First Section (continued 2)

“Six includin Mr. Dorkins de second officer.”

“Seven and four makes eleven.... Jez.... Four an three-elevenths broads per capita.... Some island.”

“When does the next ferry leave?”

“Better have another drink on that.... Hay Charlie fill ’em up.”

Emile pulled at Congo’s elbow. “Come outside a sec. J’ai que’quechose a te dire.” Congo’s eyes were wet, he staggered a little as he followed Emile into the outer bar. “O le p’tit mysterieux.”

“Look here, I’ve got to go call on a lady friend.”

“Oh that’s what’s eating you is it? I always said you was a wise guy Emile.”

“Look, here’s my address on a piece of paper in case you forget it: 945 West 22nd. You can come and sleep there if you’re not too pickled, and dont you bring any friends or women or anything. I’m in right with the landlady and I dont want to spoil it.... Tu comprends.”

“But I wanted you to come on a swell party.... Faut faire un peu la noce, nom de dieu!...”

“I got to work in the morning.”

“But I got eight months’ pay in my pocket....

“Anyway come round tomorrow at about six. I’ll wait for you.”

“Tu m’emmerdes tu sais avec tes manières;” Congo aimed a jet of saliva at the spittoon in the corner of the bar and turned back frowning into the inside room.

“Hay dere sit down Congo; Barney’s goin to sing de Bastard King of England.”

Emile jumped on a streetcar and rode uptown. At Eighteenth Street he got off and walked west to Eighth Avenue. Two doors from the corner was a small store. Over one window was Confiserie, over the other Delicatessen. In the middle of the glass door white enamel letters read Emile Rigaud, High Class Table Dainties. Emile went in. The bell jangled on the door. A dark stout woman with black hairs over the corners of her mouth was drowsing behind the counter. Emile took off his hat. “Bonsoir Madame Rigaud.” She looked up with a start, then showed two dimples in a profound smile.

“Tieng c’est comma ça qu’ong oublie ses ami-es,” she said in a booming Bordelais voice. “Here’s a week that I say to myself, Monsieur Loustec is forgetting his friends.”

“I never have any time any more.”

“Lots of work, lots of money, heing?” When she laughed her shoulders shook and the big breasts under the tight blue bodice.

Emile screwed up one eye. “Might be worse.... But I’m sick of waiting.... It’s so tiring; nobody regards a waiter.”

“You are a man of ambition, Monsieur Loustec.”

“Que voulez vous?” He blushed, and said timidly “My name’s Emile.”

Mme. Rigaud rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. “That was my dead husband’s name. I’m used to that name.” She sighed heavily.

“And how’s business?”

“Comma ci comma ça.... Ham’s gone up again.”

“It’s the Chicago ring’s doing that.... A corner in pork, that’s the way to make money.”

Emile found Mme. Rigaud’s bulgy black eyes probing his. “I enjoyed your singing so last time.... I’ve thought of it often.... Music does one good dont it?” Mme. Rigaud’s dimples stretched and stretched as she smiled. “My poor husband had no ear.... That gave me a great deal of pain.”

“Couldn’t you sing me something this evening?”

“If you want me to, Emile?... But there is nobody to wait on customers.”

“I’ll run in when we hear the bell, if you will permit me.”

“Very well.... I’ve learned a new American song ... C’est chic vous savez.”

Mme. Rigaud locked the till with a key from the bunch that hung at her belt and went through the glass door in the back of the shop. Emile followed with his hat in his hand.

“Give me your hat Emile.”

“Oh dont trouble yourself.”

The room beyond was a little parlor with yellow flowered wallpaper, old salmon pink portières and, under the gas-bracket from which hung a bunch of crystals, a piano with photographs on it. The pianostool creaked when Mme. Rigaud sat down. She ran her fingers over the keys. Emile sat carefully on the very edge of the chair beside the piano

The bell on the door of the shop jangled loud.

“Permettez,” cried Emile running out.

“Half a pound o bolony sausage sliced,” said a little girl with pigtails. Emile passed the knife across the palm of his hand and sliced the sausage carefully. He tiptoed back into the parlor and put the money on the edge of the piano. Madame Rigaud was still singing:

Bud stood on the corner of West Broadway and Franklin Street eating peanuts out of a bag. It was noon and his money was all gone. The Elevated thundered overhead. Dustmotes danced before his eyes in the girderstriped sunlight. Wondering which way to go he spelled out the names of the streets for the third time. A black shiny cab drawn by two black shinyrumped horses turned the corner sharp in front of him with a rasp on the cobblestones of red shiny wheels suddenly braked. There was a yellow leather trunk on the seat beside the driver. In the cab a man in a brown derby talked loud to a woman with a gray feather boa round her neck and gray ostrich plumes in her hat. The man jerked a revolver up to his mouth. The horses reared and

“His wife was taking him to Europe.... The Deutschland sailing at twelve. I’d said goodby to him forever. He was sailing on the Deutschland at twelve. He’d said goodby to me forever.”

“Git oute de way dere;” a cop jabbed Bud in the stomach with his elbow. His knees trembled. He got to the edge of the crowd and walked away trembling. Mechanically he shelled a peanut and put it in his mouth. Better save the rest till evenin. He twisted the mouth of the bag and dropped it into his pocket.

Under the arclight that spluttered pink and green-edged violet the man in the checked suit passed two girls. The full-lipped oval face of the girl nearest to him; her eyes were like a knifethrust. He walked a few paces then turned and followed them fingering his new satin necktie. He made sure the horseshoe diamond pin was firm in its place. He passed them again. Her face was turned away. Maybe she was.... No he couldn’t tell. Good luck he had fifty dollars on him. He sat on a bench and let them pass him. Wouldnt do to make a mistake and get arrested. They didnt notice him. He followed them down the path and out of the Park. His heart was pounding. I’d give a million dollars for ... Pray pardon me, isn’t this Miss Anderson? The girls walked fast. In the crowd crossing Columbus Circle he lost sight of them. He hurried down Broadway block after block. The full lips, the eyes like the thrust of a knife. He stared in girls’ faces right and left. Where could she have gone? He hurried on down Broadway.

Ellen was sitting beside her father on a bench at the Battery. She was looking at her new brown button shoes. A glint of sunlight caught on the toes and on each of the little round buttons when she swung her feet out from under the shadow of her dress.

“Think how it’d be,” Ed Thatcher was saying, “to go abroad on one of those liners. Imagine crossing the great Atlantic in seven days.”

“But daddy what do people do all that time on a boat?”

“I dunno ... I suppose they walk round the deck and play cards and read and all that sort of thing. Then they have dances.”

“Dances on a boat! I should think it’d be awful tippy.” Ellen giggled.

“On the big modern liners they do.”

“Daddy why dont we go?”

“Maybe we will some day if I can save up the money.”

“Oh daddy do hurry up an save a lot of money. Alice Vaughan’s mother an father go to the White Mountains every summer, but next summer they’re going abroad.”

Ed Thatcher looked out across the bay that stretched in blue sparkling reaches into the brown haze towards the Narrows. The statue of Liberty stood up vague as a sleepwalker among the curling smoke of tugboats and the masts of schooners and the blunt lumbering masses of brickbarges and sandscows. Here and there the glary sun shone out white on a sail or on the superstructure of a steamer. Red ferryboats shuttled back and forth.

“Daddy why arent we rich?”

“There are lots of people poorer than us Ellie.... You wouldn’t like your daddy any better if he were rich would you?”

“Oh yes I would daddy.”

Thatcher laughed. “Well it might happen someday.... How would you like the firm of Edward C. Thatcher and Co., Certified Accountants?”

Ellen jumped to her feet: “Oh look at that big boat.... That’s the boat I want to go on.”

“That there’s the Harabic,” croaked a cockney voice beside them.

“Oh is it really?” said Thatcher.

“Indeed it is, sir; as fahne a ship as syles the sea sir,” explained eagerly a frayed creakyvoiced man who sat on the bench beside them. A cap with a broken patentleather visor was pulled down over a little peaked face that exuded a faded smell of whiskey. “Yes sir, the Harabic sir.”

“Looks like a good big boat that does.”

“One of the biggest afloat sir. I syled on er many’s the tahme and on the Majestic and the Teutonic too sir, fahne ships both, though a bit light’eaded in a sea as you might say. I’ve signed as steward on the Hinman and White Star lahnes these thirty years and now in me old age they’ve lyed me hoff.”

“Oh well, we all have hard luck sometimes.”

“And some of us as it hall the tahme sir.... I’d be a appy man sir, if I could get back to the old country. This arent any plyce for an old man, it’s for the young and strong, this is.” He drew a gout-twisted hand across the bay and pointed to the statue. “Look at er, she’s alookin towards Hengland she is.”

“Daddy let’s go away. I dont like this man,” whispered Ellen tremulously in her father’s ear.

“All right we’ll go and take a look at the sealions.... Good day.”

“You couldn’t fahnd me the price of a cup o coffee, could you now sir? I’m fair foundered.” Thatcher put a dime in the grimy knobbed hand.

“But daddy, mummy said never to let people speak to you in the street an to call a policeman if they did an to run away as fast as you could on account of those horrible kidnappers.”

“No danger of their kidnapping me Ellie. That’s just for little girls.”

“When I grow up will I be able to talk to people on the street like that?”

“No deary you certainly will not.”

“If I’d been a boy could I?”

“I guess you could.”

In front of the Aquarium they stopped a minute to look down the bay. The liner with a tug puffing white smoke against either bow was abreast of them towering above the ferryboats and harborcraft. Gulls wheeled and screamed. The sun shone creamily on the upper decks and on the big yellow blackcapped funnel. From the foremast a string of little flags fluttered jauntily against the slate sky.

“And there are lots of people coming over from abroad on that boat arent there daddy?”

“Look you can see ... the decks are black with people.”

