Third Section

I. Rejoicing City That Dwelt Carelessly

There are flags on all the flagpoles up Fifth Avenue. In the shrill wind of history the great flags flap and tug at their lashings on the creaking goldknobbed poles up Fifth Avenue. The stars jiggle sedately against the slate sky, the red and white stripes writhe against the clouds.

In the gale of brassbands and trampling horses and rumbling clatter of cannon, shadows like the shadows of claws grasp at the taut flags, the flags are hungry tongues licking twisting curling.

Oh it’s a long way to Tipperary ... Over there! Over there!

The harbor is packed with zebrastriped skunkstriped piebald steamboats, the Narrows are choked with bullion, they’re piling gold sovereigns up to the ceilings in the Subtreasury. Dollars whine on the radio, all the cables tap out dollars.

There’s a long long trail awinding ... Over there! Over there!

In the subway their eyes pop as they spell out Apocalypse, typhus, cholera, shrapnel, insurrection, death in fire, death in water, death in hunger, death in mud.

Oh it’s a long way to Madymosell from Armenteers, over there! The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming. Down Fifth Avenue the bands blare for the Liberty Loan drive, for the Red Cross drive. Hospital ships sneak up the harbor and unload furtively at night in old docks in Jersey. Up Fifth Avenue the flags of the seventeen nations are flaring curling in the shrill hungry wind.

O the oak and the ash and the weeping willow tree

And green grows the grass in God’s country.

The great flags flap and tug at their lashings on the creaking goldknobbed poles up Fifth Avenue.

Captain James Merivale D.S.C. lay with his eyes closed while the barber’s padded fingers gently stroked his chin. The lather tickled his nostrils; he could smell bay rum, hear the drone of an electric vibrator, the snipping of scissors.

“A little face massage sir, get rid of a few of those blackheads sir,” burred the barber in his ear. The barber was bald and had a round blue chin.

“All right,” drawled Merivale, “go as far as you like. This is the first decent shave I’ve had since war was declared.”

“Just in from overseas, Captain?”

“Yare ... been making the world safe for democracy.”

The barber smothered his words under a hot towel. “A little lilac water Captain?”

“No dont put any of your damn lotions on me, just a little witchhazel or something antiseptic.”

The blond manicure girl had faintly beaded lashes; she looked up at him bewitchingly, her rosebud lips parted. “I guess you’ve just landed Captain.... My you’ve got a good tan.” He gave up his hand to her on the little white table. “It’s a long time Captain since anybody took care of these hands.”

“How can you tell?”

“Look how the cuticle’s grown.”

“We were too busy for anything like that. I’m a free man since eight o’clock that’s all.”

“Oh it must have been terr ... ible.”

“Oh it was a great little war while it lasted.”

“I’ll say it was ... And now you’re all through Captain?”

“Of course I keep my commission in the reserve corps.”

She gave his hand a last playful tap and he got to his feet.

He put tips into the soft palm of the barber and the hard palm of the colored boy who handed him his hat, and walked slowly up the white marble steps. On the landing was a mirror. Captain James Merivale stopped to look at Captain

“Hello James, all cleaned up?”

“You betcher.... Say isnt it a damn fool rule not letting us wear Sam Browne belts? Spoils the whole uniform....”

“They can take all their Sam Browne’s belts and hang them on the Commanding General’s fanny for all I care.... I’m a civilian.”

“You’re still an officer in the reserve corps, dont forget that.”

“They can take their reserve corps and shove it ten thousand miles up the creek. Let’s go have a drink.”

“I’ve got to go up and see the folks.” They had come out on Fortysecond Street. “Well so long James, I’m going to get so drunk ... Just imagine being free.” “So long Jerry, dont do anything I wouldnt do.”

Merivale walked west along Fortysecond. There were still flags out, drooping from windows, waggling lazily from poles in the September breeze. He looked in the shops as he walked along; flowers, women’s stockings, candy, shirts and neckties, dresses, colored draperies through glinting plateglass, beyond a stream of faces, men’s razorscraped faces, girls’ faces with rouged lips and powdered noses. It made him feel flushed and excited. He fidgeted when he got in the subway. “Look at the stripes that one has.... He’s a D.S.C.,” he heard a girl say to another. He got out at Seventysecond and walked with his chest stuck out down the too familiar brownstone street towards the river.

“How do you do, Captain Merivale,” said the elevator man.

“Well, are you out James?” cried his mother running into his arms.

He nodded and kissed her. She looked pale and wilted in her black dress. Maisie, also in black, came rustling tall and rosycheeked behind her. “It’s wonderful to find you both looking so well.”

“Of course we are ... as well as could be expected. My dear we’ve had a terrible time.... You’re the head of the family now, James.”

“Poor daddy ... to go off like that.”

“That was something you missed.... Thousands of people died of it in New York alone.”

He hugged Maisie with one arm and his mother with the other. Nobody spoke.

“Well,” said Merivale walking into the living room, “it was a great war while it lasted.” His mother and sister followed on his heels. He sat down in the leather chair and stretched out his polished legs. “You dont know how wonderful it is to get home.”

Mrs. Merivale drew up her chair close to his. “Now dear you just tell us all about it.”

In the dark of the stoop in front of the tenement door, he reaches for her and drags her to him. “Dont Bouy, dont; dont be rough.” His arms tighten like knotted cords round her back; her knees are trembling. His mouth is groping for her mouth along one cheekbone, down the side of her nose. She cant breathe with his lips probing her lips. “Oh I cant stand it.” He holds her away from him. She is staggering panting against the wall held up by his big hands.

“Nutten to worry about,” he whispers gently.

“I’ve got to go, it’s late.... I have to get up at six.”

“Well what time do you think I get up?”

“It’s mommer who might catch me....”

“Tell her to go to hell.”

“I will some day ... worse’n that ... if she dont quit

The door is still on the latch. She strips off her dancing pumps and walks carefully through the kitchenette on aching feet. From the next room comes the wheezy doublebarreled snoring of her uncle and aunt. Somebody loves me, I wonder who.... The tune is all through her body, in the throb of her feet, in the tingling place on her back where he held her tight dancing with her. Anna you’ve got to forget it or you wont sleep. Anna you got to forget. Dishes on the tables set for breakfast jingle tingle hideously when she bumps against it.

“That you Anna?” comes a sleepy querulous voice from her mother’s bed.

“Went to get a drink o water mommer.” The old woman lets the breath out in a groan through her teeth, the bedsprings creak as she turns over. Asleep all the time.

Somebody loves me, I wonder who. She slips off her party dress and gets into her nightgown. Then she tiptoes to the closet to hang up the dress and at last slides between the covers little by little so the slats wont creak. I wonder who. Shuffle shuffle, bright lights, pink blobbing faces, grabbing arms, tense thighs, bouncing feet. I wonder who. Shuffle, droning saxophone tease, shuffle in time to the drum, trombone, clarinet. Feet, thighs, cheek to cheek, Somebody loves me.... Shuffle shuffle. I wonder who.

The baby with tiny shut purplishpink face and fists lay asleep on the berth. Ellen was leaning over a black leather suitcase. Jimmy Herf in his shirtsleeves was looking out the porthole.

“Well there’s the statue of Liberty.... Ellie we ought to be out on deck.”

“It’ll be ages before we dock.... Go ahead up. I’ll come up with Martin in a minute.”

“Oh come ahead; we’ll put the baby’s stuff in the bag while we’re warping into the slip.”

They came out on deck into a dazzling September afternoon. The water was greenindigo. A steady wind kept sweeping coils of brown smoke and blobs of whitecotton steam off the high enormous blueindigo arch of sky. Against a sootsmudged horizon, tangled with barges, steamers, chimneys of powerplants, covered wharves, bridges, lower New York was a pink and white tapering pyramid cut slenderly out of cardboard.

“Ellie we ought to have Martin out so he can see.”

“And start yelling like a tugboat.... He’s better off where he is.”

They ducked under some ropes, slipped past the rattling steamwinch and out to the bow.

“God Ellie it’s the greatest sight in the world.... I never thought I’d ever come back, did you?”

“I had every intention of coming back.”

“Not like this.”

“No I dont suppose I did.”

“S’il vous plait madame ...”

A sailor was motioning them back. Ellen turned her face into the wind to get the coppery whisps of hair out of her eyes. “C’est beau, n’est-ce pas?” She smiled into the wind into the sailor’s red face.

“J’aime mieux Le Havre ... S’il vous plait madame.”

“Well I’ll go down and pack Martin up.”

The hard chug, chug of the tugboat coming alongside beat Jimmy’s answer out of her ears. She slipped away from him and went down to the cabin again.

They were wedged in the jam of people at the end of the gangplank.

“Look we could wait for a porter,” said Ellen.

“No dear I’ve got them.” Jimmy was sweating and staggering with a suitcase in each hand and packages under his arms. In Ellen’s arms the baby was cooing stretching tiny spread hands towards the faces all round.

“D’you know it?” said Jimmy as they crossed the gangplank,

“I dont hate it.... There’s H ... I’ll follow right along.... I wanted to look for Frances and Bob. Hello....” “Well I’ll be ...” “Helena you’ve gained, you’re looking wonderfully. Where’s Jimps?” Jimmy was rubbing his hands together, stiff and chafed from handles of the heavy suitcases.

“Hello Herf. Hello Frances. Isn’t this swell?”

“Gosh I’m glad to see you....”

“Jimps the thing for me to do is go right on to the Brevoort with the baby ...”

“Isn’t he sweet.”

“... Have you got five dollars?”

“I’ve only got a dollar in change. That hundred is in express checks.”

“I’ve got plenty of money. Helena and I’ll go to the hotel and you boys can come along with the baggage.”

“Inspector is it all right if I go through with the baby? My husband will look after the trunks.”

“Why surely madam, go right ahead.”

“Isnt he nice? Oh Frances this is lots of fun.”

“Go ahead Bob I can finish this up alone quicker.... You convoy the ladies to the Brevoort.”

“Well we hate to leave you.”

“Oh go ahead.... I’ll be right along.”

“Mr. James Herf and wife and infant ... is that it?”

“Yes that’s right.”

“I’ll be right with you, Mr. Herf.... Is all the baggage there?”

“Yes everything’s there.”

