FIVE HUNDRED MILLIONS IN BANK DEAL 4 страница

After the door had closed on Senator Planet the rest of

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them sat silent a moment. Dick poured himself a glass of
the Armagnac. "Well, Mr. Bingham don't need to worry,"
said Colonel Judson. "But it's going to cost him money.
Bowie an' his friends are just trying to raise the ante. You
know I can read 'em like a book. . . . After all, I been
around this town for fifteen years."

"It's humiliating and absurd that legitimate business
should have to stoop to such methods," said J. W.

"Sure, J. W., you took the words right out of my
mouth. . . . If you want my opinion, what we need is a
strong man in this country to send all these politicians
packing. . . . Don't think I don't know 'em. . . . But
this little dinnerparty has been very valuable. You are a
new element in the situation. . . . A valuable air of dig-
nity, you know. . . . Well, goodnight."

J. W. was already standing with his hand outstretched,
his face white as paper. "Well, I'll be running along," said
Colonel Judson. "You can assure your client that that bill
will never pass. . . . Take a good night's rest, Mr.
Moorehouse. . . . Goodnight, Captain Savage. . . ."
Colonel Judson patted both J. W. and Dick affectionately
on the shoulder with his two hands in the same gesture.
Chewing his cigar he eased out of the door leaving a broad
smile behind him and a puff of rank blue smoke.

Dick turned to J. W. who had sunk down in a red plush
chair. "Are you sure you're feeling all right, J. W.?""It's
just a little indigestion," J. W. said in a weak voice, his
face twisted with pain, gripping the arms of the chair with
both hands. "Well, I guess we'd better all turn in," said
Dick. "But, J. W., how about getting a doctor in to take a
look at you in the morning?" "We'll see, goodnight," said
J. W., talking with difficulty with his eyes closed.

Dick had just got to sleep when a knocking on his door
woke him with a start. He went to the door in his bare
feet. It was Morton, J. W.'s elderly cockney valet. "Beg
pardon, sir, for waking you, sir," he said. "I'm worried

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about Mr. Moorehouse, sir. Dr. Gleason's with him. . . .
I'm afraid it's a heart attack. He's in pain something awful,
sir." Dick put on his purple silk bathrobe and his slippers
and ran into the drawingroom of the suite where he met
the doctor. "This is Mr. Savage, sir," said the valet. The
doctor was a greyhaired man with a grey mustache and a
portentous manner. He looked Dick fiercely in the eye as
he spoke: "Mr. Moorehouse must be absolutely quiet for
some days. It's a very light angina pectoris . . . not seri-
ous this time but a thorough rest for a few months is in-
dicated. He ought to have a thorough physical examination
. . . talk him into it in the morning. I believe you are Mr.
Moorehouse's business partner, aren't you, Mr. Savage?"
Dick blushed. "I'm one of Mr. Moorehouse's collabora-
tors.""Take as much off his shoulders as you can." Dick
nodded. He went back to his room and lay on his bed the
rest of the night without being able to sleep.

In the morning when Dick went in to see him J. W.
was sitting up in bed propped up with pillows. His face
was a rumpled white and he had violet shadows under his
eyes. "Dick, I certainly gave myself a scare." J. W.'s voice
was weak and shaking, it made Dick feel almost tearful
to hear it. "Well, what about the rest of us?""Well, Dick,
I'm afraid I'm going to have to dump E. R. Bingham and
a number of other matters on your shoulders. . . . And
I've been thinking that perhaps I ought to change the
whole capital structure of the firm. What would you think
of Moorehouse, Griscolm and Savage?""I think it would
be a mistake to change the name, J. W. After all J. Ward
Moorehouse is a national institution."

J. W.'s voice quavered up a little stronger. He kept
having to clear his throat. "I guess you're right, Dick,"
he said. "I'd like to hold on long enough to give my boys
a start in life."

"What do you want to bet you wear a silk hat at my
funeral, J. W.? In the first place it may have been an

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attack of acute indigestion just as you thought. We can't
go on merely one doctor's opinion. What would you think
of a little trip to the Mayo clinic? All you need's a little
overhauling, valves ground, carburetor adjusted, that sort
of thing. . . . By the way, J. W., we wouldn't want Mr.
Bingham to discover that a mere fifteenthousandayear man
was handling his sacred proprietary medicines, would we?"

