MARGO DOWLING 3 страница. In a moment Cliff stuck his head in the door

In a moment Cliff stuck his head in the door. His face

-353-

was red. "Are you . . . will you be needing me down
there, sir?""No, I'll be needin' you here to keep an eye on
the boys downtown. . . . I got to have somebody here I
can trust. . . . I'll tell you what I will have you do
though . . . go down to Trenton and accompany Miss
Dowlin' down to Norfolk. I'll pick her up there. She's in
Trenton visitin' her folks. Her old man just died or some-
thin'. You'd just as soon do that, wouldn't you? It'll give
you a little trip."

Charley was watching Cliff's face. He screwed his mouth
further to one side and bowed like a butler. "Very good,
sir," he said.

Charley lay back on the pillows again. His head was
throbbing, his stomach was still tied up in knots. When he
closed his eyes dizzy red lights bloomed in front of them.
He began to think about Jim and how Jim had never paid
over his share of the old lady's money he'd put into the
business. Anyway he ain't got a plane, two cars, a suite
at the Biltmore and a secretary that'll do any goddam
thing in the world for you, and a girl like Margo. He tried
to remember how her face looked, the funny amazed way
she opened her eyes wide when she was going to make a
funny crack. He couldn't remember a damn thing, only
the sick feeling he had all over and the red globes bloom-
ing before his eyes. In a little while he fell asleep.

He was still feeling so shaky when he started south that
he took Parker along to drive the car. He sat glumly in
his new camelshair coat with his hands hanging between
his knees staring ahead through the roaring blank of the
Holland Tunnel, thinking of Margo and Bill Edwards
the patent lawyer he had to see in Washington about a
suit, and remembering the bills in Cliff's desk drawer and
wondering where the money was coming from to fight this
patent suit against Askew-Merritt. He had a grand in bills
in his pocket and that made him feel good anyway. Gosh,
money's a great thing, he said to himself.

-354-

They came out of the tunnel into a rainygrey morning
and the roar and slambanging of trucks through Jersey
City. Then the traffic gradually thinned and they were
going across the flat farmlands of New Jersey strawcolored
and ruddy with winter. At Philadelphia Charley made
Parker drive him to Broad Street. "I haven't got the pa-
tience to drive, I'll take the afternoon train. Come to the
Waldman Park when you get in."

He hired a drawingroom in the parlorcar and went and
lay down to try to sleep. The train clattered and roared so
and the grey sky and the lavender fields and yellow pas-
tures and the twigs of the trees beginning to glow red and
green and paleyellow with a foretaste of spring made him
feel so blue, so like howling like a dog, that he got fed up
with being shut up in the damn drawingroom and went
back to the clubcar to smoke a cigar.

He was slumped in the leather chair fumbling for the
cigarclipper in his vest pocket when the portly man in the
next chair looked up from a bluecovered sheaf of law-
papers he was poring over. Charley looked into the black
eyes and the smooth bluejowled face and at the bald head
still neatly plastered with a patch of black hair shaped like
a bird's wing, without immediately recognizing it.

"Why, Charley ma boy, I reckon you must be in love."
Charley straightened up and put out his hand. "Hello,
senator," he said, stammering a little like he used to in
the old days. "Goin' to the nation's capital?""Such is my
unfortunate fate." Senator Planet's eyes went searching all
over him. " Charley, I hear you had an accident."

"I've had a series of them," said Charley, turning red.
Senator Planst nodded his head understandingly and made
a clucking noise with his tongue. "Too bad . . . too bad.
. . . Well, sir, a good deal of water has run under the
bridge since you and young Merritt had dinner with me
that night in Washington. . . . Well, we're none of us
gettin' any younger." Charley got the feeling that the

-355-

senator's black eyes got considerable pleasure from ex-
ploring the flabby lines where his neck met his collar and
the bulge of his belly against his vest. "Well, we're none
of us getting any younger," the senator repeated. "You
are, senator. I swear you look younger than you did the
last time I saw you."

The senator smiled. "Well, I hope you'll forgive me for
makin' the remark . . . but it's been one of the most sen-
sational careers I have had the luck to witness in many
years of public life."

"Well, it's a new industry. Things happen fast."

"Unparalleled," said the senator. "We live in an age
of unparalleled progress . . . everywhere except in
Washington. . . . You should come down to our quiet
little village more often. . . . You have many friends
there. I see by the papers, as Mr. Dooley used to say, that
there's been considerable reorganization out with you folks
in Detroit. Need a broader capital base, I suppose."

