinner cooking,
to spread their hands before the gaslogs, "if she called up
once she called up twenty times. She must think I'm trying
to keep you away from her."

"Who . . . Doris?"

Grace pursed up her lips and nodded. "But, Charles,

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you'd better stay home to dinner. I've got a wonderful leg
of lamb and sweetpotatoes. You know you like our dinners
better here than all those fancy fixin's over there . . ."

Charley was already at the phone. "Oh, Charley," came
Doris's sweet lisping voice, "I was afraid you'd been
snowed in over on Long Island. I called there but nobody
answered. . . . I've got an extra place . . . I've got
some people to dinner you'd love to meet. . . . He was
an engineer under the Czar. We're all waiting for you."
"But honestly, Doris, I'm all in.""This'll be a change.
Mother's gone south and we'll have the house to ourselves.
We'll wait. . . ."

"It's those lousy Russians again," muttered Charley as
he ran to his room and hopped into his dinnerclothes.
"Why, look at the loungelizard," kidded Joe from the
easychair where he was reading the evening paper with his
legs stretched out towards the gaslogs. "Daddy, what's a
loungelizard?" intoned Jean. "Grace, would you mind?"
Charley went up to Mrs. Askew blushing, with the two
ends of his black tie hanging from his collar.

"Well, it's certainly devotion," Grace said, getting up
out of her chair -- to tie the bow she had to stick the tip of
her tongue out of the corner of her mouth -- "on a night
like this.""I'd call it dementia if you asked me," said Joe.
"Daddy, what's dementia?" echoed Jean, but Charley was
already putting on his overcoat as he waited for the ele-
vator in the fakemarble hall full of sample whiffs of all the
dinners in all the apartments on the floor.

He pulled on his woolly gloves as he got into the car.
In the park the snow hissed under his wheels. Turning out
of the driveway at Fiftyninth he went into a skid, out of
it, into it again. His wheels gripped the pavement just be-
side a cop who stood at the corner beating his arms against
his chest. The cop glared. Charley brought his hand up to
his forehead in a snappy salute. The cop laughed.

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"Naughty naughty," he said and went on thrashing his
arms.

When the door of the Humphries' apartment opened
Charley's feet sank right away into the deep nap of a
Beluchistan rug. Doris came out to meet him. "Oh, you
were a darling to come in this dreadful weather," she
cooed. He kissed her. He wished she didn't have so much
greasy lipstick on. He hugged her to him so slender in the
palegreen eveninggown. "You're the darling," he whis-
pered.

From the drawingroom he could hear voices, foreign
accents, and the clink of ice in a shaker. "I wish we were
goin' to be alone," he said huskily. "Oh, I know, Charley,
but they were some people I just had to have. Maybe
they'll go home early." She straightened his necktie and
patted down his hair and pushed him before her into the
drawingroom.

When the last of Doris's dinnerguests had gone the
two of them stood in the hall facing each other. Charley
drew a deep breath. He had drunk a lot of cocktails and
champagne. He was crazy for her. "Jesus, Doris, they
were pretty hard to take.""It was sweet of you to come,
Charley." Charley felt bitter smoldering anger swelling
inside him. "Look here, Doris, let's have a talk . . .""Oh,
now we're going to be serious." She made a face as she let
herself drop on the settee. "Now look here, Doris . . .
I'm crazy about you, you know that. . . ."

"Oh, but, Charley, we've had such fun together . . .
we don't want to spoil it yet. . . . You know marriage
isn't always so funny. . . . Most of my friends who've
gotten married have had a horrid time."

"If it's a question of jack, don't worry. The concern's
goin' to go big. . . . I wouldn't lie to you. Ask Nat Ben-
ton. Just this after' he was explainin' to me how I could
start gettin' in the money right away."

Doris got up and went over to him and kissed him.

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"Yes, he was a poor old silly. . . . You must think I'm
a horrid mercenary little bitch. I don't see why you'd want
to marry me if you thought I was like that. Honestly,
Charley, what I'd love more than anything in the world
would be to get out and make my own living. I hate this
plushhorse existence." He grabbed her to him. She pushed
him away. "It's my dress, darling, yes, that costs money,
not me. . . . Now you go home and go to bed like a good
boy. You look all tired out."

When he got down to the street, he found the snow
had drifted in over the seat of the car. The motor would
barely turn over. No way of getting her to start. He called
his garage to send somebody to start the car. Since he was
in the phonebooth he might as well call up Mrs. Darling.
"What a dreadful night, dearie. Well, since it's Mr. Char-
ley, maybe we can fix something up but it's dreadfully
short notice and the end of the week too. Well . . . in
about an hour."

