NEWSREEL LII 5 страница

Charley put his hand on the back of Bill's greasy leather
jerkin. "Always on the dot, Bill," he said. "Meet Mr.
Merritt. . . . Say, Andy . . . Bill's comin' with us, if
you don't mind . . . he can rebuild this motor out of old
hairpins and chewin'gum if anythin' goes wrong."

Bill was already hoisting Merritt's suitcase into the tail.
Merritt was putting on a big leather coat and goggles like
Charley had seen in the windows of Abercrombie and
Fitch. "Do you think it will be bumpy?" Merritt was ask-
ing again. Charley gave him a boost. "May be a little
bumpy over Pennsylvania . . . but we ought to be there
in time for a good lunch. . . . Well, gents, this is the first

-210-

time I've ever been in the Nation's Capital." "Me neither,'
said Bill. "Bill ain't never been outside of Brooklyn," said
Charley, laughing.

He felt good as he climbed up to the controls. He put
on his goggles and yelled back at Merritt, "You're in the
observer's seat, Andy."

The Askew-Merritt starter worked like a dream. The
motor sounded smooth and quiet as a sewingmachine.
"What do you think of that, Bill?" Charley kept yelling
at the mechanic behind him. She taxied smoothly across
the soft field in the early spring sunshine, bounced a couple
of times, took the air and banked as he turned out across
the slatecolored squares of Brooklyn. The light northwest
wind made a million furrows on the opaque green bay.
Then they were crossing the gutted factory districts of
Bayonne and Elizabeth. Beyond the russet saltmeadows,
Jersey stretched in great flat squares, some yellow, some
red, some of them misted with the green of new crops.

There were ranks of big white cumulus clouds catching
the sunlight beyond the Delaware. It got to be a little
bumpy and Charley rose to seven thousand feet where it
was cold and clear with a fiftymile wind blowing from the
northwest. When he came down again it was noon and the
Susquehanna shone bright blue in a rift in the clouds. Even
at two thousand feet he could feel the warm steam of
spring from the plowed land. Flying low over the farms
he could see the white fluff of orchards in bloom. He got
too far south, avoiding a heavy squall over the head of the
Chesapeake, and had to follow the Potomac north up to-
wards the glinting white dome of the Capitol and the shin-
ing sliver of the Washington Monument. There was no
smoke over Washington. He circled around for a half an
hour before he found the flyingfield. There was so much
green it all looked like flyingfield.

"Well, Andy," said Charley when they were stretching

-211-

their legs on the turf, "when those experts see that starter
their eyes'll pop out of their heads."

Merritt's face looked pale and he tottered a little as he
walked. "Can't hear," he shouted. "I got to take a leak."

Charley followed him to the hangar, leaving Bill to go
over the motor. Merritt was phoning for a taxi. "Christ
amighty, am I hungry?" roared Charley. Merritt winced.
"I got to get a drink to settle my stomach first."

When they got into the taxi with their feet on Mer-
ritt's enormous pigskin suitcase, "I'll tell you one thing,
Charley," Merritt said, "we've got to have a separate cor-
poration for that starter . . . might need a separate pro-
ductionplant and everything. Standard Airparts would list
well."

They had two rooms and a large parlor with pink easy-
chairs in it at the huge new hotel. From the windows you
could look down into the fresh green of Rock Creek Park.
Merritt looked around with considerable satisfaction. "I
like to get into a place on Sunday," he said. "It gives you
a chance to get settled before beginning work." He added
that he didn't think there'd be anybody in the diningroom
he knew, not on a Sunday, but as it turned out it took them
quite a while to get to their table. Charley was introduced
on the way to a senator, a corporation lawyer, the youngest
member of the House of Representatives and a nephew of
the Secretary of the Navy. "You see," explained Merritt,
"my old man was a senator once."

After lunch Charley 'went out to the field again to take
a look at the ship. Bill Cermak had everything bright as a
jeweler's window. Charley brought Bill back to the hotel
to give him a drink. There were waiters in the hall outside
the suite and cigarsmoke and a great sound of social voices
pouring out the open door. Bill laid a thick finger against
his crooked nose and said maybe he'd better blow. "Gee, it
does sound like the socialregister. Here, I'll let you in my
bedroom an' I'll bring you a drink if you don't mind wait-

-212-

ing a sec,""Sure, it's all right by me, boss." Charley
washed his hands and straightened his necktie and went
into the sittingroom all in a rush like a man diving into a
cold pool.