J. W. laughed weakly. "Well, we'll see about that. . . .
I think you'd better go on down to New York this morn-
ing and take charge of the office. Miss Williams and I will
hold the fort here. . . . She's sour as a pickle but a treas-
ure, I tell you."

"Hadn't I better stick around until we've had a special-
ist look you over?"

"Dr. Gleason filled me up with dope of some kind so
that I'm pretty comfortable. I've wired my sister Hazel,
she teaches school over in Wilmington, she's the only one
of the family I've seen much of since the old people died.
. . . She'll be over this afternoon. It's her Christmas vaca-
tion."

"Did Morton get you the opening quotations?"

"Skyrocketing. . . . Never saw anything like it. . . .
But do you know, Dick, I'm going to sell out and lay on
my oars for a while. . . . It's funny how an experience
like this takes the heart out of you."

"You and Paul Warburg," said Dick.

"Maybe it's old age," said J. W. and closed his eyes for
a minute. His face seemed to be collapsing into a mass of
grey and violet wrinkles as Dick looked.

"Well, take it easy, J. W.," said Dick and tiptoed out of
the room.

He caught the eleveno'clock train and got to the office
in time to straighten things out. He told everybody that
J. W. had a light touch of grippe and would be in bed for
a few days. There was so much work piled up that he gave
Miss Hilles his secretary a dollar for her supper and asked

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her to come back at eight. For himself he had some sand-
wiches and a carton of coffee sent up from a delicatessen.
It was midnight before he got through. In the empty
halls of the dim building he met two rusty old women
coming with pails and scrubbingbrushes to clean the office.
The night elevatorman was old and pastyfaced. Snow had
fallen and turned to slush and gave Lexington Avenue a
black gutted look like a street in an abandoned village. A
raw wind whipped his face and ears as he turned uptown.
He thought of the apartment on Fiftysixth Street full of
his mother's furniture, the gilt chairs in the front room, all
the dreary,objects he'd known as a small boy, the Stag at
Bay and the engravings of the Forum Romanorum in his
room, the birdseyemaple beds; he could see it all sharply
as if he was there as he turned into the wind. Bad enough
when his mother was there, but when she was in St. Augus-
tine, frightful. "God damn it, it's time I was making
enough money to reorganize my life," he said to himself.

He Jumped into the first taxi he came to and went to
"63." It was warm and cozy in "63." As she helped him
off with his coat and muffler the platinumhaired checkgirl
carried on an elaborate kidding that had been going on all
winter about how he was going to take her to Miami and
make her fortune at the races at Hialeah. Then he stood a
second peering through the doorway into the low room
full of wellgroomed heads tables glasses cigarettesmoke
spiraling in front of the pink lights. He caught sight of Pat
Doolittle's black bang. There she was sitting in the alcove
with Reggie and Jo. The Italian waiter ran up rubbing his
hands. "Good evening, Mr. Savage, we've been missing
you.""I've been in Washington." "Cold down there?"
"Oh, kind of medium," said Dick and slipped into the red-
leather settee opposite Pat. "Well, look who we have with
us," she said. "I thought you were busy poisoning the
American public under the dome of the Capitol."

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"Wouldn't be so bad if we poisoned some of those west-
ern legislators," said Dick.

Reggie held out his hand. "Well, put it there, Alec
Borgia. . . . I reckon you're on the bourbon if you've
been mingling with the conscript fathers."

"Sure, I'll drink bourbon . . . kids, I'm tired . . . I'm
going to eat something. I didn't have any supper. I just
left the office."

Reggie looked pretty tight; so did Pat. Jo was evi-
dently sober and sore. I must fix this up, thought Dick and
put his arm round Pat's waist. "Say, did you get my
'gram?""Laughed myself sick over it," said Pat. "Gosh,
Dick, it's nice to have you back among the drinking
classes."

"Say, Dick," said Reggie, "is there anything in the
rumor that old doughface toppled over?"

"Mr. Moorehouse had a little attack of acute indiges-
tion . . . he was better when I left," said Dick in a voice
that sounded a little too solemn in his ears.