Walking across Fiftythird Street from the East River Bud Korpenning found himself standing beside a pile of coal on the sidewalk. On the other side of the pile of coal a grayhaired woman in a flounced lace shirtwaist with a big pink cameo poised on the curve of her high bosom was looking at his stubbly chin and at the wrists that hung raw below the frayed sleeves of his coat. Then he heard himself speak:

“Dont spose I could take that load of coal in back for you ma’am?” Bud shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“That’s just what you could do,” the woman said in a cracked voice. “That wretched coal man left it this morning and said he’d be back to bring it in. I suppose he’s drunk like the rest of them. I wonder if I can trust you in the house.”

“I’m from upstate ma’am,” stammered Bud.

“From where?”

“From Cooperstown.”

“Hum.... I’m from Buffalo. This is certainly the city for everyone being from somewhere else.... Well you’re probably a burglar’s accomplice, but I cant help it I’ve got to have that coal in.... Come in my man, I’ll give you a shovel and a basket and if you dont drop any in the passage

When he carried in the first load she was hovering in the kitchen. His caving hungersniff stomach made him totter lightheadedly, but he was happy to be working instead of dragging his feet endlessly along pavements, across streets, dodging drays and carts and streetcars.

“How is it you haven’t got a regular job my man,” she asked as he came back breathless with the empty basket.

“I reckon it’s as I aint caught on to city ways yet. I was born an raised on a farm.”

“And what did you want to come to this horrible city for?”

“Couldn’t stay on the farm no more.”

“It’s terrible what’s going to become of this country if all the fine strong young men leave the farms and come into the cities.”

“Thought I could git a work as a longshoreman, ma’am, but they’re layin’ men off down on the wharves. Mebbe I kin go to sea as a sailor but nobody wants a green hand.... I aint et for two days now.”

“How terrible.... Why you poor man couldn’t you have gone to some mission or something?”

When Bud had brought the last load in he found a plate of cold stew on the corner of the kitchen table, half a loaf of stale bread and a glass of milk that was a little sour. He ate quickly barely chewing and put the last of the stale bread in his pocket.

“Well did you enjoy your little lunch?”

“Thankye ma’am.” He nodded with his mouth full.

“Well you can go now and thank you very much.” She put a quarter into his hand. Bud blinked at the quarter in the palm of his hand.

“But ma’am you said you’d give me a dollar.”

“I never said any such thing. The idea.... I’ll call my husband if you dont get out of here immediately. In fact I’ve a great mind to notify the police as it is....”

Without a word Bud pocketed the quarter and shuffled out.

“Such ingratitude,” he heard the woman snort as he closed the door behind him.

A cramp was tying knots in his stomach. He turned east again and walked the long blocks to the river with his fists pressed tight in under his ribs. At any moment he expected to throw up. If I lose it it wont do me no good. When he got to the end of the street he lay down on the gray rubbish slide beside the wharf. A smell of hops seeped gruelly and sweet out of the humming brewery behind him. The light of the sunset flamed in the windows of factories on the Long Island side, flashed in the portholes of tugs, lay in swaths of curling yellow and orange over the swift browngreen water, glowed on the curved sails of a schooner that was slowly bucking the tide up into Hell Gate. Inside him the pain was less. Something flamed and glowed like the sunset seeping through his body. He sat up. Thank Gawd I aint agoin to lose it.

On deck it’s damp and shivery in the dawn. The ship’s rail is wet when you put your hand on it. The brown harborwater smells of washbasins, rustles gently against the steamer’s sides. Sailors are taking the hatches off the hold. There’s a rattle of chains and a clatter from the donkeyengine where a tall man in blue overalls stands at a lever in the middle of a cloud of steam that wraps round your face like a wet towel.

“Muddy is it really the Fourth of July?”

Mother’s hand has grasped his firmly trailing him down the companionway into the dining saloon. Stewards are piling up baggage at the foot of the stairs.

“Muddy is it really the Fourth of July?”

“Yes deary I’m afraid it is.... A holiday is a dreadful time to arrive. Still I guess they’ll all be down to meet us.”

She has her blue serge on and a long trailing brown veil

“Why it’s going to be a fine day after all. I think the sun will burn through the mist.... Think of it dear; home at last. This is where you were born deary.”

“And it’s the Fourth of July.”

“Worst luck.... Now Jimmy you must promise me to stay on the promenade deck and be very careful. Mother has to finish packing. Promise me you wont get into any mischief.”

“I promise.”

He catches his toe on the brass threshold of the smokingroom door and sprawls on deck, gets up rubbing his bare knee just in time to see the sun break through chocolate clouds and swash a red stream of brightness over the putty-colored water. Billy with the freckles on his ears whose people are for Roosevelt instead of for Parker like mother is waving a silk flag the size of a handkerchief at the men on a yellow and white tugboat.

“Didjer see the sun rise?” he asks as if he owned it.

“You bet I saw it from my porthole,” says Jimmy walking away after a lingering look at the silk flag. There’s land close on the other side; nearest a green bank with trees and wide white grayroofed houses.

“Well young feller, how does it feel to be home?” asks the tweedy gentleman with droopy mustaches.

“Is that way New York?” Jimmy points out over the still water broadening in the sunlight.

“Yessiree-bobby, behind yonder bank of fog lies Manhattan.”

“Please sir what’s that?”

“That’s New York.... You see New York is on Manhattan Island.”

“Is it really on an island?”

“Well what do you think of a boy who dont know that his own home town is on an island?”

The tweedy gentleman’s gold teeth glitter as he laughs with his mouth wide open. Jimmy walks on round the deck, kicking his heels, all foamy inside; New York’s on an island.

“You look right glad to get home little boy,” says the Southern lady.

“Oh I am, I could fall down and kiss the ground.”

“Well that’s a fine patriotic sentiment.... I’m glad to hear you say it.”

Jimmy scalds all over. Kiss the ground, kiss the ground, echoes in his head like a catcall. Round the deck.

“That with the yellow flag’s the quarantine boat.” A stout man with rings on his fingers—he’s a Jew—is talking to the tweedy man. “Ha we’re under way again.... That was quick, what?”

“We’ll be in for breakfast, an American breakfast, a good old home breakfast.”

Muddy coming down the deck, her brown veil floating. “Here’s your overcoat Jimmy, you’ve got to carry it.”

“Muddy, can I get out that flag?”

“What flag?”

“The silk American flag.”

“No dear it’s all put away.”

“Please I’d so like to have that flag cause it’s the Fourth of July an everything.”

“Now dont whine Jimmy. When mother says no she means no.”

Sting of tears; he swallows a lump and looks up in her eyes.

“Jimmy it’s put away in the shawlstrap and mother’s so tired of fussing with those wretched bags.”

“But Billy Jones has one.”

“Look deary you’re missing things.... There’s the statue of Liberty.” A tall green woman in a dressing gown standing on an island holding up her hand.

“What’s that in her hand?”

“That’s a light, dear ... Liberty enlightening the world.... And there’s Governors Island the other side. There where the trees are ... and see, that’s Brooklyn Bridge.... That is a fine sight. And look at all the docks ... that’s the Battery ... and the masts and the ships ... and there’s the spire of Trinity Church and the Pulitzer building.” ... Mooing of steamboat whistles, ferries red and waddly like ducks churning up white water, a whole train of cars on a barge pushed by a tug chugging beside it that lets out cotton steampuffs all the same size. Jimmy’s hands are cold and he’s chugging and chugging inside.

“Dear you mustn’t get too excited. Come on down and see if mother left anything in the stateroom.”

Streak of water crusted with splinters, groceryboxes, orangepeel, cabbageleaves, narrowing, narrowing between the boat and the dock. A brass band shining in the sun, white caps, sweaty red faces, playing Yankee Doodle. “That’s for the ambassador, you know the tall man who never left his cabin.” Down the slanting gangplank, careful not to trip. Yankee Doodle went to town.... Shiny black face, white enameled eyes, white enameled teeth. “Yas ma’am, yas ma’am” ... Stucka feather in his hat, an called it macaroni..... “We have the freedom of the port.” Blue custom officer shows a bald head bowing low ... Tumte boomboom BOOM BOOM BOOM ... cakes and sugar candy....

“Here’s Aunt Emily and everybody.... Dear how sweet of you to come.”

“My dear I’ve been here since six o’clock!”

“My how he’s grown.”

Light dresses, sparkle of brooches, faces poked into Jimmy’s, smell of roses and uncle’s cigar.

“Why he’s quite a little man. Come here sir, let me look at you.”

“Well goodby Mrs. Herf. If you ever come down our way.... Jimmy I didn’t see you kiss the ground young man.”

“Oh he’s killing, he’s so oldfashioned ... such an oldfashioned child.”

The cab smells musty, goes rumbling and lurching up a wide avenue swirling with dust, through brick streets soursmelling full of grimy yelling children, and all the while the trunks creak and thump on top.

“Muddy dear, you dont think it’ll break through do you?”

“No dear,” she laughs tilting her head to one side. She has pink cheeks and her eyes sparkle under the brown veil.

“Oh muddy.” He stands up and kisses her on the chin. “What lots of people muddy.”

“That’s on account of the Fourth of July.”

“What’s that man doing?”

“He’s been drinking dear I’m afraid.”

From a little stand draped with flags a man with white whiskers with little red garters on his shirtsleeves is making a speech. “That’s a Fourth of July orator.... He’s reading the Declaration of Independence.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the Fourth of July.”

Crang! ... that’s a cannon-cracker. “That wretched boy might have frightened the horse.... The Fourth of July dear is the day the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 in the War of the Revolution. My great grandfather Harland was killed in that war.”

A funny little train with a green engine clatters overhead.

“That’s the Elevated ... and look this is Twentythird Street ... and the Flatiron Building.”

The cab turns sharp into a square glowering with sunlight, smelling of asphalt and crowds and draws up before a tall door where colored men in brass buttons run forward.

“And here we are at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.”

Icecream at Uncle Jeff’s, cold sweet peachy taste thick against the roof of the mouth. Funny after you’ve left the

The box is empty, gritty powder and sawdust get under your nails when you feel along it, it’s empty, no there are still some little wooden fire engines on wheels. Really truly fire engines. “We must set these off Uncle Jeff. Oh these are the best of all Uncle Jeff.” They have squibs in them and go sizzling off fast over the smooth asphalt of the street, pushed by sparkling plumed fiery tails, leaving smoke behind some real fire engines.