“Isnt he good?” clucked Frances as she and Hildebrand followed Ellen into the cab.

“Who?”

“The baby of course....”

“Oh you ought to see him sometimes.... He seems to like traveling.”

A plainclothesman opened the door of the cab and looked

“He gave me a scare ... Look.”

“Good gracious!” From under the blanket that was wrapped round the baby she produced a brownpaper package.... “Two quarts of our special cognac ... gout famille ’Erf ... and I’ve got another quart in a hotwaterbottle under my waistband.... That’s why I look as if I was going to have another baby.”

The Hildebrands began hooting with laughter.

“Jimp’s got a hotwaterbottle round his middle too and chartreuse in a flask on his hip.... We’ll probably have to go and bail him out of jail.”

They were still laughing so that tears were streaming down their faces when they drew up at the hotel. In the elevator the baby began to wail.

As soon as she had closed the door of the big sunny room she fished the hotwaterbottle from under her dress. “Look Bob phone down for some cracked ice and seltzer.... We’ll all have a cognac a l’eau de selz....”

“Hadn’t we better wait for Jimps?”

“Oh he’ll be right here.... We haven’t anything dutiable.... Much too broke to have anything.... Frances what do you do about milk in New York?”

“How should I know, Helena?” Frances Hildebrand flushed and walked to the window.

“Oh well we’ll give him his food again.... He’s done fairly well on it on the trip.” Ellen had laid the baby on the bed. He lay kicking, looking about with dark round goldstone eyes.

“Isnt he fat?”

“He’s so healthy I’m sure he must be halfwitted.... Oh Heavens and I’ve got to call up my father.... Isnt family life just too desperately complicated?”

Ellen was setting up her little alcohol stove on the washstand.

“You fix us a drink out of the hotwaterbottle. We’ve got to use that up or it’ll eat the rubber.... And we’ll drink to the Café d’Harcourt.”

“Of course what you kids dont realize,” said Hildebrand, “is that the difficulty under prohibition is keeping sober.”

Ellen laughed; she stood over the little lamp that gave out a quiet domestic smell of hot nickel and burned alcohol.

George Baldwin was walking up Madison Avenue with his light overcoat on his arm. His fagged spirits were reviving in the sparkling autumn twilight of the streets. From block to block through the taxiwhirring gasoline gloaming two lawyers in black frock coats and stiff wing collars argued in his head. If you go home it will be cozy in the library. The apartment will be gloomy and quiet and you can sit in your slippers under the bust of Scipio Africanus in the leather chair and read and have dinner sent in to you.... Nevada would be jolly and coarse and tell you funny stories.... She would have all the City Hall gossip ... good to know.... But you’re not going to see Nevada any more ... too dangerous; she gets you all wrought up.... And Cecily sitting faded and elegant and slender biting her lips and hating me, hating life.... Good God how am I going to get my existence straightened out? He stopped in front of a flowerstore. A moist warm honied expensive smell came from the door, densely out into the keen steelblue street. If I could at least make my financial position impregnable.... In the window was a minature Japanese garden with brokenback bridges and ponds where the goldfish looked big as whales. Proportion, that’s it. To lay out your life like a prudent gardener, plowing and sowing. No I wont go to see Nevada tonight. I might send her some flowers though. Yellow roses, those coppery roses ... it’s Elaine who ought to wear those. Imagine

“It’s Gold of Ophir sir.”

“All right I want two dozen sent down to the Brevoort immediately.... Miss Elaine ... No Mr. and Mrs. James Herf.... I’ll write a card.”

He sat down at the desk with a pen in his hand. Incense of roses, incense out of the dark fire of her hair.... No nonsense for Heaven’s sake ...

Dear Elaine,

I hope you will allow an old friend to call on you and your husband one of these days. And please remember that I am always sincerely anxious—you know me too well to take this for an empty offer of politeness—to serve you and him in any way that could possibly contribute to your happiness. Forgive me if I subscribe myself your lifelong slave and admirer

George Baldwin

The letter covered three of the florists’ white cards. He read it over with pursed lips, carefully crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s. Then he paid the florist from the roll of bills he took from his back pocket and went out into the street again. It was already night, going on to seven o’clock. Still hesitating he stood at the corner watching the taxis pass, yellow, red, green, tangerinecolored.

The snubnosed transport sludges slowly through the Narrows in the rain. Sergeant-Major O’Keefe and Private 1st Class Dutch Robertson stand in the lee of the deckhouse looking at the liners at anchor in quarantine and the low wharfcluttered shores.

“Look some of em still got their warpaint—Shippin Board boats.... Not worth the powder to blow em up.”

“The hell they aint,” said Joey O’Keefe vaguely.

“Gosh little old New York’s goin to look good to me....”

“Me too Sarge, rain or shine I dont care.”

They are passing close to a mass of steamers anchored in a block, some of them listing to one side or the other, lanky ships with short funnels, stumpy ships with tall funnels red with rust, some of them striped and splashed and dotted with puttycolor and blue and green of camouflage paint. A man in a motorboat waved his arms. The men in khaki slickers huddled on the gray dripping deck of the transport begin to sing

Through the brightbeaded mist behind the low buildings of Governors Island they can make out the tall pylons, the curving cables, the airy lace of Brooklyn Bridge. Robertson pulls a package out of his pocket and pitches it overboard.

“What was that?”

“Just my propho kit.... Wont need it no more.”

“How’s that?”

“Oh I’m goin to live clean an get a good job and maybe get married.”

“I guess that’s not such a bad idear. I’m tired o playin round myself. Jez somebody must a cleaned up good on them Shippin Board boats.” “That’s where the dollar a year men get theirs I guess.”

“I’ll tell the world they do.”

Up forward they are singing

“Jez we’re goin up the East River Sarge. Where the devil do they think they’re goin to land us?”

“God, I’d be willin to swim ashore myself. An just think of all the guys been here all this time cleanin up on us.... Ten dollars a day workin in a shipyard mind you ...”

“Hell Sarge we got the experience.”

“Experience ...”

“I bet the skipper’s been drinkin beaucoup highballs an thinks Brooklyn’s Hoboken.”

“Well there’s Wall Street, bo.”

They are passing under Brooklyn Bridge. There is a humming whine of electric trains over their heads, an occasional violet flash from the wet rails. Behind them beyond barges tugboats carferries the tall buildings, streaked white with whisps of steam and mist, tower gray into sagged clouds.

Nobody said anything while they ate the soup. Mrs. Merivale sat in black at the head of the oval table looking out through the half drawn portières and the drawingroom window beyond at a column of white smoke that uncoiled in the sunlight above the trainyards, remembering her husband and how they had come years ago to look at the apartment in the unfinished house that smelled of plaster and paint. At last when she had finished her soup she roused herself and said: “Well Jimmy, are you going back to newspaper work?”

“I guess so.”

“James has had three jobs offered him already. I think it’s remarkable.”

“I guess I’ll go in with the Major though,” said James Merivale to Ellen who sat next to him. “Major Goodyear you know, Cousin Helena.... One of the Buffalo Goodyears. He’s head of the foreign exchange department of the Banker’s Trust.... He says he can work me up quickly. We were friends overseas.”

“That’ll be wonderful,” said Maisie in a cooing voice, “wont it Jimmy?” She sat opposite slender and rosy in her black dress.

“He’s putting me up for Piping Rock,” went on Merivale.

“What’s that?”

“Why Jimmy you must know.... I’m sure Cousin Helena has been out there to tea many a time.”

“You know Jimps,” said Ellen with her eyes in her plate. “That’s where Stan Emery’s father used to go every Sunday.”

“Oh did you know that unfortunate young man? That was a horrible thing,” said Mrs. Merivale. “So many horrible things have been happening these years.... I’d almost forgotten about it.”

“Yes I knew him,” said Ellen.

The leg of lamb came in accompanied by fried eggplant, late corn, and sweet potatoes. “Do you know I think it is just terrible,” said Mrs. Merivale when she had done carving, “the way you fellows wont tell us any of your experiences over there.... Lots of them must have been remarkably interesting. Jimmy I should think you’d write a book about your experiences.”

“I have tried a few articles.”

“When are they coming out?”

“Nobody seems to want to print them.... You see I differ radically in certain matters of opinion ...”

“Mrs. Merivale it’s years since I’ve eaten such delicious sweet potatoes.... These taste like yams.”

“They are good.... It’s just the way I have them cooked.”

“Well it was a great war while it lasted,” said Merivale.

“Where were you Armistice night, Jimmy?”

“I was in Jerusalem with the Red Cross. Isn’t that absurd?”

“I was in Paris.”

“So was I,” said Ellen.

“And so you were over there too Helena? I’m going to call you Helena eventually, so I might as well begin now.... Isn’t that interesting? Did you and Jimmy meet over there?”

“Oh no we were old friends.... But we were thrown together a lot.... We were in the same department of the Red Cross—the Publicity Department.”

“A real war romance,” chanted Mrs. Merivale. “Isn’t that interesting?”

“Now fellers it’s this way,” shouted Joe O’Keefe, the sweat breaking out on his red face. “Are we going to put over this bonus proposition or aint we?... We fought for em didnt we, we cleaned up the squareheads, didnt we? And now when we come home we get the dirty end of the stick. No jobs.... Our girls have gone and married other fellers.... Treat us like a bunch o dirty bums and loafers when we ask for our just and legal and lawful compensation ... the bonus. Are we goin to stand for it?... No. Are we goin to stand for a bunch of politicians treatin us like we was goin round to the back door to ask for a handout?... I ask you fellers....”

Feet stamped on the floor. “No.” “To hell wid em,” shouted voices.... “Now I say to hell wid de politicians.... We’ll carry our campaign to the country ... to the great big generous bighearted American people we fought and bled and laid down our lives for.”

The long armory room roared with applause. The wounded men in the front row banged the floor with their crutches. “Joey’s a good guy,” said a man without arms to a man with one eye and an artificial leg who sat beside him. “He is that Buddy.” While they were filing out offering each other cigarettes, a man stood in the door calling out, “Committee meeting, Committee on Bonus.”

The four of them sat round a table in the room the Colonel had lent them. “Well fellers let’s have a cigar.” Joe hopped over to the Colonel’s desk and brought out four Romeo and Juliets. “He’ll never miss em.”

