Chapter V: Part 5

“I’m still in favor of sitting tight and not going in until we have to,” Ed declared. “Once we do get in, we ought to be smart and pull out fast. This time we don’t want to feed a bunch of starving Europeans when the war is over.”

“Which would you rather see us do?” Bemrose asked bitterly. “Stay over there and keep order until they get on their feet, or maintain the biggest army in the world from now on? We’ll have to do one or the other.”

“Let the English take care of them. Or Russia. When we finish up, we ought to pull out,” Ed insisted.

Marge giggled nervously. “We aren’t even in the War, and they’re deciding what we should do when it’s over.”

Larry pointed to the lamb on his plate. “Like butter. And tell Bessie someday how you get the au gratin potatoes brown on top----”

“I don’t know what the hell we’re waiting for.” Bemrose’s voice was squeezed and harsh. “Waiting for the British to go under, I guess, so we’ll have to lick Hitler by ourselves.” He sipped his water, had trouble swallowing, and choked.

Lucy thumped his back, but he twisted away from her and bumped his knee against the table leg.

“Have you heard anything from the Army about your commission?” Marge asked him.

Lucy shook her head at Marge, and Arthur continued to cough into his napkin.

“Maybe the Army isn’t sure we’re going to get in it and isn’t handing out anything,” Ed remarked.

“They know what they can do with their commission,” Bemrose said. “I’m going to give them two more weeks. If nothing comes through, I’ll close the office and enlist.”

He will, too, Larry reflected. While a lot of fellows were figuring how they could stay out, Bemrose was going to give up a practice it had taken him almost twenty years to build. Without a second thought he would lock the office, close his house, and get into it. As a private, if they wouldn’t have him any other way. Sure, Larry knew plenty of men who were willing to go--his nephew, Bill, a farmer out in Iowa, Joe Clarke, a college friend who owned timber near Seattle, Eddie Goldbert, the kid who waited on Bessie at the vegetable store in the middle of the block, Larry’s own younger brother, Dave, a physician for the Central Chicle Company. A lot of kids just out of school couldn’t wait to get in, but he wondered how many older men past forty were willing to chuck their professions, men who could ask for safe jobs in Washington, who had access to the White House and held I.O.U.s from the party that was in, as Bemrose did. He might be an idealist, but he deserved credit for acting on his convictions.

How many in the country besides the President himself had the foresight to see what the defeat of Russia or of England might mean? If Bemrose and Janice hadn’t been around and kept pointing it out to him, Larry wondered whether he’d be hep yet, or like Ed, hoping for the best, counting on our luck to get by and let other countries do our fighting. Bemrose was a complex, mixed-up guy. But for all his queer kind of snobbishness and his tactics to indebt those who were powerful and entrenched, for all his drive to reach the top of his profession, to handle the biggest and toughest cases and win them, to be kingpin at home and to keep reminding Lucy of it, Bemrose had a deep-dyed honesty. He was willing to face up to the big questions and to act. He thought the country should be in there fighting this War, and was eager to fight. Personally. Larry might not agree with him, but he admired Bemrose’s guts.

He couldn’t help but respect a man who put what he believed ahead of what was easy and comfortable, and who was willing to trade in the working investment of a lifetime for a chance to stick by his convictions. Larry could forget his flare-ups of temper, and be damned glad Bemrose was his friend. This crowd here--Larry looked around the table--they could feel good about being related to him.

Lucy mixed small pieces of her lamb with her potatoes, as if by disguising them she would do away with the act of swallowing. She fingered her bread into doughy balls and scattered them on her butter plate. The scratched look came back to her eyes, as though someone had carelessly drawn a fingernail across the eyeball. “You tell him, Larry,” she urged. “Tell him there’s plenty of time after we get in--” Her voice shook quietly.

“You ought to think of Lucy,” Marge said. “It isn’t going to be easy for her. Not even if you wait. She’s still a bride----”

“She can get used to being an adult,” he said. “I’d hate to think of myself bringing the bride her breakfast in bed while England and Russia went under. How do you take your breakfast coffee? One sugar or two?”

“Oh, lay off,” Ed said.

Marge stopped to soothe Lucy’s shoulder on her way to the kitchen.

During dessert Larry complimented Marge extravagantly on her plum cake.

She puffed up with the flattery. “Do you really like it, Larry?” She giggled and touched his hand suggestively. “You don’t mind if I call you Larry? You’re like one of the family.”

“I never mind what a beautiful woman does,” Larry said, figuring there was no harm in flattering her. If Bemrose would only sweeten her with a compliment now and then-- He knew how, and could make it sound convincing. The difference between them was that Arthur had to _like_ someone to make an effort. It almost caused him physical pain to pretend with people he didn’t care for. Handing out flattery didn’t make Larry feel like a hypocrite. With Larry it rolled out, and when someone grabbed the hook, he felt nothing but pleasure.

“Have you heard the one about the two cloak-and-suiters who met on Sixth Avenue----”

Bemrose frowned, but Larry went on with the story. Marge laughed so hard that the tears came. Her giggle turned into a shrill cackle. Ed grinned behind the thick spectacles with high school shame at enjoying a dirty story. Lucy’s sad smile seemed to be fulfilling an obligation.

“You never told us he could--” Marge pointed at him and continued to laugh helplessly.

“Where did you pick up the accent?” Ed asked. “You sure have it down pat. Did you ever hear Lou Holtz tell them back in the old days at the Palace?”

But Bemrose didn’t smile.

“Sorry to put you through it again.” Larry turned toward him. “He’s heard me tell that story twenty or thirty times.”

