FIVE HUNDRED MILLIONS IN BANK DEAL 2 страница

It was after one before the conference broke up. Every-
body was congratulating Ed Griscolm on his layout. Dick
heard his own voice saying it was wonderful but it needed
a slightly different slant. "All right," said J. W. "How
about finding that slightly different slant over the week-
end? That's the idea I want to leave with every man here.
I'm lunching with Mr. Bingham Monday noon. I must
have a perfected project to present."

Dick Savage went back to his office and signed a pile of
letters his secretary had left for him. Then he suddenly
remembered he'd told Reggie Talbot held meet him for

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lunch at "63" to meet the girlfriend and ran out, adjust-
ing his blue muffler as he went down in the elevator. He
caught sight of them at a table with their heads leaning
together in the crinkled cigarettesmoke in the back of the
crowded Saturdayafternoon speakeasy. "Oh, Dick, hello,"
said Reggie, jumping to his feet with his mild smile, grab-
bing Dick's hand and drawing him towards the table. "I
didn't wait for you at the office because I had to meet this
one. . . . Jo, this is Mr. Savage. The only man in New
York who doesn't give a damn. . . . What'll you have to
drink?" The girl certainly was a knockout. When Dick
let himself drop on the redleather settee beside her, facing
Reggie's slender ashblond head and his big inquiring light-
brown eyes, he felt boozy and tired.

"Oh, Mr. Savage, what's happened about the Bingham
account? I'm so excited about it. Reggie can't talk about
anything else. I know it's indiscreet to ask." She looked
earnestly in his face out of longlashed black eyes. They
certainly made a pretty couple.

"Telling tales out of school, eh?" said Dick, picking up
a breadstick and snapping it into his mouth.

"But you know, Dick, Jo and me . . . we talk about
everything . . . it never goes any further. . . . And hon-
estly all the younger guys in the office think it's a damn
shame J. W. didn't use your first layout. . . . Griscolm
is going to lose the account for us if he isn't careful . . .
it just don't click. . . . I think the old man's getting soft-
ening of the brain."

"You know I've thought several times recently that
J. W. wasn't in very good health. . . . Too bad. He's the
most brilliant figure in the publicrelations field." Dick
heard an oily note come into his voice and felt ashamed
in front of the youngsters and shut up suddenly. "Say,
Tony," he called peevishly to the waiter. "How about
some cocktails? Give me a bacardi with a little absinthe in

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it, you know, my special. . . . Gosh, I feel a hundred
years old."

"Been burning the candle at both ends?" asked Reggie.

Dick twisted his face into a smirk. "Oh, that candle,"
he said. "It gives me a lot of trouble." They all blushed.
Dick chuckled. "By God, I don't think there are three
other people in the city that have a blush left in them."
They ordered more cocktails. While they were drinking
Dick felt the girl's eyes serious and dark fixed on his face.
She lifted her glass to him. " Reggie says you've been aw-
fully sweet to him at the office. . . . He says he'd have
been fired if it wasn't for you.""Who could help being
sweet to Reggie? Look at him." Reggie got red as a
beet. "The lad's got looks," said the girl. "But has he
any brains?"

Dick began to feel better with the onionsoup and the
third cocktail. He began to tell them how he envied them
being kids and getting married. He promised he'd be
bestman. When they asked him why he didn't get mar-
ried himself he confusedly had some more drinks and said
his life was a shambles. He made fifteen thousand a year
but he never had any money. He knew a dozen beautiful
women but he never had a girl when he needed her. All
the time he was talking he was planning in the back of
his head a release on the need for freedom of selfmedi-
cation. He couldn't stop thinking about that damned Bing-
ham account.

It was beginning to get dark when they came out of
"63". A feeling of envy stung him as he put the young
people into a taxi. He felt affectionate and amorous and
nicely buoyed up by the radiating warmth of food and
alcohol in his belly. He stood for a minute on the corner
of Madison Avenue watching the lively beforechristmas
crowd pour along the sidewalk against the bright show-
windows, all kinds of faces flushed and healthylooking for

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once in the sharp cold evening in the slanting lights. Then
he took a taxi down to Twelfth Street.

The colored maid who let him in was wearing a pretty
lace apron. "Hello, Cynthia.""How do you do, Mr.
Dick." Dick could feel the impatient blood pounding in
his temples as he walked up and down the old uneven par-
quet floor waiting. Eveline was smiling when she came
out from the back room. She'd put too much powder on
her face in too much of a hurry and it brought out the
drawn lines between her nostrils and her mouth and gave
her nose a floury look. Her voice still had a lovely swing
to it. " Dick, I thought you'd given me up."