Tucked into bed in a tall unfriendly room, with hot eyes and aching legs. “Growing pains darling,” muddy said when she tucked him in, leaning over him in a glimmering silk dress with drooping sleeves.

“Muddy what’s that little black patch on your face?”

“That,” she laughed and her necklace made a tiny tinkling, “is to make mother look prettier.”

He lay there hemmed by tall nudging wardrobes and dressers. From outside came the sound of wheels and shouting, and once in a while a band of music in the distance. His legs ached as if they’d fall off, and when he closed his eyes he was speeding through flaring blackness on a red fire engine that shot fire and sparks and colored balls out of its sizzling tail.

The July sun pricked out the holes in the worn shades on the office windows. Gus McNiel sat in the morrischair with his crutches between his knees. His face was white and puffy from months in hospital. Nellie in a straw hat with red poppies rocked herself to and fro in the swivel chair at the desk.

“Better come an set by me Nellie. That lawyer might not like it if he found yez at his desk.”

She wrinkled up her nose and got to her feet. “Gus I declare you’re scared to death.”

“You’d be scared too if you’d had what I’d had wid de railroad doctor pokin me and alookin at me loike I was a jailbird and the Jew doctor the lawyer got tellin me as I was totally in-cap-aciated. Gorry I’m all in. I think he was lyin though.”

“Gus you do as I tell ye. Keep yer mouth shut an let the other guys do the talkin’.”

“Sure I wont let a peep outa me.”

Nellie stood behind his chair and began stroking the crisp hair back from his forehead.

“It’ll be great to be home again, Nellie, wid your cookin an all.” He put an arm round her waist and drew her to him.

“Juss think, maybe I wont have to do any.”

“I don’t think I’d loike that so well.... Gosh if we dont git that money I dunno how we’ll make out.”

“Oh pop’ll help us like he’s been doin.”

“Hope to the Lord I aint goin to be sick all me loife.”

George Baldwin came in slamming the glass door behind him. He stood looking at the man and his wife a second with his hands in his pockets. Then he said quietly smiling:

“Well it’s done people. As soon as the waiver of any further claims is signed the railroad’s attorneys will hand me a check for twelve thousand five hundred. That’s what we finally compromised on.”

“Twelve thousand iron men,” gasped Gus. “Twelve thousand five hundred. Say wait a second.... Hold me crutches while I go out an git run over again.... Wait till

“To be sure he is.”

Baldwin tried to keep from looking her in the eye. Spurts of jangling agitation were going through him, making his legs feel weak and trembly.

“I’ll tell yez what let’s do,” said Gus. “Sposin we all take a horsecab up to ole McGillycuddy’s an have somethin to wet our whistles in the private bar.... My treat. I need a bit of a drink to cheer me up. Come on Nellie.”

“I wish I could,” said Baldwin, “but I’m afraid I cant. I’m pretty busy these days. But just give me your signature before you go and I’ll have the check for you tomorrow.... Sign here ... and here.”

McNiel had stumped over to the desk and was leaning over the papers. Baldwin felt that Nellie was trying to make a sign to him. He kept his eyes down. After they had left he noticed her purse, a little leather purse with pansies burned on the back, on the corner of the desk. There was a tap on the glass door. He opened.

“Why wouldn’t you look at me?” she said breathlessly low.

“How could I with him here.” He held the purse out to her.

She put her arms round his neck and kissed him hard on the mouth. “What are we goin to do? Shall I come in this afternoon? Gus’ll be liquorin up to get himself sick again now he’s out of the hospital.”

“No I cant Nellie.... Business ... business.... I’m busy every minute.”

“Oh yes you are.... All right have it your own way.” She slammed the door.

Baldwin sat at his desk biting his knuckles without seeing the pile of papers he was staring at. “I’ve got to cut it out,” he said aloud and got to his feet. He paced back and forth across the narrow office looking at the shelves

“Rector 1237.... Mr. Sandbourne there?... Say Phil suppose I come by for you for lunch? Do you want to go out right now?... Sure.... Say Phil I clinched it, I got the milkman his damages. I’m pleased as the dickens. I’ll set you up to a regular lunch on the strength of it... So long....”

He came away from the telephone smiling, took his hat off its hook, fitted it carefully on his head in front of the little mirror over the hatrack, and hurried down the stairs.

On the last flight he met Mr. Emery of Emery & Emery who had their offices on the first floor.

“Well Mr. Baldwin how’s things?” Mr. Emery of Emery & Emery was a flatfaced man with gray hair and eyebrows and a protruding wedgeshaped jaw. “Pretty well sir, pretty well.”

“They tell me you are doing mighty well.... Something about the New York Central Railroad.”

“Oh Simsbury and I settled it out of court.”

“Humph,” said Mr. Emery of Emery & Emery.

As they were about to part in the street Mr. Emery said suddenly “Would you care to dine with me and my wife some time?”

“Why ... er ... I’d be delighted.”

“I like to see something of the younger fellows in the profession you understand.... Well I’ll drop you a line.... Some evening next week. It would give us a chance to have a chat.”

Baldwin shook a blueveined hand in a shinystarched cuff and went off down Maiden Lane hustling with a springy step through the noon crowd. On Pearl Street he climbed a steep flight of black stairs that smelt of roasting coffee and knocked on a groundglass door.

“Come in,” shouted a bass voice. A swarthy man lanky in his shirtsleeves strode forward to meet him. “Hello

“Phil I’m going to set you up to the best lunch you ever ate in your life.”

“Well I’m juss waitin’ to be set.”

Phil Sandbourne put on his coat, knocked the ashes out of his pipe on the corner of a draftingtable, and shouted into a dark inner office, “Goin out to eat, Mr. Specker.”

“All right go ahead,” replied a goaty quavering from the inner office.

“How’s the old man?” asked Baldwin as they went out the door.

“Ole Specker? Bout on his last legs ... but he’s been thataway for years poa ole soul. Honest George I’d feel mighty mean if anythin happened to poa ole Specker.... He’s the only honest man in the city of New York, an he’s got a head on his shoulders too.”

“He’s never made anything much by it,” said Baldwin.

“He may yet.... He may yet.... Man you ought to see his plans for allsteel buildins. He’s got an idea the skyscraper of the future’ll be built of steel and glass. We’ve been experimenting with vitrous tile recently.... cristamighty some of his plans would knock yer eye out.... He’s got a great sayin about some Roman emperor who found Rome of brick and left it of marble. Well he says he’s found New York of brick an that he’s goin to leave it of steel ... steel an glass. I’ll have to show you his project for a rebuilt city. It’s some pipedream.”

They settled on a cushioned bench in the corner of the restaurant that smelled of steak and the grill. Sandbourne stretched his legs out under the table.

“Wow this is luxury,” he said.

“Phil let’s have a cocktail,” said Baldwin from behind the bill of fare. “I tell you Phil, it’s the first five years that’s the hardest.”

“You needn’t worry George, you’re the hustlin kind.... I’m the ole stick in the mud.”

“I don’t see why, you can always get a job as a draftsman.”

“That’s a fine future I muss say, to spend ma life with the corner of a draftintable stuck in ma bally.... Christ-amighty man!”

“Well Specker and Sandbourne may be a famous firm yet.”

“People’ll be goin round in flyin machines by that time an you and me’ll be laid out with our toes to the daisies.”

“Here’s luck anyway.”

“Here’s lead in yer pencil, George.”

They drank down the Martinis and started eating their oysters.

“I wonder if it’s true that oysters turn to leather in your stomach when you drink alcohol with em.”

“Search me.... Say by the way Phil how are you getting on with that little stenographer you were taking out?”

“Man the food an drink an theaters I’ve wasted on that lil girl.... She’s got me run to a standstill.... Honest she has. You’re a sensible feller, George, to keep away from the women.”

“Maybe,” said Baldwin slowly and spat an olive stone into his clenched fist.

The first thing they heard was the quavering whistle that came from a little wagon at the curb opposite the entrance to the ferry. A small boy broke away from the group of immigrants that lingered in the ferryhouse and ran over to the little wagon.

“Sure it’s like a steam engine an its fulla monkeynuts,” he yelled running back.

“Padraic you stay here.”

“And this here’s the L station, South Ferry,” went on Tim Halloran who had come down to meet them. “Up thataway’s Battery Park an Bowling Green an Wall Street

There were only three people left at the ferrylanding, an old woman with a blue handkerchief on her head and a young woman with a magenta shawl, standing at either end of a big corded trunk studded with brass tacks; and an old man with a greenish stub of a beard and a face lined and twisted like the root of a dead oak. The old woman was whimpering with wet eyes: “Dove andiamo Madonna mia, Madonna mia?” The young woman was unfolding a letter blinking at the ornate writing. Suddenly she went over to the old man, “Non posso leggere,” holding out the letter to him. He wrung his hands, letting his head roll back and forth, saying over and over again something she couldn’t understand. She shrugged her shoulders and smiled and went back to the trunk. A Sicilian with sideburns was talking to the old woman. He grabbed the trunk by its cord and pulled it over to a spring wagon with a white horse that stood across the street. The two women followed the trunk. The Sicilian held out his hand to the young woman. The old woman still muttering and whimpering hoisted herself painfully onto the back of the wagon. When the Sicilian leaned over to read the letter he nudged the young woman with his shoulder. She stiffened. “Awright,” he said. Then as he shook the reins on the horse’s back he turned back towards the old woman and shouted, “Cinque le due.... Awright.”

IV. Tracks

The rumpetybump rumpetybump spaced out, slackened; bumpers banged all down the train. The man dropped off the rods. He couldnt move for stiffness. It was pitchblack. Very slowly he crawled out, hoisted himself to his knees, to his feet until he leaned panting against the freightcar. His body was not his own; his muscles were smashed wood, his bones were twisted rods. A lantern burst his eyes.

“Get outa here quick yous. Company detectives is beatin through de yards.”

“Say feller, is this New York?”

“You’re goddam right it is. Juss foller my lantern; you kin git out along de waterfront.”