Marge insisted on doing the dishes alone. After Arthur and Ed had pushed the dining table against the wall, they settled down in what became the living room. Larry expected Ed to produce his shoe wax and begin polishing the furniture, noticing him glance uneasily at the wooden leg of a chair to make sure it hadn’t been kicked. But Ed quietly fussed with his pipe. He reamed and refilled the bowl, cleaned the stem, replaced an empty match box with a fresh one, and settled back to a smoke.

“Pick up any liquor last week?” he asked Larry. A federal excise had been placed on liquor October first, and buyers had battled in the stores to lay in a tax-free supply. “I managed to get hold of a case of Bourbon.”

Larry shrugged. “I always let Bessie do the buying for the house. She said something about putting in a few bottles of Scotch. We don’t use much of the stuff----”

Lucy, who hadn’t spoken since Bemrose’s outburst at dinner, timidly said, “Arthur’s dealer on Madison Avenue saved us a case----”

Slouched in his chair and miles away, Bemrose suddenly sat up straight. “Why didn’t you tell me so before?”

“I didn’t think of it.”

“You might have thought of it,” he said. “It might have occurred to you that I don’t believe in beating the government out of taxes. If we have to levy taxes on liquor to pay for the War, and we consume liquor, then I want to pay the taxes on what we consume.”

Larry had heard him sound like that in court.

“Furthermore, I don’t want Mr. Valencia on Madison Avenue telling the neighborhood that Arthur H. Bemrose laid in enough Scotch to last him a year. It doesn’t sound good, not even if _Mrs._ Bemrose----”

Lucy raised her hand, then let her wrist drop on the arm of the chair. “It’s only a case, dear. It won’t last more than----”

His ears were stiff and red. “I suppose you told Mr. Valencia that we use a case a _week_.”

“Let her alone,” Ed interrupted. “Everyone was putting in stuff last week. The liquor stores were jammed. She only thought----”

“She doesn’t. That’s the trouble. I wish once in a while you’d _ask_ me----”

“You were in Washington.”

“You mean for a whole day I was in Washington.”

Larry closed his fingers sharply against his palm. “Arthur!”

Bemrose walked to the radio and looked at his watch as he fiddled with the dial. He skimmed through a quiz program where the master of ceremonies was saying, “Two ‘p’s’ and an ‘i.’ That’s _right_, Mrs. Anderson, that is the way you spell Mississippi, and just for that you get four clean, crisp dollar bills, count ’em, one-two-three-_four_.” Some swing music faded in and out. The dial picked up the last sentence of a shoe commercial promising that now _he_ can be taller than _she_ is, and finally the solid, academic voice of the _New York Times_ brought the nine o’clock news. Bemrose, visibly relieved, sat down to hear the headline summary.

Larry turned to Ed. “How about a hand of gin rummy?”

“Never played it,” Ed replied. “I’ll play you regular rummy.”

“You don’t have to be Einstein to learn. I can teach you in ten minutes.” He turned to Lucy and to Arthur. “Want to make it four-handed?”

But before they had a chance to answer, Ed cut in. “Arthur doesn’t play cards.”

Quizzically Larry looked at him. Why? Why didn’t he want to play cards with Ed instead of discussing the War? One of the reasons a man played cards was to while away hours that might seem interminable because he had to spend them with people he couldn’t talk to.

Bemrose flushed. “I haven’t seen tonight’s paper,” he said. “You two go ahead and play.” He went to the hall and brought back a copy of the _New York Post_. “I want to see if the Supreme Court decided anything in that anti-trust case----”

Larry motioned Lucy to watch the game, but Marge had finished the dishes and brought over a tapestry footstool cover for Lucy to work on with her. Ed clicked off the radio announcements of a sale on sunfast cotton pinafores, and except for a sudden intermittent giggle from Marge, the room settled down to an uneasy silence.

Larry saw that Bemrose was clutching the edge of the paper in his fist and sinking his teeth into the newsprint like a starved man reading a free-restaurant ad. His brow was pulled together, and his hair and mustache defied combing.

Larry expected the quiet to explode, but in a half hour nothing happened except that Ed had mastered gin rummy scoring, and Lucy and Marge had filled a corner of their tapestry cloth with even stitches of dark green wool. Larry began to draw an unrationed breath at last.

The phone rang and Marge jumped up to answer it at a table in the hall. Disappointed, she called from the doorway, “It’s for you, Larry.”

Maybe she thought nostalgically of when Lucy was single and had young men ringing her up. Larry moved toward the phone, sensing the instrument was dangerous and might explode some of the dynamite that was lying around the room. He hesitated before he lifted the receiver. Bessie’s happy, excited voice came through.

“Can you get away from there? Miss Baldwin, you know--Janice Baldwin, that friend of yours--is in town on her way to Hollywood. They’re making a picture of her book, Larry. She told me all about it. She sounds awfully nice.” Bessie chattered on. “She has to see you before she leaves town tomorrow. She wants you to call her right away.”

Larry jotted down the exchange and number as Bessie slowly repeated it. “I hope you can get away. Be sure to ask her who’s going to play the lead in the picture. I forgot.”

Icy sweat dotted Larry’s forehead. There was no use trying to fake a call to Janice with Bemrose sitting a few feet away. He walked over to him. “That was Bess,” he explained. “Jan Baldwin is back and wants to see me tonight. She’s on her way through to the Coast.”

Bemrose went on reading his paper.

“I’m going to give her a ring. Anything you’d like me to tell her?”