"I've been working like a dog. . . . I've gotten so my
brain won't work. I thought it would do me good to see
you." She handed him a Chinese porcelain box with ciga-
rettes in it. They sat down side by side on a rickety old-
fashioned horsehair sofa. "How's Jeremy?" asked Dick in
a cheerful tone.

Her voice went flat. "He's gone out west with Paul for
Christmas."

"You must miss him . . . I'm disappointed myself. I
love the brat."

" Paul and I have finally decided to get a divorce . . .
in a friendly way."

" Eveline, I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"I dunno. . . . It does seem silly. . . . But I always
liked Paul."

"It all got just too tiresome. . . . This way it'll be
much better for him."

There was something coolly bitter about her as she sat
beside him in her a little too frizzy afternoondress. He
felt as if he was meeting her for the first time. He picked
up her long blueveined hand and put it on the little table
in front of them and patted it. "I like you better . . .
anyway." It sounded phony in his ears, like something

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he'd say to a client. He jumped to his feet. "Say, Eveline,
suppose I call up Settignano and get some gin around?
I've got to have a drink. . . . I can't get the office out
of my head."

"If you go back to the icebox you'll find some perfectly
lovely cocktails all mixed. I just made them. There are
some people coming in later.""How much later?""About
seven o'clock . . . why?" Her eyes followed him teas-
ingly as he went back through the glass doors.

In the pantry the colored girl was putting on her hat.
" Cynthia, Mrs. Johnson alleges there are cocktails out
here.""Yes, Mr. Dick, I'll get you some glasses.""Is
this your afternoon out?""Yessir, I'm goin' to church."
"On Saturday afternoon?""Yessir, our church we have
services every Saturday afternoon . . . lots of folks don't
get Sunday off nowadays.""It's gotten so I don't get
any day off at all.""It shoa is too bad, Mr. Dick."

He went back into the front room shakily, carrying the
tray with the shaker jiggling on it. The two glasses clinked.
"Oh, Dick, I'm going to have to reform you. Your hands
are shaking like an old greybeard's.""Well, I am an old
greybeard. I'm worrying myself to death about whether
that bastardly patentmedicine king will sign on the dotted
line Monday."

"Don't talk about it. . . . It sounds just too awful.
I've been working hard myself . . . I'm trying to put on
a play."

" Eveline, that's swell! Who's it by?"

" Charles Edward Holden. . . . It's a magnificent
piece of work. I'm terribly excited about it. I think I know
how to do it. . . . I don't suppose you want to put a
couple of thousand dollars in, do you, Dick?"

" Eveline, I'm flat broke. . . . They've got my salary
garnisheed and Mother has to be supported in the style
to which she is accustomed and then there's Brother
Henry's ranch in Arizona . . . he's all balled up with a

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mortgage. . . . I thought Charles Edward Holden was
just a columnist."

"This is a side of him that's never come out. . . . I
think he's the real poet of modern New York . . . you
wait and see."

Dick poured himself another cocktail. "Let's talk about
just us for a minute. . . . I feel so frazzled. . . . Oh,
Eveline, you know what I mean. . . . We've been pretty
good friends." She let him hold her hand but she did not
return the squeeze he gave it. "You know we always said
we were just physically attractive to each other . . . why
isn't that the swellest thing in the world?" He moved up
close to her on the couch, gave her a little kiss on the
cheek, tried to twist her face around. "Don't you like this
miserable sinner a little bit?"

" Dick, I can't." She got to her feet. Her lips were
twitching and she looked as if she was going to burst into
tears. "There's somebody I like very much . . . very,
very much. I've decided to make some sense out of my
life."

"Who? That damn columnist?"

"Never mind who."

Dick buried his face in his hands. When he took his
hands away he was laughing. "Well, if that isn't just my
luck. . . . Just Johnny on the spot and me full of speak-
easy Saturdayafternoon amorosity."

"Well, Dick, I'm sure you won't lack for partners."

"I do today. . . . I feel lonely and hellish. My life is
a shambles."

"What a literary phrase."

"I thought it was pretty good myself but honestly I
feel every whichway. . . . Something funny happened to
me last night. 'I'll tell you about it someday when you like
me better."

" Dick, why don't you go to Eleanor's? She's giving a
party for all the boyars."