"A good many have been thrown out on their broad
capital bases," said Charley. He thought the senator would
never quit laughing. The senator pulled out a large ini-
tialed silk handkerchief to wipe the tears from his eyes and
brought his small pudgy hand down on Charley's knee.
"God almighty, we ought to have a drink on that."

The senator ordered whiterock from the porter and mys-
teriously wafted a couple of slugs of good rye whiskey
into it from a bottle he had in his Gladstone bag. Charley
began to feel better. The senator was saying that some very
interesting developments were to be expected from the
development of airroutes. The need for subsidies was
pretty generally admitted if this great nation was to catch
up on its lag in air transportation. The question would be
of course which of a number of competing concerns en-
joyed the confidence of the Administration. There was
more in this airroute business than there ever had been in
supplying ships and equipment. "A question of the con-

-356-

fidence of the Administration, ma boy." At the word con-
fidence, Senator Planet's black eyes shone. "That's why,
ma boy, I'm glad to see you up here. Stick close to our
little village on the Potomac, ma boy."

"Check," said Charley.

"When you're in Miami, look up my old friend Homer
Cassidy. . . . He's got a nice boat . . . he'll take you out
fishin' . . . I'll write him, Charley. If I could get away
I might spend a week down there myself next month.
There's a world of money bein' made down there right
now."

"I sure will, senator, that's mighty nice of you, senator."

By the time they got into the Union station Charley and
the senator were riding high. They were talking trunklines
and connecting lines, airports and realestate. Charley
couldn't make out whether he was hiring Senator Planet
for the lobbying or whether Senator Planet was hiring
him. They parted almost affectionately at the taxistand.

Next afternoon he drove down through Virginia. It was
a pretty, sunny afternoon. The judastrees were beginning
to come out red on the sheltered hillsides. He had two
bottles of that good rye whiskey Senator Planet had sent
up to the hotel for him. As he drove he began to get sore
at Parker the chauffeur. All the bastard did was get rake-
offs on the spare parts and gas and oil. Here he'd charged
up eight new tires in the last month, what did he do with
tires anyway, eat them? By the time they were crossing
the tollbridge into Norfolk Charley was sore as a crab.
He had to hold himself in to keep from hauling off and
giving the bastard a crack on the sallow jaw of his smooth
flunkey's face. In front of the hotel he blew up.

"Parker, you're fired. Here's your month's wages and
your trip back to New York. If I see your face around this
town tomorrow I'll have you run in for theft. You know
what I'm referrin' to just as well as I do. You damn
chauffeurs think you're too damn smart. I know the whole

-357-

racket, see. . . . I have to work for my dough just as
hard as you do. Just to prove it I'm goin' to drive myself
from now on." He hated the man's smooth unmoving face.

"Very well, sir," Parker said coolly. "Shall I return you
the uniform?"

"You can take the uniform and shove it up your . . ."

Charley paused. He was stamping up and down red in the
face on the pavement at the hotel entrance in a circle of
giggling colored bellboys. "Here, boy, take those bags in
and have my car taken around to the garage. . . . All
right, Parker, you have your instructions."

He strode into the hotel and ordered the biggest double
suite they had. He registered in his own name. "Mrs.
Anderson will be here directly." Then he called up the
other hotels to find out where the hell Margo was. "Hello,
kid," he said when at last it was her voice at the end of
the wire. "Come on over. You're Mrs. Anderson and no
questions asked. Aw, to hell with 'em; nobody's goin' to
dictate to me what I'll do or who I'll see or what I'm
goin' to do with my money. I'm through with all that.
Come right around. I'm crazy to see you. . . ."

When she came in, followed by the bellhop with the
bags, she certainly looked prettier than ever. "Well, Char-
ley," she said, when the bellhop had gone out, "this sure
is the cream de la cream. . . . You must have hit oil."
After she'd run all around the rooms she came back and
snuggled up to him. "I bet you been giving 'em hell on
the market.""They tried to put somethin' over on me,
but it can't be done. Take it from me. . . . Have a drink,
Margo. . . . Let's get a little bit cockeyed you and me,
Margo. . . . Christ, I was afraid you wouldn't come."

She was doing her face in the mirror. "Me? Why I'm
only a pushover," she said in that gruff low tone that made
him shiver all up his spine.

"Say, where's Cliff?"

"Our hatchetfaced young friend who was kind enough

-358-

to accompany me to the meeting with the lord and master?
He pulled out on the six o'clock train."

"The hell he did. I had some instructions for him."

"He said you said be in the office Tuesday morning and
he'd do it if he had to fly. Say, Charley, if he's a sample
of your employees they must worship the ground you
walk on. He couldn't stop talking about what a great guy
you were."