Bemrose shook his head. While Larry was phoning, he walked past him to Marge and Ed’s bedroom.

Five minutes later Larry found him slumped on the edge of Marge’s bed, the pink cotton bedspread wrinkled under him, his loose vest bulging.

“She sounded okay,” Larry said.

Bemrose nodded.

“I promised her I’d run over for a few minutes. Do you want me to ask her for you about Lend-Lease?”

Bemrose shook his head.

“You sure you don’t want me to give her a message?”

“What is there to say?”

“She’ll ask about you.” Larry rubbed his palm against the green metal footboard of Marge’s bed, figuring that maybe Bemrose should be seeing her instead.

“You know about me. Tell her,” Bemrose said.

“I’ll have to say goodbye to Lucy and the folks.” Larry hated to leave him in the dim bedroom, lighted only by a pink-fringed table lamp.

“Go ahead and say goodbye. I want to stay here.” Arthur’s mouth was set.

While Larry thanked Marge for the dinner, Ed brought his polishing wax and cloth into the hall, examining the fingermarks Larry had left on the telephone.

At the doorway Larry stood close to Lucy and searched her face. It was clean as a rain-emptied sky, scrubbed of emotion. He felt sorry, damned sorry, for her.

_Chapter 11_

The next day in a taxi on the way to Bemrose’s office, Larry warned Janice not to provoke any arguments.

She withdrew to her corner of the cab and tossed a burned-out match on the rubber mat, taking jerky puffs at her cigarette. The wide rouged mouth made a nice contrast with the gray Persian of her coat and with her Cossack-style fur turban. Janice’s long, straight hair, brushed close to her cheek, looked darker next to the gray fur.

“What’s worrying him?” she asked. “If he’s going to upset easy, maybe we’d better not----”

“Supposing Shore _is_ mixed up in this. That would be something for him to worry about.”

“I don’t see why. What if he is?” she asked perversely, twisting the end of her cigarette on the metal snuffer of an ash tray.

“Anything about Shore is Arthur’s business. I thought you agreed last night----”

“You didn’t say he was going to be difficult,” she objected. “What’s the matter with him?”

Larry began to regret that he had suggested the meeting. Aside from Shore’s possible involvement in a suspicious deal that Janice had turned up during her trip--he really did think Bemrose should know that Janice planned to incriminate Shore--Larry had figured it might do him good to see her once and get it out of his system.

“The same old thing is eating him. The War,” Larry said.

“I thought surely he’d be in uniform by now.” Janice fumbled in her pouch-shaped handbag through a snarl of cigarettes, compact, lipstick, gloves, notebooks, memos, letters and handkerchiefs, and brought out a white card with scribbling on it. “Here, you better hang on to my notes. I went back to the stateroom and jotted down what Richter said. This is the dope.”

Larry slipped the card into his wallet. “He’s been breaking his neck to get a commission, but no luck so far. He’s going to enlist soon if they won’t take him. He says that he’s fed up hanging around.”

“It’s ridiculous for him to think of enlisting. Anyone with his connections in Washington.”

“I don’t think he has any connections in the Army, but you’d imagine if Tom Newton spoke to someone in the War Department-- Hell, I thought this was what he was saving up for. All the favors he’s done Newton for years----”

“I know a few spots where the State Department could use him if the Army won’t take him,” Janice said. “They’re screaming for trained people at the Embassy in London.” She turned her foot and studied the platform sole of her shoe which made her taller by an inch or so.

“You probably could fix it for him,” Larry said.

“Maybe I could, but it’s like calling the boy scouts when the Empire State building’s on fire. He knows more people who can help him than I do. He ought to be able to produce action faster than I could.”

Larry kicked the small seat in front of him and it fell forward with a thump. “I don’t think he likes to ask. I’m willing to bet he hasn’t said a word to Newton.”

“He’d better stop fooling around. If he doesn’t watch out, they’ll _take_ him as a private.”

“Sure they’ll take him.”

“Maybe he’ll feel more patriotic, being a private.”

“You don’t know many fellows his age who are willing to give up what he’d be giving up,” Larry asked.

She looked at him incredulously, and he knew what she meant. The millions of poor devils over there. Not only willing but already sacrificing more than a job.

“All right, who?” Larry asked. “I mean here. Not in England, and not the Poles or the Czechs. I said someone who wasn’t forced to go but who _wanted_ to----”

“Don’t make him sound so damned noble.”

“All right, but you’re lucky just the same that he’s willing to see you.”

“Why?”

“You walked out. After you promised me to hang around,” Larry reminded her. “I wouldn’t have blamed him if he refused to see you.”

“I went away because he seemed to need time to think it over. I was only giving him a chance to find out what was in his own heart, what he really felt like doing about us,” Janice argued.

“What were you supposed to be doing while he was thinking it over?” Larry asked.

“Finding out whether I was in love with him.”

“Are you?”

“There was a man in Sweden. He thought so,” Janice said. “After a few weeks he decided I wasn’t even a _prospect_ for love. He seemed quite disturbed by it.” Her profile was quiet, and the smoothly arched nose remained rigid.

“That fellow in Sweden ought to get together with Arthur’s wife someday.”

After a minute Larry asked, “Why don’t you talk to him about taking a job in London? He needs to get away.”

“What about his wife? What would she do if he walked out? He can’t just walk out because the going is tough.”

“Jan, let me go to see him and tell him what’s on your mind about Shore,” Larry offered. “He’s been through hell. If you turn up and make cracks about his marriage----”

“What’s the matter with his marriage? Can’t his wife keep him from being upset?”

