“Oh you darlings,” she cried and threw her arms round them both at once. “Hester said you wouldnt come but I just knew you would.... Come wight in and take off your things, we’re beginning with a few classic wythms.” They followed her through a long candlelit incensesmelling room full of men and women in dangly costumes.
“But my dear you didn’t tell us it was going to be a costume party.”
“Oh yes cant you see evewything’s Gweek, absolutely Gweek.... Here’s Hester.... Here they are darling.... Hester you know Wuth ... and this is Elaine Oglethorpe.”
“I call myself Mrs. Herf now, Cassie.”
“Oh I beg your pardon, it’s so hard to keep twack.... They’re just in time.... Hester’s going to dance an owiental dance called Wythms from the Awabian Nights.... Oh it’s too beautiful.”
When Ellen came out of the bedroom where she had left herwraps a tall figure in Egyptian headdress with crooked rusty eyebrows accosted her. “Allow me to salute Helena Herf, distinguished editress ofManners, the journal that brings the Ritz to the humblest fireside ... isnt that true?”
“Jojo you’re a horrible tease.... I’m awfully glad to see you.”
“Let’s go and sit in a corner and talk, oh only woman I have ever loved...”
“Yes do let’s ... I dont like it here much.”
“And my dear, have you heard about Tony Hunter’s being straightened out by a psychoanalyst and now he’s all sublimated and has gone on the vaudeville stage with a woman named California Jones.”
“You’d better watch out Jojo.”
They sat down on a couch in a recess between the dormer windows. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a girl dancing in green silk veils. The phonograph was playing the Cesar Frank symphony.
“We mustnt miss Cassie’s daunce. The poor girl would be dreadfully offended.”
“Jojo tell me about yourself, how have you been?”
He shook his head and made a broad gesture with his draped arm. “Ah let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings.”
“Oh Jojo I’m sick of this sort of thing.... It’s all so silly and dowdy.... I wish I hadnt let them make me take my hat off.”
“That was so that I should look upon the forbidden forests of your hair.”
“Oh Jojo do be sensible.”
“How’s your husband, Elaine or rathah Helenah?”
“Oh he’s all right.”
“You dont sound terribly enthusiastic.”
“Martin’s fine though. He’s got black hair and brown eyes and his cheeks are getting to be pink. Really he’s awfully cute.”
“My deah, spare me this exhibition of maternal bliss.... You’ll be telling me next you walked in a baby parade.”
She laughed. “Jojo it’s lots of fun to see you again.”
“I havent finished my catechism yet deah.... I saw you in the oval diningroom the other day with a very distinguished looking man with sharp features and gray hair.”
“That must have been George Baldwin. Why you knew him in the old days.”
“Of course of course. How he has changed. A much more interesting looking man than he used to be I must say.... A very strange place for the wife of a bolshevik pacifist and I. W. W. agitator to be seen taking lunch, I must say.”
“Jimps isnt exactly that. I kind of wish he were....” She wrinkled up her nose. “I’m a little fed up too with all that sort of thing.”
“I suspected it my dear.” Cassie was flitting selfconsciously by.
“Oh do come and help me.... Jojo’s teasing me terribly.”
“Well I’ll twy to sit down just for a second, I’m going to dance next.... Mr. Oglethorpe’s going to wead his twanslation of the songs of Bilitis for me to dance to.”
Ellen looked from one to the other; Oglethorpe crooked his eyebrows and nodded.
Then Ellen sat alone for a long while looking at the dancing and the chittering crowded room through a dim haze of boredom.
The record on the phonograph was Turkish. Hester Voorhees, a skinny woman with a mop of hennaed hair cut short at the level of her ears, came out holding a pot of drawling incense out in front of her preceded by two young men who unrolled a carpet as she came. She wore silk bloomers and a clinking metal girdle and brassières. Everybody was clapping and saying, “How wonderful, how marvelous,” when from another room came three tearing shrieks of a woman. Everybody jumped to his feet. A stout man in a derby hat appeared in the doorway. “All right little goils, right through into the back room. Men stay here.”
“Who are you anyway?”
“Never mind who I am, you do as I say.” The man’s face was red as a beet under the derby hat.
“It’s a detective.” “It’s outrageous. Let him show his badge.”
“It’s a holdup.”