His feet could barely stumble through the long gleaming v’s and crisscrossed lines of tracks, he tripped and fell over a bundle of signal rods. At last he was sitting on the edge of a wharf with his head in his hands. The water made a soothing noise against the piles like the lapping of a dog. He took a newspaper out of his pocket and unwrapped a hunk of bread and a slice of gristly meat. He ate them dry, chewing and chewing before he could get any moisture in his mouth. Then he got unsteadily to his feet, brushed the crumbs off his knees, and looked about him. Southward beyond the tracks the murky sky was drenched with orange glow.

“The Gay White Way,” he said aloud in a croaking voice. “The Gay White Way.”

Through the rainstriped window Jimmy Herf was watching the umbrellas bob in the slowly swirling traffic that flowed up Broadway. There was a knock at the door; “Come in,” said Jimmy and turned back to the

“Muddy.” “Yes deary,” the voice wailed frailly through the folding doors.

“Dinner’s ready mother dear.”

“You begin darling boy, I’ll be right in....”

“But I dont want to begin without you mother.”

He walked round the table straightening knives and forks. He put a napkin over his arm. The head waiter at Delmonico’s was arranging the table for Graustark and the Blind King of Bohemia and Prince Henry the Navigator and ...

“Mother who d’you want to be Mary Queen of Scots or Lady Jane Grey?”

“But they both had their heads chopped off honey.... I dont want to have my head chopped off.” Mother had on her salmoncolored teagown. When she opened the folding doors a wilted smell of cologne and medicines seeped out of the bedroom, trailed after her long lacefringed sleeves. She had put a little too much powder on her face, but her hair, her lovely brown hair was done beautifully. They sat down opposite one another; she set a plate of soup in front of him, lifting it between two long blueveined hands.

He ate the soup that was watery and not hot enough. “Oh I forgot the croûtons, honey.”

“Muddy ... mother why arent you eating your soup?”

“I dont seem to like it much this evening. I couldn’t

“Would you rather be Cleopatra? She had a wonderful appetite and ate everything that was put before her like a good little girl.”

“Even pearls.... She put a pearl in a glass of vinegar and drank it down....” Her voice trembled. She stretched out her hand to him across the table; he patted her hand manfully and smiled. “Only you and me Jimmy boy.... Honey you’ll always love your mother wont you?”

“What’s the matter muddy dear?”

“Oh nothing; I feel strange this evening.... Oh I’m so tired of never really feeling well.”

“But after you’ve had your operation....”

“Oh yes after I’ve had my operation.... Deary there’s a paper of fresh butter on the windowledge in the bathroom.... I’ll put some on these turnips if you fetch it for me.... I’m afraid I’ll have to complain about the food again. This lamb’s not all it should be; I hope it wont make us sick.”

Jimmy ran through the folding doors and his mother’s room into the little passage that smelled of mothballs and silky bits of clothing littered on a chair; the red rubber tubing of a douche swung in his face as he opened the bathroom door; the whiff of medicines made his ribs contract with misery. He pushed up the window at the end of the tub. The ledge was gritty and feathery specks of soot covered the plate turned up over the butter. He stood a moment staring down the airshaft, breathing through his mouth to keep from smelling the coalgas that rose from the furnaces. Below him a maid in a white cap leaned out of a window and talked to one of the furnacemen who stood looking up at her with his bare grimy arms crossed over his chest. Jimmy strained his ears to hear what they were saying; to be dirty and handle coal all day and have grease in your hair and up to your armpits.

“Jimmee!”

“Coming mother.” Blushing he slammed down the window

“Dreaming again, Jimmy. My little dreamer.”

He put the butter beside his mother’s plate and sat down.

“Hurry up and eat your lamb while it’s hot. Why dont you try a little French mustard on it? It’ll make it taste better.”

The mustard burnt his tongue, brought tears to his eyes.

“Is it too hot?” mother asked laughing. “You must learn to like hot things.... He always liked hot things.”

“Who mother?”

“Someone I loved very much.”

They were silent. He could hear himself chewing. A few rattling sounds of cabs and trolleycars squirmed in brokenly through the closed windows. The steampipes knocked and hissed. Down the airshaft the furnaceman with grease up to his armpits was spitting words out of his wabbly mouth up at the maid in the starched cap—dirty words. Mustard’s the color of ...

“A penny for your thoughts.”

“I wasn’t thinking of anything.”

“We mustn’t have any secrets from each other dear. Remember you’re the only comfort your mother has in the world.”

“I wonder what it’d be like to be a seal, a little harbor seal.”

“Very chilly I should think.”

“But you wouldn’t feel it.... Seals are protected by a layer of blubber so that they’re always warm even sitting on an iceberg. But it would be such fun to swim around in the sea whenever you wanted to. They travel thousands of miles without stopping.”

“But mother’s traveled thousands of miles without stopping and so have you.”

“When?”

“Going abroad and coming back.” She was laughing at him with bright eyes.

“Oh but that’s in a boat.”

“And when we used to go cruising on the Mary Stuart.”

“Oh tell me about that muddy.”

There was a knock. “Come.” The spikyhaired waiter put his head in the door.

“Can I clear mum?”

“Yes and bring me some fruit salad and see that the fruit is fresh cut.... Things are wretched this evening.”

Puffing, the waiter was piling dishes on the tray. “I’m sorry mum,” he puffed.

“All right, I know it’s not your fault waiter.... What’ll you have Jimmy?”

“May I have a meringue glacé muddy?”

“All right if you’ll be very good.”

“Yea,” Jimmy let out a yell.

“Darling you mustn’t shout like that at table.”

“But we dont mind when there are just the two of us.... Hooray meringue glacé.”

“James a gentleman always behaves the same way whether he’s in his own home or in the wilds of Africa.”

“Gee I wish we were in the wilds of Africa.”

“I’d be terrified, dear.”

“I’d shout like that and scare away all the lions and tigers.... Yes I would.”

The waiter came back with two plates on the tray. “I’m sorry mum but meringue glacé’s all out.... I brought the young gentleman chocolate icecream instead.”

“Oh mother.”

“Never mind dear.... It would have been too rich anyway.... You eat that and I’ll let you run out after dinner and buy some candy.”

“Oh goody.”

“But dont eat the icecream too fast or you’ll have collywobbles.”

“I’m all through.”

“You bolted it you little wretch .... Put on your rubbers honey.”

“But it’s not raining at all.”

“Do as mother wants you dear.... And please dont

He sat down to pull on his rubbers. While he was snapping them tight over his heels she came to him with a dollar bill. She put her arm with its long silky sleeve round his shoulder. “Oh my darling.”

She was crying.

“Mother you mustnt.” He squeezed her hard; he could feel the ribs of her corset against his arms. “I’ll be back in a minute, in the teenciest weenciest minute.”

On the stairs where a brass rod held the dull crimson carpet in place on each step, Jimmy pulled off his rubbers and stuffed them into the pockets of his raincoat. With his head in the air he hurried through the web of prying glances of the bellhops on the bench beside the desk. “Goin fer a walk?” the youngest lighthaired bellhop asked him. Jimmy nodded wisely, slipped past the staring buttons of the doorman and out onto Broadway full of clangor and footsteps and faces putting on shadowmasks when they slid out of the splotches of light from stores and arclamps. He walked fast uptown past the Ansonia. In the doorway lounged a blackbrowed man with a cigar in his mouth, maybe a kidnapper. But nice people live in the Ansonia like where we live. Next a telegraph office, drygoods stores, a dyers and cleaners, a Chinese laundry sending out a scorched mysterious steamy smell. He walks faster, the chinks are terrible kidnappers. Footpads. A man with a can of coaloil brushes past him, a greasy sleeve brushes against his shoulder, smells of sweat and coaloil; suppose he’s a firebug. The thought of firebug gives him gooseflesh. Fire. Fire.

Huyler’s; there’s a comfortable fudgy odor mixed with the smell of nickel and wellwiped marble outside the door, and the smell of cooking chocolate curls warmly from the gratings under the windows. Black and orange crêpepaper favors for Hallowe’en. He is just going in when he thinks of the Mirror place two blocks further up, those little silver

Mirror candies; this time he goes in without hesitating. He stands at the counter a while before anyone comes to wait on him. “Please a pound of sixty cents a pound mixed chocolate creams,” he rattled off. She is a blond lady, a little crosseyed, and looks at him spitefully without answering. “Please I’m in a hurry if you dont mind.”

“All right, everybody in their turn,” she snaps. He stands blinking at her with flaming cheeks. She pushes him a box all wrapped up with a check on it “Pay at the desk.” I’m not going to cry. The lady at the desk is small and grey-haired. She takes his dollar through a little door like the little doors little animals go in and out of in the Small Mammal House. The cash register makes a cheerful tinkle, glad to get the money. A quarter, a dime, a nickel and a little cup, is that forty cents? But only a little cup instead of a steamengine or an automobile. He picks up the money and leaves the little cup and hurries out with the box under his arm. Mother’ll say I’ve been too long. He walks home looking straight ahead of him, smarting from the meanness of the blond lady.

“Ha ... been out abuyin candy,” said the lighthaired bellhop. “I’ll give you some if you come up later,” whispered Jimmy as he passed. The brass rods rang when he kicked them running up the stairs. Outside the chocolate-colored door that had 503 on it in white enameled letters he remembered his rubbers. He set the candy on the floor and pulled them on over his damp shoes. Lucky Muddy wasn’t waiting for him with the door open. Maybe she’d seen him coming from the window.

“Mother.” She wasn’t in the sittingroom. He was terrified. She’d gone out, she’d gone away. “Mother!”

“Come here dear,” came her voice weakly from the bedroom.

He pulled off his hat and raincoat and rushed in. “Mother what’s the matter?”

“Nothing honey.... I’ve a headache that’s all, a terrible headache.... Put some cologne on a handkerchief and put it on my head nicely, and dont please dear get it in my eye the way you did last time.”

She lay on the bed in a skyblue wadded wrapper. Her face was purplish pale. The silky salmoncolored teagown hung limp over a chair; on the floor lay her corsets in a tangle of pink strings. Jimmy put the wet handkerchief carefully on her forehead. The cologne reeked strong, prickling his nostrils as he leaned over her.