"Not drinking gets 'em in the end," said Reggie. The
girls laughed. Dick put down three bourbons in rapid suc-
cession but he wasn't getting any lift from them. He just
felt hungry and frazzled. He had his head twisted around
trying to flag the waiter to find out what the devil had hap-
pened to his filetmignon when he heard Reggie drawling,
"After all J. Ward Moorehouse isn't a man . . . it's a
name. . . . You can't feel sorry when a name gets sick."

Dick felt a rush of anger flush his head: "He's one of
the sixty most important men in this country," he said.
"After all, Reggie, you're taking his money. . . ."

"Good God," cried Reggie. "The man on the high
horse."

Pat turned to Dick, laughing. "They seem to be getting
mighty holy down there in Washington."

"No, you know I like to kid as well as anybody. . . .
But when a man like J. W. who's perhaps done more than

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any one living man, whether you like what he does or not,
to form the public mind in this country, is taken ill, I think
sophomore wisecracks are in damn bad taste."

Reggie was drunk. He was talking in phony southern
dialect. "Wha, brudder, Ah didn't know as you was Mista
Moahouse in pussen. Ah thunked you was juss a lowdown
wageslave like the rest of us pickaninnies."

Dick wanted to shut up but he couldn't. "Whether you
like it or not the molding of the public mind is one of the
most important things that goes on in this country. If it
wasn't for that American business would be in a pretty
pickle. . . . Now we may like the way American business
does things or we may not like it, but it's a historical fact
like the Himalaya Mountains and no amount of kidding's
going to change it. It's only through publicrelations work
that business is protected from wildeyed cranks and dema-
gogues who are always ready to throw a monkeywrench
into the industrial machine."

"Hear, hear," cried Pat.

"Well, you'll be the first to holler when they cut the
income from your old man's firstmortgage bonds," said
Dick snappishly.

"Senator," intoned
Reggie, strengthened by another old-
fashioned, "allow me to congrat'late you. . . ma soul 'n
body, senator, 'low me to congrat'late you. . . upon your
vallable services to this great commonwealth that stretches
from the great Atlantical ocean to the great and glorious
Pacifical."

"Shut up, Reggie," said Jo. "Let him eat his steak in
peace."

"Well, you certainly made the eagle scream, Dick,"
said Pat, "but seriously, I guess you're right."

"We've got to be realists," said Dick.

"I believe," said Pat Doolittle, throwing back her head
and laughing, "that he's come across with that raise."

Dick couldn't help grinning and nodding. He felt bet-

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ter since he'd eaten. He ordered another round of drinks
and began to talk about going up to Harlem to dance at
Small's Paradise. He said he couldn't go to bed, he was too
tired, he had to have some relaxation. Pat Doolittle said
she loved it in Harlem but that she hadn't brought any
money. "My party," said Dick. "I've got plenty of cash
on me."

They went up with a flask of whiskey in each of the
girls' handbags and in Dick's and Reggie's back pockets.
Reggie and Pat sang The Fireship in the taxi. Dick drank
a good deal in the taxi to catch up with the others. Going
down the steps to Small's was like going underwater into
a warm thicklygrown pool. The air was dense with musky
smells of mulatto powder and perfume and lipstick and
dresses and throbbed like flesh with the smoothlybalanced
chugging of the band. Dick and Pat danced right away,
holding each other very close. Their dancing seemed
smooth as cream. Dick found her lips under his and kissed
them. She kissed back. When the music stopped they were
reeling a little. They walked back to their table with
drunken dignity. When the band started again Dick danced
with Jo. He kissed her too. She pushed him off a little.
"Dick, you oughtn't to." "Reggie won't mind. It's all in
the family. . . ." They were dancing next to Reggie and
Pat hemmed in by a swaying blur of couples. Dick dropped
Jo's hand and put his hand on Reggie's shoulder. " Reggie,
you don't mind if I kiss your future wife for you just
once.""Go as far as you like, senator," said Reggie. His
voice was thick. Pat was having trouble keeping him on his
feet. Jo gave Dick a waspish look and kept her face turned
away for the rest of the dance. As soon as they got back to
the table she told Reggie that it was after two and she'd
have to go home, she for one had to work in the morning.