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"Is she really going to marry that horrid little prince?"
Eveline nodded with that same cold bitter look in her
eyes. "I suppose a title is the last word in the decorating
business. . . . Why won't Eleanor put up some money?"
"I don't want to ask her. She's filthy with money, though,
she's had a very successful fall. I guess we're all getting
grasping in our old age. . . . What does poor Moore-
house think about the prince?"

"I wish I knew what he thought about anything. I've
been working for him for years now and I don't know
whether he's a genius or a stuffed shirt. . . . I wonder if
he's going to be at Eleanor's. I want to get hold of him
this evening for a moment. . . . That's a very good idea.
. . . Eveline, you always do me good one way or an-
other."

"You'd better not go without phoning. . . . She's per-
fectly capable of not letting you in if you come uninvited
and particularly with a houseful of émigrée Russians in
tiaras."

Dick went to the phone and called up. He had to wait
a long time for Eleanor to come. Her voice sounded shrill
and rasping. At first she said why didn't he come to din-
ner next week instead. Dick's voice got very coaxing.
"Please let me see the famous prince, Eleanor. . . . And
I've got something very important to ask you about. . . .
After all you've always been my guardian angel, Eleanor
If I can't come to you when I'm in trouble, who can I
come to?" At last she loosened up and said he could come
but he mustn't stay long. "You can talk to poor J. Ward
. . . he looks a little forlorn." Her voice ended in a
screechy laugh that made the receiver jangle and hurt his
ear.

When he went back to the sofa Eveline was lying back
against the pillows soundlessly laughing. "Dick," she said,
"you're a master of blarney." Dick made a face at her,
kissed her on the forehead and left the house.

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Eleanor's place was glittering with chandeliers and cut-
glass. When she met him at the drawingroom door her
small narrow face looked smooth and breakable as a piece
of porcelain under her carefullycurled hair and above a
big rhinestone brooch that held a lace collar together.
From behind her came the boom and the high piping of
Russian men's and women's voices and a smell of tea and
charcoal. "Well, Richard, here you are," she said in a rapid
hissing whisper. "Don't forget to kiss the grandduchess's
hand . . . she's had such a dreadful life. You'd like to do
any little thing that would please her, wouldn't you? . . .
And, Richard, I'm worried about Ward . . . he looks so
terribly tired . . . I hope he isn't beginning to break up.
He's the type you know that goes off like that. . . . You
know these big shortnecked blonds."

There was a tall silver samovar on the Buhl table in
front of the marble fireplace and beside it sat a large oldish
woman in a tinsel shawl with her hair in a pompadour and
the powder flaking off a tired blotchy face. She was very
gracious and had quite a twinkle in her eye and she was
piling caviar out of a heaped cutglass bowl onto a slice of
blackbread and laughing with her mouth full. Around her
were grouped Russians in all stages of age and decay, some
in tunics and some in cheap business suits and some frowsty-
looking young women and a pair of young men with slick
hair and choirboy faces. They were all drinking tea or little
glasses of vodka. Everybody was ladling out caviar. Dick
was introduced to the prince who was an olivefaced young
man with black brows and a little pointed black mustache
who wore a black tunic and black soft leather boots and
had a prodigiously small waist. They were all merry as
crickets chirping and roaring in Russian, French and Eng-
lish. Eleanor sure is putting out, Dick caught himself
thinking as he dug into the mass of big greygrained caviar.

J. W. looking pale and fagged was standing in the cor-
ner of the room with his back to an icon that had three

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candles burning in front of it. Dick distinctly remembered
having seen the icon in Eleanor's window some weeks be-
fore, against a piece of purple brocade. J. W. was talking
to an ecclesiastic in a black cassock with purple trimmings
who when Dick went up to them turned out to have a rich
Irish brogue. "Meet the Archimandrite O'Donnell, Dick,"
said J. W. "Did I get it right?" The Archimandrite
grinned and nodded. "He's been telling me about the
monasteries in Greece.""You mean where they haul you
up in a basket?" said Dick. The Archimandrite jiggled his
grinning, looselipped face up and down. "I'm goin' to have
the honorr and pleasurr of introducin' dear Eleanor into
the mysteries of the true church. I was tellin' Mr. Moore-
house the story of my conversion." Dick found an impu-
dent rolling eye looking him over. "Perhaps you'd be
carin' to come someday, Mr. Savage, to hear our choir.
Unbelief dissolves in music like a lump of sugar in a glass
of hot tay.""Yes, I like the Russian choir," said J. W.