“He won’t let anyone help him,” Larry reminded her. “He hasn’t changed.”

“He lets you.”

“He talks himself out at me because I don’t see his friends, and I don’t run into his clients,” Larry said. “I’m outside of his life, and when he talks to me, it’s like telling it to this.” He thumped the leather seat between them.

The taxi pulled up a few feet west of Forty Wall Street. Larry shoved even change and a quarter tip into the driver’s hand. “I’m not asking for miracles,” he told her. “Only go easy on him. Remember, he’s not in good shape.”

“I don’t believe it.” Her grin had the glitter of winter sunshine. “He’ll never be in bad shape while he has you for a friend.”

It took Janice only a few minutes to tell Bemrose about Richter. She hurried her story as if she were anxious to have it over and get away. Larry could see that the meeting had turned out to be an ordeal for Janice, too. He could tell by the vertical blue vein which stood out on her forehead, emphatically dividing it.

Outwardly Bemrose was controlled, a little quiet and reserved toward her, but calm. Buttressed by his massive desk, he listened impersonally.

Janice described her meeting with Gerhardt Richter on the ship coming over. Richter was a Fifty-seventh Street art dealer with Berlin connections. Anyone with a name like that might have been suspect in wartime, and when Janice heard him brag to another passenger about the time he had dined with Goering, she drew the obvious conclusion. One afternoon when she was alone at the bar, Richter turned up. He was going to stop for a drink but saw her and changed his mind. Another time he rather pointedly left the sun deck when she sat down two steamer chairs away. The purser tried to introduce them the first day at sea when they were both in line waiting to change some bills, but Richter fumbled in his pocket, muttered something about forgetting his stateroom key, and hastily left the line. Her own stateroom was in the corridor that ran directly past the purser’s desk, and on the third day out, she emerged from the passageway just as Richter was handing the officer a wrapped cylinder about six inches in diameter and two feet long. Richter cautioned him that the bulky package must be locked up. The purser said it was too long to fit in the safe, but he might find room in a storage closet that had a safety catch. Richter explained that the package contained valuable art which had been entrusted to him by an important client. Then he saw Janice, who had been standing quietly at the corridor exit, and without leaving the package or finishing his conversation, he hurried back to his stateroom. The purser shrugged, and swung closed the door of the safe.

That same night after a movie in the recreation hall on B deck, Janice stopped to chat with Richter’s confidant, a sun-dried Italian business man of about fifty. He told her that on previous business trips to New York he had visited Richter’s Fifty-seventh Street gallery which specialized in old masters. The Italian himself didn’t care for old French or Dutch, but Richter had told him on this trip that he was bringing back some Brueghels. Now _there_ was a painter. The Italian rubbed the fake buttonhole of his lapel. No one had ever handled crowds like Brueghel. Especially Brueghel the Elder. Crowds, comedy, and color. Brueghel was _one_ old master the Italian wouldn’t mind collecting himself. He sighed. It was his misfortune not to have the price for art. If this filthy war ever ended-- But by that time the Germans or the rich Americans, like Richter’s client, would own everything.

Then Richter _had_ a client for whom he was buying the Brueghels? While Janice questioned the Italian, another screen of her brain showed the Brueghel painting of a Flemish feast day which she had seen and loved in Vienna. The Italian mentioned the name of Richter’s New York client, Signor Way. Way, Way. Janice tried to pin him down, but he admitted that his memory for foreign names was terrible. The name was something that meant a path or a way, he feebly recalled. Richter told him the client had made his money in Wall Street.

Could it be anyone named Signor Shore, Janice had asked.

It was not impossible, the Italian admitted, rubbing the false buttonhole.

Goering. Brueghel. Janice wondered what the Nazis would want of a humorous painter. Rubens and his undulating nudes perhaps, but not a satirist. She made the jumps quickly. Brueghel. Vienna. New York. Wall Street. Davis Shore. The Nazis selling art for cash, Richter the intermediary for an American collector who put up the money. It was a little raw to lift a Brueghel from the wall of a Vienna museum, but Goering or even Hitler himself might have confiscated the painting from a private collection, arranged with Richter to sell it and have the proceeds deposited in Mexico or the Argentine. It sounded fantastic. Self-consciously Janice looked at Bemrose. However, it was no more incredible than some other well-known Nazi deals, she said defensively. The name of Shore was the wildest kind of guess, of course, except that she had remembered Arthur telling her about a collection of Flemish paintings at Shore’s Long Island place. She might be dead wrong about Shore, Janice told him, but she didn’t think she was mistaken about Richter. He _had_ bragged about visiting Goering, and-- Well, one look at him with his bull neck and fishbowl glasses. Besides he had definitely tried to avoid her, and that in itself was suspicious.

She had thought of going straight to the F.B.I. and putting the whole thing in their laps--Janice reached for the card of notes she had given Larry in the taxi, and he handed them to her. Here was the evidence, she explained. She had jotted down exactly what was said by Richter, the purser, and the Italian whose name was Terelli. Naturally she had no idea how Richter had made out with the paintings at customs. He couldn’t possibly have smuggled in a cylinder two feet long. Maybe the F.B.I. picked him up at the pier. But if by any chance he got the pictures past customs unopened-- That’s why she had called Larry for advice. She wasn’t sure whether to go to the F.B.I. directly, although her instinct told her to go----

Larry kept an eye on Bemrose. “When she told me Shore might be mixed up in it, I thought she better see you first. I knew you wouldn’t want Shore’s name to come into it unless we were absolutely sure----”

Bemrose had been taking notes while Janice talked. He reread them and excused himself from the room. Janice, trying to decipher her pencil scrawls, put on green harlequin frame glasses to make out the writing on the dogeared card.