When they were alone and Dick was just starting to
make love to Pat she turned to him and said, "Oh, Dick,
do take me some place low. . . nobody'll ever take me

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any place really low.""I should think this would be quite
low enough for a juniorleaguer," he said. "But this is more
respectable than Broadway, and I'm not a juniorleaguer

I'm the new woman." Dick burst out laughing. They
both laughed and had a drink on it and felt fond of each
other again and Dick suddenly asked her why couldn't
they be together always. "I think you're mean. This isn't
any place to propose to a girl. Imagine remembering all
your life that you'd got engaged in Harlem. . . . I want
to see life." "All right, young lady, we'll go. . . but
don't blame me if it's too rough for you." "I'm not a
sissy," said Pat angrily. "I know it wasn't the stork."

Dick paid and they finished up one of the pints. Outside
it was snowing. Streets and stoops and pavements were
white, innocent, quiet, glittering under the streetlights
with freshfallen snow. Dick asked the whiteeyed black
doorman about a dump he'd heard of and the doorman
gave the taximan the address. Dick began to feel good.
"Gosh, Pat, isn't this lovely," he kept crying. "Those kids
can't take it. Takes us grownups to take it. . . . Say, Reg-
gie's getting too fresh, do you know it?" Pat held his hand
tight. Her cheeks were flushed and her face had a taut
look. "Isn't it exciting?" she said. The taxi stopped in front
of an unpainted basement door with one electriclightbulb
haloed with snowflakes above it.
they had a hard time getting in. There were no white
people there at all. It was a furnaceroom set around with
plain kitchen tables and chairs. The steampipes overhead,
were hung with colored paper streamers. A big brown
woman in a pink dress, big eyes rolling loose in their dark
sockets and twitching lips, led them to a table. She seemed
to take a shine to Pat. "Come right on in, darlin'," she
said. "Where's you been all my life?"

Their whiskey was gone so they drank gin. Things got
to whirling round in Dick's head. He couldn't get off the
subject of how sore he was at that little squirt Reggie.

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Here Dick had been nursing him along in the office for a
year and now he goes smartaleck on him. The little twirp.

The only music was a piano where a slimwaisted black
man was tickling the ivories. Dick and Pat danced and
danced and he whirled her around until the sealskin
browns and the highyallers cheered and clapped. Then
Dick slipped and dropped her. She went spinning into a
table where some girls were sitting. Dark heads went back,
pink rubber lips stretched, mouths opened. Gold teeth and
ivories let out a roar.

Pat was dancing with a pale pretty mulatto girl in a
yellow dress. Dick was dancing with a softhanded brown
boy in a tightfitting suit the color of his skin. The boy was
whispering in Dick's ear that his name was Gloria Swan-
son. Dick suddenly broke away from him and went over
to Pat and pulled her away from the girl. Then he ordered
drinks all around that changed sullen looks into smiles
again. He had trouble getting Pat into her coat. The fat
woman was very helpful. "Sure, honey," she said, "you
don't want to go on drinkin' tonight, spoil your lovely
looks." Dick hugged her and gave her a tendollar bill.

In the taxi Pat had hysterics and punched and bit at him
when he held her tight to try to keep her from opening
the door and jumping out into the snow. "You spoil every-
thing. . . . You can't think of anybody except yourself,"
she yelled. "You'll never go through with anything.""But,
Pat, honestly," he was whining, "I thought it was time to
draw. the line." By the time the taxi drew up in front of
the big square apartmenthouse on Park Avenue where she
lived she was sobbing quietly on his shoulder. He took her
into the elevator and kissed her for a long time in the up-
stairs hall before he'd let her put the key in the lock of
her door. They stood there tottering clinging to each other
rubbing up against each other through their clothes until
Dick heard the swish of the rising elevator and opened her
door for her and pushed her in.

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When he got outside the door he found the taxi waiting
for him. He'd forgotten to pay the driver. He couldn't
stand to go home. He didn't feel drunk, he felt immensely
venturesome and cool and innocently excited. Patricia
Doolittle he hated more than anybody in the world. "The
bitch," he kept saying aloud. He wondered how it would
be to go back to the dump and see what happened and
there he was being kissed by the fat woman who wiggled
her breasts as she hugged him and called him her own
lovin' chile, with a bottle of gin in his hand pouring drinks
for everybody and dancing cheek to cheek with Gloria
Swanson who was humming in his ear: Do I get it now
. . . or must I he. . . esitate.