“That’s so good,” came her voice feebly. “Dear call up Aunt Emily, Riverside 2466, and ask her if she can come round this evening. I want to talk to her.... Oh my head’s bursting.”

His heart thumping terribly and tears blearing his eyes he went to the telephone. Aunt Emily’s voice came unexpectedly soon.

“Aunt Emily mother’s kinder sick.... She wants you to come around.... She’s coming right away mother dear,” he shouted, “isn’t that fine? She’s coming right around.” He tiptoed back into his mother’s room, picked up the corset and the teagown and hung them in the wardrobe.

“Deary” came her frail voice “take the hairpins out of my hair, they hurt my head.... Oh honeyboy I feel as if my head would burst....” He felt gently through her brown hair that was silkier than the teagown and pulled out the hairpins.

“Ou dont, you are hurting me.”

“Mother I didn’t mean to.”

Aunt Emily, thin in a blue mackintosh thrown over her evening dress, hurried into the room, her thin mouth in a pucker of sympathy. She saw her sister lying twisted with

“What is it Lil?” she asked quietly.

“My dear something terrible’s the matter with me,” came Lily Herf’s voice in a gasping hiss.

“James,” said Aunt Emily harshly, “you must run off to bed.... Mother needs perfect quiet.”

“Good night muddy dear,” he said.

Aunt Emily patted him on the back. “Dont worry James I’ll attend to everything.” She went to the telephone and began calling a number in a low precise voice.

The box of candy was on the parlor table; Jimmy felt guilty when he put it under his arm. As he passed the bookcase he snatched out a volume of the American Cyclopædia and tucked it under the other arm. His aunt did not notice when he went out the door. The dungeon gates opened. Outside was an Arab stallion and two trusty retainers waiting to speed him across the border to freedom. Three doors down was his room. It was stuffed with silent chunky darkness. The light switched on obediently lighting up the cabin of the schooner Mary Stuart. All right Captain weigh anchor and set your course for the Windward Isles and dont let me be disturbed before dawn; I have important papers to peruse. He tore off his clothes and knelt beside the bed in his pyjamas. Nowilaymedowntosleep Ipraythelordmysoultokeep Ifishoulddiebeforeiwake Ipraythelordmysoultotake.

Then he opened the box of candy and set the pillows together at the end of the bed under the light. His teeth broke through the chocolate into a squashysweet filling. Let’s see ...

A the first of the vowels, the first letter in all written alphabets except the Amharic or Abyssinian, of which it is the thirteenth, and the Runic of which it is the tenth....

Darn it that’s a hairy one....

AA, Aachen (see Aix-la-Chapelle).

Aardvark ...

Gee he’s funny looking ...

(orycteropus capensis), a plantigrade animal of the class mammalia, order edentata, peculiar to Africa.

Abd,

Abd-el-halim, an Egyptian prince, son of Mehmet Ali and a white slave woman....

His cheeks burned as he read:

The Queen of the White Slaves.

Abdomen (lat. of undetermined etymology) ... the lower part of the body included between the level of the diaphragm and that of the pelvis....

Abelard ... The relation of master and pupil was not long preserved. A warmer sentiment than esteem filled their hearts and the unlimited opportunities of intercourse which were afforded them by the canon who confided in Abelard’s age (he was now almost forty), and in his public character, were fatal to the peace of both. The condition of Heloise was on the point of betraying their intimacy.... Fulbert now abandoned himself to a transport of savage vindictiveness ... burst into Abelard’s chamber with a band of ruffians and gratified his revenge by inflicting on him an atrocious mutilation....

Abelites ... denounced sexual intercourse as service of Satan.

Abimelech I, son of Gideon by a Sheshemite concubine, who made himself king after murdering all his seventy brethren except Jotham, and was killed while besieging the tower of Thebez ...

Abortion ...

No; his hands were icy and he felt a little sick from stuffing down so many chocolates.

Abracadabra.

Abydos ...

He got up to drink a glass of water before Abyssinia with engravings of desert mountains and the burning of Magdala by the British.

His eyes smarted. He was stiff and sleepy. He looked at his Ingersoll. Eleven o’clock. Terror gripped him suddenly. If mother was dead...? He pressed his face into the pillow. She stood over him in her white ballgown that had lace crisply on it and a train sweeping behind on satin rustling ruffles and her hand softly fragrant gently stroked his cheek. A rush of sobs choked him. He tossed on the bed with his face shoved hard into the knotty pillow. For a long time he couldn’t stop crying.

He woke up to find the light burning dizzily and the room stuffy and hot. The book was on the floor and the candy squashed under him oozing stickily from its box. The

“James dear, go back to bed and dont worry,” said Aunt Emily in a tired whisper. “Mother’s very ill and must be absolutely quiet, but there’s no more danger.”

“Not for the present at least, Mrs. Merivale,” said the doctor breathing on his eyeglasses.

“The little dear,” came the nurse’s voice low and purry and reassuring, “he’s been sitting up worrying all night and he never bothered us once.”

“I’ll go back and tuck you into bed,” said Aunt Emily. “My James always likes that.”

“May I see mother, just a peek so’s I’ll know she’s all right.” Jimmy looked up timidly at the big face with the eyeglasses.

The doctor nodded. “Well I must go.... I shall drop by at four or five to see how things go.... Goodnight Mrs. Merivale. Goodnight Miss Billings. Goodnight son....”

“This way....” The trained nurse put her hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. He wriggled out from under and walked behind her.

There was a light on in the corner of mother’s room shaded by a towel pinned round it. From the bed came the rasp of breathing he did not recognize. Her crumpled face was towards him, the closed eyelids violet, the mouth screwed to one side. For a half a minute he stared at her. “All right I’ll go back to bed now,” he whispered to the nurse. His blood pounded deafeningly. Without looking at his aunt or at the nurse he walked stiffly to the outer door. His

“With all the business you have, madame,” Emile was saying in a singsong voice, “I should think you’d need someone to help you with the store.”

“I know that ... I’m killing myself with work; I know that,” sighed Madame Rigaud from her stool at the cashdesk. Emile was silent a long time staring at the cross section of a Westphalia ham that lay on a marble slab beside his elbow. Then he said timidly: “A woman like you, a beautiful woman like you, Madame Rigaud, is never without friends.”

“Ah ça.... I have lived too much in my time.... I have no more confidence.... Men are a set of brutes, and women, Oh I dont get on with women a bit!”

“History and literature ...” began Emile.

The bell on the top of the door jangled. A man and a woman stamped into the shop. She had yellow hair and a hat like a flowerbed.

“Now Billy dont be extravagant,” she was saying.

“But Norah we got have sumpen te eat.... An I’ll be all jake by Saturday.”

“Nutten’ll be jake till you stop playin the ponies.”

“Aw go long wud yer.... Let’s have some liverwurst.... My that cold breast of turkey looks good....”

“Piggywiggy,” cooed the yellowhaired girl.

“Lay off me will ye, I’m doing this.”

“Yes sir ze breast of turkee is veree goud.... We ave ole cheekens too, steel ’ot.... Emile mong ami cherchez moi uns de ces petits poulets dans la cuisin-e.” Madame Rigaud spoke like an oracle without moving from her stool

“Varm tonight,” said Madame Rigaud.

“It sure is.... Norah we ought to have gone down to the Island instead of bummin round this town.”

“Billy you know why we couldn’t go perfectly well.”

“Don’t rub it in. Aint I tellin ye it’ll be all jake by Saturday.”

“History and literature,” continued Emile when the customers had gone off with the chicken, leaving Madame Rigaud a silver half dollar to lock up in the till ... “history and literature teach us that there are friendships, that there sometimes comes love that is worthy of confidence....”

“History and literature!” Madame Rigaud growled with internal laughter. “A lot of good that’ll do us.”

“But dont you ever feel lonely in a big foreign city like this...? Everything is so hard. Women look in your pocket not in your heart.... I cant stand it any more.”

Madame Rigaud’s broad shoulders and her big breasts shook with laughter. Her corsets creaked when she lifted herself still laughing off the stool. “Emile, you’re a good-looking fellow and steady and you’ll get on in the world.... But I’ll never put myself in a man’s power again.... I’ve suffered too much.... Not if you came to me with five thousand dollars.”

“You’re a very cruel woman.”

Madame Rigaud laughed again. “Come along now, you can help me close up.”

Sunday weighed silent and sunny over downtown. Baldwin sat at his desk in his shirtsleeves reading a calfbound lawbook. Now and then he wrote down a note on a scratchpad in a wide regular hand. The phone rang loud in the hot stillness. He finished the paragraph he was reading and strode over to answer it.

“Yes I’m here alone, come on over if you want to.” He

Nellie came in without knocking, found him pacing back and forth in front of the window.

“Hello Nellie,” he said without looking up; she stood still staring at him.

“Look here Georgy this cant go on.”

“Why cant it?”

“I’m sick of always pretendin an deceivin.”

“Nobody’s found out anything, have they?”

“Oh of course not.”

She went up to him and straightened his necktie. He kissed her gently on the mouth. She wore a frilled muslin dress of a reddish lilac color and had a blue sunshade in her hand.

“How’s things Georgy?”

“Wonderful. D’you know, you people have brought me luck? I’ve got several good cases on hand now and I’ve made some very valuable connections.”

“Little luck it’s brought me. I haven’t dared go to confession yet. The priest’ll be thinkin I’ve turned heathen.”

“How’s Gus?”

“Oh full of his plans.... Might think he’d earned the money, he’s gettin that cocky about it.”

“Look Nellie how would it be if you left Gus and came and lived with me? You could get a divorce and we could get married.... Everything would be all right then.”

“Like fun it would.... You dont mean it anyhow.”

“But it’s been worth it Nellie, honestly it has.” He put his arms round her and kissed her hard still lips. She pushed him away.

“Anyways I aint comin here again.... Oh I was so happy comin up the stairs thinkin about seein you.... You’re paid an the business is all finished.”

He noticed that the little curls round her forehead were loose. A wisp of hair hung over one eyebrow.

“Nellie we mustn’t part bitterly like this.”

“Why not will ye tell me?”