“Some little grafter I’ll say,” said Sid Garnett stretching out his long legs.

“Havent got a case of Scotch in there, have you Joey?” said Bill Dougan.

“Naw I’m not drinkin myself jus for the moment.”

“I know where you kin get guaranteed Haig and Haig,” put in Segal cockily—“before the war stuff for six dollars a quart.”

“An where are we goin to get the six dollars for crissake?”

“Now look here fellers,” said Joe, sitting on the edge of the table, “let’s get down to brass tacks.... What we’ve got to do is raise a fund from the gang and anywhere else we can.... Are we agreed about that?”

“Sure we are, you tell em,” said Dougan.

“I know lot of old fellers even, thinks the boys are gettin a raw deal.... We’ll call it the Brooklyn Bonus Agitation Committee associated with the Sheamus O’Rielly Post of the A. L.... No use doin anythin unless you do it up right.... Now are yous guys wid me or aint yer?”

“Sure we are Joey.... You tell em an we’ll mark time.”

“Well Dougan’s got to be president cause he’s the best lookin.”

Dougan went crimson and began to stammer.

“Oh you seabeach Apollo,” jeered Garnett.

“And I think I can do best as treasurer because I’ve had more experience.”

“Cause you’re the crookedest you mean,” said Segal under his breath.

Joe stuck out his jaw. “Look here Segal are you wid us or aint yer? You’d better come right out wid it now if you’re not.”

“Sure, cut de comedy,” said Dougan. “Joey’s de guy to put dis ting trough an you know it.... Cut de comedy.... If you dont like it you kin git out.”

Segal rubbed his thin hooked nose. “I was juss jokin gents, I didn’t mean no harm.”

“Look here,” went on Joe angrily, “what do you think I’m givin up my time for?... Why I turned down fifty dollars a week only yesterday, aint that so, Sid? You seen me talkin to de guy.”

“Sure I did Joey.”

“Oh pipe down fellers,” said Segal. “I was just stringin Joey along.”

“Well I think Segal you ought to be secretary, cause you know about office work....”

“Office work?”

“Sure,” said Joe puffing his chest out. “We’re goin to have desk space in the office of a guy I know.... It’s all fixed. He’s goin to let us have it free till we get a start. An we’re goin to have office stationery. Cant get nowhere in this world without presentin things right.”

“An where do I come in?” asked Sid Garnett.

“You’re the committee, you big stiff.”

After the meeting Joe O’Keefe walked whistling down Atlantic Avenue. It was a crisp night; he was walking on springs. There was a light in Dr. Gordon’s office. He rang. A whitefaced man in a white jacket opened the door.

“Hello Doc.”

“Is that you O’Keefe? Come on in my boy.” Something in the doctor’s voice clutched like a cold hand at his spine.

“Well did your test come out all right doc?”

“All right ... positive all right.”

“Christ.”

“Dont worry too much about it, my boy, we’ll fix you up in a few months.”

“Months.”

“Why at a conservative estimate fiftyfive percent of the people you meet on the street have a syphilitic taint.”

“It’s not as if I’d been a damn fool. I was careful over there.”

“Inevitable in wartime....”

“Now I wish I’d let loose.... Oh the chances I passed up.”

The doctor laughed. “You probably wont even have any symptoms.... It’s just a question of injections. I’ll have you sound as a dollar in no time.... Do you want to take a shot now? I’ve got it all ready.”

O’Keefe’s hands went cold. “Well I guess so,” he forced

The wind was blowing up colder. His teeth were chattering. Through the rasping castiron night he walked home. Fool to pass out that way when he stuck me. He could still feel the sickening lunge of the needle. He gritted his teeth. After this I got to have some luck.... I got to have some luck.

Two stout men and a lean man sit at a table by a window. The light of a zinc sky catches brightedged glints off glasses, silverware, oystershells, eyes. George Baldwin has his back to the window. Gus McNiel sits on his right, and Densch on his left. When the waiter leans over to take away the empty oystershells he can see through the window, beyond the graystone parapet, the tops of a few buildings jutting like the last trees at the edge of a cliff and the tinfoil reaches of the harbor littered with ships. “I’m lecturin you this time, George.... Lord knows you used to lecture me enough in the old days. Honest it’s rank foolishness,” Gus McNiel is saying. “... It’s rank foolishness to pass up the chance of a political career at your time of life.... There’s no man in New York better fitted to hold office ...”

“Looks to me as if it were your duty, Baldwin,” says Densch in a deep voice, taking his tortoiseshell glasses out of a case and applying them hurriedly to his nose.

The waiter has brought a large planked steak surrounded by bulwarks of mushrooms and chopped carrots and peas and frilled browned mashed potatoes. Densch straightens his glasses and stares attentively at the planked steak.

“A very handsome dish Ben, a very handsome dish I must say.... It’s just this Baldwin ... as I look at it ... the country is going through a dangerous period of

“That’s what I was tryin to tell ye the other day George.”

“But that’s all very well Gus, but how do you know I’d be elected.... After all it would mean giving up my law practice for a number of years, it would mean ...”

“You just leave that to me.... George you’re elected already.”

“An extraordinarily good steak,” says Densch, “I must say.... No but newspaper talk aside ... I happen to know from a secret and reliable source that there is a subversive plot among undesirable elements in this country.... Good God think of the Wall Street bomb outrage.... I must say that the attitude of the press has been gratifying in one respect ... in fact we’re approaching a national unity undreamed of before the war.”

“No but George,” breaks in Gus, “put it this way.... The publicity value of a political career’d kinder bolster up your law practice.”

“It would and it wouldn’t Gus.”

Densch is unrolling the tinfoil off a cigar. “At any rate it’s a grand sight.” He takes off his glasses and cranes his thick neck to look out into the bright expanse of harbor that stretches full of masts, smoke, blobs of steam, dark oblongs of barges, to the hazeblurred hills of Staten Island.

Bright flakes of cloud were scaling off a sky of crushing indigo over the Battery where groups of dingy darkdressed people stood round the Ellis Island landing station and the small boat dock waiting silently for something. Frayed smoke of tugs and steamers hung low and trailed along the opaque glassgreen water. A threemasted schooner was being towed down the North River. A newhoisted jib flopped awkwardly in the wind. Down the harbor loomed taller, taller a steamer head on, four red stacks packed into one, creamy superstructure gleaming. “Mauretania just acomin in twentyfour hours lyte,” yelled the man with the telescope and fieldglasses.... “Tyke a look at the Mauretania, farstest ocean greyhound, twentyfour hours lyte.” The Mauretania stalked like a skyscraper through the harbor shipping. A rift of sunlight sharpened the shadow under the broad bridge, along the white stripes of upper decks, glinted in the rows of portholes. The smokestacks stood apart, the hull lengthened. The black relentless hull of the Mauretania pushing puffing tugs ahead of it cut like a long knife into the North River.

A ferry was leaving the immigrant station, a murmur rustled through the crowd that packed the edges of the wharf. “Deportees.... It’s the communists the Department of Justice is having deported ... deportees ... Reds.... It’s the Reds they are deporting.” The ferry was out of the slip. In the stern a group of men stood still tiny like tin soldiers. “They are sending the Reds back to Russia.” A handkerchief waved on the ferry, a red handkerchief. People tiptoed gently to the edge of the walk, tiptoeing, quiet like in a sickroom.

Behind the backs of the men and women crowding to the edge of the water, gorillafaced chipontheshoulder policemen walked back and forth nervously swinging their billies.

“They are sending the Reds back to Russia.... Deportees.... Agitators.... Undesirables.” ... Gulls wheeled crying. A catsupbottle bobbed gravely in the little ground-glass waves. A sound of singing came from the ferryboat getting small, slipping away across the water.

“Take a look at the deportees.... Take a look at the undesirable aliens,” shouted the man with the telescopes and fieldglasses. A girl’s voice burst out suddenly, “Arise prisoners of starvation,” “Sh.... They could pull you for that.”

The singing trailed away across the water. At the end of a marbled wake the ferryboat was shrinking into haze. International ... shall be the human race. The singing died. From up the river came the longdrawn rattling throb of a steamer leaving dock. Gulls wheeled above the dark dingydressed crowd that stood silently looking down the bay.

II. Nickelodeon

A nickel before midnight buys tomorrow ... holdup headlines, a cup of coffee in the automat, a ride to Woodlawn, Fort Lee, Flatbush.... A nickel in the slot buys chewing gum. Somebody Loves Me, Baby Divine, You’re in Kentucky Juss Shu’ As You’re Born ... bruised notes of foxtrots go limping out of doors, blues, waltzes (We’d Danced the Whole Night Through) trail gyrating tinsel memories.... On Sixth Avenue on Fourteenth there are still flyspecked stereopticons where for a nickel you can peep at yellowed yesterdays. Beside the peppering shooting gallery you stoop into the flicker A Hot Time, The Bachelor’s Surprise, The Stolen Garter ... wastebasket of tornup daydreams.... A nickel before midnight buys our yesterdays.

Ruth Prynne came out of the doctor’s office pulled the fur tight round her throat. She felt faint. Taxi. As she stepped in she remembered the smell of cosmetics and toast and the littered hallway at Mrs. Sunderlands. Oh I cant go home just yet. “Driver go to the Old English Tea Room on Fortieth Street please.” She opened her long green leather purse and looked in. My God, only a dollar a quarter a nickel and two pennies. She kept her eyes on the figures flickering on the taximeter. She wanted to break down and cry.... The way money goes. The gritty cold wind rasped at her throat when she got out. “Eighty cents miss.... I haven’t any change miss.” “All right keep the change.” Heavens only thirtytwo cents.... Inside it was warm and smelled cozily of tea and cookies.

“Why Ruth, if it isn’t Ruth.... Dearest come to my arms after all these years.” It was Billy Waldron. He was fatter and whiter than he used to be. He gave her a stagy hug and kissed her on the forehead. “How are you? Do tell me.... How distinguée you look in that hat.”

“I’ve just been having my throat X-rayed,” she said with a giggle. “I feel like the wrath of God.”

“What are you doing Ruth? I havent heard of you for ages.”

“Put me down as a back number, hadn’t you?” She caught his words up fiercely.

“After that beautiful performance you gave in The Orchard Queen....”