It was morning. Dick was shouting the party couldn't
break up, they must all come to breakfast with him. Every-
body was gone and he was getting into a taxicab with
Gloria and a strapping black buck he said was his girl-
friend Florence. He had a terrible time getting his key in
the lock. He tripped and fell towards the paleblue light
seeping through his mother's lace curtains in the windows.
Something very soft tapped him across the back of the
head.

He woke up undressed in his own bed. It was broad
daylight. The phone was ringing. He let it ring. He sat
up. He felt lightheaded but not sick. He put his hand to
his ear and it came away all bloody. It must have been a
stocking full of sand that hit him. He got to his feet. He
felt tottery but he could walk. His head began to ache like
thunder. He reached for the place on the table he usually
left his watch. No watch. His clothes were neatly hung on
a chair. He found the wallet in its usual place, but the roll
of bills was gone. He sat down on the edge of the bed. Of
all the damn fools. Never never never take a risk like that
again. Now they knew his name his address his phone-
number. Blackmail, oh, Christ. How would it be when
Mother came home from Florida to find her son earning

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twentyfive thousand a year, junior partner of J. Ward
Moorehouse being blackmailed by two nigger whores,
male prostitutes receivifig males? Christ. And Pat Doo-
little and the Bingham girls. It would ruin his life. For a
second he thought of going into the kitchenette and turn-
ing on the gas.

He pulled himself together and took a bath. Then he
dressed carefully and put on his hat and coat and went out.
It was only nine o'clock. He saw the time in a jeweler's
window on Lexington. There was a mirror in the same win-
dow. He looked at his face. Didn't look so bad, would look
worse later, but he needed a shave and had to do some-
thing about the clotted blood on his ear.

He didn't have any money but he had his checkbook.
He walked to a Turkish bath near the Grand Central. The
attendants kidded him about what a fight he'd been in. He
began to get over his scare a little and to talk big about
what he'd done to the other guy. They took his check all
right and he even was able to buy a drink to have before his
breakfast. When he got to the office his head was still split-
ting but he felt in fair shape. He had to keep his hands
in his pockets so that Miss Hilles shouldn't see how they
shook. Thank God he didn't have to sign any letters till
afternoon.

Ed Griscolm came in and sat on his desk and talked
about J. W.'s condition and the Bingham account and Dick
was sweet as sugar to him. Ed Griscolm talked big about
an offer he'd had from Halsey, but Dick said of course he
couldn't advise him but that as for him the one place in
the country he wanted to be was right here, especially now
as there were bigger things in sight than there had ever
been before, he and J. W. had had a long talk going down
on the train. "I guess you're' right," said Ed. "I guess it
was sour grapes a little." Dick got to his feet. "Honestly,
Ed, old man, you mustn't think for a minute J. W. doesn't
appreciate your work. He even let drop something about

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a raise." "Well, it was nice of you to put in a word for me,
old man," said Ed and they shook hands warmly.

As Ed was leaving the office he turned and said, "Say,
Dick, I wish you'd give that youngster Talbot a talking
to. . . . I know he's a friend of yours so I don't like to
do it, but Jesus Christ, he's gone and called up again say-
ing he's in bed with the grippe. That's the third time this
month."

Dick wrinkled up his brows. "I don't know what to do
about him, Ed. He's a nice kid all right but if he won't
knuckle down to serious work. . . I guess we'll have to
let him go. We certainly can't let drinking acquaintance
stand in the way of the efficiency of the office. These kids
all drink too much anyway."

After Ed had gone Dick found on his desk a big laven-
der envelope marked Personal. A whiff of strong perfume
came out when he opened it. It was an invitation from
Myra Bingham to come to the housewarming of her studio
on Central Park South. He was still reading it when Miss
Hilles' voice came out of the interoffice phone. "There's
Mr. Henry B. Furness of the Furness Corporation says he
must speak to Mr. Moorehouse at once." "Put him on my
phone, Miss Hilles. I'll talk to him. . . and, by the way,
put a social engagement on my engagement pad. . .
January fifteenth at five o'clock. . . reception Miss Myra
Bingham, 36 Central Park South."

NEWSREEL LXVIII

WALL STREET STUNNED

This is not Thirty-eight but it's old Ninety-seven
You must put her in Center on time

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