Charley walked up and down in the snow in front of the
apartmenthouse waiting for them to come round from the
garage. The black angry bile was still rising in him. When
they finally came and got her started he let the mechanic
take her back to the garage. Then he walked around to a
speak he knew.

The streets were empty. Dry snow swished in his face
as he went down the steps to the basement door. The bar
was full of men and girls halftight and bellowing and tit-
tering. Charley felt like wringing their goddam necks. He
drank off four whiskies one after another and went around
to Mrs. Darling's. Going up in the elevator he began to
feel tight. He gave the elevatorboy a dollar and caught
out of the corner of his eye the black boy's happy surprised
grin when he shoved the' bill into his pocket. Once inside
he let out a whoop. "Now, Mr. Charley," said the colored
girl in starched cap and apron who had opened the door,

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"you know the missis don't like no noise . . . and you're
such a civilspoken young gentleman."

"Hello, dearie." He hardly looked at the girl. "Put out
the light," he said. "Remember your name's Doris. Go
in the bathroom and take your clothes off and don't forget
to put on lipstick, plenty lipstick." He switched off the
light and tore off his clothes. In the dark it was hard to
get the studs out of his boiled shirt. He grabbed the boiled
shirt with both hands and ripped out the buttonholes.
"Now come in here, goddam you. I love you, you bitch
Doris." The girl was trembling. When he grabbed her to
him she burst out crying.

He had to get some liquor for the girl to cheer her up
and that started him off again. Next day he woke up late
feeling too lousy to go out to the plant, he didn't want to
go out, all he wanted to do was drink so he hung around
all day drinking gin and bitters in Mrs. Darling's drapery-
choked parlor. In the afternoon Mrs. Darling came in and
played Russian bank with him and told him about how an
operasinger had ruined her life, and wanted to get him to
taper off on beer. That evening he got her to call up the
same girl again. When she came he tried to explain to her
that he wasn't crazy. He woke up alone in the bed feeling
sober and disgusted.

The Askews were at breakfast when he got home Sun-
day morning. The little girls were lying on the floor read-
ing the funny papers. There were Sunday papers on all
the chairs. Joe was sitting in his bathrobe smoking a cigar
over his last cup of coffee. "Just in time for a nice cup of
fresh coffee," he said. "That must have been quite a din-
nerparty," said Grace, giggling. "I got in on a little poker-
game," growled Charley. When he sat down his overcoat
opened and they saw his torn shirtfront. "I'd say it was
quite a pokergame," said Joe. "Everything was lousy,"
said Charley. "I'll go and wash my face."

When he came back in his bathrobe and slippers he

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began to feel better. Grace got him some country sausage
and hot cornbread. "Well, I've heard about these Park
Avenue parties before but never one that lasted two days."
"Oh, lay off, Grace."

"Say, Charley, did you read that article in the financial
section of the Evening Post last night tipping off about a
boom in airplane stocks?""No . . . but I had a talk with
Nat Benton, you know he's a broker I told you about, a
friend of Ollie Taylor's. . . . Well, he said . . ."

Grace got to her feet. "Now you know if you boys talk
shop on Sundays I leave the room." Joe took his wife's
arm and gently pulled her back into her chair. "Just let me
say one thing and then we'll shut up. . . . I hope we keep
out of the hands of the operators for at least five years.
I'm sorry the damned stuff's listed. I wish I trusted Mer-
ritt and them as much as I do you and me.""We'll talk
about that," said Charley. Joe handed him a cigar. "All
right, Gracie," he said. "How about a selection on the vic-
trola?"

Charley had been planning all winter to take Doris with
him to Washington when he flew down one of the sample
planes to show off some of his patents to the experts at the
War Department, but she and her mother sailed for Eu-
rope the week before. That left him with nothing to do
one springy Saturday night, so he called up the Johnsons.
He'd met Paul on the subway during the winter and Paul
had asked him in a hurt way why he never came down
any more. Charley had answered honestly he hadn't stuck
his nose out of the plant in months. Now it made him feel
funny calling up, listening to the phone ring and then
Eveline's teasing voice that always seemed to have a little
jeer in it: What fun, he must come down at once and stay
to supper, she had a lot of funny people there, she said.