Andy Merritt was giving a cocktailparty with dry mar-
tinis, chickensalad, sandwiches, a bowl of caviar, strips of
smoked fish, two old silverhaired gentlemen, three husky-
voiced southern belles with too much makeup on, a fat
senator and a very thin senator in a high collar, a sprin-
kling of pale young men with Harvard accents and a sal-
low man with a gold tooth who wrote a syndicated column
called Capitol Small Talk. There was a young publicity-
man named Savage he'd met at Eveline's. Charley was in-
troduced all around and stood first on one foot and then
on the other until he got a chance to sneak into the bed-
room with two halftumblers of rye and a plate of sand-
wiches. "Gosh, it's terrible in there. I don't dare open my
mouth for fear of puttin' my foot in it."

Charley and Bill sat on the bed eating the sandwiches
and listening to the jingly babble that came in from the
other room. When he'd drunk his whiskey Bill got to his
feet, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and asked
what time Charley wanted him to report in the morning.
"Nine o'clock will do. You sure you don't want to stick
around? . . . I don't know what to say to those birds
. . . we might fix you up with a southern belle." Bill said
he was a quiet family man and would get him a flop and
go to bed. When he left it meant Charley had to go back
to the cocktailparty.

When Charley went back into Merritt's room he found
the black eyes of the fat senator fixed on him from be-
tween the two cute bobbing hats of two pretty girls. Char-
ley found himself saying goodby to them. The browneyed
one was a blonde and the blueeyed one had very black
hair. A little tang of perfume and kid gloves lingered after
them when they left. "Now which would you say was the

-213-

prettiest, young man?" The fat senator was standing be-
side him looking up at him with a tooconfidential smile.
Charley felt his throat stiffen, he didn't know why.
"They're a couple of beauties," he said. "They leave you
like the ass between two bundles of hay," said the fat sena-
tor with a soft chuckle that played smoothly in and out of
the folds of his chin.

"Buridan's ass died of longing, senator," said the thin
senator putting the envelope back in his pocket on which
he and Andy Merritt had been doping out figures of some
kind. "And so do I, senator," said the fat one, pushing
back the streak of black hair from his forehead, his loose
jowls shaking. "I die daily. . . . Senator, will you dine
with me and these young men? I believe old Horace is
getting us up a little terrapin." He put a small plump
hand on the thin senator's shoulder and another on Char-
ley's. "Sorry, senator, the missis is having some friends out
at the Chevy Chase Club.""Then I'm afraid these young-
sters will have to put up with eating dinner with a pair of
old fogies. I'd hoped you'd bridge the gap between the
generations. . . . General Hicks is coming." Charley saw
a faint pleased look come over Andy Merritt's serious
wellbred face. The fat senator went on with his smooth
ponderous courtroom voice. "Perhaps we had better be on
our way. . . . He's coming at seven and those old war-
horses tend to be punctual."

A great black Lincoln was just coming to a soundless
stop at the hotel entry when the four of them, Charley
and Andy Merritt and Savage and the fat senator, came
out into the Washington night that smelt of oil on asphalt
and the exhausts of cars and of young leaves and of wis-
teriablossoms. The senator's house was a continuation of his
car, big and dark and faintly gleaming and soundless.
They sprawled in big blackleather chairs and an old white-
haired mulatto brought around manhattans on an engraved
silver tray.

-214-

The senator took each of the men separately to show
them where to wash up. Charley didn't much like the little
pats on the back he got from the senator's small padded
hands as he was ushered into a big oldfashioned bathroom
with a setin marble tub. When he came back from washing
his hands the folding doors were open to the diningroom
and a halelooking old gentleman with a white mustache
and a slight limp was walking up and down in front of
them impatiently. "I can smell that terrapin, Bowie," he
was saying. "Ole Horace is still up to his tricks."

With the soup and the sherry the general began to
talk from the head of the table. "Of course all this work
with flyin'machines is very interestin' for the advance-
ment of science . . . I tell you, Bowie, you're one of the
last people in this town who sets a decent table . . . per-
haps it points to vast possibilities in the distant future. . . .
But speakin' as a military man, gentlemen, you know some
of us don't feel that they have proved their worth. . . .
The terrapin is remarkable, Bowie. . . . I mean we don't
put the confidence in the flyin'machine that they seem to
have over at the Navy Department. . . . A good glass of
burgundy, Bowie, nothin' I like so much. . . . Experi-
ment is a great thing, gentlemen, and I don't deny that
perhaps in the distant future . . ."

"In the distant future," echoed Savage, laughing, as he
followed Merritt and Charley out from under the stone
portico of Senator Planet's house. A taxi was waiting for
him. "Where can I drop you, gentlemen? . . . The trou-
ble with us is we are in the distant future and don't know
it."