“To tell the truth Billy I’ve had a terrible run of bad luck.”

“Oh I know everything is dead.”

“I have an appointment to see Belasco next week.... Something may come of that.”

“Why I should say it might Ruth.... Are you expecting someone?”

“No.... Oh Billy you’re still the same old tease.... Dont tease me this afternoon. I dont feel up to it.”

“You poor dear sit down and have a cup of tea with me.

“I tell you Ruth it’s a terrible year. Many a good trouper will pawn the last link of his watch chain this year.... I suppose you’re going the rounds.”

“Dont talk about it.... If I could only get my throat all right.... A thing like that wears you down.”

“Remember the old days at the Somerville Stock?”

“Billy could I ever forget them?... Wasnt it a scream?”

“The last time I saw you Ruth was in The Butterfly on the Wheel in Seattle. I was out front....”

“Why didn’t you come back and see me?”

“I was still angry at you I suppose.... It was my lowest moment. In the valley of shadow ... melancholia ... neurasthenia. I was stranded penniless.... That night I was a little under the influence, you understand. I didn’t want you to see the beast in me.”

Ruth poured herself a fresh cup of tea. She suddenly felt feverishly gay. “Oh but Billy havent you forgotten all that?... I was a foolish little girl then.... I was afraid that love or marriage or anything like that would interfere

“Would you do the same thing again?”

“I wonder....”

“How does it go?... The moving finger writes and having writ moves on ...”

“Something about Nor all your tears wash out a word of it ... But Billy,” she threw back her head and laughed, “I thought you were getting ready to propose to me all over again.... Ou my throat.”

“Ruth I wish you werent taking that X-ray treatment.... I’ve heard it’s very dangerous. Dont let me alarm you about it my dear ... but I have heard of cases of cancer contracted that way.”

“That’s nonsense Billy.... That’s only when X-rays are improperly used, and it takes years of exposure.... No I think this Dr. Warner’s a remarkable man.”

Later, sitting in the uptown express in the subway, she still could feel his soft hand patting her gloved hand. “Goodby little girl, God bless you,” he’d said huskily. He’s gotten to be a ham actor if there ever was one, something was jeering inside her all the while. “Thank heavens you will never know.” ... Then with a sweep of his broadbrimmed hat and a toss of his silky white hair, as if he were playing in Monsieur Beaucaire, he had turned and walked off among the crowd up Broadway. I may be down on my luck, but I’m not all ham inside the way he is.... Cancer he said. She looked up and down the car at the joggling faces opposite her. Of all those people one of them must have it. Four Out of Every Five Get ... Silly, that’s not cancer. Ex-lax, Nujol, O’Sullivan’s.... She put her hand to her throat. Her throat was terribly swollen, her throat throbbed feverishly. Maybe it was worse. It is something alive that grows in flesh, eats all your life, leaves you horrible, rotten.... The people opposite stared straight ahead of them, young men and young women, middleaged people, green faces in the dingy light, under the sourcolored advertisements. Four Out of Every Five ... A trainload

Dutch Robertson sat on a bench on Brooklyn Bridge with the collar of his army overcoat turned up, running his eye down Business Opportunities. It was a muggy fog-choked afternoon; the bridge was dripping and aloof like an arbor in a dense garden of steamboatwhistles. Two sailors passed. “Ze best joint I’ve been in since B. A.”

Partner movie theater, busy neighborhood ... stand investigation ... $3,000.... Jez I haven’t got three thousand mills.... Cigar stand, busy building, compelled sacrifice.... Attractive and completely outfitted radio and music shop ... busy.... Modern mediumsized printingplant consisting of cylinders, Kelleys, Miller feeders, job presses, linotype machines and a complete bindery.... Kosher restaurant and delicatessen.... Bowling alley ... busy.... Live spot large dancehall and other concessions. We Buy False Teeth, old gold, platinum, old jewelry. The hell they do. Help Wanted Male. That’s more your speed you rummy. Addressers, first class penmen.... Lets me out.... Artist, Attendant, Auto, Bicycle and Motorcycle repair shop.... He took out the back of an envelope and marked down the address. Bootblacks.... Not yet. Boy; no I guess I aint a boy any more, Candystore, Canvassers, Carwashers, Dishwasher. Earn While You Learn. Mechanical dentistry is your shortest way to success.... No dull seasons....

“Hello Dutch.... I thought I’d never get here.” A grayfaced girl in a red hat and gray rabbit coat sat down beside him.

“Jez I’m sick o readin want ads.” He stretched out his arms and yawned letting the paper slip down his legs.

“Aint you chilly, sittin out here on the bridge?”

“Maybe I am.... Let’s go and eat.” He jumped to his

They walked back towards Manhattan, the way she had come. Under them the river glinted through the mist. A big steamer drifted by slowly, lights already lit; over the edge of the walk they looked down the black smokestacks.

“Was it a boat as big as that you went overseas on Dutch?”

“Bigger ’n that.”

“Gee I’d like to go.”

“I’ll take you over some time and show you all them places over there ... I went to a lot of places that time I went A.W.O.L.”

In the L station they hesitated. “Francie got any jack on you?”

“Sure I got a dollar.... I ought to keep that for tomorrer though.”

“All I got’s my last quarter. Let’s go eat two fiftyfive cent dinners at that chink place ... That’ll be a dollar ten.”

“I got to have a nickel to get down to the office in the mornin.”

“Oh Hell! Goddam it I wish we could have some money.”

“Got anything lined up yet?”

“Wouldn’t I have told ye if I had?”

“Come ahead I’ve got a half a dollar saved up in my room. I can take carfare outa that.” She changed the dollar and put two nickels into the turnstile. They sat down in a Third Avenue train.

“Say Francie will they let us dance in a khaki shirt?”

“Why not Dutch it looks all right.”

“I feel kinder fussed about it.”

The jazzband in the restaurant was playing Hindustan. It smelled of chop suey and Chinese sauce. They slipped into a booth. Slickhaired young men and little bobhaired

“Jez I’m hungry.”

“Are you Dutch?”

He pushed forward his knees until they locked with hers. “Gee you’re a good kid,” he said when he had finished his soup. “Honest I’ll get a job this week. And then we’ll get a nice room an get married an everything.”

When they got up to dance they were trembling so they could barely keep time to the music.

“Mister ... no dance without ploper dless ...” said a dapper Chinaman putting his hand on Dutch’s arm.

“Waz he want?” he growled dancing on.

“I guess it’s the shirt, Dutch.”

“The hell it is.”

“I’m tired. I’d rather talk than dance anyway ...” They went back to their booth and their sliced pineapple for dessert.

Afterwards they walked east along Fourteenth. “Dutch cant we go to your room?”

“I ain’t got no room. The old stiff wont let me stay and she’s got all my stuff. Honest if I dont get a job this week I’m goin to a recruiting sergeant an re-enlist.”

“Oh dont do that; we wouldn’t ever get married then Dutch.... Gee though why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to worry you Francie.... Six months out of work ... Jez it’s enough to drive a guy cookoo.”

“But Dutch where can we go?”

“We might go out that wharf.... I know a wharf.”

“It’s so cold.”

“I couldn’t get cold when you were with me kid.”

“Dont talk like that.... I dont like it.”

They walked leaning together in the darkness up the muddy rutted riverside streets, between huge swelling gastanks, brokendown fences, long manywindowed warehouses. At a corner under a streetlamp a boy catcalled as they passed.

“I’ll poke your face in you little bastard,” Dutch let fly out of the corner of his mouth.

“Dont answer him,” Francie whispered, “or we’ll have the whole gang down on us.”

They slipped through a little door in a tall fence above which crazy lumberpiles towered. They could smell the river and cedarwood and sawdust. They could hear the river lapping at the piles under their feet. Dutch drew her to him and pressed his mouth down on hers.

“Hay dere dont you know you cant come out here at night disaway?” a voice yapped at them. The watchman flashed a lantern in their eyes.

“All right keep your shirt on, we were just taking a little walk.”

“Some walk.”

They were dragging themselves down the street again with the black riverwind in their teeth.

“Look out.” A policeman passed whistling softly to himself. They drew apart. “Oh Francie they’ll be takin us to the nuthouse if we keep this up. Let’s go to your room.”

“Landlady’ll throw me out, that’s all.”

“I wont make any noise.... You got your key aint ye? I’ll sneak out before light. Goddam it they make you feel like a skunk.”

“All right Dutch let’s go home.... I dont care no more what happens.”

They walked up mudtracked stairs to the top floor of the tenement.

“Take off your shoes,” she hissed in his ear as she slipped the key in the lock.

“I got holes in my stockings.”

“That dont matter, silly. I’ll see if it’s all right. My room’s way back past the kitchen so if they’re all in bed they cant hear us.”

When she left him he could hear his heart beating. In a second she came back. He tiptoed after her down a creaky hall. A sound of snoring came through a door.

He lay beside her whispering on and on with his lips against her ear. “And Francie I’ll make good, honest I will; I got to be a sergeant overseas till they busted me for goin A.W.O.L. That shows I got it in me. Once I get a chance I’ll make a whole lot of jack and you an me’ll go back an see Château Teery an Paree an all that stuff; honest you’d like it Francie ... Jez the towns are old and funny and quiet and cozy-like an they have the swellest ginmills where you sit outside at little tables in the sun an watch the people pass an the food’s swell too once you get to like it an they have hotels all over where we could have gone like tonight an they dont care if your married or nutten. An they have big beds all cozy made of wood and they bring ye up breakfast in bed. Jez Francie you’d like it.”

They were walking to dinner through the snow. Big snowfeathers spun and spiraled about them mottling the glare of the streets with blue and pink and yellow, blotting perspectives.

“Ellie I hate to have you take that job.... You ought to keep on with your acting.”

“But Jimps, we’ve got to live.”

“I know ... I know. You’d certainly didn’t have your wits about you Ellie when you married me.”

“Oh let’s not talk about it any more.”

“Do let’s have a good time tonight.... It’s the first snow.”

“Is this the place?” They stood before an unlighted basement door covered by a closemeshed grating. “Let’s try.”

“Did the bell ring?”

“I think so.”

The inner door opened and a girl in a pink apron peered out at them. “Bon soir mademoiselle.”

