MARGO DOWLING 6 страница

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want a union we'll give 'em a union. You get up a meeting
and tell 'em how we feel about it but tell em. we've got to
have some patriotism. Tell 'em the industry's the first line
of national defense. We'll send Eddy Sawyer down to talk
to 'em . . . make 'em understand our problems."

Bill Cermak shook his head. "Plenty other guys do
that." Charley frowned. "Well, let's see how she goes,"
he snapped impatiently.

"Gosh, she's a honey."

The roar of the motor kept them from saying any more.
The mechanic stepped from the controls and Charley
climbed in. Bill Cermak got in behind. She started taxiing
fast across the green field. Charley turned her into the
wind and let her have the gas. At the first soaring bounce
there was a jerk. As he pitched forward Charley switched
off the ignition.

They were carrying him across the field on a stretcher.
Each step of the men carrying the stretcher made two
jagged things grind together in his leg. He tried to tell
'em that he had a piece of something in his side, but his
voice was very small and hoarse. In the shadow of the
hangar he was trying to raise himself on his elbow. "What
the devil happened? Is Bill all right?" The men shook
their heads. Then he passed out again like the juice failing
in a car.

In the ambulance he tried to ask the man in the white
jacket about Bill Cermak and to remember back exactly
what had happened, but the leg kept him too busy trying
not to yell. "Hay, doc," he managed to croak, "can't you
get these aluminum splinters out of my side? The damn
ship must have turned turtle on them. Wing couldn't take
it maybe, but it's time they got the motor lifted off me.
Hay, doc, why can't they get a move on?"

When he got the first whiff of the hospital, there were
a lot of men in white jackets moving and whispering round
him. The hospital smelt strong of ether. The trouble was

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he couldn't breathe. Somebody must have spilt that
damned ether. No, not on my face. The motor roared. He
must have been seeing things. The motor's roar swung into
an easy singsong. Sure, she was taking it fine, steady as
one of those big old bombers. When he woke up a nurse
was helping him puke into a bowl.

When he woke up again, for chrissake no more ether,
no, it was flowers, and Gladys was standing beside the bed
with a big bunch of sweetpeas in her hand. Her face had a
pinched look. "Hello, Glad, how's the girl?""Oh, I've
been so worried, Charley. How do you feel? Oh, Charley,
for a man of your standing to risk his life in practice
flights . . . Why don't you let the people whose business
it is do it, I declare." There was something Charley wanted-
to ask. He was scared about something. "Say, are the kids
all right?""Wheatley skinned his knee and I'm afraid the
baby has a little temperature. I've phoned Dr. Thompson.
I don't think it's anything though."

"Is Bill Cermak all right?"

Gladys's mouth trembled. "Oh, yes," she said, cutting
the words off sharply. "Well, I suppose this means our
dinnerdance is off. . . . The Edsel Fords were coming."
"Hell, no, why not have it anyway? Yours truly can attend
in a wheelchair. Say, they sure have got me in a strait-
jacket. . . . I guess I busted some ribs." Gladys nodded;
her mouth was getting very small and thin. Then she sud-
denly began to cry.

The nurse came in and said reproachfully, "Oh, Mrs.
Anderson." Charley was just as glad when Gladys went
out and left him alone with the nurse. "Say, nurse, get
hold of the doctor, will you? Tell him I'm feeling fine
and want to look over the extent of the damage.""Mr.
Anderson, you mustn't have anything on your mind.""I
know, tell Mrs. Anderson I want her to get in touch with
the office.""But it's Sunday, Mr. Anderson. A great many
people have been downstairs but I don't think the doctor

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is letting them up yet." The nurse was a freshfaced girl
with a slightly Scotch way of talking. "I bet you're a
Canadian," said Charley. "Right that time," said the nurse.
"I knew a wonderful nurse who was a Canadian once. If
I'd had any sense I'd have married her."

The housephysician was a roundfaced man with a jovial
smooth manner almost like a headwaiter at a big hotel.
"Say, doc, ought my leg to hurt so damn much?""You
see we haven't set it yet. You tried to puncture a lung but
didn't quite get away with it. We had to remove a few
little splinters of rib.""Not from the lung . . .""Luck-
ily not.""But why the hell didn't you set the leg at the
same time?""Well, we're waiting for Dr. Roberts to come
on from New York. . . . Mrs. Anderson insisted on him.
Of course we are all very pleased, as he's one of the most
eminent men in his profession. . . . It'll be another little
operation."

