"Bliss was it in that Freud to be alive,But to be Jung was very Heaven!"
"Bliss was it in that Freud to be alive,But to be Jung was very Heaven!"
"Bliss was it in that Freud to be alive,
But to be Jung was very Heaven!"
"Dr. Folsom tells me, Mr. Tompkins," Potter continued in a sort of heel-clicking, stiff-bow-from-the-waist manner which was meant, I suppose, to reveal his Viennese training, "that you have reason to believe that your business partners are plotting against you, conspiring to throw you in the asylum? This sense of special persecution, sir, have you had it long? Perhaps when you were a child, you hated your father? It began then, not so? And, later at school, perhaps—"
I got out of bed and advanced on the psychiatrist.
"Dr. Potter," I informed him, "you are here for only one reason, to certify that I am sane in the legal sense. For this service I am paying the Sanctuary a fee of five thousand dollars. To which, of course, I will add a personal fee of one thousand dollars to you, Dr. Potter, assuming that you can sign a certificate of sanity with a clear scientific conscience."
Potter subsided in the arm-chair and cackled gleefully. "Boy, oh boy!" he exclaimed, "for one thousand smackers I'd certify that Hitler is the Messiah. Damn Folsom for sending me in blind! He didn't tell me it was one of those."
"Besides," I added, "I have a really serious loss of memory, which is worth your attention, though I haven't time to go into it now. So get ahead with your tests, please, and let's clean up this one."
"Cross your knees, either leg!" he ordered and gave me a few brisk taps just below the knee-cap with the edge of his flattened palm. My knee-jerks were all that could be desired.
"Good!" remarked Potter. "That's still the only physical test for sanity that's worth a damn. Hell! They have all sorts of gadgets but they all amount to the same thing: Is your nervous system functioning normally or is it not? What seems to be the trouble, Mr. Tompkins? Partners closing in on your assets or has your wife made book with your lawyer?"
"My only trouble," I informed him, "is that I'm damned if I can remember anything that happened before April second of this year. That's been getting me close to trouble and I'd like to clear it up. I remember all sorts of things before then, but it's about another man."
"Hm!" Potter suddenly looked formidably medical. "That's what I call schizophrenia with a pretzel twist. We could keep you here and give you sedatives and baths and exercises and analysis, but it would be just the same if we left you alone. You've had some kind of shock causing a temporary occlusion of personality, and the best thing you can do is wait. Sooner or later there will be another shock and everything will come straight again. What do you think you remember from the blank period?"
"Damned if I know," I replied. "I think I sank a battleship or killed a President, or something."
Potter laughed. "That's just a variation of the good old Napoleon complex—which is an inferiority complex gone wild. You ought to take up a hobby, like expert book-binding or watch-repairing. That would give you a sense of power and you wouldn't feel the need for sinking ships. Ten to one, you can't even shoot a decent game of golf."
"I'm pretty good at poker," I defended myself.
"That's not power, Mr. Tompkins, that's just shrewdness. You have a profound sense of physical inadequacy. The record says you're married. Any children?"
I shook my head.
"That's it," Potter declared. "We had a case like that in Jung's clinic—a baker named Hermann Schultz, who insisted that he was the Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa. We were baffled for a while, since Schultz was married and had three children. Then we learned that his wife was the girl-friend of one of the Habsburg Archdukes and that poor Schultz was not the father of little Franz, Irma and Ernst. We solved it for him with his wife's help. She agreed to have another child. Of course, it was the Archduke's but Schultz never guessed. He ceased to believe that he was the Barbarossa and became a highly successful baker. What you ought to do, Mr. Tompkins, is to father a child and then you will forget all this nonsense about battleships and Presidents. Not so?"
I grinned at him knowingly. "There's much in what you say, Dr. Potter," I complimented him, "but what the hell can I do about it bottled up here in the Sanctuary? Just give me a clean mental bill of health—in case any of my partners try to pull a fast one—and I'll go home to my wife and give earnest consideration to your suggestion. After all, if that fails, I can always take up wood-carving. Or try another girl."