Paul opened the door for him. Paul's face had a tallowy
look Charley hadn't noticed before. "Welcome, stranger,"
he said in a forced boisterous tone and gave him a couple

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of pats on the back as he went into the crowded room.
There were some very pretty girls, and young men of dif-
ferent shapes and sizes, cocktailglasses, trays of little things
to eat on crackers, cigarettesmoke. Everybody was talking
and screeching like a lot of lathes in a turningplant. At the
back of the room Eveline, looking tall and pale and beau-
tiful, sat on a marbletopped table beside a small man with
a long yellow nose and pouches under his eyes. "Oh, Char-
ley, how prosperous you look. . . . Meet Charles Edward
Holden . . . Holdy, this is Charley Anderson; he's in
flyingmachines. . . . Why, Charley, you look filthy rich."
"Not yet," said Charley. He was trying to keep from
laughing. "Well, what are you looking so pleased about?
Everybody is just too dreary about everything this after-
noon."

"I'm not dreary," said Holden. "Now don't tell me I'm
dreary."

"Of course, Holdy, you're never dreary but your re-
marks tend towards murder and suicide."

Everybody laughed a great deal. Charley found him-
self pushed away from Eveline by people trying to listen
to what Charles Edward Holden was saying. He found
himself talking to a plain young woman in a shiny grey
hat that had a big buckle set in it like a headlight. "Do
tell me what you do," she said. "How do you mean?"
"Oh, I mean almost everybody here does something,
writes or paints or something.""Me? No, I don't do any-
thing like that . . . I'm in airplane motors.""A flyer, oh,
my, how thrilling. . . . I always love to come to Eve-
line's, you never can tell who you'll meet. . . . Why,
last time I was here Houdini had just left. She's wonder-
ful on celebrities. But I think it's hard on Paul, don't
you? . . . Paul's such a sweet boy. She and Mr. Holden
. . . it's all so public. He writes about her all the time in
his column. . . . Of course I'm very oldfashioned. Most
people don't seem to think anything of it. . . . Of course

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it's grand to be honest. . . . Of course he's such a celeb-
rity too. . . . I certainly think people ought to be honest
about their sexlife, don't you? It avoids all those dreadful
complexes and things. . . . But it's too bad about Paul,
such a nice cleancut young fellow. . . ."

When the guests had thinned out a little a Frenchspeak-
ing colored maid served a dinner of curry and rice with lots
of little fixings. Mr. Holden and Eveline did all the talk-
ing. It was all about people Charley hadn't ever heard of.
He tried to break it up by telling about how he'd been
taken for Charles Edward Holden in that saloon that
time, but nobody listened, and he guessed it was just as
well anyway. They had just come to the salad when
Holden got up and said, "My dear, my only morals con-
sist in never being late to the theater, we must run." He
and Eveline went out in a hurry leaving Charley and Paul
to talk to a quarrelsome middleaged man and his wife that
Charley had never been introduced to. It wasn't much use
trying to talk to them because the man was too tight to
listen to anything anybody said and the woman was set on
some kind of a private row with him and couldn't be got
off it. When they staggered out Charley and Paul were
left alone. They went out to a movingpicture house for a
while but the film was lousy so Charley went uptown glum
and tumbled into bed.

Next day Charley went by early for Andy Merritt and
sat with him in the big antisepticlooking diningroom at
the Yale Club while he ate his breakfast. "Will it be
bumpy?" was the first thing he asked. "Weather report
was fine yesterday.""What does Joe say?""He said for
us to keep our goddam traps shut an' let the other guys
do the talkin'."

Merritt was drinking his last cup of coffee in little sips.
"You know Joe's a little overcautious sometimes. . . . He
wants to have a jerkwater plant to run himself and hand
down to his grandchildren. Now that was all very well in

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upstate New York in the old days . . . but now if a busi-
ness isn't expanding it's on the shelf.""Oh, we're ex-
pandin' all right," said Charley, getting to his feet to fol-
low Merritt's broadshouldered tweed suit to the door of
the diningroom. "If we weren't expandin', we wouldn't be
at all."

While they were washing their hands in the lavatory
Merritt asked Charley what he was taking along for
clothes. Charley laughed and said he probably had a clean
shirt and a toothbrush somewhere. Merritt turned a square
serious face to him: "But we might have to go out. . . .
I've engaged a small suite for us at the Waldman Park.
You know in Washington those things count a great deal."
"Well, if the worst comes to the worst I can rent me a
soup an' fish."

As the porter was putting Merritt's big pigskin suitcase
and his hatbox into the rumbleseat of the car, Merritt
asked with a worried frown if Charley thought it would
be too much weight. "Hell, no, we could carry a dozen
like that," said Charley, putting his foot on the starter.
They drove fast through the empty streets and out across
the bridge and along the wide avenues bordered by low
gimcrack houses out towards Jamaica. Bill Cermak had the
ship out of the hangar and all tuned up.