It wasn't until he'd come to from the second operation
that they told him that Bill Cermak had died of a frac-
tured skull.

Charley was in the hospital three months with his leg
in a Balkan frame. The fractured ribs healed up fast, but
he kept on having trouble with his breathing. Gladys han-
dled all the house bills and came every afternoon for a
minute. She was always in a hurry and always terribly
worried. He had to turn over a power of attorney to Moe
Frank his lawyer who used to come to see him a couple of
times a week to talk things over. Charley couldn't say
much, he couldn't say much to anybody he was in so much
pain.

He liked it best when Gladys sent Wheatley to see him.
Wheatley was three years old now and thought it was
great in the hospital. He liked to see the nurse working
all the little weights and pulleys of the frame the leg hung
in. "Daddy's living in a airplane," was what he always

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said about it. He had tow hair and his nose was beginning
to stick up and Charley thought he took after him.

Marguerite was still too little to be much fun. The one
time Gladys had the governess bring her, she bawled so
at the look of the scarylooking frame she had to be taken
home. Gladys wouldn't let her come again. Gladys and
Charley had a bitter row about letting Wheatley come as
she said she didn't want the child to remember his father
in the hospital. "But, Glad, he'll have plenty of time to get
over it, get over it a damn sight sooner than I will."
Gladys pursed her lips together and said nothing. When
she'd gone Cfiarley lay there hating her and wondering
how they could ever have had children together.

Just about the time he began to see clearly that they all
expected him to be a cripple the rest of his life he began
to mend, but it was winter before he was able to go home
on crutches. He still suffered sometimes from a sort of
nervous difficulty in breathing. The house seemed strange
as he dragged himself around in it. Gladys had had every
room redecorated while he was away and all the servants
were different. Charley didn't feel it was his house at all.
What he enjoyed best was the massage he had three times
a week. He spent his days playing with the kids and talk-
ing to Miss Jarvis, their stiff and elderly English gov-
erness. After they'd gone to bed he'd sit in his sittingroom
drinking scotch and soda and feeling puffy and nervous.
God damn it, he was getting too fat. Gladys was always
cool as a cucumber these days; even when he went into fits
of temper and cursed at her, she'd stand there looking at
him with a cold look of disgust on her carefully madeup
face. She'entertained a great deal but made the servants
understand that Mr. Anderson wasn't well enough to come
down. He began to feel like a poor relation in his own
house. Once when the Farrells were coming he put on his
tuxedo and hobbled down to dinner on his crutches. There

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was no place set for him and everybody looked at him like
he was a ghost.

"Thataboy," shouted Farrell in his yapping voice. "I
was expecting to come up and chin with you after dinnex."
It turned out that what Farrell wanted to talk about was
the suit for five hundred thousand some damn shyster had
induced Cermak's widow to bring against the company.
Farrell had an idea that if Charley went and saw her he
could induce her to be reasonable and settle for a small
annuity. Charley said he'd be damned if he'd go. At din-
ner Charley got tight and upset the afterdinner coffeecups
with his crutch and went off to bed in a rage.

What he enjoyed outside of playing with the kids was
buying and selling stocks and talking to Nat over the long-
distance. Nat kept telling him he was getting the feel of
the market. Nat warned him and Charley knew damn well
that he was slipping at Tern and that if he didn't do some-
thing he'd be frozen out, but he felt too rotten to go to
directors' meetings; what he did do was to sell out about
half his stocks in small parcels. Nat kept telling him if he'd
only get a move on he could get control of the whole busi-
ness before Andy Merritt pulled off his new reorganiza-
tion, but he felt too damn nervous and miserable to make
the effort. All he could seem to do was to grumble and
call Julius Stauch and raise hell about details. Stauch had
taken over his work on the new monoplane and turned out
a little ship that had gone through all tests with flying
colors. When he'd put down the receiver, Charley would
pour himself a little scotch and settle back on the couch in
his window and mutter to himself, "Well, you're dished
this time."