"Well, they know I'm regular, been through the mill
. . . understand their point of view. It wasn't so long ago
I was workin' at a lathe myself."

Charley felt good. He poured them each another drink.
Margo took his and poured half of the rye back into the
bottle. "Don't want to get too cockeyed, Mr. A," she said
in that new low caressing voice.

Charley grabbed her to him and kissed her hard on the
mouth. "Christ, if you only knew how I've wanted to
have a really swell woman all to myself. I've had some
awful bitches . . . Gladys, God, what a bitch she was.
She pretty near ruined me . . . tried to strip me of every
cent I had in the world . . . ganged up on me with guys
I thought were my friends. . . . But you just watch, little
girl. I'm goin' to show 'em. In five years they'll come
crawlin' to me on their bellies. I don't know what it is, but
I got a kind of feel for the big money . . . Nat Benton
says I got it . . . I know I got it. I can travel on a hunch,
see. Those bastards all had money to begin with."

After they'd ordered their supper and while they were
having just one little drink waiting for it, Margo brought
out some bills she had in her handbag. "Sure, I'll handle
'em right away." Charley shoved them into his pocket
without looking at them. "You know, Mr. A, I wouldn't
have to worry you about things like that if I had an ac-
count in my own name.""How about ten grand in the
First National Bank when we get to Miami?"

"Suit yourself, Charley . . . I never did understand

-359-

more money than my week's salary, you know that. That's
all any real trouper understands. I got cleaned out fixing
the folks up in Trenton. It certainly costs money to die in
this man's country."

Charley's eyes filled with tears. "Was it your dad,
Margery?"

She made a funny face. "Oh, no. The old man bumped
off from too much Keeley cure when I was a little twirp
with my hair down my back. . . . This was my step-
mother's second husband. I'm fond of my stepmother, be-
lieve it or not. . . . She's been the only friend I had in
this world. I'll tell you about her someday. It's quite a
story."

"How much did it cost? I'll take care of it."

Margo shook her head. "I never loaded my relations
on any man's back," she said.

When the waiter came in with a tray full of big silver
dishes followed by a second waiter pushing in a table
already set, Margo pulled apart from Charley. "Well, this
is the life," she whispered in a way that made him laugh.

Driving down was a circus. The weather was good. As
they went further south there began to be a green fuzz of
spring on the woods. There were flowers in the pinebar-
rens. Birds were singing. The car ran like a dream.
Charley kept her at sixty on the concrete roads, driving
carefully, enjoying the driving, the good fourwheel brakes,
the easy whir of the motor under the hood. Margo was a
smart girl and crazy about him and kept making funny
cracks. They drank just enough to keep them feeling good.
They made Savannah late that night and felt so good they
got so tight there the manager threatened to run them
out of the big old hotel. That was when Margo threw
an ashtray through the transom.

They'd been too drunk to have much fun in bed that
night and woke up with a taste of copper in their mouths
and horrible heads. Margo looked haggard and green and

-360-

saggy under the eyes before she went in to take her bath.
Charley made her a prairie oyster for breakfast like he said
the English aviators used to make over on the other side,
and she threw it right up without breaking the eggyolk.
She made him come and look at it in the toilet before she
pulled the chain. There was the raw eggyolk looking up
at them like it had just come out of the shell. They
couldn't help laughing about it in spite of their heads.

It was eleven o'clock when they pulled out. Charley
drove kind of easy along the winding road through the
wooded section of southern Georgia, cut with inlets and
saltmarshes from which cranes flew up and once a white
flock of egrets. They felt pretty pooped by the time they
got to Jacksonville. Neither of them could eat anything
but a lambchop washed down with some lousy gin they
paid eight dollars a quart for to the colored bellboy who
claimed it was the best English gin imported from Nassau
the night before. They drank the gin with bitters and went
to bed.

Driving down from Jax to Miami the sun was real hot.
Charley wanted to have the top down to get plenty of air
but Margo wouldn't hear of it. She made him laugh about
it. "A girl'll sacrifice anything for a man except her com-
plexion." They couldn't eat on the way down, though
Charley kept tanking up on the gin. When they got into
Miami they went right to the old Palms where Margo
used to work and got a big ovation from Joe Kantor and
Eddy Palermo and the boys of the band. They all said it
looked like a honeymoon and kidded about seeing the
marriagelicense. "Merely a chance acquaintance . . .
something I picked up at the busstation in Jax," Margo
kept saying. Charley ordered the best meal they had in
the house and drinks all around and champagne. They
danced all evening in spite of his game leg. When he
passed out they took him upstairs to Joe and Mrs. Kantor's
own room. When he began to wake up Margo was sitting

-361-

fully dressed looking fresh as a daisy on the edge of the
bed. It was late in the morning. She brought him up break-
fast on a tray herself.