When Arthur returned about five minutes later, he looked relieved. “Nothing to it,” he reported. “Shore never heard of Richter. He buys through the Valentine Galleries.”

Janice’s lips divided her jaw like a track of red metal. “You didn’t phone him,” she objected. “You didn’t go and phone Shore without telling us.”

“Why not? That was a serious charge, and I felt I had to ask him. Maybe you don’t remember the Lusk committee after the last war, but I do,” he reminded her. “Did you ever hear of the wholesale witchhunts under our Attorney-General at that time, Mr. A. Mitchell Palmer?” He frowned. “They blackjacked three hundred men whose only crime was being foreigners. They broke in and searched homes without a warrant. They made false arrests.” Bemrose slammed his hand against the corner of his desk. “They did away with trials by imposing sentences _before_ trial. They took prisoners, and when they had them locked up, they denied them counsel and bail. They kept out reporters and wrote canned press releases. There was a nasty non-liberal stink to the whole business, and if we don’t watch out, we’ll have the same thing over again in this War. That’s what happens in wartime. Everyone becomes suspect. The thing rolls up like a snowball. If people start running to the F.B.I. about everyone who talks with a foreign accent-- Or even every German for that matter----”

“Richter isn’t every German,” Janice protested. She stuffed the notes into the fur pocket of her coat and got up. “Forget it. Forget the whole thing. I’ll handle it.”

Larry motioned her to wait. “Tell Arthur something about your trip,” he said. “Tell him what you think about the way the War is going.”

Janice sat down again and described conditions in England when she had left three weeks ago. “Larry says you might want to hook up with Lend-Lease. There are plenty of openings in London. If you want to know whom to see----”

“I have some Army feelers out. Thanks just the same.”

Larry felt a thickening of the tension. “Arthur would rather get a commission,” he explained to her.

“I suppose you’re down in Washington most of the time.”

“Not all the time. Once in a while.”

“I wondered.”

“Why?”

“No one in New York seems to see much of you.”

“He’s been busy fixing over his house,” Larry said.

“What have you done to it?” Janice asked. “I saw the Storeys, and they didn’t mention it being done over.”

“They haven’t been up. I haven’t gotten around to asking them.”

She must have noticed that Bemrose said I, not we. She must have realized that he hadn’t as yet accepted fully the idea of his marriage.

“They were wondering why you didn’t invite them to that reception you had last summer. They heard about it and naturally they wanted to meet your wife.”

“I arranged it at the last minute,” Bemrose apologized. “Larry can tell you----”

“It wasn’t a real party, just a few people,” Larry said.

“I bumped into Judd Harrison at the airline office the other day when I went to pick up my tickets,” Janice said.

“I haven’t seen him for months.”

“I know. He wondered if you were hibernating.”

Bemrose’s lip jerked sharply, and the old distracting tic started.

“Judd thought maybe you were afraid to let your wife be seen by eligible wolves. I told him you’d never have to worry about amateur competition.” Janice thrust her open cigarette case toward him, laughing with her eyes. “On me.”

She settled back, and for the first time since Larry walked in with her this morning, things seemed easy between them.

“When is your friend Churchill going to kick out Franco?” Bemrose taunted her.

“When he gets through using him.”

“Using him for what? To keep the German Army supplied?”

She slipped out of her coat and threw it over the rounded back of the armchair. Her upper topography showed to advantage in a plain black dress cut to a low V at the throat. “How do you know what Franco’s going to do for him? Maybe England plans to base troops in Spain and use them to clean up Italy.”

“You mean he’s going to take on _another_ war? He hasn’t his hands full enough with Hitler?” Bemrose asked.

“Maybe that’s his plan for defeating Hitler,” Janice said.

“Where did you pick up that idea? In London?” Bemrose sounded skeptical, his training in suspicion coming out.

“Why couldn’t I figure it out for myself? It makes good sense. I don’t have to get all my ideas from other people. Once in a while I figure things out for myself.”

“That’s what I thought when you went to Sweden without calling me,” Bemrose said. “I thought you had things figured out.”

“I did call you. You were out of town.” She swallowed hard.

“You have just an hour to make the airport, Jan,” Larry reminded her. “That isn’t long. We may get caught in traffic.”

“You know as well as I do that the British can’t afford to lose the Mediterranean,” Janice addressed Bemrose. “How are they going to get supplies through the Suez Canal if they lose their southern ports? Have you ever stopped to think that with Greece gone----”

“But it’s playing off one dictator against another, and they’re nasty boys to play with,” Bemrose protested.

“Why is he running down the British?” Janice appealed to Larry. “I thought he was pushing for us to get in and fight with them.”

“We can be allies and not swallow all their policies. I don’t care much for the way they’re handling the situation in India, do you?” Bemrose slammed shut the drawer of his desk, although it was only open a few inches.

“India is quite a subject. Let’s talk about it when I get back from Hollywood,” Janice offered. “I’d like to come up anyway and spend an evening with you. You can show me how you’ve done over your place, and you can introduce me to Mrs. Bemrose.”

She was buttoned into her coat before Larry could reach her. As she extended her hand to Bemrose, Larry remembered what a firm, compact implement it could be.

“I’ll see you dressed in eagles on the next trip,” she predicted.