One evening Farrell came around and had a long talk
and said what Charley needed was a fishing trip, he'd
never get well if he kept on this way. He said he'd been
talking to Doc Thompson and that he recommended three

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months off and plenty of exercise if he ever expected to
throw away his crutches.

Gladys couldn't go because old Mrs. Wheatley was sick,
so Charley got into the back of his Lincoln towncar alone
with the chauffeur to drive him, and a lot of blankets to
keep him warm, and a flask of whiskey and a thermosbottle
of hot coffee, to go down all alone to Miami.

At Cincinnati he felt so bum he spent a whole day in
bed in the hotel there. He got the chauffeur to get him
booklets about Florida from a travel agency, and finally
sent a wire to Nat Benton asking him to spend a week with
him down at the Key Largo fishingcamp. Next morning
he started off again early. He'd had a good night's sleep
and he felt better and began to enjoy the trip. But he felt
a damn fool sitting there being driven like an old woman
all bundled up in rugs. He was lonely too because the
chauffeur wasn't the kind of bird you could talk to. He
was a sourlooking Canuck Gladys had hired because she
thought it was classy to give her orders in French through
the speakingtube; Charley was sure the bastard gypped
him on the price of gas and oil and repairs along the road;
that damn Lincoln was turning out a bottomless pit for
gas and oil.

In Jacksonville the sun was shining. Charley gave him-
self the satisfaction of firing the chauffeur as soon as they'd
driven up to the door of the hotel. Then he went to bed
with a pint of bum corn the bellboy sold him and slept like
a log.

In the morning he woke up late feeling thirsty but
cheerful. After breakfast he checked out of the hotel and
drove around the town a little. It made him feel good to
pack his own bag and get into the front seat and drive his
own car.

The town had a cheerful rattletrap look in the sunlight
under the big white clouds and the blue sky. At the lunch-
room next to the busstation he stopped to have a drink.

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He felt so good that he got out of the car without his
crutches and hobbled across the warm pavement. The wind
was fluttering the leaves of the magazines and the pink
and palegreen sheets of the papers outside the lunchroom
window. Charley was out of breath from the effort when
he slid onto a stool at the counter. "Give me a limeade
and no sweetnin' in it, please," he said to the ratfaced boy
at the fountain.

The sodajerker didn't pay any attention, he was looking
down the other way. Charley felt his face get red. His
first idea was, I'll get him fired. Then he looked where
the boy was looking. There was a blonde eating a sandwich
at the other end of the counter. She certainly was pretty.
She wore a little black hat and a neat bluegrey suit and a
little white lace around her neck and at her wrists. She had
an amazed look on her face like she'd just heard some-
thing extraordinarily funny. Forgetting to favor his game
leg Charley slipped up several seats towards her. "Say, bo,
how about that limeade?" he shouted cheerfully at the
sodajerker.

The girl was looking at Charley. Her eyes really were
a perfectly pure blue. She was speaking to him. "Maybe
you know how long the bus takes to Miami, mister. This
boy thinks he's a wit so I can't get any data."

"Suppose we try it out and see," said Charley.

"They surely come funny in Florida. . . . Another
humorist."

"No, I mean it. If you let me drive you down you'll be
doing a sick man a great favor."

"Sure it won't mean a fate worse than death?"

"You'll be perfectly safe with me, young lady. I'm al-
most a cripple. I'll show you my crutches in the car."

"What's the trouble?"

"Cracked up in a plane."

"You a pilot?"

Charley nodded. "Not quite skinny enough for Lind-

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bergh," she said, looking him up and down. Charley
turned red. "I am a little overweight. It's being cooped
up with this lousy leg."

"Well, I guess I'll try it. If I step into your car and
wake up in Buenos Aires it'll be my bad luck."

Charley tried to pay for her coffee and sandwich but she
wouldn't let him. Something about her manner kept him
laughing all the time. When he got up and she saw how
he limped she pursed her mouth up. "Gee, that's too bad."
When she saw the car she stopped in her tracks. "Zowie,"
she said, "we're bloomin' millionaires."

They were laughing as they got into the car. There was
something about the way she said things that made him
laugh. She wouldn't say what her name was. "Call me
Mme. X," she said. "Then you'll have to call me Mr. A,"
said Charley.