“Ah ... bon soir monsieur ’dame.” She ushered them into a foodsmelling gaslit hall hung with overcoats and hats and mufflers. Through a curtained door the restaurant blew in their faces a hot breath of bread and cocktails and frying butter and perfumes and lipsticks and clatter and jingling talk.

“I can smell absinthe,” said Ellen. “Let’s get terribly tight.”

“Good Lord, there’s Congo.... Dont you remember Congo Jake at the Seaside Inn?”

He stood bulky at the end of the corridor beckoning to them. His face was very tanned and he had a glossy black mustache. “Hello Meester ’Erf.... Ow are you?”

“Fine as silk. Congo I want you to meet my wife.”

“If you dont mind the keetchen we will ’ave a drink.”

“Of course we dont.... It’s the best place in the house. Why you’re limping.... What did you do to your leg?”

“Foutu ... I left it en Italie.... I couldnt breeng it along once they’d cut it off.”

“How was that?”

“Damn fool thing on Mont Tomba.... My bruderinlaw e gave me a very beautiful artificial leemb.... Sit ’ere. Look madame now can you tell which is which?”

“No I cant,” said Ellie laughing. They were at a little marble table in the corner of the crowded kitchen. A girl was dishing out at a deal table in the center. Two cooks worked over the stove. The air was rich with sizzling fatty foodsmells. Congo hobbled back to them with three glasses on a small tray. He stood over them while they drank.

“Salut,” he said, raising his glass. “Absinthe cocktail, like they make it in New Orleans.”

“It’s a knockout.” Congo took a card out of his vest pocket:

MARQUIS DES COULOMMIERS Imports Riverside 11121

“Maybe some day you need some little ting ... I deal in nutting but prewar imported. I am the best bootleggair in New York.”

“If I ever get any money I certainly will spend it on you Congo.... How do you find business?”

“Veree good.... I tell you about it. Tonight I’m too busee.... Now I find you a table in the restaurant.”

“Do you run this place too?”

“No this my bruderinlaw’s place.”

“I didnt know you had a sister.”

“Neither did I.”

When Congo limped away from their table silence came down between them like an asbestos curtain in a theater.

“He’s a funny duck,” said Jimmy forcing a laugh.

“He certainly is.”

“Look Ellie let’s have another cocktail.”

“Allright.”

“I must get hold of him and get some stories about bootleggers out of him.”

When he stretched his legs out under the table he touched her feet. She drew them away. Jimmy could feel his jaws chewing, they clanked so loud under his cheeks he thought Ellie must hear them. She sat opposite him in a gray tailoredsuit, her neck curving up heartbreakingly from the ivory V left by the crisp frilled collar of her blouse, her head tilted under her tight gray hat, her lips made up; cutting up little pieces of meat and not eating them, not saying a word.

“Gosh ... let’s have another cocktail.” He felt paralyzed like in a nightmare; she was a porcelaine figure under a bellglass. A current of fresh snowrinsed air from somewhere eddied all of a sudden through the blurred packed jangling glare of the restaurant, cut the reek of food and drink and tobacco. For an instant he caught the smell of

Sitting in the restaurant of the Gare de Lyon, side by side on the black leather bench. His cheek brushes hers when he reaches to put herring, butter, sardines, anchovies, sausage on her plate. They eat in a hurry, gobbling, giggling, gulp wine, start at every screech of an engine....

The train pulls out of Avignon, they two awake, looking in each other’s eyes in the compartment full of sleep-sodden snoring people. He lurches clambering over tangled legs, to smoke a cigarette at the end of the dim oscillating corridor. Diddledeump, going south, Diddledeump, going south, sing the wheels over the rails down the valley of the Rhone. Leaning in the window, smoking a broken cigarette, trying to smoke a crumbling cigarette, holding a finger over the torn place. Glubglub glubglub from the bushes, from the silverdripping poplars along the track.

“Ellie, Ellie there are nightingales singing along the track.”

“Oh I was asleep darling.” She gropes to him stumbling across the legs of sleepers. Side by side in the window in the lurching jiggling corridor.

Deedledeump, going south. Gasp of nightingales along the track among the silverdripping poplars. The insane cloudy night of moonlight smells of gardens garlic rivers freshdunged field roses. Gasp of nightingales.

Opposite him the Elliedoll was speaking. “He says the lobstersalad’s all out.... Isnt that discouraging?”

Suddenly he had his tongue. “Gosh if that were the only thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did we come back to this rotten town anyway?”

“You’ve been burbling about how wonderful it was ever since we came back.”

“I know. I guess it’s sour grapes.... I’m going to have another cocktail.... Ellie for heaven’s sake what’s the matter with us?”

“We’re going to be sick if we keep this up I tell you.”

“Well let’s be sick.... Let’s be good and sick.”

When they sit up in the great bed they can see across the harbor, can see the yards of a windjammer and a white sloop and a red and green toy tug and plainfaced houses opposite beyond a peacock stripe of water; when they lie down they can see gulls in the sky. At dusk dressing rockily, shakily stumbling through the mildewed corridors of the hotel out into streets noisy as a brass band, full of tambourine rattle, brassy shine, crystal glitter, honk and whir of motors.... Alone together in the dusk drinking sherry under a broad-leaved plane, alone together in the juggled particolored crowds like people invisible. And the spring night comes up over the sea terrible out of Africa and settles about them.

They had finished their coffee. Jimmy had drunk his very slowly as if some agony waited for him when he finished it.

“Well I was afraid we’d find the Barneys here,” said Ellen.

“Do they know about this place?”

“You brought them here yourself Jimps.... And that dreadful woman insisted on talking babies with me all the evening. I hate talking babies.”

“Gosh I wish we could go to a show.”

“It would be too late anyway.”

“And just spending money I havent got.... Lets have a cognac to top off with. I don’t care if it ruins us.”

“It probably will in more ways than one.”

“Well Ellie, here’s to the breadwinner who’s taken up the white man’s burden.”

“Why Jimmy I think it’ll be rather fun to have an editorial job for a while.”

“I’d find it fun to have any kind of job.... Well I can always stay home and mind the baby.”

“Dont be so bitter Jimmy, it’s just temporary.”

“Life’s just temporary for that matter.”

The taxi drew up. Jimmy paid him with his last dollar. Ellie had her key in the outside door. The street was a confusion of driving absintheblurred snow. The door of their apartment closed behind them. Chairs, tables, books,

she hums under her breath as she dances. It’s a long hall with a band at one end, lit greenishly by two clusters of electric lights hanging among paper festoons in the center. At the end where the door is, a varnished rail holds back the line of men. This one Anna’s dancing with is a tall square built Swede, his big feet trail clumsily after her tiny lightly tripping feet. The music stops. Now it’s a little blackhaired slender Jew. He tries to snuggle close.

“Quit that.” She holds him away from her.

“Aw have a heart.”

She doesn’t answer, dances with cold precision; she’s sickeningly tired.

An Italian breathes garlic in her face, a marine sergeant, a Greek, a blond young kid with pink cheeks, she gives him a smile; a drunken elderly man who tries to kiss her ... Charley my boy O Charley my boy ... slickhaired, freckled rumplehaired, pimplefaced, snubnosed, straightnosed, quick dancers, heavy dancers.... Goin souf.... Wid de taste o de sugarcane right in my mouf ... against her back big hands, hot hands, sweaty hands, cold hands, while her dancechecks

“Gee I’m tired,” she whispers.

“Dancing never tires me.”

“Oh it’s dancin with everybody like this.”

“Dont you want to come an dance with me all alone somewhere?”

“Boyfrien’s waitin for me after.”

“What time’s it?” she asks a broadchested wise guy. “Time you an me was akwainted, sister....” She shakes her head. Suddenly the music bursts into Auld Lang Syne. She breaks away from him and runs to the desk in a crowd of girls elbowing to turn in their dancechecks. “Say Anna,” says a broadhipped blond girl ... “did ye see that sap was dancin wid me?... He says to me the sap he says See you later an I says to him the sap I says see yez in hell foist ... an then he says, Goily he says ...”

III. Revolving Doors

Glowworm trains shuttle in the gloaming through the foggy looms of spiderweb bridges, elevators soar and drop in their shafts, harbor lights wink.

Like sap at the first frost at five o’clock men and women begin to drain gradually out of the tall buildings downtown, grayfaced throngs flood subways and tubes, vanish underground.

All night the great buildings stand quiet and empty, their million windows dark. Drooling light the ferries chew tracks across the lacquered harbor. At midnight the fourfunneled express steamers slide into the dark out of their glary berths. Bankers blearyeyed from secret conferences hear the hooting of the tugs as they are let out of side doors by lightningbug watchmen; they settle grunting into the back seats of limousines, and are whisked uptown into the Forties, clinking streets of ginwhite whiskey-yellow ciderfizzling lights.

She sat at the dressingtable coiling her hair. He stood over her with the lavender suspenders hanging from his dress trousers prodding the diamond studs into his shirt with stumpy fingers.

“Jake I wish we were out of it,” she whined through the hairpins in her mouth.

“Out of what Rosie?”

“The Prudence Promotion Company.... Honest I’m worried.”

“Why everything’s goin swell. We’ve got to bluff out Nichols that’s all.”

“Suppose he prosecutes?”

“Oh he wont. He’d lose a lot of money by it. He’d much better come in with us.... I can pay him in cash in a week anyways. If we can keep him thinkin we got money

Rosie had just put a rhinestone comb into the coil of her black hair. She nodded and got to her feet. She was a plump broadhipped woman with big black eyes and higharched eyebrows. She wore a corset trimmed with yellow lace and a pink silk chemise.

“Put on everythin you’ve got Rosie. I want yez all dressed up like a Christmas tree. We’re goin to the El Fey an stare Nichols down tonight. Then tomorrer I’ll go round and put the proposition up to him.... Lets have a little snifter anyways ...” He went to the phone. “Send up some cracked ice and a couple of bottles of White Rock to four o four. Silverman’s the name. Make it snappy.”

“Jake let’s make a getaway,” Rosie cried suddenly. She stood in the closet door with a dress over her arm. “I cant stand all this worry.... It’s killin me. Let’s you an me beat it to Paris or Havana or somewheres and start out fresh.”