“It’s a raid.”
The room had filled suddenly with detectives. They stood in front of the windows. A man in a checked cap with a face knobbed like a squash stood in front of the fireplace. They were pushing the women roughly into the back room. The men were herded in a little group near the door; detectives were taking their names. Ellen still sat on the couch. “... complaint phoned to headquarters,” she heard somebody say. Then she noticed that there was a phone on the little table beside the couch where she sat. She picked it up and whispered softly for a number.
“Hello is this the district attorney’s office?... I want to speak to Mr. Baldwin please.... George.... It’s lucky I knew where you were. Is the district attorney there? That’s fine ... no you tell him about it. There has been a horrible mistake. I’m at Hester Voorhees’; you know she has a dancing studio. She was presenting some dances to some friends and through some mistake the police are raiding the place ...”
The man in the derby was standing over her. “All right phoning wont do no good.... Go ’long in the other room.”
“I’ve got the district attorney’s office on the wire. You speak to him.... Hello is this Mr. Winthrop?... Yes O ... How do you do? Will you please speak to this man?” She handed the telephone to the detective and walked out into the center of the room. My I wish I hadnt taken my hat off, she was thinking.
From the other room came a sound of sobbing and Hester Voorhees’ stagy voice shrieking, “It’s a horrible mistake.... I wont be insulted like this.”
The detective put down the telephone. He came over to Ellen. “I want to apologize miss.... We acted oninsufficient information. I’ll withdraw my men immediately.”
“You’d better apologize to Mrs. Voorhees.... It’s her studio.”
“Well ladies and gents,” the detective began in a loud cheerful voice, “we’ve made a little mistake and we’re very sorry.... Accidents will happen ...”
Ellen slipped into the side room to get her hat and coat. She stood some time before the mirror powdering her nose. When she went out into the studio again everybody was talking at once. Men and women stood round with sheets and bathrobes draped over their scanty dancingclothes. The detectives had melted away as suddenly as they came. Oglethorpe was talking in loud impassioned tones in the middle of a group of young men.
“The scoundrels to attack women,” he was shouting, red in the face, waving his headdress in one hand. “Fortunately I was able to control myself or I might have committed an act that I should have regretted to my dying day.... It was only with the greatest selfcontrol...”
Ellen managed to slip out, ran down the stairs and out into drizzly streets. She hailed a taxi and went home. When she had got her things off she called up George Baldwin at his house. “Hello George, I’m terribly sorry I had to trouble you and Mr. Winthrop. Well if you hadnt happened to say at lunch you’d be there all the evening they probably would be just piling us out of the black maria at the Jefferson Market Court.... Of course it was funny. I’ll tell you about it sometime, but I’m so sick of all that stuff.... Oh just everything like that æsthetic dancing and literature and radicalism and psychoanalysis.... Just an overdose I guess.... Yes I guess that’s it George.... I guess I’m growing up.”
The night was one great chunk of black grinding cold. The smell of the presses still in his nose, the chirrup oftypewriters still in his ears, Jimmy Herf stood in City Hall Square with his hands in his pockets watching ragged men with caps and earsflaps pulled down over faces and necks the color of raw steak shovel snow. Old and young their faces were the same color, their clothes were the same color. A razor wind cut his ears and made his forehead ache between the eyes.
“Hello Herf, think you’ll take the job?” said a milkfaced young man who came up to him breezily and pointed to the pile of snow. “Why not, Dan. I dont know why it wouldnt be better than spending all your life rooting into other people’s affairs until you’re nothing but a goddam traveling dictograph.”
“It’d be a fine job in summer all right.... Taking the West Side?”
“I’m going to walk up.... I’ve got the heebyjeebies tonight.”
“Jez man you’ll freeze to death.”
“I dont care if I do.... You get so you dont have any private life, you’re just an automatic writing machine.”
“Well I wish I could get rid of a little of my private life.... Well goodnight. I hope you find some private life Jimmy.”