"They certainly don't know it in Washington," said
Merritt as they got into the cab. Savage giggled. "The
senator and the general were pricelessly archaic . . . like
something dug up. . . . But don't worry about the gen-
eral . . . once he knows he's dealing with . . . you know
. . . presentable people, he's gentle as Santa Claus . . . .

-215-

He believes in a government of gentlemen, for gentlemen
and by gentlemen."

"Well, don't we all?" said Merritt sternly.

Savage let out a hooting laugh. "Nature's gentlemen
. . . been looking for one for years." Then he turned his
bulging alcoholic eyes and his laughing pugface to Char-
ley. "The senator thinks you're the whiteheaded boy. . . .
He asked me to bring you around to see him . . . the
senator is very susceptible, you know." He let out another
laugh.

The guy must be pretty tight, thought Charley. He was
a little woozy himself from the Napoleon brandy drunk
out of balloonshaped glasses they'd finished off the dinner
with. Savage let them out at the Waldman Park and his
taxi went on. "Say, who is that guy, Andy?""He's a wild
man," said Merritt. "He is one of Moorehouse's bright
young men. He's bright enough, but I don't like the stories
I hear about him. He wants the Askew-Merritt contract
but we're not in that class yet. Those publicrelations people
will eat you out of house and home."

As they were going up in the elevator Charley said,
yawning, "Gee, I hoped those pretty girls were comin' to
dinner.""Senator Planet never has women to dinner. . . .
He's got a funny reputation. . . . There are some funny
people in this town.""I guess there are," said Charley. He
was all in, he'd hardly got his clothes off before he was
asleep.

At the end of the week Charley and Bill flew back to
New York leaving Andy Merritt to negotiate contracts
with the government experts. When they'd run the ship
into the hangar Charley said he'd wheel Bill home to
Jamaica in his car. They stopped off in a kind of hofbrau
for a beer. They were hungry and Bill thought his wife
would be through supper so they ate noodlesoup and
schnitzels. Charley found they had some fake rhinewine
and ordered it. They drank the wine and ordered another

-216-

set of schnitzels. Charley was telling Bill how Andy Mer-
ritt said the government contracts were going through and
Andy Merritt was always right and he'd said it was a
patriotic duty to capitalize production on a broad base.
"Bill, goddam it, we'll be in the money. How about an-
other bottle? . . . Good old Bill, the pilot's nothin' with-
out his mechanic, the promotor's nothin' without produc-
tion. . . . You and me, Bill, we're in production, and by
God I'm goin' to see we don't lose out. If they try to rook
us we'll fight, already I've had offers, big offers from De-
troit . . . in five years now we'll be in the money and I'll
see you're in the big money too."

They ate applecake and then the proprietor brought out
a bottle of kümmel. Charley bought the bottle. "Cheaper
than payin' for it drink by drink, don't you think so, Bill?"
Bill began to start saying he was a family man and had
better be getting along home. "Me," said Charley, pour-
ing out some kümmel into a tumbler, "I haven't got no
home to go to. . . . If she wanted she could have a home.
I'd make her a wonderful home."

Charley discovered that Bill Cermak had gone and that
he was telling all this to a stout blonde lady of uncertain
age with a rich German accent. He was calling her Aunt
Hartmann and telling her that if he ever had a home she'd
be his housekeeper. They finished up the kümmel and
started drinking beer. She stroked his head and called him
her vandering yunge. There was an orchestra in Bavarian
costume and a thicknecked man that sang. Charley wanted
to yodel for the company but she pulled him back to the
table. She was very strong and pushed him away with big
red arms when he tried to get friendly, but when he
pinched her seat she looked down into her beer and gig-
gled. It was all like back home in the old days, he kept
telling her, only louder and funnier. It was dreadfully
funny until they were sitting in the car and she had her
head on his shoulder and was calling him schatz and her

-217-

long coils of hair had come undone and hung down over
the wheel. Somehow he managed to drive.

He woke up next morning in a rattletrap hotel in Coney
Island. It was nine o'clock, he had a frightful head and
Aunt Hartmann was sitting up in bed looking pink, broad
and beefy and asking for kaffee und schlagsahne. He took
her out to breakfast at a Vienna bakery. She ate a great
deal and cried a great deal and said he mustn't think she
was a bad woman, because she was just a poor girl out of
work and she'd felt so badly on account of his being a poor
homeless boy. He said he'd be a poor homeless boy for
fair if he didn't get back to the office. He gave her all the
change he had in his pocket and a fake address and left
her crying over a third cup of coffee in the Vienna bakery
and headed for Long Island City. About Ozone Park he
had to stop to upchuck on the side of the road. He just
managed to get into the yard of the plant with his last drop
of gas. He slipped into his office. It was ten minutes of
twelve.