They laughed and giggled all the way to Daytona Beach
where they stopped off and went into the surf for a dip.
Charley felt ashamed of his pot and his pale skin and his
limp as he walked across the beach with her looking brown
and trim in her blue bathingsuit. She had a pretty figure
although her hips were a little big. "Anyway it's not as if
I'd come out of it with one leg shorter than the other. The
doc says I'll be absolutely O.K. if I exercise it right."

"Sure, you'll be great in no time. And me thinkin' you
was an elderly sugardaddy in the drugstore there."

"I think you're a humdinger, Mme. X."

"Be sure you don't put anything in writing, Mr. A."

Charley's leg ached like blazes when he came out of the
water, but it didn't keep him from having a whale of a
good appetite for the first time in months. After a big fish-
dinner they started off again. She went to sleep in the car
with her neat little head on his shoulder. He felt very
happy driving down the straight smooth concrete highway
although he felt tired already. When they got into Miami that night she made him take her to a small hotel back

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near the railroad tracks and wouldn't let him come in with
her. "But gosh, couldn't we see each other again?"

"Sure, you can see me any night at the Palms. I'm an
entertainer there."

"Honest . . . I knew you were an entertainer but I
didn't know you were a professional."

"You sure did me a good turn, Mr. A. Now it can be
told . . . I was flat broke with exactly the price of that
ham sandwich and if you hadn't brought me down I'da
lost the chance of working here. . . . I'll tell you about
it sometime."

"Tell me your name. I'd like to call you up."

"You tell me yours."

" Charles Anderson. I'll be staying bored to death at the
Miami-Biltmore."

"So you really are Mr. A. . . . Well, goodby, Mr. A,
and thanks a million times." She ran into the hotel. Char-
ley was crazy about her already. He was so tired he just
barely made his hotel. He went up to his room and tum-
bled into bed and for the first time in months went to sleep
without getting drunk first.

A week later when Nat Benton turned up he was sur-
prised to find Charley in such good shape. "Nothin' like a
change," said Charley, laughing. They drove on down to-
wards the Keys together. Charley had. Margo Dowling's
photograph in his pocket, a professional photograph of her
dressed in Spanish costume for her act. He'd been to the
Palms every night, but he hadn't managed to get her to
go out with him yet. When he'd suggest anything she'd
shake her head and make a face and say, "I'll tell you all
about it sometime." But the last night she had given him a
number where he could call her up.

Nat kept trying to talk about the market and the big
reorganization of Tern and Askew-Merritt that Merritt
was engineering but Charley would shut him up with,
"Aw, hell, let's talk about somethin' else." The camp was

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all right but the mosquitoes were fierce. They spent a good
day on the reef fishing for barracuda and grouper. They
took a jug of bacardi out in the motorboat and fished and
drank and ate sandwiches. Charley told Nat all about the
crackup. "Honestly, I don't think it was my fault. It was
one of those damn things you can't help. . . . Now I feel
as if I'd lost the last friend I had on earth. Honest, I'd a
given anythin' I had in the world if that hadn't happened
to Bill.""After all," said Nat, "he was only a mechanic."

One day when they got in from fishing, drunk and with
their hands and pants fishy, and their faces burned by the
sun and glare, and dizzy from the sound and smell of the
motor and the choppy motion of the boat, they found wait-
ing for them a wire from Benton's office.

UNKNOWN UNLOADING TERN STOP DROPS FOUR AND A
HALF POINTS STOP WIRE INSTRUCTIONS

"Instructions hell," said Benton, jamming his stuff into
his suitcase. "We'll go up and see. Suppose we charter a
plane at Miami.""You take the plane," said Charley
coolly. "I'm going to ride on the train."

In New York he sat all day in the back room of Nat
Benton's office smoking too many cigars, watching the
ticker, fretting and fuming, riding up and down town in
taxicabs, getting the lowdown from various sallowfaced
friends of Nat's and Moe Frank's. By the end of the week
he'd lost four hundred thousand dollars and had let go
every airplane stock he had in the world.