Bemrose followed them through the reception room to the corridor, but Janice didn’t turn back. She grabbed Larry’s sleeve and raced him along the slippery stone floor to the elevator.

* * * * *

The first cab, a Yellow, turned them down, but a Checker offered to drive them to the airport if they would skip the Queensborough traffic and use the twenty-five-cent Triboro bridge instead. Larry steadied a cigarette between his lips, trying to keep the end dry before offering it to Janice. She refused, flipping open the lid of her compact and looking uncertainly into the mirror.

“First you bring up Shore. Then all that about no one seeing him. I told you it doesn’t take much for him to go off--” Larry said.

“Phoning behind our backs, walking in two minutes later with the answer. That may be the way he wins cases, but thank God I don’t have to sit on the jury and listen to him.” She vengefully stroked the straight, long mouth with purple lipstick.

“He’ll feel better the minute the Army takes him,” Larry said. “Everything’s unsettled with him. He doesn’t know what to do about his practice, whether to close the house, or where to put Lucy. He has no idea where he’ll be sent if they give him a commission----”

“I can’t see him again. It takes too much out of me. For all he cares, I could have stayed in Stockholm. It’s hard on me, Larry, very hard----”

Larry reached for her hand, and the small joints went limp in his fist. “He was covering up, too. It was just as hard for him to see you.”

“I suppose he was right about Shore,” she said contritely.

“Probably.”

“I didn’t expect him to apologize for getting married, but I thought he’d, well, I thought he’d be glad to see me. And he didn’t have to blame me for walking out. I hung around for weeks waiting----”

“That stuff about Shore threw him.” Larry stroked the knuckles of her hand.

“But before I even told him about Shore, when we first walked in--‘Good to see you, my good girl,’ she mimicked. You’d think I was there begging him to keep me out of jail.”

“I bet he didn’t close his eyes last night. Not after he heard you were in town. When he saw you, he was thrown. He forgot to ask you about the tax matter that came up when you were away,” Larry reminded her. “That’s how much you could have stayed in Stockholm.”

“That’s right. You said last night he had trouble with my taxes.” The black eyes widened. “He didn’t write me, did he?”

“I don’t know. Anyway his mind didn’t seem to be on taxes this morning.” Larry grinned, and he squeezed her narrow shoulders.

“He remembered to cover up for Shore, his mind was clicking where Shore was concerned,” she said bitterly. “I’m not going to drop it. I’m going to turn Richter in.”

“Think it over, Jan,” Larry cautioned. “You’ll have enough on your mind out in Hollywood without turning up spies.”

“And let Richter go on working for the Nazis?”

“I’ll see an F.B.I. man I know here in town. I’ll ask him if they have a record on Richter,” Larry promised.

They swept across the bridge, and traveling high above the East River, looked down at the stadium on Randall’s Island, ahead to Welfare with its city of public hospitals set solidly in the moving water life of tugboats, lighters, and barges. Larry always felt as though he owned it from up here--the River and the streams of cars and drivers. Everything except the bridge. The bridge, for all the delicacy of its steelwork, had its own indestructible character. It owned him. He imagined that even if he were Commissioner Robert Moses and had helped to build the span, its flawless functioning would awe him. Larry wasn’t an atheist, but he hadn’t been inside a house of worship in years. This perfect steel image aroused whatever religious sparks lay dormant. He felt more reverent about it than about an old church like St. Mark’s of the Bouwerie around the corner from where he lived, the place where Peter Stuyvesant was buried.

When he remembered about Janice, she was crying. The tears calmly washed her unrouged cheeks.

“For a smart girl, you’re not being specially smart,” he said, offering her his handkerchief.

The tears stopped, and she looked at him.

“Do you remember what I told you? You don’t run away,” Larry said. “You ran away once, and you’re miserable because you did, but now you’re doing it again, acting as if you’ve signed up for the track team the rest of your life.”

A sob broke loose, and Larry figured from its unwilling harshness that it was a symbol of weakness which had not been shaken from her in years.

“Maybe he’s happy,” she said humbly. “If he is, I haven’t any right----”

“For someone who’s happy, he is easily thrown. I wouldn’t say that he acted happy when you walked in this morning.”

“It’s too late,” Janice said. “He’s all set. He has a wife, a home. What would he want of me now?”

Larry shrugged. “It’s late for us to get into the War, too, but we’re going to get into it just the same.”

“I know one of my troubles,” Janice admitted. “I keep doing second what I really want to do first.”

“Which do you do first, the job?” Larry asked.

Her hair moved solemnly across her cheek. “When I’m like this, it isn’t worth doing. When I’ve just seen him, even the War doesn’t matter. All I want to do is stick around. That’s how I feel. The trouble is I’m trained to work, not to feel.”

“Just once, why don’t you turn things around and let your feelings tell you what to do?” Larry suggested. “It makes more sense than running off carbon copies of a mistake. That man in Sweden knew you weren’t feeling. There will be other men, and they’ll know it when they’re with you. You can’t go on living logically, figuring everything out with your bean, even if it’s a good bean.”

“I’ll get hurt. If I let myself go. I can’t risk it, Larry. I’d go to pieces.” The tears started again.

Larry picked up his handkerchief from where she had left it on the seat and blotted her eyes.

“Why not look at it this way, and then maybe you’ll stop resenting him,” Larry advised. “With Bemrose the War really _is_ the thing. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t miss you while you were gone, or that he wasn’t tied in a knot when he heard last night that you were back in this country. I was with him and saw his reaction. He damned near went to pieces. Once Arthur is set in a job, maybe he’ll be able to handle himself better. He’ll know more what to do about you, about his marriage, and whatever else is bothering him. The thing that is knocking him off base is not having it settled and not being in the War.”