“Because we’ve both loved one another.”

“I’m not goin to cry.” She patted her nose with a little rolledup handkerchief. “Georgy I’m goin to hate ye.... Goodby.” The door snapped sharply to behind her.

Baldwin sat at his desk and chewed the end of a pencil. A faint pungence of her hair lingered in his nostrils. His throat was stiff and lumpy. He coughed. The pencil fell out of his mouth. He wiped the saliva off with his handkerchief and settled himself in his chair. From bleary the crowded paragraphs of the lawbook became clear. He tore the written sheet off the scratchpad and clipped it to the top of a pile of documents. On the new sheet he began: Decision of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.... Suddenly he sat up straight in his chair, and started biting the end of his pencil again. From outside came the endless sultry whistle of a peanut wagon. “Oh well, that’s that,” he said aloud. He went on writing in a wide regular hand: Case of Patterson vs. The State of New York.... Decision of the Supreme ...

Bud sat by a window in the Seamen’s Union reading slowly and carefully through a newspaper. Next him two men with freshly shaved rawsteak cheeks cramped into white collars and blue serge storesuits were ponderously playing chess. One of them smoked a pipe that made a little clucking noise when he drew on it. Outside rain beat incessantly on a wide glimmering square.

Banzai, live a thousand years, cried the little gray men of the fourth platoon of Japanese sappers as they advanced to repair the bridge over the Yalu River ... Special correspondent of the New York Herald ...

“Checkmate,” said the man with the pipe. “Damn it all let’s go have a drink. This is no night to be sitting here sober.”

“I promised the ole woman ...”

“None o that crap Jess, I know your kinda promises.” A big crimson hand thickly furred with yellow hairs brushed the chessmen into their box. “Tell the ole woman you had to have a nip to keep the weather out.”

“That’s no lie neither.”

Bud watched their shadows hunched into the rain pass the window.

“What you name?”

Bud turned sharp from the window startled by a shrill squeaky voice in his ear. He was looking into the fireblue eyes of a little yellow man who had a face like a toad, large mouth, protruding eyes and thick closecropped black hair.

Bud’s jaw set. “My name’s Smith, what about it?”

The little man held out a square callouspalmed hand, “Plis to meet yez. Me Matty.”

Bud took the hand in spite of himself. It squeezed his until he winced. “Matty what?” he asked. “Me juss Matty ... Laplander Matty ... Come have drink.”

“I’m flat,” said Bud. “Aint got a red cent.”

“On me. Me too much money, take some....” Matty shoved a hand into either pocket of his baggy checked suit and punched Bud in the chest with two fistfuls of greenbacks.

“Aw keep yer money ... I’ll take a drink with yous though.”

By the time they got to the saloon on the corner of Pearl Street Bud’s elbows and knees were soaked and a trickle of cold rain was running down his neck. When they went up to the bar Laplander Matty put down a five dollar bill.

“Me treat everybody; very happy yet tonight.”

Bud was tackling the free lunch. “Hadn’t et in a dawg’s age,” he explained when he went back to the bar to take his drink. The whisky burnt his throat all the way down, dried wet clothes and made him feel the way he used to feel when he was a kid and got off to go to a baseball game Saturday afternoon.

“Put it there Lap,” he shouted slapping the little man’s broad back. “You an me’s friends from now on.”

“Hey landlubber, tomorrow me an you ship togezzer. What say?”

“Sure we will.”

“Now we go up Bowery Street look at broads. Me pay.”

“Aint a Bowery broad would go wid yer, ye little Yap,” shouted a tall drunken man with drooping black mustaches who had lurched in between them as they swayed in the swinging doors.

“Zey vont, vont zey?” said the Lap hauling off. One of his hammershaped fists shot in a sudden uppercut under the man’s jaw. The man rose off his feet and soared obliquely in through the swinging doors that closed on him. A shout went up from inside the saloon.

“I’ll be a sonofabitch, Lappy, I’ll be a sonofabitch,” roared Bud and slapped him on the back again.

Arm in arm they careened up Pearl Street under the drenching rain. Bars yawned bright to them at the corners of rainseething streets. Yellow light off mirrors and brass rails and gilt frames round pictures of pink naked women was looped and slopped into whiskyglasses guzzled fiery with tipped back head, oozed bright through the blood, popped bubbly out of ears and eyes, dripped spluttering off fingertips. The raindark houses heaved on either side, streetlamps swayed like lanterns carried in a parade, until Bud was in a back room full of nudging faces with a woman on his knees. Laplander Matty stood with his arms round two girls’ necks, yanked his shirt open to show a naked man and a naked woman tattooed in red and green on his chest, hugging, stiffly coiled in a seaserpent and when he puffed out his chest and wiggled the skin with his fingers the tatooed man and woman wiggled and all the nudging faces laughed.

Phineas P. Blackhead pushed up the wide office window. He stood looking out over the harbor of slate and mica in the uneven roar of traffic, voices, racket of building that soared from the downtown streets bellying and curling like

“Hay Schmidt, bring me my field glasses,” he called over his shoulder. “Look ...” He was focusing the glasses on a thickwaisted white steamer with a sooty yellow stack that was abreast of Governors Island. “Isn’t that the Anonda coming in now?”

Schmidt was a fat man who had shrunk. The skin hung in loose haggard wrinkles on his face. He took one look through the glasses. “Sure it is.” He pushed down the window; the roar receded tapering hollowly like the sound of a sea shell.

“Jiminy they were quick about it.... They’ll be docked in half an hour.... You beat it along over and get hold of Inspector Mulligan. He’s all fixed.... Dont take your eyes off him. Old Matanzas is out on the warpath trying to get an injunction against us. If every spoonful of manganese isnt off by tomorrow night I’ll cut your commission in half.... Do you get that?”

Schmidt’s loose jowls shook when he laughed. “No danger sir.... You ought to know me by this time.”

“Of course I do.... You’re a good feller Schmidt. I was just joking.”

Phineas P. Blackhead was a lanky man with silver hair and a red hawkface; he slipped back into the mahogany armchair at his desk and rang an electric bell. “All right Charlie, show em in,” he growled at the towheaded officeboy who appeared in the door. He rose stiffly from his desk and held out a hand. “How do you do Mr. Storrow ... How do you do Mr. Gold.... Make yourselves comfortable.... That’s it.... Now look here, about this strike. The attitude of the railroad and docking interests that I represent is one of frankness and honesty, you know that.... I have confidence, I can say I have the completest confidence, that we can settle this matter amicably and agreeably.... Of course you must meet me halfway.... We have I know the same interests at heart, the interests of this great city, of this great seaport....” Mr. Gold moved

In the sunlight on the windowledge a fly sat scrubbing his wings with his hinder legs. He cleaned himself all over, twisting and untwisting his forelegs like a person soaping his hands, stroking the top of his lobed head carefully; brushing his hair. Jimmy’s hand hovered over the fly and slapped down. The fly buzzed tinglingly in his palm. He groped for it with two fingers, held it slowly squeezing it into mashed gray jelly between finger and thumb. He wiped it off under the windowledge. A hot sick feeling went through him. Poor old fly, after washing himself so carefully, too. He stood a long time looking down the airshaft through the dusty pane where the sun gave a tiny glitter to the dust. Now and then a man in shirtsleeves crossed the court below with a tray of dishes. Orders shouted and the clatter of dishwashing came up faintly from the kitchens.

He stared through the tiny glitter of the dust on the windowpane. Mother’s had a stroke and next week I’ll go back to school.

“Say Herfy have you learned to fight yet?”

“Herfy an the Kid are goin to fight for the flyweight championship before lights.”

“But I dont want to.”

“Kid wants to.... Here he comes. Make a ring there you ginks.”

“I dont want to, please.”

“You’ve damn well got to, we’ll beat hell outa both of ye if you dont.”

“Say Freddy that’s a nickel fine from you for swearing.”

“Jez I forgot.”

“There you go again.... Paste him in the slats.”

“Go it Herfy, I’m bettin on yer.”

“That’s it sock him.”

The Kid’s white screwedup face bouncing in front of him like a balloon; his fist gets Jimmy in the mouth; a salty taste of blood from the cut lip. Jimmy strikes out, gets him down on the bed, pokes his knee in his belly. They pull him off and throw him back against the wall.

“Go it Kid.”

“Go it Herfy.”

There’s a smell of blood in his nose and lungs; his breath rasps. A foot shoots out and trips him up.

“That’s enough, Herfy’s licked.”

“Girlboy ... Girlboy.”

“But hell Freddy he had the Kid down.”

“Shut up, don’t make such a racket.... Old Hoppy’ll be coming up.”

“Just a little friendly bout, wasn’t it Herfy?”

“Get outa my room, all of you, all of you,” Jimmy screeches, tear-blinded, striking out with both arms.

“Crybaby ... crybaby.”

He slams the door behind them, pushes the desk against it and crawls trembling into bed. He turns over on his face and lies squirming with shame, biting the pillow.

Jimmy stared through the tiny glitter of the dust on the windowpane.

Darling

Your poor mother was very unhappy when she finally put you on the train and went back to her big empty rooms at the hotel. Dear, I am very lonely without you. Do you know what I did? I got out all your toy soldiers, the ones that used to be in the taking of Port Arthur, and set them all out in battalions on the library shelf. Wasn’t that silly? Never mind dear, Christmas’ll soon come round and I’ll have my boy again....

A crumpled face on a pillow; mother’s had a stroke and next week I’ll go back to school. Darkgrained skin growing flabby under her eyes, gray creeping up her brown hair. Mother never laughs. The stroke.

He turned back suddenly into the room, threw himself on the bed with a thin leather book in his hand. The surf

Aunt Emily was at the door. “Why do you keep your door locked Jimmy.... I never allow James to lock his door.”

“I like it better that way, Aunt Emily.”

“Imagine a boy asleep this time of the afternoon.”

“I was reading The Coral Island and I fell asleep.” Jimmy was blushing.

“All right. Come along. Miss Billings said not to stop by mother’s room. She’s asleep.”

They were in the narrow elevator that smelled of castor oil; the colored boy grinned at Jimmy.