"Don't you think that our dear Eleanor looks happier
and younger for it?" The Archimandrite was beaming into
the crowded room. J. W. nodded doubtfully. "Och, a
lovely graceful little thing she is, clever too. . . . Per-
haps, Mr. Moorehouse and Mr. Savage, you'd come to the
service and to lunch with me afterwards. . . . I have
some ideas about a little book on my experiences at Mount
Athos. . . . We could make a little parrty of it." Dick
was amazed to find the Archimandrite's fingers pinching
him in the seat and hastily moved away a step, but not be-
fore he'd caught from the Archimandrite's left eye a slow
vigorous wink.

The big room was full of clinking and toasting, and
there was the occasional crash of a broken glass. A group
of younger Russians were singing in deep roaring voices
that made the crystal chandelier tinkle over their heads.
The caviar was all gone but two uniformed maids were

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bringing in a table set with horsdœuvres in the middle of
which was a large boiled salmon.

J. W. nudged Dick. "I think we might go someplace
where we can talk.""I was just waiting for you, J. W. I
think I've got a new slant. I think it'll click this time."

They'd just managed to make their way through the
crush to the door when a Russian girl in black with fine
black eyes and arched brows came running after them.
"Oh, you mustn't go. Leocadia Pavlovna likes you so
much. She likes it here, it is informal . . . the bohème.
That is what we like about Leonora Ivanovna. She is
bohème and we are bohème. We luff her." "I'm afraid we
have a business appointment," said J. W. solemnly. The
Russian girl snapped her fingers with, "Oh, business it is
disgusting. . . . America would be so nice without the
business."

When they got out on the street J. W. sighed. "Poor
Eleanor, I'm afraid she's in for something. . . . Those
Russians will eat her out of house and home. Do you sup-
pose she really will marry this Prince Mingraziali? I've
made inquiries about him. . . . He's all that he says he is.
But heavens!""With crowns and everything," said Dick,
"the date's all set." "After all, Eleanor knows her own
business. She's been very successful, you know."

J. W.'s car was at the door. The chauffeur got out with
a laprobe over his arm and was just about to close the door
on J. W. when Dick said, "J. W., have you a few minutes
to talk about this Bingham account?" "Of course, I was
forgetting," said J. W. in a tired voice. "Come on out to
supper at Great Neck. . . . I'm alone out there except for
the children." Smiling, Dick jumped in and the chauffeur
closed the door of the big black towncar behind him.

It was pretty lugubrious eating in the diningroom with
its painted Italian panels at the Moorehouses' with the
butler and the secondman moving around silently in the
dim light and only Dick and J. W. and Miss Simpson, the

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children's so very refined longfaced governess, at the long
candlelit table. Afterwards when they went into J. W.'s
little white den to smoke and talk about the Bingham ac-
count, Dick thanked his stars when the old butler appeared
with a bottle of scotch and ice and glasses. "Where did you
find that, Thompson?" asked J. W. "Been in the ceflaz
since before the war, Sir . . . those cases Mrs. Moore-
house bought in Scotland. . . . I knew Mr. Savage liked
a bit of a spot."

Dick laughed. "That's the advantage of having a bad
name," he said.

J. W. drawled solemnly, "It's the best to be had, I know
that. . . . Do you know I never could get much out of
drinking, so I gave it up, even before prohibition."

J. W. had lit himself a cigar. Suddenly he threw it in
the fire. "I don't think I'll smoke tonight. The doctor says
three cigars a day won't hurt me . . . but I've been feel-
ing seedy all week. . . . I ought to get out of the stock-
market. . . . I hope you keep out of it, Dick."

"My creditors don't leave me enough to buy a ticket to
a raffle with."

J. W. took a couple of steps across the small room lined
with unscratched sets of the leading authors in morocco,
and then stood with his back to the Florentine fireplace
with his hands behind him. "I feel chilly all the time. I
don't think my circulation's very good. . . . Perhaps it
was going to see Gertrude. . . . The doctors have finally
admitted her case is hopeless. It was a great shock to me."

Dick got to his feet and put down his glass. "I'm sorry,
J. W. . . . Still, there have been surprising cures in brain
troubles."

J. W. was standing with his lips in a thin tight line, his
big jowl trembling a little. "Not in schizophrenia. . . .
I've managed to do pretty well in everything except that.
. . . I'm a lonely man," he said. "And to think once upon
a time I was planning to be a songwriter." He smiled.

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Dick smiled too and held out his hand. "Shake hands,
J. W.," he said, "with the ruins of a minor poet."

"Anyway," said J. W., "the children will have the ad-
vantages I never had. . . . Would it bore you, before we
get down to business, to go up and say goodnight to them?
I'd like to have you see them."