His desk was full of notes and letters held together with
clips and blue papers marked IMMEDIATE ATTENTION. He
was scared Miss Robinson or Joe Askew would find out
he was back. Then he remembered he had a silver flask of
old bourbon in his desk drawer that Doris had given him
the night before she sailed, to forget her by she'd said,
kidding him. He'd just tipped his head back to take a swig
when he saw Joe Askew standing in front of his desk.

Joe stood with his legs apart with a worn frowning look
on his face. "Well, for Pete's sake, where have you been?
We been worried as hell about you. . . . Grace waited
dinner an hour."

"Why didn't you call up the hangar?"

"Everybody had gone home. . . . Stauch's sick. Every-
thing's tied up."

"Haven't you heard from Merritt?"

"Sure . . . but that means we've got to reorganize pro-

-218-

duction. . . . And frankly, Charley, that's a hell of an
example to set the employees . . . boozing around the
office. Last time I kept my mouth shut, but my god . . ."

Charley walked over to the cooler and drew himself a
couple of papercupfuls of water. "I got to celebratin' that
trip to Washington last night. . . . After all, Joe, these
contracts will put us on the map. . . . How about havin'
a little drink?" Joe frowned. "You look like you'd been
having plenty . . . and how about shaving before you
come into the office? We expect our employees to do it,
we ought to do it too. . . . For craps' sake, Charley, re-
member that the war's over." Joe turned on his heel and
went back to his own office.

Charley took another long pull on the flask. He was
mad. "I won't take it," he muttered, "not from him or
anybody else." Then the phone rang. The foreman of the
assemblyroom was standing in the door. "Please, Mr. An-
derson," he said.

That was the beginning of it. From then everything
seemed to go haywire. At eight o'clock that night Charley
hadn't yet had a shave. He was eating a sandwich and
drinking coffee out of a carton with the mechanics of the
repaircrew over a busted machine. It was midnight and he
was all in before he got home to the apartment. He was al
ready to give Joe a piece of his mind but there wasn't an
Askew in sight.

Next morning at breakfast Grace's eyebrows were raised
when she poured out the coffee. "Well, if it isn't the lost
battalion," she said.

Joe Askew cleared his throat. "Charley," he said nerv-
ously, "I didn't have any call to bawl you out like that
. . . I guess I'm getting cranky in my old age. The plant's
been hell on wheels all week."

The two little girls began to giggle.

"Aw, let it ride," said Charley.

"Little pitchers, Joe," said Grace, rapping on the table

-219-

for order. "I guess we all need a rest. Now this summer,
Joe, you'll take a vacation. I need a vacation in the worst
way myself, especially from entertaining Joe's dead cats.
He hasn't had anybody to talk to since you've been away,
Charley, and the house has been full of dead cats.""That's
just a couple of guys I've been trying to fix up with jobs.
Grace thinks they're no good because they haven't much
social smalltalk.""I don't think, I know they are dead
cats," said Grace. The little girls started to giggle some
more. Charley got to his feet and pushed back his. chair.

"Comin', Joe?" he said. "I've got to get back to my
wreckin'crew."

It was a couple of weeks before Charley got away from
the plant except to sleep. At the end of that time Stauch
was back with his quiet regretful manner like the manner
of an assisting physician in a hospital operatingroom, and
things began to straighten out. The day Stauch finally
came to Charley's office door saying, "Production is now
again smooth, Mr. Anderson," Charley decided he'd knock
off at noon. He called up Nat Benton to wait for him for
lunch and slipped out by the employees' entrance so that
he wouldn't meet Joe in the entry.

In Nat's office they had a couple of drinks before going
out to lunch. At the restaurant after they'd ordered, he
said, "Well, Nat, how's the intelligence service going."

"How many shares have you got?"

"Five hundred."

"Any other stock, anything you could put up for mar-
gin?"

"A little. . . . I got a couple of grand in cash."

"Cash," said Nat scornfully. "For a rainy day . . .
stuff and nonsense. . . . Why not put it to work?"

"That's what I'm talkin' about."

"Suppose you try a little flyer in Auburn just to get
your hand in."

"But how about Merritt?"

-220-

"Hold your horses. . . . What I want to do is get you
a little capital so you can fight those birds on an equal
basis. . . . If you don't they'll freeze you out sure as
fate."