“Then we would be up the creek. You can be extradited for grand larceny. Jez you wouldnt have me goin round with dark glasses and false whiskers all my life.”

Rosie laughed. “No I guess you wouldnt look so good in a fake zit.... Oh I wish we were really married at least.”

“Dont make no difference between us Rosie. Then they’d be after me for bigamy too. That’d be pretty.”

Rosie shuddered at the bellboy’s knock. Jake Silverman put the tray with its clinking bowl of ice on the bureau and fetched a square whiskeybottle out of the wardrobe.

“Dont pour out any for me. I havent got the heart for it.”

“Kid you’ve got to pull yourself together. Put on the glad rags an we’ll go to a show. Hell I been in lots o tighter holes than this.” With his highball in his hand he went to the phone. “I want the newsstand.... Hello cutie.... Sure I’m an old friend of yours.... Sure you know me.... Look could you get me two seats for the Follies.... That’s the idear.... No I cant sit back of the eighth row....

“Say Jake is there really any borax in that lake?”

“Sure there is. Aint we got the affidavit of four experts?”

“Sure. I was just kinder wonderin.... Say Jake if this ever gets wound up will you promise me not to go in for any more wildcat schemes?”

“Sure; I wont need to.... My you’re a redhot mommer in that dress.”

“Do you like it?”

“You look like Brazil ... I dunno ... kinder tropical.”

“That’s the secret of my dangerous charm.”

The phone rang jingling sharp. They jumped to their feet. She pressed the side of her hand against her lips.

“Two in the fourth row. That’s fine.... We’ll be right down an get em ... Jez Rosie you cant go on being jumpy like; you’re gettin me all shot too. Pull yerself together why cant you?”

“Let’s go out an eat Jake. I havent had anything but buttermilk all day. I guess I’ll stop tryin to reduce. This worryin’ll make me thin enough.”

“You got to quit it Rosie.... It’s gettin my nerve.”

They stopped at the flowerstall in the lobby. “I want a gardenia” he said. He puffed his chest out and smiled his curlylipped smile as the girl fixed it in the buttonhole of his dinnercoat. “What’ll you have dear?” he turned grandiloquently to Rosie. She puckered her mouth. “I dont just know what’ll go with my dress.”

“While you’re deciding I’ll go get the theater tickets.” With his overcoat open and turned back to show the white puffedout shirtfront and his cuffs shot out over his thick hands he strutted over to the newsstand. Out of the corner of her eye while the ends of the red roses were being wrapped in silver paper Rosie could see him leaning across the magazines talking babytalk to the blond girl. He came back brighteyed with a roll of bills in his hand. She pinned the roses on her fur coat, put her arm in his and together they

The diningroom smelled of toast and coffee and the New York Times. The Merivales were breakfasting to electric light. Sleet beat against the windows. “Well Paramount’s fallen off five points more,” said James from behind the paper.

“Oh James I think its horrid to be such a tease,” whined Maisie who was drinking her coffee in little henlike sips.

“And anyway,” said Mrs. Merivale, “Jack’s not with Paramount any more. He’s doing publicity for the Famous Players.”

“He’s coming east in two weeks. He says he hopes to be here for the first of the year.”

“Did you get another wire Maisie?”

Maisie nodded. “Do you know James, Jack never will write a letter. He always telegraphs,” said Mrs. Merivale through the paper at her son. “He certainly keeps the house choked up with flowers,” growled James from behind the paper.

“All by telegraph,” said Mrs. Merivale triumphantly.

James put down his paper. “Well I hope he’s as good a fellow as he seems to be.”

“Oh James you’re horrid about Jack.... I think it’s mean.” She got to her feet and went through the curtains into the parlor.

“Well if he’s going to be my brother-in-law, I think I ought to have a say in picking him,” he grumbled.

Mrs. Merivale went after her. “Come back and finish your breakfast Maisie, he’s just a terrible tease.”

“I wont have him talk that way about Jack.”

“But Maisie I think Jack’s a dear boy.” She put her arm round her daughter and led her back to the table. “He’s so simple and I know he has good impulses.... I’m sure he’s going to make you very happy.” Maisie sat down again

“Deary you know you oughtnt to drink two cups. Dr. Fernald said that was what was making you so nervous.”

“Just a little bit mother very weak. I want to finish this muffin and I simply cant eat it without something to wash it down, and you know you dont want me to lose any more weight.” James pushed back his chair and went out with the Times under his arm. “It’s half past eight James,” said Mrs. Merivale. “He’s likely to take an hour when he gets in there with that paper.”

“Well,” said Maisie peevishly. “I think I’ll go back to bed. I think it’s silly the way we all get up to breakfast. There’s something so vulgar about it mother. Nobody does it any more. At the Perkinses’ it comes up to you in bed on a tray.”

“But James has to be at the bank at nine.”

“That’s no reason why we should drag ourselves out of bed. That’s how people get their faces all full of wrinkles.”

“But we wouldn’t see James until dinnertime, and I like to get up early. The morning’s the loveliest part of the day.” Maisie yawned desperately.

James appeared in the doorway to the hall running a brush round his hat.

“What did you do with the paper James?”

“Oh I left it in there.”

“I’ll get it, never mind.... My dear you’ve got your stickpin in crooked. I’ll fix it.... There.” Mrs. Merivale put her hands on his shoulders and looked in her son’s face. He wore a dark gray suit with a faint green stripe in it, an olive green knitted necktie with a small gold nugget stickpin, olive green woolen socks with black clockmarks and dark red Oxford shoes, their laces neatly tied with doubleknots that never came undone. “James arent you carrying your cane?” He had an olive green woolen muffler round his neck and was slipping into his dark brown winter overcoat. “I notice the younger men down there dont carry

“But Mr. Perkins carries a cane with a gold parrothead.”

“Yes but he’s one of the vicepresidents, he can do what he likes.... But I’ve got to run.” James Merivale hastily kissed his mother and sister. He put on his gloves going down in the elevator. Ducking his head into the sleety wind he walked quickly east along Seventysecond. At the subway entrance he bought a Tribune and hustled down the steps to the jammed soursmelling platform.

Chicago! Chicago! came in bursts out of the shut phonograph. Tony Hunter, slim in a black closecut suit, was dancing with a girl who kept putting her mass of curly ashblond hair on his shoulder. They were alone in the hotel sitting room.

“Sweetness you’re a lovely dancer,” she cooed snuggling closer.

“Think so Nevada?”

“Um-hum ... Sweetness have you noticed something about me?”

“What’s that Nevada?”

“Havent you noticed something about my eyes?”

“They’re the loveliest little eyes in the world.”

“Yes but there’s something about them.”

“You mean that one of them’s green and the other one brown.”

“Oh it noticed the tweet lil ting.” She tilted her mouth up at him. He kissed it. The record came to an end. They both ran over to stop it. “That wasnt much of a kiss, Tony,” said Nevada Jones tossing her curls out of her eyes. They put on Shuffle Along.

“Say Tony,” she said when they had started dancing again. “What did the psychoanalyst say when you went to see him yesterday?”

“Oh nothing much, we just talked,” said Tony with a

“I bet you I could.”

They stopped dancing and looked at each other with the blood burning in their faces.

“Knowing you Nevada,” he said in a doleful tone “has meant more to me ... You’re so decent to me. Everybody’s always been so nasty.”

“Aint he solemn though?” She walked over thoughtfully and stopped the phonograph.

“Some joke on George I’ll say.”

“I feel horribly about it. He’s been so decent.... And after all I could never have afforded to go to Dr. Baumgardt at all.”

“It’s his own fault. He’s a damn fool.... If he thinks he can buy me with a little hotel accommodation and theater tickets he’s got another think coming. But honestly Tony you must keep on with that doctor. He did wonders with Glenn Gaston.... He thought he was that way until he was thirtyfive years old and the latest thing I hear he’s married an had a pair of twins.... Now give me a real kiss sweetest. Thataboy. Let’s dance some more. Gee you’re a beautiful dancer. Kids like you always are. I dont know why it is....”

The phone cut into the room suddenly with a glittering sawtooth ring. “Hello.... Yes this is Miss Jones.... Why of course George I’m waiting for you....” She put up the receiver. “Great snakes, Tony beat it. I’ll call you later. Dont go down in the elevator you’ll meet him coming up.” Tony Hunter melted out the door. Nevada put Baby ... Babee Deewine on the phonograph and strode nervously about the room, straightening chairs, patting her tight short curls into place.

“Oh George I thought you werent comin.... How do you do Mr. McNiel? I dunno why I’m all jumpy today. I thought you were never comin. Let’s get some lunch up. I’m that hungry.”

George Baldwin put his derby hat and stick on a table in the corner. “What’ll you have Gus?” he said. “Sure I always take a lamb chop an a baked potato.”

“I’m just taking crackers and milk, my stomach’s a little out of order.... Nevada see if you cant frisk up a highball for Mr. McNiel.”

“Well I could do with a highball George.”

“George order me half a broiled chicken lobster and some alligator pear salad,” screeched Nevada from the bathroom where she was cracking ice.

“She’s the greatest girl for lobster,” said Baldwin laughing as he went to the phone.

She came back from the bathroom with two highballs on a tray; she had put a scarlet and parrotgreen batik scarf round her neck. “Just you an me’s drinkin Mr. McNiel.... George is on the water wagon. Doctor’s orders.”

“Nevada what do you say we go to a musical show this afternoon? There’s a lot of business I want to get off my mind.”

“I just love matinees. Do you mind if we take Tony Hunter. He called up he was lonesome and wanted to come round this afternoon. He’s not workin this week.”

“All right.... Nevada will you excuse us if we talk business for just a second over here by the window. We’ll forget it by the time lunch comes.”

“All righty I’ll change my dress.”

“Sit down here Gus.”

They sat silent a moment looking out of the window at the red girder cage of the building under construction next door. “Well Gus,” said Baldwin suddenly harshly, “I’m in the race.”

“Good for you George, we need men like you.”

“I’m going to run on a Reform ticket.”

“The hell you are?”

“I wanted to tell you Gus rather than have you hear it by a roundabout way.”

“Who’s goin to elect you?”

“Oh I’ve got my backing.... I’ll have a good press.”

“Press hell.... We’ve got the voters.... But Goddam it if it hadn’t been for me your name never would have come up for district attorney at all.”