“What did the doctor say Aunt Emily?”

“Everything’s going as well as could be expected.... But you mustn’t worry about that. This evening you must have a real good time with your little cousins.... You dont see enough children of your own age Jimmy.”

They were walking towards the river leaning into a gritty wind that swirled up the street cast out of iron under a dark silvershot sky.

“I guess you’ll be glad to get back to school, James.”

“Yes Aunt Emily.”

“A boy’s school days are the happiest time in his life. You must be sure to write your mother once a week at least James.... You are all she has now.... Miss Billings and I will keep you informed.”

“Yes Aunt Emily.”

“And James I want you to know my James better. He’s the same age you are, only perhaps a little more developed and all that, and you ought to be good friends.... I wish Lily had sent you to Hotchkiss too.”

“Yes Aunt Emily.”

There were pillars of pink marble in the lower hall of Aunt Emily’s apartmenthouse and the elevatorboy wore a chocolate livery with brass buttons and the elevator was square and decorated with mirrors. Aunt Emily stopped before a wide red mahogany door on the seventh floor and fumbled in her purse for her key. At the end of the hall was a leaded window through which you could see the Hudson and steamboats and tall trees of smoke rising against the yellow sunset from the yards along the river. When Aunt Emily got the door open they heard the piano. “That’s Maisie doing her practicing.” In the room where the piano was the rug was thick and mossy, the wallpaper was yellow with silveryshiny roses between the cream woodwork and the gold frames of oilpaintings of woods and people in a gondola and a fat cardinal drinking. Maisie tossed the pigtails off her shoulders as she jumped off the pianostool. She had a round creamy face and a slight pugnose. The metronome went on ticking.

“Hello James,” she said after she had tilted her mouth up to her mother’s to be kissed. “I’m awfully sorry poor Aunt Lily’s so sick.”

“Arent you going to kiss your cousin, James?” said Aunt Emily.

Jimmy shambled up to Maisie and pushed his face against hers.

“That’s a funny kind of a kiss,” said Maisie.

“Well you two children can keep each other company till

“We wont be able to go on calling you James.” After she had stopped the metronome, Maisie stood staring with serious brown eyes at her cousin. “There cant be two Jameses can there?”

“Mother calls me Jimmy.”

“Jimmy’s a kinder common name, but I guess it’ll have to do till we can think of a better one.... How many jacks can you pick up?”

“What are jacks?”

“Gracious dont you know what jackstones are? Wait till James comes back, wont he laugh!”

“I know Jack roses. Mother used to like them better’n any other kind.”

“American Beauties are the only roses I like,” announced Maisie flopping into a Morris chair. Jimmy stood on one leg kicking his heel with the toes of the other foot.

“Where’s James?”

“He’ll be home soon.... He’s having his riding lesson.”

The twilight became leadensilent between them. From the trainyards came the scream of a locomotivewhistle and the clank of couplings on shunted freight cars. Jimmy ran to the window.

“Say Maisie, do you like engines?” he asked.

“I think they are horrid. Daddy says we’re going to move on account of the noise and smoke.”

Through the gloom Jimmy could make out the beveled smooth bulk of a big locomotive. The smoke rolled out of the stack in huge bronze and lilac coils. Down the track a red light snapped green. The bell started to ring slowly, lazily. Forced draft snorting loud the train clankingly moved, gathered speed, slid into dusk swinging a red taillight.

“Gee I wish we lived here,” said Jimmy. “I’ve got two hundred and seventytwo pictures of locomotives, I’ll show em to you sometime if you like. I collect em.”

“What a funny thing to collect.... Look Jimmy you pull the shade down and I’ll light the light.”

When Maisie pushed the switch they saw James Merivale standing in the door. He had light wiry hair and a freckled face with a pugnose like Maisie’s. He had on riding breeches and black leather gaiters and was flicking a long peeled stick about.

“Hullo Jimmy,” he said. “Welcome to our city.”

“Say James,” cried Maisie, “Jimmy doesn’t know what jackstones are.”

Aunt Emily appeared through the blue velvet curtains. She wore a highnecked green silk blouse with lace on it. Her white hair rose in a smooth curve from her forehead. “It’s time you children were washing up,” she said, “dinner’s in five minutes.... James take your cousin back to your room and hurry up and take off those ridingclothes.”

Everybody was already seated when Jimmy followed his cousin into the diningroom. Knives and forks tinkled discreetly in the light of six candles in red and silver shades. At the end of the table sat Aunt Emily, next to her a rednecked man with no back to his head, and at the other end Uncle Jeff with a pearl pin in his checked necktie filled a broad armchair. The colored maid hovered about the fringe of light passing toasted crackers. Jimmy ate his soup stiffly, afraid of making a noise. Uncle Jeff was talking in a booming voice between spoonfuls of soup.

“No I tell you, Wilkinson, New York is no longer what it used to be when Emily and I first moved up here about the time the Ark landed.... City’s overrun with kikes and low Irish, that’s what’s the matter with it.... In ten years a Christian wont be able to make a living.... I tell you the Catholics and the Jews are going to run us out of our own country, that’s what they are going to do.”

“It’s the New Jerusalem,” put in Aunt Emily laughing.

“It’s no laughing matter; when a man’s worked hard all his life to build up a business and that sort of thing he dont want to be run out by a lot of damn foreigners, does he Wilkinson?”

“Jeff you are getting all excited. You know it gives you indigestion....”

“I’ll keep cool, mother.”

“The trouble with the people of this country is this, Mr. Merivale” ... Mr. Wilkinson frowned ponderously. “The people of this country are too tolerant. There’s no other country in the world where they’d allow it.... After all we built up this country and then we allow a lot of foreigners, the scum of Europe, the offscourings of Polish ghettos to come and run it for us.”

“The fact of the matter is that an honest man wont soil his hands with politics, and he’s given no inducement to take public office.”

“That’s true, a live man, nowadays, wants more money, needs more money than he can make honestly in public life.... Naturally the best men turn to other channels.”

“And add to that the ignorance of these dirty kikes and shanty Irish that we make voters before they can even talk English ...” began Uncle Jeff.

The maid set a highpiled dish of fried chicken edged by corn fritters before Aunt Emily. Talk lapsed while everyone was helped. “Oh I forgot to tell you Jeff,” said Aunt Emily, “we’re to go up to Scarsdale Sunday.”

“Oh mother I hate going out Sundays.”

“He’s a perfect baby about staying home.”

“But Sunday’s the only day I get at home.”

“Well it was this way: I was having tea with the Harland girls at Maillard’s and who should sit down at the next table but Mrs. Burkhart ...”

“Is that Mrs. John B. Burkhart? Isn’t he one of the vicepresidents of the National City Bank?”

“John’s a fine feller and a coming man downtown.”

“Well as I was saying dear, Mrs. Burkhart said we just had to come up and spend Sunday with them and I just couldn’t refuse.”

“My father,” continued Mr. Wilkinson, “used to be old Johannes Burkhart’s physician. The old man was a cranky old bird, he’d made his pile in the fur trade way back in

“Ah well, times have changed,” said Aunt Emily.

Jimmy sat in his chair with pins and needles in his legs. Mother’s had a stroke and next week I’ll go back to school. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday.... He and Skinny coming back from playing with the hoptoads down by the pond, in their blue suits because it was Sunday afternoon. Smokebushes were in bloom behind the barn. A lot of fellows teasing little Harris, calling him Iky because he was supposed to be a Jew. His voice rose in a singsong whine; “Cut it fellers, cant you fellers. I’ve got my best suit on fellers.”

“Oy Oy Meester Solomon Levy with his best Yiddisher garments all marked down,” piped jeering voices. “Did you buy it in a five and ten Iky?”

“I bet he got it at a firesale.”

“If he got it at a firesale we ought to turn the hose on him.”

“Let’s turn the hose on Solomon Levy.”

“Oh stop it fellers.”

“Shut up; dont yell so loud.”

“They’re juss kiddin, they wont hurt him,” whispered Skinny.

Iky was carried kicking and bawling down towards the pond, his white tearwet face upside down. “He’s not a Jew at all,” said Skinny. “But I’ll tell you who is a Jew, that big bully Fat Swanson.”

“Howjer know?”

“His roommate told me.”

“Gee whiz they’re going to do it.”

They ran in all directions. Little Harris with his hair full of mud was crawling up the bank, water running out of his coatsleeves.

There was hot chocolate sauce with the icecream. “An Irishman and a Scotchman were walking down the street and the Irishman said to the Scotchman; Sandy let’s have a drink....” A prolonged ringing at the front door bell was making them inattentive to Uncle Jeff’s story. The colored maid flurried back into the diningroom and began whispering in Aunt Emily’s ear. “... And the Scotchman said, Mike ... Why what’s the matter?”

“It’s Mr. Joe sir.”

“The hell it is.”

“Well maybe he’s all right,” said Aunt Emily hastily.

“A bit whipsey, ma’am.”

“Sarah why the dickens did you let him in?”

“I didnt let him, he juss came.”

Uncle Jeff pushed his plate away and slapped down his napkin. “Oh hell ... I’ll go talk to him.”

“Try and make him go ...” Aunt Emily had begun; she stopped with her mouth partly open. A head was stuck through the curtains that hung in the wide doorway to the livingroom. It had a birdlike face, with a thin drooping nose, topped by a mass of straight black hair like an Indian’s. One of the redrimmed eyes winked quietly.

“Hullo everybody!... How’s every lil thing? Mind if I butt in?” His voice perked hoarsely as a tall skinny body followed the head through the curtains. Aunt Emily’s mouth arranged itself in a frosty smile. “Why Emily you must ... er ... excuse me; I felt an evening ... er ... round the family hearth ... er ... would be ... er ... er ... beneficial. You understand, the refining influence of the home.” He stood jiggling his head behind Uncle Jeff’s chair. “Well Jefferson ole boy, how’s the market?” He brought a hand down on Uncle Jeff’s shoulder.

“Oh all right. Want to sit down?” he growled.