Laughing, Jimmy Herf turned his back on the snow-shovelers and started walking up Broadway, leaning into the wind with his chin buried in his coatcollar. At Houston Street he looked at his watch. Five o’clock. Gosh he was late today. Wouldnt be a place in the world where he could get a drink. He whimpered to himself at the thought of the icy blocks he still had to walk before he could get to his room. Now and then he stopped to pat some life into his numb ears. At last he got back to his room, lit the gasstove and hung over it tingling. His room was a small square bleak room on the south side of Washington Square. Its only furnishings were a bed, a chair, a table piled with books, and the gasstove. When he had begun to be a little less cold he reached under the bed for a basketcovered bottle of rum. He put some water to heat in a tin cup on the gasstoveand began drinking hot rum and water. Inside him all sorts of unnamed agonies were breaking loose. He felt like the man in the fairy story with an iron band round his heart. The iron band was breaking.
He had finished the rum. Occasionally the room would start going round him solemnly and methodically. Suddenly he said aloud: “I’ve got to talk to her ... I’ve got to talk to her.” He shoved his hat down on his head and pulled on his coat. Outside the cold was balmy. Six milkwagons in a row passed jingling.
On West Twelfth two black cats were chasing each other. Everywhere was full of their crazy yowling. He felt that something would snap in his head, that he himself would scuttle off suddenly down the frozen street eerily caterwauling.
He stood shivering in the dark passage, ringing the bell marked Herf again and again. Then he knocked as loud as he could. Ellen came to the door in a green wrapper. “What’s the matter Jimps? Havent you got a key?” Her face was soft with sleep; there was a happy cozy suave smell of sleep about her. He talked through clenched teeth breathlessly.
“Ellie I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Are you lit, Jimps?”
“Well I know what I’m saying.”
“I’m terribly sleepy.”
He followed her into her bedroom. She kicked off her slippers and got back into bed, sat up looking at him with sleepweighted eyes.
“Dont talk too loud on account of Martin.”
“Ellie I dont know why it’s always so difficult for me to speak out about anything.... I always have to get drunk to speak out.... Look here do you like me any more?”
“You know I’m awfully fond of you and always shall be.”
“I mean love, you know what I mean, whatever it is ...” he broke in harshly.
“I guess I dont love anybody for long unless they’re dead....I’m a terrible sort of person. It’s no use talking about it.”
“I knew it. You knew I knew it. O God things are pretty rotten for me Ellie.”
She sat with her knees hunched up and her hands clasped round them looking at him with wide eyes. “Are you really so crazy about me Jimps?”
“Look here lets get a divorce and be done with it.”
“Dont be in such a hurry, Jimps.... And there’s Martin. What about him?”
“I can scrape up enough money for him occasionally, poor little kid.”
“I make more than you do, Jimps.... You shouldnt do that yet.”
“I know. I know. Dont I know it?”
They sat looking at each other without speaking. Their eyes burned from looking at each other. Suddenly Jimmy wanted terribly to be asleep, not to remember anything, to let his head sink into blackness, as into his mother’s lap when he was a kid.
“Well I’m going home.” He gave a little dry laugh. “We didn’t think it’d all go pop like this, did we?”
“Goodnight Jimps,” she whined in the middle of a yawn. “But things dont end.... If only I weren’ so terribly sleepy.... Will you put out the light?”
He groped his way in the dark to the door. Outside the arctic morning was growing gray with dawn. He hurried back to his room. He wanted to get into bed and be asleep before it was light.
A long low room with long tables down the middle piled with silk and crêpe fabrics, brown, salmonpink, emeraldgreen. A smell of snipped thread and dress materials. All down the tables bowed heads auburn, blond, black, brown of girls sewing. Errandboys pushing rolling stands of hungdresses up and down the aisles. A bell rings and the room breaks out with noise and talk shrill as a birdhouse.
Anna gets up and stretches out her arms. “My I’ve got a head,” she says to the girl next her.
“Up last night?”
She nods.
“Ought to quit it dearie, it’ll spoil your looks. A girl cant burn the candle at both ends like a feller can.” The other girl is thin and blond and has a crooked nose. She puts her arm round Anna’s waist. “My I wish I could put on a little of your weight.”
“I wish you could,” says Anna. “Dont matter what I eat it turns to fat.”
“Still you aint too fat.... You’re juss plump so’s they like to squeeze ye. You try wearing boyishform like I told an you’ll look fine.”
“My boyfriend says he likes a girl to have shape.”