"Look here, Mr. A," she said. "You came down here
for a rest. No more nightclubs for a while. I've rented us
a little bungalow down on the beach and we'll put you up
at the hotel to avoid the breath of scandal and you'll like
it. What we need's the influence of the home. . . . And
you and me, Mr. A, we're on the wagon."

The bungalow was in Spanishmission style, and cost a
lot, but they sure had a good time at Miami Beach. They
played the dograces and the roulettewheels and Charley
got in with a bunch of allnight pokerplayers through
Homer Cassidy, Senator Planet's friend, a big smiling cul-
tured whitehaired southerner in a baggy linen suit, who
came round to the hotel to look him up. After a lot of
talking about one thing and another, Cassidy got around
to the fact that he was buying up options on property for
the new airport and would let Charley in on it for the sake
of his connections, but he had to have cash right away. At
poker Charley's luck was great, he always won enough to
have a big roll of bills on him, but his bankaccount was a
dog of a different stripe. He began burning up the wires to
Nat Benton's office in New York.

Margo tried to keep him from drinking; the only times
he could really get a snootful were when he went out fish-
ing with Cassidy. Margo wouldn't go fishing, she said she
didn't like the way the fish looked at her when they came
up out of the water. One day he'd gone down to the dock
to go fishing with Cassidy but found that the norther that
had come up that morning was blowing too hard. It was
damn lucky because just as Charley was leaving the dock
a Western Union messengerboy came up on his bike. The
wind was getting sharper every minute and blew the chilly
dust in Charley's face as he read the telegram. It was
from the senator: ADMINISTRATION PREPARES OATS FOR

-362-

PEGASUS. As soon as he got back to the beach Charley
talked to Benton over longdistance. Next day airplane
stocks bounced when the news came over the wires of a
bill introduced to subsidize airlines. Charley sold every-
thing he had at the top, covered his margins and was sit-
ting pretty when the afternoon papers killed the story.

A week later he started to rebuy at twenty points lower.
Anyway he'd have the cash to refinance his loans and go
in with Cassidy on the options. When he told Cassidy he
was ready to go in with him they went out on the boat
to talk things over. A colored boy made them mintjuleps.
They sat in the stern with their rods and big straw hats
to keep the sun out of their eyes and the juleps on a table
behind them. When they got to the edge of the blue water
they began to troll for sailfish.

It was a day of blue sky with big soft pinkishwhite
clouds lavender underneath drifting in the sun. There was
enough wind blowing against the current out in the Gulf
Stream to make sharp choppy waves green where they
broke and blue and purple in the trough. They followed
the long streaks of mustardcolored weed but they didn't
see any sailfish. Cassidy caught a dolphin and Charley lost
one. The boat pitched so that Charley had to keep working
on the juleps to keep his stomach straight.

Most of the morning they cruised back and forth in
front of the mouth of the Miami River. Beyond the steep
dark waves they could see the still sunny brown water of
the bay and against the horizon the new buildings spar-
kling white among a red web of girder construction.
"Buildin', that's what I like to see," said Homer Cassidy,
waving a veined hand that had a big old gold sealring on
it towards the city. "And it's just beginnin'. . . . Why,
boy, I kin remember when Miamah was the jumpin' off
place, a little collection of brokendown shacks between the
railroad and the river, and I tell you the mosquitoes were
fierce. There were a few crackers down here growin' early

-363-

tomatoes and layin' abed half the time with chills and
fever . . . and now look at it . . . an' up in New York
they try to tell you the boom ain't sound." Charley nodded
without speaking. He was having a tussle with a fish on
his line. His face was getting red and his hand was
cramped from reeling. "Nothin' but a small bonito," said
Cassidy. ". . . The way they try to tell you the fishin'
ain't any good . . . that's all propaganda for the West
Coast. . . . Boy, I must admit that I saw it comin' years
ago when I was workin' with old Flagler. There was a
man with vision. . . . I went down with him on the first
train that went over the overseas extension into Key West
I was one of the attorneys for the road at the time.
Schoolchildren threw roses under his feet all the way from
his private car to the carriage. . . . We had nearly a
thousand men carried away in hurricanes before the line
was completed . . . and now the new Miamah . . . an'
Miamah Beach, what do you think of Miamah Beach?
It's Flagler's dream come true."