“They tell me ... if you’ll take a tip from an old timer ... er ... a retired broker ... broker and broker every day ... ha-ha.... But they tell me that Interborough Rapid Transit’s worth trying a snifter of.... Doan look at me crosseyed like that Emily. I’m going right away....

“A little better thank you,” Jimmy forced the words out through a tight throat.

“Well when you go home you give her my love ... she’ll understand. Lily and I have always been good friends even if I am the family skeleton.... They dont like me, they wish I’d go away.... I’ll tell you what boy, Lily’s the best of the lot. Isn’t she Emily, isn’t she the best of the lot of us?”

Aunt Emily cleared her throat. “Sure she is, the best looking, the cleverest, the realest.... Jimmy your mother’s an emperess.... Aways been too fine for all this. By gorry I’d like to drink her health.”

“Joe you might moderate your voice a little;” Aunt Emily clicked out the words like a typewriter.

“Aw you all think I’m drunk.... Remember this Jimmy” ... he leaned across the table, stroked Jimmy’s face with his grainy whisky breath ... “these things aren’t always a man’s fault ... circumstances ... er ... circumstances.” He upset a glass staggering to his feet. “If Emily insists on looking at me crosseyed I’m goin out.... But remember give Lily Herf Joe Harland’s love even if he has gone to the demnition bowbows.” He lurched out through the curtains again.

“Jeff I know he’ll upset the Sèvres vase.... See that he gets out all right and get him a cab.” James and Maisie burst into shrill giggles from behind their napkins. Uncle Jeff was purple.

“I’ll be damned to hell if I put him in a cab. He’s not my cousin.... He ought to be locked up. And next time you see him you can tell him this from me, Emily: if he ever comes here in that disgusting condition again I’ll throw him out.”

“Jefferson dear, it’s no use getting angry.... There’s no harm done. He’s gone.”

“No harm done! Think of our children. Suppose there’d been a stranger here instead of Wilkinson. What would he have thought of our home?”

“Dont worry about that,” croaked Mr. Wilkinson, “accidents will happen in the best regulated families.”

“Poor Joe’s such a sweet boy when he’s himself,” said Aunt Emily. “And think that it looked for a while years ago as if Harland held the whole Curb Market in the palm of his hand. The papers called him the King of the Curb, dont you remember?” “That was before the Lottie Smithers affair....”

“Well suppose you children go and play in the other room while we have our coffee,” chirped Aunt Emily. “Yes, they ought to have gone long ago.”

“Can you play Five Hundred, Jimmy?” asked Maisie.

“No I cant.”

“What do you think of that James, he cant play jacks and he cant play Five Hundred.”

“Well they’re both girl’s games,” said James loftily. “I wouldn’t play em either xept on account of you.”

“Oh wouldn’t you, Mr. Smarty.”

“Let’s play animal grabs.”

“But there aren’t enough of us for that. It’s no fun without a crowd.”

“An last time you got the giggles so bad mother made us stop.”

“Mother made us stop because you kicked little Billy Schmutz in the funnybone an made him cry.”

“Spose we go down an look at the trains,” put in Jimmy.

“We’re not allowed to go down stairs after dark,” said Maisie severely.

“I’ll tell you what lets play stock exchange.... I’ve got a million dollars in bonds to sell and Maisie can be the bulls an Jimmy can be the bears.”

“All right, what do we do?”

“Oh juss run round an yell mostly.... I’m selling short.”

“All right Mr. Broker I’ll buy em all at five cents each.”

“No you cant say that.... You say ninetysix and a half or something like that.”

“I’ll give you five million for them,” cried Maisie waving the blotter of the writing desk.

“But you fool, they’re only worth one million,” shouted Jimmy.

Maisie stood still in her tracks. “Jimmy what did you say then?” Jimmy felt shame flame up through him; he looked at his stubby shoes. “I said, you fool.”

“Haven’t you ever been to Sunday school? Don’t you know that God says in the Bible that if you call anybody Thou fool you’ll be in danger of hellfire?”

Jimmy didn’t dare raise his eyes.

“Well I’m not going to play any more,” said Maisie drawing herself up. Jimmy somehow found himself out in the hall. He grabbed his hat and ran out the door and down the six flights of white stone stairs past the brass buttons and chocolate livery of the elevator boy, out through the hall that had pink marble pillars in to Seventysecond Street. It was dark and blowy, full of ponderous advancing shadows and chasing footsteps. At last he was climbing the familiar crimson stairs of the hotel. He hurried past his mother’s door. They’d ask him why he had come home so soon. He burst into his own room, shot the bolt, doublelocked the door and stood leaning against it panting.

“Well are you married yet?” was the first thing Congo asked when Emile opened the door to him. Emile was in his undershirt. The shoebox-shaped room was stuffy, lit and heated by a gas crown with a tin cap on it.

“Where are you in from this time?”

“Bizerta and Trondjeb.... I’m an able seaman.”

“That’s a rotten job, going to sea.... I’ve saved two hundred dollars. I’m working at Delmonico’s.”

They sat down side by side on the unmade bed. Congo

They were silent. The gas hummed. Congo let his breath out in a whistle. “Whee ... C’est chic ça, Delmonico ... Why havent you married her?”

“She likes to have me hang around.... I’d run the store better than she does.”

“You’re too easy; got to use rough stuff with women to get anything outa them.... Make her jealous.”

“She’s got me going.”

“Want to see some postalcards?” Congo pulled a package, wrapped in newspaper out of his pocket. “Look these are Naples; everybody there wants to come to New York.... That’s an Arab dancing girl. Nom d’une vache they got slippery bellybuttons....”

“Say, I know what I’ll do,” cried Emile suddenly dropping the cards on the bed. “I’ll make her jealous....”

“Who?”

“Ernestine ... Madame Rigaud....”

“Sure walk up an down Eighth Avenue with a girl a couple of times an I bet she’ll fall like a ton of bricks.”

The alarmclock went off on the chair beside the bed. Emile jumped up to stop it and began splashing water on his face in the washbasin.

“Merde I got to go to work.”

“I’ll go over to Hell’s Kitchen an see if I can find May.”

“Don’t be a fool an spend all your money,” said Emile who stood at the cracked mirror with his face screwed up, fastening the buttons in the front of a clean boiled shirt.

“It’s a sure thing I’m tellin yer,” said the man again and again, bringing his face close to Ed Thatcher’s face and rapping the desk with his flat hand.

“Maybe it is Viler but I seen so many of em go under, honest I dont see how I can risk it.”

“Man I’ve hocked the misses’s silver teaset and my diamond ring an the baby’s mug.... It’s a sure sure thing.... I wouldn’t let you in on it, xept you an me’s been pretty good friends an I owe you money an everythin.... You’ll make twentyfive percent on your money by tomorrow noon.... Then if you want to hold you can on a gamble, but if you sell three quarters and hold the rest two or three days on a chance you’re safe as ... as the Rock of Gibraltar.”

“I know Viler, it certainly sounds good....”

“Hell man you dont want to be in this damned office all your life, do you? Think of your little girl.”

“I am, that’s the trouble.”

“But Ed, Gibbons and Swandike had started buying already at three cents when the market closed this evening.... Klein got wise an’ll be right there with bells on first thing in the morning. The market’ll go crazy on it....”

“Unless the fellers doin the dirty work change their minds. I know that stuff through and through, Viler.... Sounds like a topnotch proposition.... But I’ve examined the books of too many bankrupts.”

Viler got to his feet and threw his cigar into the cuspidor. “Well do as you like, damn it all.... I guess you must like commuting from Hackensack an working twelve hours a day....”

“I believe in workin my way up, that’s all.”

“What’s the use of a few thousands salted away when you’re old and cant get any satisfaction? Man I’m goin in with both feet.”

“Go to it Viler.... You tellem,” muttered Thatcher as the other man stamped out slamming the office door.

The big office with its series of yellow desks and hooded typewriters was dark except for the tent of light in which Thatcher sat at a desk piled with ledgers. The three windows at the end were not curtained. Through them he could see the steep bulk of buildings scaled with lights

FanTan Import and Export Company (statement of assets and liabilities up to and including February 29) ... Branches New York, Shanghai, Hongkong and Straights Settlements....

Balance carried over $345,789.84

Real Estate 500,087.12

Profit and Loss 399,765.90

“A bunch of goddam crooks,” growled Thatcher out loud. “Not an item on the whole thing that aint faked. I dont believe they’ve got any branches in Hongkong or anywhere....”

He leaned back in his chair and stared out of the window. The buildings were going dark. He could just make out a star in the patch of sky. Ought to go out an eat, bum for the digestion to eat irregularly like I do. Suppose I’d taken a plunge on Viler’s red hot tip. Ellen, how do you like these American Beauty roses? They have stems eight feet long, and I want you to look over the itinerary of the trip abroad I’ve mapped out to finish your education. Yes it will be a shame to leave our fine new apartment looking out over Central Park.... And downtown; The Fiduciary Accounting Institute, Edward C. Thatcher, President.... Blobs of steam were drifting up across the patch of sky, hiding the star. Take a plunge, take a plunge ... they’re all crooks and gamblers anyway ... take a plunge and come up with your hands full, pockets full, bankaccount full, vaults full of money. If I only dared take the risk. Fool to waste your time fuming about it. Get back to the FanTan Import. Steam faintly ruddy with light reflected from the streets swarmed swiftly up across the patch of sky, twisting scattering.

Goods on hand in U. S. bonded warehouses ... $325,666.00

Take a plunge and come up with three hundred and

Ed Thatcher got to his feet with clenched fists sniveling; You poor fool whats the use now she’s gone. I’d better go eat or Ellen’ll scold me.

V. Steamroller

Dusk gently smooths crispangled streets. Dark presses tight the steaming asphalt city, crushes the fretwork of windows and lettered signs and chimneys and watertanks and ventilators and fireescapes and moldings and patterns and corrugations and eyes and hands and neckties into blue chunks, into black enormous blocks. Under the rolling heavier heavier pressure windows blurt light. Night crushes bright milk out of arclights, squeezes the sullen blocks until they drip red, yellow, green into streets resounding with feet. All the asphalt oozes light. Light spurts from lettering on roofs, mills dizzily among wheels, stains rolling tons of sky.