All the time he was sitting there putting on a big show
of business he was counting the minutes, the way he had
when he was a kid in school, for the market to close so that
he could go uptown to a speakeasy on Fiftysecond Street
to meet a hennahaired girl named Sally Hogan he'd met
when he was out with Nat at the Club Dover. She was the
first girl he'd picked up when he got to New York. He
didn't give a damn about her but he had to have some kind

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of a girl. They were registered at the hotel as Mr. and
Mrs. Smith.

One morning when they were having breakfast in bed
there was a light knock on the door. "Come in," yelled
Charley, thinking it was the waiter. Two shabbylooking
men rushed into the room, followed by O'Higgins, a shy-
ster lawyer he'd met a couple of times back in Detroit.
Sally let out a shriek and covered her head with the pillow.

"Howdy, Charley," said O'Higgins. "I'm sorry to do
this but it's all in the line of duty. You don't deny that you
are Charles Anderson, do you? Well, I thought you'd
rather hear it from me than just read the legal terms.
Mrs. Anderson is suing you for divorce in Michigan. . . .
That's all right, boys."

The shabby men bowed meekly and backed out the door.

"Of all the lousy stinkin' tricks . . ."

"Mrs. Anderson's had the detectives on your trail ever
since you fired her chauffeur in Jacksonville."

Charley had such a splitting headache and felt so weak
from a hangover that he couldn't lift his head. He wanted
to get up and sock that sonofabitch O'Higgins but all he
could do was lie there and take' it. "But she never said
anything about it in her letters. She's been writin' me right
along. There's never been any trouble between us."

O'Higgins shook his curly red head. "Too bad," he
said. "Maybe if you can see her you can arrange it between
you. You know my advice about these things is always
keep 'em out of court. Well, I'm heartily sorry, old boy,
to have caused you and your charming friend any embar-
rassment . . . no hard feelings I hope, Charley old man.
. . . I thought it would be pleasanter more open and
aboveboard if I came along if you saw a friendly face, as
you might say. I'm sure this can all be amicably settled."
He stood there a while rubbing his hands and nodding and
then tiptoed to the door. Standing there with one hand on
the doorknob he waved the other big flipper towards the

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bed. "Well, so long, Sally. . . . Guess I'll be seein' you
down at the office." Then he closed the door softly after
him. Sally had jumped out of bed and was running to-
wards the door with a terrified look on her face. Charley
began to laugh in spite of his splitting headache. "Aw,
never mind, girlie," he said. "Serves me right for bein' a
sucker. . . . I know we all got our livin's to make. . . .
Come on back to bed."

NEWSREEL LX

Was Céline to blame? To young Scotty marriage seemed
just a lark, a wild time in good standing. But when she began
to demand money and the extravagant things he couldn't af-
ford did Céline meet him halfway? Or did she blind herself
to the very meaning of the sacred word: wife?

CROOK FROZEN OUT OF SHARE IN BONDS TELLS MURDER
PLOT

TO REPEAL DECISION ON CAST IRON PIPE

In a little Spanish town
'Twas, on a night like this

speculative sentiment was encouraged at the opening of
the week by the clearer outlook. Favorable weather was doing
much to eliminate the signs of hesitation lately evinced by sev-
eral trades

I'm in love again
And the Spring
Is comin'
I'm in love again
Hear my heart strings
Strummin'

ITCHING GONE IN ONE NIGHT

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thousands of prosperous happy women began to earn dou-
ble and treble their former wages and sometimes even more
immediately

Yes sir that's my baby
That's my baby na-ow!

APE TRIAL GOAT TO CONFER WITH
ATTORNEYS

Mysterious Mr. Y to Testify

an exquisite replica in miniature of a sunlit French coun-
try home on the banks of the Rhone boldly built on the crest
of Sunset Ridge overlooking the most beautiful lakeland in New
Jersey where every window frames a picture of surprising
beauty

And the tune I'm hummin'
I'll not go roamin' like a kid again
I'll stay home and be a kid again

NEIGHBORS ENJOIN NOCTURNAL SHOUTS IN
TURKISH BATH

ALL CITY POLICE TURN OUT IN
BANDIT HUNT

CONGOLEUM BREAK FEATURES OPENING

for the sixth week freight car loadings have passed the
million mark in this country, indicating that prosperity is gen-
eral and that records are being established and broken every-
where

Good-bye east and good-bye west
Good-bye north and all the rest
Hello Swan-ee Hello

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