"Joe wouldn't," said Charley.

"I don't know the man personally but I do know men
and there are darn few who won't look out for number one
first."

"I guess' they'll all rook you if they can."

"I wouldn't put it just that way, Charley. There are
some magnificent specimens of American manhood in the
business world." That night Charley got drunk all by him-
self at a speak in the Fifties.

By the time Doris landed from Europe in the fall
Charley had made two killings in Auburn and was buying
up all the Askew-Merritt stock he could lay his hands on.
At the same time he discovered he had credit, for a new
car, for suits at Brooks Brothers, for meals at speakeasies.
The car was a Packard sport phaeton with a long low cus-
tombody upholstered in red leather. He drove down to
the dock to meet Doris and Mrs. Humphries when they
came in on the Leviathan. The ship had already docked
when Charley got to Hoboken. Charley parked his car and
hurried through the shabby groups at the thirdclass to the
big swirl of welldressed people chattering round piles of
pigskin suitcases, patentleather hatboxes, wardrobetrunks
with the labels of Ritz hotels on them, in the central part
of the wharfbuilding. Under the H he caught sight of old
Mrs. Humphries. Above the big furcollar her face looked
like a faded edition of Doris's, he had never before no-
ticed how much.

She didn't recognize him for a moment. "Why, Charles
Anderson, how very nice." She held her hand out to him
without smiling. "This is most trying. Doris of course had
to leave her jewelcase in the cabin. . . . You are meeting
someone, I presume." Charley blushed. "I thought I

-221-

might give you a lift . . . I got a big car now. I thought
it would take your bags better than a taxi." Mrs. Hum-
phries wasn't paying much attention. "There she is. . . ."
She waved a gloved hand with an alligatorskin bag in it.
"Here I am."

Doris came running through the crowd. She was flushed
and her lips were very red. Her little hat and her fur were.
just the color of her hair. "I've got it, Mother . . . what
a silly girl.""Every time I go through this," sighed Mrs.
Humphries, "I decide I'll never go abroad again."

Doris leaned over to tuck a piece of yellow something
into a handbag that had been opened.

"Here's Mr. Anderson, Doris," said Mrs. Humphries.

Doris turned with a jump and ran up to him and threw
her arms round his neck and kissed him on the cheek. "You
darling to come down." Then she introduced him to a red-
faced young Englishman in an English plaid overcoat who
was carrying a big bag of golfclubs. "I know you'll like
each other."

"Is this your first visit to this country?" asked Charley.

"Quite the contrary," said the Englishman, showing his
yellow teeth in a smile. "I was born in Wyoming."

It was chilly on the wharf. Mrs. Humphries went to sit
in the heated waitingroom. When the young man with the
golfsticks went off to attend to his own bags, Doris said,
"How do you like George Duquesne? He was born here
and brought up in England. His mother comes from peo-
ple in the Doomsday Book. I went to stay with them at
the most beautiful old abbey. . . . I had the time of my
life in England. I think George is a duck. The Duquesnes
have copper interests. They are almost like the Guggen-
heims except of course they are not Jewish. . . . Why,
Charley, I believe you're jealous. . . . Silly . . . George
and I are just like brother and sister, really. . . . It's not
like you and me at all, but he's such fun."

It took the Humphries family a couple of hours to get

-222-

through the customs. They had a great many bags and
Doris had to pay duty on some dresses. When Mrs. Hum-
phries found she was to drive uptown in an open car with
the top down she looked black indeed, the fact that it was
a snakylooking Packard didn't seem to help. "Why, it's a
regular rubberneck wagon," said Doris. "Mother, this is
fun . . . Charley'll point out all the tall buildings." Mrs.
Humphries was grumbling as, surrounded by handbag-
gage, she settled into the back seat, "Your dear father,
Doris, never liked to see a lady riding in an open cab,
much less in an open machine."

When he'd taken them uptown Charley didn't go back
to the plant. He spent the rest of the day till closing at
the Askews' apartment on the telephone talking to Ben-
ton's office. Since the listing of Standard Airparts there'd
been a big drop in Askew-Merritt. He was hocking every-
thing and waiting for it to hit bottom before buying.
Every now and then he'd call up Benton and say, "What
do you think, Nat?"

Nat still had no tips late that afternoon, so Charley
spun a coin to decide; it came heads. He called up the
office and told them to start buying at the opening figure
next day. Then he changed his clothes and cleared out
before Grace brought the little girls home from school;
he hardly spoke to the Askews these days. He was fed up
out at the plant and he knew Joe thought he was a slacker.