“I know you’ve always been a good friend of mine and I hope you’ll continue to be.”

“I never went back on a guy yet, but Jez, George, it’s give and take in this world.”

“Well,” broke in Nevada advancing towards them with little dancesteps, wearing a flamingo pink silk dress, “havent you boys argued enough yet?”

“We’re through,” growled Gus. “... Say Miss Nevada, how did you get that name?”

“I was born in Reno.... My mother’d gone there to get a divorce.... Gosh she was sore.... Certainly put my foot in it that time.”

Anna Cohen stands behind the counter under the sign The Best Sandwich in New York. Her feet ache in her pointed shoes with runover heels.

“Well I guess they’ll begin soon or else we’re in for a slack day,” says the sodashaker beside her. He’s a raw-faced man with a sharp adamsapple. “It allus comes all of a rush like.”

“Yeh, looks like they all got the same idear at the same time.” They stand looking out through the glass partition at the endless files of people jostling in and out of the subway. All at once she slips away from the counter and back into the stuffy kitchenette where a stout elderly woman is tidying up the stove. There is a mirror hanging on a nail in the corner. Anna fetches a powderbox from the pocket of her coat on the rack and starts powdering her nose. She stands a second with the tiny puff poised looking at her broad face with the bangs across the forehead and the straight black bobbed hair. A homely lookin kike, she says to herself bitterly. She is slipping back to her place at the counter when she runs into the manager, a little fat Italian

She stares at his face sleek like an olive. “Kin I stay out my day?” she stammers. He nods. “Getta move on; this aint no beauty parlor.” She hustles back to her place at the counter. The stools are all full. Girls, officeboys, grayfaced bookkeepers. “Chicken sandwich and a cup o caufee.” “Cream cheese and olive sandwich and a glass of buttermilk.”

“Chocolate sundae.”

“Egg sandwich, coffee and doughnuts.” “Cup of boullion.” “Chicken broth.” “Chocolate icecream soda.” People eat hurriedly without looking at each other, with their eyes on their plates, in their cups. Behind the people sitting on stools those waiting nudge nearer. Some eat standing up. Some turn their backs on the counter and eat looking out through the glass partition and the sign hcnuL eniL neerG at the jostling crowds filing in and out the subway through the drabgreen gloom.

“Well Joey tell me all about it,” said Gus McNiel puffing a great cloud of smoke out of his cigar and leaning back in his swivel chair. “What are you guys up to over there in Flatbush?”

O’Keefe cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. “Well sir we got an agitation committee.”

“I should say you had.... That aint no reason for raidin the Garment Workers’ ball is it?”

“I didn’t have nothin to do with that.... The bunch got sore at all these pacifists and reds.”

“That stuff was all right a year ago, but public sentiment’s changin. I tell you Joe the people of this country are pretty well fed up with war heroes.”

“We got a livewire organization over there.”

“I know you have Joe. I know you have. Trust you for that.... I’d put the soft pedal on the bonus stuff

“That’s true enough.”

“A national bonus means taxes to the average business man and nothing else.... Nobody wants no more taxes.”

“Still I think the boys have got it comin to em.”

“We’ve all of us got a whole lot comin to us we dont never get.... For crissake dont quote me on this.... Joey fetch yourself a cigar from that box over there. Frien o mine sent em up from Havana by a naval officer.”

“Thankye sir.”

“Go ahead take four or five.”

“Jez thank you.”

“Say Joey how’ll you boys line up on the mayoralty election?”

“That depends on the general attitude towards the needs of the ex-service man.”

“Look here Joey you’re a smart feller ...”

“Oh they’ll line up all right. I kin talk em around.”

“How many guys have you got over there?”

“The Sheamus O’Rielly Post’s got three hundred members an new ones signin up every day.... We’re gettin em from all over. We’re goin to have a Christmas dance an some fights in the Armory if we can get hold of any pugs.”

Gus McNiel threw back his head on his bullneck and laughed. “Thataboy!”

“But honest the bonus is the only way we kin keep the boys together.”

“Suppose I come over and talk to em some night.”

“That’d be all right, but they’re dead sot against anybody who aint got a war record.”

McNiel flushed. “Come back feeling kinder smart, dont ye, you guys from overseas?” He laughed. “That wont last more’n a year or two.... I seen em come back from the Spanish American War, remember that Joe.”

An officeboy came in an laid a card on the desk. “A lady to see you Mr. McNiel.”

“All right show her in.... It’s that old bitch from the

Dougan was waiting in the outer office. He sidled up mysteriously. “Well Joe, how’s things?”

“Pretty good,” said Joe puffing out his chest. “Gus tells me Tammany’ll be right behind us in our drive for the bonus ... planning a nation wide campaign. He gave me some cigars a friend o his brought up by airplane from Havana.... Have one?” With their cigars tilting up out of the corners of their mouths they walked briskly cockily across City Hall square. Opposite the old City Hall there was a scaffolding. Joe pointed at it with his cigar. “That there’s the new statue of Civic Virtue the mayor’s havin set up.”

The steam of cooking wrenched at his knotted stomach as he passed Child’s. Dawn was sifting fine gray dust over the black ironcast city. Dutch Robertson despondently crossed Union Square, remembering Francie’s warm bed, the spicy smell of her hair. He pushed his hands deep in his empty pockets. Not a red, and Francie couldn’t give him anything. He walked east past the hotel on Fifteenth. A colored man was sweeping off the steps. Dutch looked at him enviously; he’s got a job. Milkwagons jingled by. On Stuyvesant Square a milkman brushed past him with a bottle in each hand. Dutch stuck out his jaw and talked tough. “Give us a swig o milk will yez?” The milkman was a frail pinkfaced youngster. His blue eyes wilted. “Sure go round behind the wagon, there’s an open bottle under the seat. Dont let nobody see you drink it.” He drank it in deep gulps, sweet and soothing to his parched throat. Jez I didn’t need to talk rough like that. He waited until the boy came back. “Thankye buddy, that was mighty white.”

He walked into the chilly park and sat down on a bench. There was hoarfrost on the asphalt. He picked up a torn $500,000 Holdup. Bank Messenger Robbed in Wall Street Rush Hour.

In the busiest part of the noon hour two men held up Adolphus St. John, a bank messenger for the Guarantee Trust Company, and snatched from his hands a satchel containing a half a million dollars in bills ...

Dutch felt his heart pounding as he read the column. He was cold all over. He got to his feet and began thrashing his arms about.

Congo stumped through the turnstile at the end of the L line. Jimmy Herf followed him looking from one side to the other. Outside it was dark, a blizzard wind whistled about their ears. A single Ford sedan was waiting outside the station.

“How you like, Meester ’Erf?”

“Fine Congo. Is that water?”

“That Sheepshead Bay.”

They walked along the road, dodging an occasional bluesteel glint of a puddle. The arclights had a look of shrunken grapes swaying in the wind. To the right and left were flickering patches of houses in the distance. They stopped at a long building propped on piles over the water. Pool; Jimmy barely made out the letters on an unlighted window. The door opened as they reached it. “Hello Mike,” said Congo. “This is Meester ’Erf, a frien’ o mine.” The door closed behind them. Inside it was black as an oven. A calloused hand grabbed Jimmy’s hand in the dark.

“Glad to meet you,” said a voice.

“Say how did you find my hand?”

“Oh I kin see in the dark.” The voice laughed throatily.

By that time Congo had opened the inner door. Light streamed through picking out billiard tables, a long bar at the end, racks of cues. “This is Mike Cardinale,” said chiff of sizzling butter and garlic. “This is frien o mine.... Now maybe we eat,” shouted Congo. “She my wife,” said Cardinale proudly. “Very deaf.... Have to talk loud.” He turned and closed the door to the large hall carefully and bolted it. “No see lights from road,” he said. “In summer,” said Mrs. Cardinale, “sometime we give a hundred meals a day, or a hundred an fifty maybe.”

“Havent you got a little peekmeup?” said Congo. He let himself down with a grunt into a chair.

Cardinale set a fat fiasco of wine on the table and some glasses. They tasted it smacking their lips. “Bettern Dago Red, eh Meester ’Erf?”

“It sure is. Tastes like real Chianti.”

Mrs. Cardinale set six plates with a stained fork, knife, and spoon in each and then put a steaming tureen of soup in the middle of the table.

“Pronto pasta,” she shrieked in a guineahen voice. “Thisa Anetta,” said Cardinale as a pinkcheeked blackhaired girl with long lashes curving back from bright black eyes ran into the room followed by a heavily tanned young man in khaki overalls with curly sunbleached hair. They all sat down at once and began to eat the peppery thick vegetable chowder, leaning far over their plates.

When Congo had finished his soup he looked up. “Mike did you see lights?” Cardinale nodded. “Sure ting ... be here any time.” While they were eating a dish of fried eggs and garlic, frizzled veal cutlets with fried potatoes and broccoli, Herf began to hear in the distance the pop pop pop of a motorboat. Congo got up from the table with a motion to them to be quiet and looked out the window, cautiously lifting a corner of the shade. “That him,” he said as he

The young man got to his feet wiping his mouth on his forearm. “Got a nickel Congo,” he said doing a double shuffle with his sneakered feet. “Here go Johnny.” The girl followed him out into the dark outer room. In a moment a mechanical piano started tinkling out a waltz. Through the door Jimmy could see them dancing in and out of the oblong of light. The chugging of the motorboat drew nearer. Congo went out, then Cardinale and his wife, until Jimmy was left alone sipping a glass of wine among the debris of the dinner. He felt excited and puzzled and a little drunk. Already he began to construct the story in his mind. From the road came the grind of gears of a truck, then of another. The motorboat engine choked, backfired and stopped. There was the creak of a boat against the piles, a swash of waves and silence. The mechanical piano had stopped. Jimmy sat sipping his wine. He could smell the rankness of salt marshes seeping into the house. Under him there was a little lapping sound of the water against the piles. Another motorboat was beginning to sputter in the far distance.