"Well, what I'd like to do," Charley began and stopped
to take a big swig of the new julep the colored boy had
just handed him. He was beginning to feel wonderful now
that the little touch of seasickness had gone. Cassidy's fish-
ing guide had taken Charley's rod up forward to put a new
hook on it, so Charley was sitting there in the stern of the
motorboat feeling the sun eat into his back and little flecks
of salt spray drying on his face with nothing to do but sip
the julep, with nothing to worry about. " Cassidy, this sure
is the life . . . why can't a guy do what he wants to with
his life? I was just goin' to say what I want to do is get
out of this whole racket . . . investments, all that crap.
. . . I'd like to get out with a small pile and get a house
and settle down to monkeyin' around with motors and de-
signin' planes and stuff like that. . . . I always thought
if I could pull out with enough jack I'd like to build me
a windtunnel all my own . . . you know that's what they

-364-

test out model planes in.""Of course," said Cassidy, "it's
aviation that's goin' to make Miami. . . . Think of it,
eighteen, fourteen, ten hours from New York. . . . I
don't need to tell you. . . . and you and me and the
Senator . . . we're right in among the foundin' fathers
with that airport. . . . Well, boy, I've waited all ma life
to make a real killin'. All ma life I been servin' others
. . . on the bench, railroad lawyer, all that sort of thing.
. . . Seems to me about time to make a pile of ma own."
"Suppose they pick some other place, then we'll be
holdin' the bag. After all it's happened before," said
Charley.

"Boy, they can't do it. You know yourself that that's
the ideal location and then . . . I oughtn't to be tellin'
you this but you'll find it out soon anyway . . . well, you
know our Washington friend, well, he's one of the for-
wardestlooking men in this country. . . . That money I
put up don't come out of Homer Cassidy's account because
Homer Cassidy's broke. That's what's worryin' me right
this minute. I'm merely his agent. And in all the years
I've been associated with Senator Planet upon ma soul and
body I've never seen him put up a cent unless it was a sure
thing."

Charley began to grin. "Well, the old sonofabitch."
Cassidy laughed. "You know the one about a nod's as good
as a wink to a blind mule. How about a nice Virginia ham
sandwich?"

They had another drink with the sandwiches. Charley
got to feeling like talking. It was a swell day. Cassidy was
a prince. He was having a swell time. "Funny," Charley
said, "when I first saw Miami it was from out at sea like
this. I never would have thought I'd be down here shov-
elin' in the dough. . . . There weren't all those tall
buildin's then either. I was goin' up to New York on a
coastin' boat. I was just a kid and I'd been down to New
Orleans for the Mardi Gras and I tell you I was broke.

-365-

I got on the boat to come up to New York and got to
pallin' with, a Florida cracker . . . he was a funny guy.
. . . We went up to New York together. He said the
thing to do was get over an' see the war, so him and me
like a pair of damn fools we enlisted in one of those volun-
teer ambulance services. After that I switched to aviation.
That's how I got started in my line of business. Miami
didn't mean a thing to me then."

"Well, Flagler gave me ma start," said Cassidy. "And
I'm not ashamed to admit it . . . buyin' up rightofway
for the Florida East Coast. . . . Flagler started me and
he started Miamah."

That night when they got in sunburned and a little
drunk from the day on the Gulf Stream they tucked all
the options away in the safe in Judge Cassidy's office and
went over to the Palms to relax from business cares.
Margo wore her silver dress and she certainly looked
stunning. There was a thin dark Irishlooking girl there
named Eileen who seemed to know Cassidy from way
back. The four of them had dinner together, Cassidy got
good -- and tight and opened his mouth wide as a grouper's
talking about the big airport and saying how he was going
to let the girls in on some lots on the deal. Charley was
drunk, but he wasn't too drunk to know Cassidy ought to
keep his trap shut. When he danced with Eileen he talked
earnestly in her ear telling her she ought to make the boy-
friend keep his trap shut until the thing was made public
from the proper quarters. Margo saw them with their
heads together and acted the jealous bitch and started mak-
ing over Cassidy to beat the cars. When Charley got her
to dance with him she played dumb and wouldn't answer
when he spoke to her.

He left her at the table and went over to have some
drinks at the bar. There he got into an argument with a
skinny guy who looked like a cracker. Eddy Palermo, with
an oily smile on his face the shape and color of an olive,

-366-

ran over and got between them. "You can't fight this
gentleman, Mr. Anderson, he's our county attorney. . . .
I know you gentlemen would like each other . . . Mr.
Pappy, Mr. Anderson was one of our leading war aces."