XXX
McCall was there, looking comfortably negligent in a light Norfolk suit and gray cap, a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth. It waswarm—springlike for a person coming fromCorinth—but close and sticky. It was hard to breathe, because of the soot, and bits of it kept getting in his eye.
McCall recognized Robert and whooped for joy. He swore picturesque oaths and called Hamilton vile names, and Robert retorted in kind.
“Sacré bleu! Nom de cochin!” McCall rattled off. How was the tin rib? How was his state of health? How long was he staying? Where was he staying? He asked questions without waiting for answers and Robert answered them by asking others.
“Oh, the eye is all right,” said McCall. “Perfect! Only Doc says I must cut down on the number of eye openers. Levin couldn’t make the train because he’s away on a case, but he wants you to come over to his house Friday evening. You’re not married yet?”
“Nope,” said Robert. “Do I look—”
“Sure you look crazy. Let me take another look at you.” He held him away at arm’s length. “But not crazy enough.”
McCall offered to share his room, but Robert had already reserved one at a hotel by wire. They reached the hotel by taxi, after a short ride between tall, soot-stained buildings, on streets thick and noisy with traffic. At almost every corner the taxi was stopped by the cross flow of hurrying men and women and vehicles. Then the shrill blast of the traffic patrolman’s whistle and they poured forward again with the current. There were glimpses of a huge steel skeleton reaching to the sky and sounds of the riveters. At the end of what appeared to be an alley loomed a massive graybuilding—the post office. Elevated trains thundered overhead. Surface cars rattled and clanged on the streets. The sidewalks swarmed with hurrying people. It was arace—a contest to get somewhere first. You had to shout to beheard and then after shouting a few times you forgot what you had started to say. The taxi kept stopping suddenly and as suddenly shooting ahead.
“Well, what do you think of Chicago?” asked McCall, when they were in their room and the bell boy had been dismissed with a tip.
“Rotten!” said Hamilton. “I’ve got a cinder in my eye.”
“It’s a sign of progress,” said McCall. “Cinders. Smoke. Tall chimneys. Railroads. Skyscrapers. Noise. Confusion. A few murders for variety and lots of vice. I’ll show you the stockyards. Then you will think Clark street is like a bed of violets. What’s this thing? ‘Do You Know That?’—or I’ll take you to our black and tan belt some night.”
Robert realized that, in throwing his coat on the bed, one of the Trick Track Tribe cards had fallen out.
“Oh, never mind. It’s not important.”
But McCall had already picked it up and was reading it.
“Oh, here’s a lulu!” he exclaimed. “Here’s richness. Here’s charity. That’s one of the Trick Track Tribe’s little cardlets, if I mistake not. Where’d you get it? Let me have it, I’m working on an expose of the Tribe. It’s a nice mess. Say, you ought to be able to help me. The headquarters is in Corinth.”
Robert turned red and pretended to search for something in his coat pocket.
“Why—er—a—you know—” Robert coughed. “Well, you know the Tribe is a sort of secret organization.”
McCall cocked his head on one side and scowled impressively.
“Aha,” he said. “Sherlock Holmes comes all the way from Corinth to tell me that it’s a secret organization.”
“Well, a—”
McCall laughed.
“Don’t look so damn embarrassed. I suppose you don’t know any more about it than I do about the current city hall scandal. Just as you have the Tribe, we have our weekly public scandal. Political factions calling each other crooks, and all of ’em right. If a person kids me about our mayor, I laugh with him. And if I were from Corinth and somebodytalked about the Trick Track Tribe I’d do the same thing. I suppose it’s only the lower element, the lawless whites responsible for your lynchings, that belongs.”
Robert made a vague noise in his throat, something halfway between a cough and a gurgle, which McCall interpreted as an affirmative reply.
“The Tribe has an office here, I’ve got the address. They’re just planning their campaign now. When it breaks, we’ll be ready to break, too. If you don’t mind, I’ll take this card to Father Callahan. I want him to answer these questions. Of course, you know and I know that they’re stupid lies, but I want the proof. I want to be able to nail the lies. I’d like to confront one of the head Tribesmen with the answers.”
“Do you belong to the Knights of Columbus?” asked Robert.
“No, but I know these charges are crazy. It’s simply a fraternal organization for Catholics.”
“Well, you can’t tell. Some of these statements are pretty positive. Maybe it is in politics. Gee, I’m black.”