“Got a nickel?” asked Congo breaking into the room suddenly. “Make music.... Very funny night tonight. Maybe you and Annette keep piano goin. I didnt see McGee about landin.... Maybe somebody come. Must be veree quick.” Jimmy got to his feet and started fishing in his pockets. By the piano he found Annette. “Wont you dance?” She nodded. The piano played Innocent Eyes. They danced distractedly. Outside were voices and footsteps. “Please,” she said all at once and they stopped dancing. The second motorboat had come very near; the motor coughed and rattled still. “Please stay here,” she said and slipped away from him.

Jimmy Herf walked up and down uneasily puffing on a cigarette. He was making up the story in his mind.... In a lonely abandoned dancehall on Sheepshead Bay ... lovely blooming Italian girl ... shrill whistle in the dark.... Yes We Have No Bananas. “Oh hell!” he kept muttering and ground his teeth and walked up and down.

Outside the tramp of steps broke into a scuffle, voices snarled. There was a splintering of wood and the crash of breaking bottles. Jimmy looked out through the window of the diningroom. He could see the shadows of men struggling and slugging on the boatlanding. He rushed into the kitchen, where he bumped into Congo sweaty and staggering into the house leaning on a heavy cane.

“Goddam ... dey break my leg,” he shouted.

“Good God.” Jimmy helped him groaning into the diningroom.

“Cost me feefty dollars to have it mended last time I busted it.”

“You mean your cork leg?”

“Sure what you tink?”

“Is it prohibition agents?”

“Prohibition agents nutten, goddam hijackers.... Go put a neeckel in the piano.” Beautiful Girl of My Dreams, the piano responded gayly.

When Jimmy got back to him, Congo was sitting in a chair nursing his stump with his two hands. On the table lay the cork and aluminum limb splintered and dented. “Regardez moi ça ... c’est foutu ... completement foutu.” As he spoke Cardinale came in. He had a deep gash over his eyes from which a trickle of blood ran down his cheek on his coat and shirt. His wife followed him rolling back her eyes; she had a basin and a sponge with which she kept making ineffectual dabs at his forehead. He pushed her away. “I crowned one of em good wid a piece o pipe. I think he fell in de water. God I hope he

“Jez it’s lucky they didn’t start shootin; one of em had a gun.”

“Scared to I guess.”

“Trucks are off.”

“Just one case got busted up.... God there was five of them.”

“Gee didnt he mix it up with em?” screamed Annette.

“Oh shut up,” growled Cardinale. He had dropped into a chair and his wife was sponging off his face. “Did you get a good look at the boat?” asked Congo.

“Too goddam dark,” said Johnny. “Fellers talked like they came from Joisey.... First ting I knowed one of em comes up to me and sez I’m a revenue officer an I pokes him one before he has time to pull a gun an overboard he goes. Jez they were yeller. That guy George on the boat near brained one of em wid an oar. Then they got back in their old teakettle an beat it.”

“But how they know how we make landin?” stuttered Congo his face purple.

“Some guy blabbed maybe,” said Cardinale. “If I find out who it is, by God I’ll ...” he made a popping noise with his lips.

“You see Meester ’Erf,” said Congo in his suave voice again, “it was all champagne for the holidays.... Very valuable cargo eh?” Annette, her cheeks very red sat still looking at Johnny with parted lips and toobright eyes. Herf found himself blushing as he looked at her.

He got to his feet. “Well I must be getting back to the big city. Thank’s for the feed and the melodrama, Congo.”

“You find station all right?”

“Sure.”

“Goodnight Meester ’Erf, maybe you buy case of champagne for Christmas, genuine Mumms.”

“Too darn broke Congo.”

“Then maybe you sell to your friends an I give you commission.”

“All right I’ll see what I can do.”

“I’ll phone you tomorrow to tell price.”

“That’s a fine idea. Good night.”

Joggling home in the empty train through empty Brooklyn suburbs Jimmy tried to think of the bootlegging story he’d write for the Sunday Magazine Section. The girl’s pink cheeks and toobright eyes kept intervening, blurring the orderly arrangement of his thoughts. He sank gradually into dreamier and dreamier reverie. Before the kid was born Ellie sometimes had toobright eyes like that. The time on the hill when she had suddenly wilted in his arms and been sick and he had left her among the munching, calmly staring cows on the grassy slope and gone to a shepherd’s hut and brought back milk in a wooden ladle, and slowly as the mountains hunched up with evening the color had come back into her cheeks and she had looked at him that way and said with a dry little laugh: It’s the little Herf inside me. God why cant I stop mooning over things that are past? And when the baby was coming and Ellie was in the American Hospital at Neuilly, himself wandering distractedly through the fair, going into the Flea Circus, riding on merrygorounds and the steam swing, buying toys, candy, taking chances on dolls in a crazy blur, stumbling back to the hospital with a big plaster pig under his arm. Funny these fits of refuge in the past. Suppose she had died; I thought she would. The past would have been complete all round, framed, worn round your neck like a cameo, set up in type, molded on plates for the Magazine Section, like the first of James Herf’s articles on The Bootlegging Ring. Burning slugs of thought kept dropping into place spelled out by a clanking linotype.

At midnight he was walking across Fourteenth. He didnt want to go home to bed although the rasping cold wind tore at his neck and chin with sharp ice claws. He walked west across Seventh and Eighth Avenues, found the name

“Hello Jimmy; come on in; we’re all lit up like churches.”

“I’ve just seen a fight between bootleggers and hijackers.”

“Where?”

“Down at Sheepshead Bay.”

“Here’s Jimmy Herf, he’s just been fighting prohibition agents,” shouted Roy to his wife. Alice had dark chestnut dollhair and an uptilted peaches and cream dollface. She ran up to Jimmy and kissed him on the chin. “Oh Jimmy do tell us all about it.... We’re so horribly bored.”

“Hello,” cried Jimmy; he had just made out Frances and Bob Hildebrand on the couch at the dim end of the room. They lifted their glasses to him. Jimmy was pushed into an armchair, had a glass of gin and ginger ale put in his hand. “Now what’s all this about a fight? You’d better tell us because were certainly not going to buy the Sunday Tribune to find out,” Bob Hildebrand said in a deep rumbling voice.

Jimmy took a long drink. “I went out with a man I know who’s shiek of all the French and Italian bootleggers. He’s a fine man. He’s got a cork leg. He set me up to a swell feed and real Italian wine out in a deserted poolroom on the shores of Sheepshead Bay....”

“By the way,” asked Roy, “where’s Helena.”

“Dont interrupt Roy,” said Alice. “This is good ... and besides you should never ask a man where his wife is.”

“Then there was a lot of flashing of signal lights and stuff and a motorboat loaded down with Mumm’s extra dry champagne for Park Avenue Christmases came in and the hijackers arrived on a speedboat.... It probably was a hydroplane it came so fast ...”

“My this is exciting,” cooed Alice. “... Roy why dont you take up bootlegging?”

“Worst fight I ever saw outside of the movies, six or seven on a side all slugging each other on a little narrow

“Was anybody hurt?”

“Everybody was.... I think two of the hijackers were drowned. At any rate they beat a retreat leaving us lapping up the spilled champagne.”

“But it must have been terrible,” cried the Hildebrands. “What did you do Jimmy?” asked Alice breathless.

“Oh I hopped around keeping out of harm’s way. I didnt know who was on which side and it was dark and wet and confusing everywhere.... I finally did drag my bootlegger friend out of the fray when he got his leg broken ... his wooden leg.”

Everybody let out a shout. Roy filled Jimmy’s glass up with gin again.

“Oh Jimmy,” cooed Alice, “you lead the most thrilling life.”

James Merivale was going over a freshly decoded cable, tapping the words with a pencil as he read them. Tasmanian Manganese Products instructs us to open credit.... The phone on his desk began to buzz.

“James this is your mother. Come right up; something terrible has happened.”

“But I dont know if I can get away....”

She had already cut off. Merivale felt himself turning pale. “Let me speak to Mr. Aspinwall please.... Mr. Aspinwall this is Merivale.... My mother’s been taken suddenly ill. I’m afraid it may be a stroke. I’d like to run up there for an hour. I’ll be back in time to get a cable off on that Tasmanian matter.”

“All right.... I’m very sorry Merivale.”

He grabbed his hat and coat, forgetting his muffler, and streaked out of the bank and along the street to the subway.

He burst into the apartment breathless, snapping his fingers

“My dear I thought you’d been taken ill.”

“It’s not that ... it’s about Maisie.”

“She hasnt met with an accid...?”

“Come in here,” interrupted Mrs. Merivale. In the parlor sat a little roundfaced woman in a round mink hat and a long mink coat. “My dear this girl says she’s Mrs. Jack Cunningham and she’s got a marriage certificate to prove it.”

“Good Heavens, is that true?”

The girl nodded in a melancholy way.

“And the invitations are out. Since his last wire Maisie’s been ordering her trousseau.”

The girl unfolded a large certificate ornamented with pansies and cupids and handed it to James.

“It might be forged.”

“It’s not forged,” said the girl sweetly.

“John C. Cunningham, 21 ... Jessie Lincoln, 18,” he read aloud.... “I’ll smash his face for that, the blackguard. That’s certainly his signature, I’ve seen it at the bank.... The blackguard.”

“Now James, don’t be hasty.”

“I thought it would be better this way than after the ceremony,” put in the girl in her little sugar voice. “I wouldnt have Jack commit bigamy for anything in the world.”

“Where’s Maisie?”

“The poor darling is prostrated in her room.”

Merivale’s face was crimson. The sweat itched under his collar. “Now dearest” Mrs. Merivale kept saying, “you must promise me not to do anything rash.”

“Yes Maisie’s reputation must be protected at all costs.”

“My dear I think the best thing to do is to get him up here and confront him with this ... with this ... lady.... Would you agree to that Mrs. Cunningham?”

“Oh dear.... Yes I suppose so.”

“Wait a minute,” shouted Merivale and strode down the

“All the years I’ve known him,” said the little lady in the round hat, “that has always been where he was.”

Outside the broad office windows the night is gray and foggy. Here and there a few lights make up dim horizontals and perpendiculars of asterisks. Phineas Blackhead sits at his desk tipping far back in the small leather armchair. In his hand protecting his fingers by a large silk handkerchief, he holds a glass of hot water and bicarbonate of soda. Densch bald and round as a billiardball sits in the deep armchair playing with his tortoiseshell spectacles. Everything is quiet except for an occasional rattling and snapping of the steampipes.