“The War comes first, and I’m second, or third, or tenth,” Janice said.

“Right now the War comes first,” Larry agreed. He saw that they were curving off the parkway into a drive that circled the entrance to the airport. “I’d let him know how it is with you. He’s going to settle this Army thing any day, and while he’s changing his life around, you ought to let him know. He’d want to know. He was probably looking for some signs from you this morning, but you had all the flags down,” Larry reminded her.

She reached into her pocket for three baggage checks.

Larry took them. “Now’s the time to talk to him, Jan. Don’t put it off too long. Things move fast during a war.”

“As soon as I get back from the Coast,” she promised. “Before some editor decides to send me to China.”

Larry helped her gently through the low door of the taxi. “I think he always figured the job came ahead of him. With you, too. He’ll be relieved to find out that some of you wants to hang around.”

Later when Larry saw her thin, small frame disappear up the ramp into the monstrous silver hulk, he felt better than he had in months about Janice. She might turn out to be more than an affair for Bemrose, if his marriage continued to go sour and he needed an affair. The Janice he had seen this morning had a little the look and sound of the real thing.

_Chapter 12_

The last of January, a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, Larry walked into a Rogers Peet clothing store on lower Broadway to pin gold leaves on Bemrose’s uniform. Arthur sounded like a kid over the phone, kicked up about getting a Major’s commission with orders to report for duty in forty-eight hours. Larry had heard somewhere that it was traditional for wives to pin on the insignia for the first time, and wondered why Arthur hadn’t invited Lucy to do it. He was flattered to be selected instead of Lucy for the ritual, and happy to hear Bemrose’s voice over the phone. It sounded as if he had dropped twenty years since the last time Larry had spoken to him.

As Larry entered the clothing store downtown, Bemrose was turning slowly in front of a triple mirror while a salesman admired the fit of his blouse.

Bemrose pointed to some fullness under the left sleeve. He saw Larry, grinned at him and straightened, looking two inches taller. The loose flabby look he had in tweeds gave way to a tidy compactness, and there was less lawyer’s stoop to his shoulders already, his frame broader and squared off.

“Pretty snappy, huh?” the salesman asked. “The Major just walked right into it. He was lucky to find it on such short notice.”

“Looks swell,” Larry said, not quite as familiar as the salesman with this new Bemrose.

“Don’t you think they ought to take it in for me here?” Arthur pointed to the left side.

“You always liked a loose coat.”

“But a blouse. A blouse should fit.”

He acted as if he had been wearing them all his life.

“Are you going to report for duty in it?” Larry asked.

“I called up Bill Turner. He’s a colonel at Governor’s Island. Bill asked me how the telegram was addressed, and when I said to Major Bemrose, he said, ‘You’re in! No if about it. Report in your uniform.’ I’m in a helluva hurry to get this one altered so I can wear it to Maxwell Field tomorrow night.”

“How did you find out about the telegram?” Larry asked, when the salesman had left them to look for a fitter.

“I was at a committee meeting at the University Club, and Miss Thompson got me on the phone. She said, ‘Congratulations, Major Bemrose! I have a telegram for you from Washington.’ I damn near dropped the phone.”

“What did you do? Call Lucy?”

“I grabbed a cab, and rushed down to the office to read the telegram myself. After I called you, I phoned Lucy, Marge, Ed, the Storeys, and Davis Shore. Then I got Newton and Harrison in Washington. I must have gone a little nuts, I guess, and called about twenty people.”

“Are you going to be able to wind up everything in time?” Larry sat down and rotated his hat on his kneecap.

“Miss Thompson will store the furniture and files. When I have a chance, I’ll get the building to do something about the lease.” Bemrose acted as if he were going to accept a Supreme Court appointment, not like someone who was about to turn the key on a six figure income.

“And the house?”

“Lucy will close the place and go to live with Marge and Ed. Unless I get orders near home, like Mitchell Field.”

“Then the Air Force took you?”

“What do you think?” Bemrose leaned down and shook Larry by the shoulders. “Do you think I’m going to try court-martial cases in the Judge Advocate’s office? _It’s the Air Force._ What do you think?”

“It’s great, boy.” What Larry meant was that it was great for Bemrose, great for a guy who always had to be on the ground floor of the big thing. The Air Force was going to draw the cream of the services. The Air Force had been invented for a fellow like Arthur H. Bemrose.

The salesman pointed out the fullness below the armhole to the fitter who got busy with chalk and pins. They promised to rush the job through and give it to Bemrose first thing in the morning.

“But Mr. Frank made a special trip down to pin on my leaves. I can’t ask him to come back again.”

“Then you want to purchase some insignia, Major?” The salesman moistened his lips in anticipation of military sales he would roll up if it were a long war.

“Sell me the works!” Bemrose said. “Only you may have to tell me where they go.” It was the first hint that he hadn’t graduated from West Point.

With stubby, fat fingers, the salesman affixed the U. S. insignia above the notch in both lapels, and pinned the finely wrought wings with central propeller below the notch.

“Now if you’ll just put these here.” The salesman handed Larry two bright gilt leaves and pointed to the cross stitching on the shoulder strap of the blouse.

Larry’s fingers felt stiff.

“Right in the center,” the salesman directed.

“That’s a little too near the collar, isn’t it?” Bemrose asked. “I thought I read in the _Officers’ Guide_ that the rank insignia goes on the shoulder one-half inch from the seam of the sleeve.”