"Of course not, I love kids," said Dick. "In fact I've
never yet quite managed to grow up myself."

At the head of the stairs Miss Simpson met them with
her finger to her lips. "Little Gertrude's asleep." They tip-
toed down the allwhite hall. The children were in bed
each in a small hospitallike room cold from an open win-
dow, on each pillow was a head of pale strawcolored hair.
"Staple's the oldest . . . he's twelve," whispered J. W.
"Then Gertrude, then Johnny." Staple said goodnight po-
litely. Gertrude didn't wake up when they turned the
light on. Johnny sat up in a nightmare with his bright blue
eyes open wide, crying, "No, no," in a tiny frightened
voice. J. W. sat on the edge of the bed petting him for a
moment until he fell asleep again. "Goodnight, Miss
Simpson," and they were tiptoeing down the stairs. "What
do you think of them?" J. W. turned beaming to Dick.

"They sure are a pretty sight. . . . I envy you," said
Dick.

"I'm glad I brought you out . . . I'd have been lonely
without you . . . I must entertain more," said J. W.

They settled back into their chairs by the fire and started
to go over the layout to be presented to Bingham Products.
When the clock struck ten J. W. began to yawn. Dick got
to his feet. "J. W., do you want my honest opinion?"

"Go ahead, boy, you know you can say anything you
like to me."

"Well, here it is." Dick tossed off the last warm weak
remnant of his scotch. "I think we can't see the woods for
the trees . . . we're balled up in a mass of petty detail.
You say the old gentleman's pretty pigheaded . . . one

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of these from newsboy to president characters. . . . Well,
I don't think that this stuff really sets in high enough re-
lief the campaign you outlined to us a month ago. . . ."

"I'm not very well satisfied with it, to tell the truth."

"Is there a typewriter in the house?"

"I guess Thompson or Morton can scrape one up some-
where."

"Well, I think that I might be able to bring your funda-
mental idea out a little more. To my mind it's one of the
biggest ideas ever presented in the business world."

"Of course it's the work of the whole office."

"Let me see if I can take this to pieces and put it to-
gether again over the weekend. After all there'll be noth-
ing lost. . . . We've got to blow that old gent clean out
of the water or else Halsey'll get him."

"They're around him every minute like a pack of
wolves," said J. W., getting up yawning. "Well, I leave
it in your hands." When he got to the door J. W. paused
and turned. "Of course those Russian aristocrats are so-
cially the top. It's a big thing for Eleanor that way. . . .
But I wish she wouldn't do it. . . . You know, Dick,
Eleanor and I have had a very beautiful relationship. . . .
That little woman's advice and sympathy have meant a
great deal to me. . . . I wish she wasn't going to do it.
. . . Well, I'm going to bed."

Dick went up to the big bedroom hung with English
huntingscenes. Thompson brought him up a new noiseless
typewriter and the bottle of whiskey. Dick sat there work-
ing all night in his pyjamas and bathrobe smoking and
drinking the whiskey. He was still at it when the windows
began to get blue with day and he began to make out be-
tween the heavy curtains black lacy masses of sleetladen
trees grouped round a sodden lawn. His mouth was sour
from too many cigarettes. He went into the bathroom
frescoed with dolphins and began to whistle as he let the

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hot water pour into the tub. He felt bleary and dizzy but
he had a new layout.

Next day at noon when J. W. came back from church
with the children Dick was dressed and shaved and walk-
ing up and down the flagged terrace in the raw air. Dick's
eyes felt hollow and his head throbbed but J. W. was de-
lighted with the work. "Of course selfservice, independ-
ence, individualism is the word I gave the boys in the be-
ginning. This is going to be more than a publicity cam-
paign, it's going to be a campaign for Americanism. . . .
After lunch I'll send the car over for Miss Williams and
get her to take some dictation. There's more meat in this
yet, Dick." "Of course," said Dick, reddening. "All I've
done is restore your original conception, J. W."

At lunch the children sat up at the table and Dick had a
good time with them, making them talk to him and tell-
ing them stories about the bunnies he'd raised when he was
a little boy in Jersey. J. W. was beaming. After lunch Dick
played pingpong in the billiardroom in the basement with
Miss Simpson and Staple and little Gertrude while Johnny
picked up the balls for them. J. W. retired to his den to
take a nap.

Later they arranged the prospectus for Miss Williams
to type. The three of them were working there happily in
front of the fire when Thompson appeared in the door and
asked reverently if Mr. Moorehouse cared to take a
phonecall from Mr. Griscolm. "All right, give it to me
on this phone here," said J. W.