Robert stripped off his collar and shirt and began washing. McCall’s protests against the accusations, various questions about Robert’s health and bits of information came gurgling through the soap and water. He talked about Levin. The operation had made him one of the most talked of physicians in Chicago and his profession. And he hadn’t charged a cent. Before he started he insisted that it be done gratis, but that in case he failed he should not be liable in any way. Levin was very busy. He was on the staff of one of the big hospitals and had hardly an evening to himself. He would run up if he had chance, but insisted that Robert come to his home for dinner Friday evening. Friday night was a sort of holiday among the Jews, something like Sunday among Christians, and it was considered especially praiseworthy to feed a guest on this night. Levin’s father still kept up the old custom.
“But won’t it be sortof—funny there?” asked Robert, wiping his face. McCall had taken a position on the bed. “Ah, the old bunk fatigue, I see.”
“Yes, the habit sticks. I usually lie down on the PressClub lounges at noon. It’s such a change from lying in your own bed.”
“Won’t the Levins have queer prayers and ceremonies?”
“Why, no. The old man is orthodox. That is, he isn’t really orthodox, but he still keeps Friday night. You may find him wearing a little skull cap and they may have a candelabra burning on thetable—I go there once in a while.”
“Well,” Robert hesitated, “Levin’s all right, but what sort of people will I meet there? You know the Jew you usuallymeet—little fellows with long beards and hats pulled over their eyes, smelling of garlic and talking with their hands.”
He gave a ludicrous imitation.
“Jews you meet?” repeated McCall. “Where do you meet ’em like that? Maybe they did that fifty years ago. You probably saw Jews like that on the vaudeville stage.”
Robert considered and grinned.
“Well, maybe. It’s probably a little exaggerated, but they do wear beards and—”
“Some do and some don’t. My dad used to wear chin whiskers, but he didn’t look like the monkey-faced Irishmen on the stage with inverted clay pipes between their teeth. Doesn’t your father wear a beard? Oh, you’ll find a peddler or two still clinging to the whiskers.”
“Well, but most of ’em are rather loud. I know even in New York, at the cafés they seemed conspicuous.”
“By gravy, I’m going to suspect you of being a member of the Trick Track Tribe,” laughed McCall. He seized a pillow and amused himself by throwing it up and down. “Well, the first time I went to Levin’s, I also had a feeling that I’d meet only peddlers, pawnbrokers and clothing salesmen. But that idea is like the idea that a man visiting an Irishman’s house will find pigs in the parlor and meet only hod-carriers, politicians and policemen. You wouldn’t associate with a poor white, would you?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then why should Levin associate with a peddler? I haven’t anything against a peddler especially, only I mean that Jews have social classes just as anybody else has. Jacob Schiff or Louis Brandeis wouldn’t associate with—”
“Oh, shut up!” laughed Robert, throwing a towel at him. “For Levin’s sake I’ll eat a pound of garlic. And, by the way, I’d like to have you show me the answers that Father Callahan gives to those questions; I’d just like to know.”
Robert had decided to write Griffith regarding certain phases of the Tribe’s campaign which were not clear to him, and if the Knights of Columbus were really not in politics, he would inquire about that phase of the campaign also.
“Have you started your big novel yet?” asked Robert.
McCall paused in the midst of a series of abdominal exercises, which consisted of alternately raising and lowering his legs.
“No,” he said. “What gave you that idea?”
“Why you said that—”
“That’s no reason at all. I simply want to write it. I probably never will. Every newspaper man is going to write a novel or a play. Once in a while somebody does. But he’s usually a rotten newspaper man. Sometimes a cub is lucky enough to get fired. That saves his literary career. If he weren’t fired he would degenerate into a good newspaper man or even an editor. Young Fitzgerald couldn’t hold a job, so he had plenty of time to write books. And didn’t Upton Sinclair try to get a job on a newspaper once? No, of course, you didn’t know. That was a rhetorical question. If you had been able to answer, I’d say it was just a plain, garden variety question.”
“Well, if you haven’t time enough to write, why don’t you resign?” inquired Robert. “Here, get your feet off my coat.”
“All right, it hasn’t spoiled the polish much. But the reason why I don’t resign is because if I did that, I wouldhaveto write a novel. I don’t like to be forced to an alternative voluntarily. This way I can simply say I haven’t the time.”
“Well, your words may mean something to you, but they mean very, very little to me.”
“As it should be,” said McCall. “Where are we going to eat? I’ll show you a goodplace—when I speak it is rather to express myself than to convey thought. Speech arose originally from the need to express certain unique conceptions, ideas or fancies. In fact, it was a disadvantagethat anybody else understood one, because that destroyed the uniqueness of one’s idea. Just a minute. I wish to work out the thought. You don’t have to listen if you don’t wish to. If you have ever heard two persons arguing you have undoubtedly noted that neither ever convinces the other, that in fact they never listen to each other’s arguments. That supports my contention. Each person simply talks to express his own ideas, to get rid of them, to work them out of his system. Thecatharsis, or something, of Plato.”