“A fellow from the Quartermaster’s was around, and he told us--” the salesman protested in a weak voice.

Larry inserted the pin at the place Bemrose indicated. He matched the second leaf to the position of the first and flipped the safety catch. “All the luck in the world!” He put out his hand.

“Now the missus’ll know where to put them for you,” the salesman said cheerfully.

Outdoors Larry looked sideways at the uniforms in the window and pictured himself in an ill-fitting G.I. version. Fear pinched and shriveled his heart. When he thought of waking-working-sleeping without the warmth of Bessie to give the days meaning, an icy fright cut off his breath. When he considered the return to a little boy’s world of doing-as-you-are-told and no Bessie around to talk things over with at night, his bone marrow solidified.

Larry recalled a summer in the Catskills when he was seven, and a smart-aleck kid had pushed him off a diving board into the lake. With the sudden impact, his eardrum had burst. Larry had mulled over the incident gratefully since Pearl Harbor. No Army doctor would pass him with a defect like that. It was a helluva thing to be happy about, a helluva thing when your best friend had been beating down doors to get in, but when he thought of Bessie, it seemed all right to put a reassuring finger in his left eardrum. If the world was going to blow up anyway, he wanted to spend the little time left with Bessie. Call him a heel. If there weren’t going to be Bess or Larry for much longer, he wanted to live the little time left by twos.

Bemrose, he knew, had to put his weight somewhere, make time count, get in on the big thing, perform like a big shot. Be one. And there was nothing phoney about his compulsion to get in. He might dread going home from the office at night and think his marriage was a mistake. He might be sick of his practice and angry at himself for passing up Janice, but he wouldn’t use the War as a cheap excuse to walk out. Some fellows might look for bargain ways to be a hero, and exit on a string of situations that had them tied in knots, but the description didn’t fit Bemrose.

Some other fellows might join up _from the wrong side of the heart_, but not Arthur H. The War counted with him, counted more than his personal life. His decision was clear-headed and unselfish. No ax-grinder, Bemrose. Axis-grinder. That was bad. Larry wrinkled his nose. Awful.

The bar was crowded; so they sat at a small, unsteady table and ordered double Martinis served in highball glasses. Larry raised his glass. “Now Hitler can start peeing in his pants!”

“How about you coming in?” Bemrose asked. “Maybe when I learn the ropes, I can find out about lining up a commission for you.”

So it was going to be a nice friendly war, like a club, with enough friends around to have a poker game on Saturday nights. A war where a fellow who had the rank pulled in his friends and made them second lieutenants. Not for Larry, not even to be a first lieutenant. He had finished the boy-meets-boy stuff at Columbia. He’d have to let the Bemroses fight the Supermen.

“I’ll take my chances on the draft board.” Larry’s finger automatically went to the left ear.

“If they’re going to get you anyway, you might as well be paid for it,” Arthur said.

“I’ll talk it over with Bessie. I think she’d rather have me take my chances on the draft board. I’d better stick around and take care of the women.”

“I wish you’d look up Lucy once in a while,” Bemrose said. “It’s going to be rough on her----”

Larry described a wide arc with his free hand. “I’ll take her out and get her drunk. How about another?”

The waiter saw them and brought refills.

“Janice had something when she said you’d be wearing eagles,” Larry said confidently.

“Not so fast. That isn’t how it works. They handed me this rank for being a specialist, but they won’t keep on promoting me. Not unless I’m in combat.” Arthur fastidiously wiped the rim of his glass with a paper napkin.

The eagles were already pinned on, Larry knew. What Bemrose meant was that it would take him a while, say about a month, to figure out how a man his age could wangle combat duty.

“What the hell are you guys celebrating?” The voice belonged to Tom Flannagan whom Larry hadn’t seen since law school.

Larry smiled up affectionately at Tom. “He just made Major.”

“No kiddin’!” Tom flung his blue serge bulk into an empty chair and pushed a forelock out of his eye. “What branch?”

“What do you think?” Larry asked, maneuvering his hand like an airplane.

“I’ll be glad if they take me as an ensign,” Tom said. “I had my physical and ought to be hearing.” He gulped a Bourbon and reached for the chaser. “Well, give ’em hell! Give those Heinies--” Tom turned to Larry. “The Air Force knows how to pick ’em.” He slapped the table. “Had more on the ball than any guy at law school. Give ’em hell, Major.”

Larry warmed toward Flannagan, as he had years ago at Columbia--soft-talking, blue-eyed Flannagan, all dumb cluck enthusiasm. It felt good to celebrate with a guy like Tom. He ordered another round of drinks.

“Where can I get in touch with you--in case this Navy deal falls through?” Flannagan asked Arthur with a sudden shrewd naïveté. “I may want to ask you to fix me up with a commission.”

“Haven’t you a bunch of kids?” Larry asked.

Flannagan held up his hand and spread his thumb and fingers. “Five reasons for going to war where it’s peaceful.”

“Larry will always know how to reach me,” Bemrose said. “How is your wife fixed if you go in?”

“She’ll have to get a job,” Tom said.

“You don’t want to leave her strapped.” Bemrose muffled his voice. “I’ll be glad to help you out, Tom.”

“You’re a white man.” Flannagan leaned a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t owe me a thing, Bemrose.” There was something wet in the corner of Flannagan’s eye. Larry watched carefully, but it didn’t drop, and decided it must have been the way the light was shining.

“Wait until I tell my wife-- She doesn’t want me to go,” Flannagan said. “Wait until I tell her how some other guys feel about the War.”