On the stairs they push their way through a group of girls listening to a little girl with red hair who talks fast, opening her mouth wide and rolling her eyes. “... She lived just on the next block at 2230 Cameron Avenue an she’d been to the Hippodrome with some girlfriends and when they got home it was late an they let her go home alone, up Cameron Avenue, see? An the next morning when her folks began looking for her they found her behind a Spearmint sign in a back lot.”
“Was she dead?”
“Sure she was.... A negro had done somethin terrible to her and then he’d strangled her.... I felt terrible. I used to go to school with her. An there aint a girl on Cameron Avenue been out after dark they’re so scared.”
“Sure I saw all about it in the paper last night. Imagine livin right on the next block.”
“Did you see me touch that hump back?” cried Rosie ashe settled down beside her in the taxi. “In the lobby of the theater?” He pulled at the trousers that were tight over his knees. “That’s goin to give us luck Jake. I never seen a hump back to fail.... if you touch him on the hump ... Ou it makes me sick how fast these taxis go.” They were thrown forward by the taxi’s sudden stop. “My God we almost ran over a boy.” Jake Silverman patted her knee. “Poor ikle kid, was it all worked up?” As they drove up to the hotel she shivered and buried her face in her coatcollar. When they went to the desk to get the key, the clerk said to Silverman, “There’s a gentleman waiting to see you sir.” A thickset man came up to him taking a cigar out of his mouth. “Will you step this way a minute please Mr. Silverman.” Rosie thought she was going to faint. She stood perfectly still, frozen, with her cheeks deep in the fur collar of her coat.
They sat in two deep armchairs and whispered with their heads together. Step by step, she got nearer, listening. “Warrant ... Department of Justice ... using the mails to defraud ...” She couldnt hear what Jake said in between. He kept nodding his head as if agreeing. Then suddenly he spoke out smoothly, smiling.
“Well I’ve heard your side Mr. Rogers.... Here’s mine. If you arrest me now I shall be ruined and a great many people who have put their money in this enterprise will be ruined.... In a week I can liquidate the whole concern with a profit.... Mr. Rogers I am a man who has been deeply wronged through foolishness in misplacing confidence in others.”
“I cant help that.... My duty is to execute the warrant.... I’m afraid I’ll have to search your room.... You see we have several little items ...” The man flicked the ash off his cigar and began to read in a monotonous voice. “Jacob Silverman, alias Edward Faversham, Simeon J. Arbuthnot, Jack Hinkley, J. J. Gold.... Oh we’ve got a pretty little list.... We’ve done some very pretty work on your case, if I do say it what shouldnt.”
They got to their feet. The man with the cigar jerked his head at a lean man in a cap who sat reading a paper on the opposite side of the lobby.
Silverman walked over to the desk. “I’m called away on business,” he said to the clerk. “Will you please have my bill prepared? Mrs. Silverman will keep the room for a few days.”
Rosie couldnt speak. She followed the three men into the elevator. “Sorry to have to do this maam,” said the lean detective pulling at the visor of his cap. Silverman opened the room door for them and closed it carefully behind him. “Thank you for your consideration, gentlemen.... My wife thanks you.” Rosie sat in a straight chair in the corner of the room. She was biting her tongue hard, harder to try to keep her lips from twitching.
“We realize Mr. Silverman that this is not quite the ordinary criminal case.”
“Wont you have a drink gentlemen?”
They shook their heads. The thickset man was lighting a fresh cigar.
“Allright Mike,” he said to the lean man. “Go through the drawers and closet.”
“Is that regular?”
“If this was regular we’d have the handcuffs on you and be running the lady here as an accessory.”
Rosie sat with her icy hands clasped between her knees swaying her body from side to side. Her eyes were closed. While the detectives were rummaging in the closet, Silverman took the opportunity to put his hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes. “The minute the goddam dicks take me out phone Schatz and tell him everything. Get hold of him if you have to wake up everybody in New York.” He spoke low and fast, his lips barely moving.
Almost immediately he was gone, followed by the two detectives with a satchel full of letters. His kiss was still wet on her lips. She looked dazedly round the empty deathly quiet room. She noticed some writing on the lavenderblotter on the desk. It was his handwriting, very scrawly: Hock everything and beat it; you are a good kid. Tears began running down her cheeks. She sat a long while with her head dropped on the desk kissing the penciled words on the blotter.