“Now I notice how much I’ve missed you,” said Robert. “I’ve absolutely forgotten how to talk nonsense.”
“An art acquired only by arduous practice and by the few,” said McCall. “Any damn fool can talk sense.”
He rose leisurely, ran his fingers through his hair and threw his cap on his head. “I say, young fellow,” he suddenly remarked. “Didn’t you say you were going to do something as soon as you got back home, some little thing, some trifle, like getting married?”
Robert acknowledged it.
“Broken romance? Or just plain broke?” asked McCall.
“Just plain broke,” laughed Robert. “I’ll tell you about it at lunch.”
They ate at the Press Club, a few blocks away from the hotel, a comfortable place on the top of an office building, across the street from the City Hall.
“Once in a while you see a newspaper man here,” said McCall gravely. “Usually you find them sleeping on the couches. But most of these men are professionalmen—lawyers, prominent officials, bankers, and so forth. That old gentleman with the long hair is a poet. Does cowboy verse. That thin, gray-haired fellow is a literary critic. Runs a little magazine. What do you want? The ham and eggs are very good.”
McCall described some of the parties that had been held at the Press Club in the old days and particularly of the night they had entertained the Milwaukee Press Club. The visitors had been met at the “L” station by a reception committee in weird costumes and paraded to the club in brewerytrucks, headed by a band. The program had been drawn up with a view to shocking, if possible, the visitors, and beer, whiskey and sandwiches had circulated freely. At the conclusion womenfrom—well, it didn’t matter where they werefrom—had danced the dance of the seven veils, without the veils. Some of the trustees had been shocked and the program committee had been reprimanded and suspended.
“And now what were you going to tell me?”
Robert explained in a general way how the Hamilton interests had met with reverses, and allowed McCall to infer that he had come to Chicago on business connected with the corporation. It saved explanations.
“Now, of course, I know that Margaret doesn’t want me because of my money, but I haven’t had the courage to tell her. Of course, she ought to know. What would you do?”
“I’d tell her, Ham. I’d tell her openly. Of course, you’re sure you love her. That’s the main thing.”
“I’m going to marry her,” replied Robert. In his own mind the answer suddenly flared like a light. “I am going to marry her.” It was loyalty to her, loyalty to his promise, loyalty to an idea, and perhaps to an old love. Was it anything else? He suddenly remembered something.
“I’ve got something of yours,” he said, reaching into his breast pocket. “I was going to send it to you, but I kept forgetting or putting it off.” He pulled out an envelope, on the back of which was scribbled a sonnet. McCall took it and examined it in surprise.
“Why, that’s your envelope. Your name on it. Oh, now I see. Where’d you get hold of that?”
He laughed.
“You didn’t need to bother about it. I copied it. Yes, I remember I borrowed the envelope from you one day at the hospital, when I was short of paper. ‘The aged pilgrim hastens on the road.’ That’s the sonnet. I read it to Meadows, she thought it was rather pretty and I gave it to her.”
Robert felt himself choking.
“You—you—didn’t write ittoher. It wasn’t anything more than, than—”
“What are you staring at me for? You mean was I in love with her?”
“Yes! Yes!”
McCall laughed.
“Why now, where’d you get that idea?”
“In New York, in that café, you recited it. You said something about a girl you had met in France and whom you’d never see again.”
“I was drinking, Ham, wasn’t I? And I’ve met several girls in France, have I not? And why should I say I’d never see Miss Meadows again? You know she lives in Chicago. Especially if I loved her. You act as though you were jealous. I simply said that because I was a trifle drunk and because I thought it would give the poem a better setting.”
Now it all seemed perfectly absurd. Of course, McCall would see Dorothy again. They both lived in Chicago.And—well, it was simply inexplainable. For the first time he realized how much he had been thinking of Dorothy. How often some incident associated with their brief acquaintance had flashed through his mind, only to be suppressed. On the way to Chicago, he had kept thinking of her, had seen her image in the clouds and in the trees. Everywhere Dorothy. Dorothy. Dorothy. But then—
“I suppose you don’t know—” McCall began when the clerk at the desk began calling his name. The colored waiter hurried up.
“I guess it’s de Times wants you,” he said.
McCall excused himself and hurried to the phone. Robert stared at the plate.
“Anything else, sir?” asked the waiter.
McCall rushed back.
“Off on a big story!” he cried. “May be gone a few days. I’ll call you when I come back. Take your time about finishing. It’s charged to my account.”
He signed his name to the slip.
“Well, so long, Ham. Sorry, but business is business.”
He shook hands and hurried out of the room.