"There are one or two around here—" he began, then checked himself. "Well," he continued, "I can't say that I see anything really abnormal about you. Sitting here, talking with you, I would have noticed any psychopathic tendencies. We psychiatrists develop a sort of sixth sense for the abnormal. I couldn't prove it scientifically, but I am sure as Adam ate little green apples that there's nothing wrong with you that can't be cured by a drink, a kiss and a baby."
There was a brisk knock on the door and the nurse appeared.
"Sorry to disturb you, doctor," she said, "but there's a man named Vail downstairs with a writ of habeas corpus for Mr. Tompkins."
Potter looked at me accusingly, as though Jung had never for-seen this kind of complication.
"Merry Vail," I agreed. "Yes, he's my lawyer. I told him to come here but never dreamed—just send him up, nurse. In the meanwhile, doctor, if you could get that certificate ready—"
Potter again gave the effect of heel-clicking, and withdrew.
Three minutes later Merriwether Vail and Arthurjean Briggs came bursting into my room.
"Glory be, you're still safe, old man," my lawyer announced. "When Miss Briggs phoned me your curious message, we put two and two together."
"And made it twenty-two?" I suggested.
"No, we made it four. We weren't going to stand for any nonsense from the F.B.I. and I owe them something for pulling me in for questioning. And when you spoke of fifteen thousand dollars and a doctor, I had a brain-storm. So I flew up here and swore out a writ from the Federal Court. I got a deputy to help me serve it—cost me all of twenty bucks—and here we are."
I turned to Arthurjean. "Honeychile," I asked, "did you by any chance, think to bring me some of the office brandy? I've been moving so fast for the last three days that I'm out of training."
My secretary turned her back, gave a sort of dip-dive-and-wiggle and produced from God knows where a half pint bottle of what proved to be excellent brandy, well-warmed above room temperature. I heartlessly refused to notice Vail's pathetic signs of desperate thirst and passed the flask back to Arthurjean. "Thanks," I told her, "that just about saved my life."
"Mr. Vail was all set that the doctors had hijacked you and were holding you for ransom," she remarked, taking a short but deep drink herself. "Seems like there's been a mistake."
"Uh-uh!" I indicated strong disagreement. "I came here under my own power and am about to leave under the same and in my right mind."
"Whoever said you weren't?" Vail demanded. "God! we'll sue them for libel."
I shook my head. "It was the Secret Service and only God can sue them," I said. "They took a notion to have me thrown in the Washington asylum because they were sore at me on general principles. So I decided to beat them to the draw and produce a certificate of sanity."
Vail looked at me with amusement. "Worst thing you could possibly do, old man," he informed me. "If you start going around showing people proof that you're not crazy, first thing you know you'll be in Matteawan. Now if you want to prove to anybody that you're really in your right mind, you'll try to do the right thing by this little girl here."
In some bewilderment I looked at Arthurjean, whom nobody could accurately accuse of being little.
"What are you driving at, Merry?" I asked.
"I refer to my client, Miss Briggs," he replied with dignity. "We have strong written evidence of breach of promise."
"Sugar-puss?" I turned to my secretary, "Don't tell me that you've shown my letters to this legal lout?"
She nodded. "Sorry, angel, but a girl's got to take care of herself in this world. You remember where you wrote me, 'Be but mine and I shall buy you a porterhouse steak with mushrooms'."
"It was onions, darling," I insisted. "Onions aren't breach of promise. Damn it! they're cause for divorce."
"It was mushrooms," she repeated. "That was the same letter in which you promised me hearts of lettuce, and ice-cream and—" she broke down, sobbing with laughter.
I pulled her face down to me and gave her a kiss. "You big slob," I told her, "all you think about, with democracy at the crossroads, is food. Take that shyster downstairs and wait for me. I'll be down as soon as I collect my certificate. Even if I can't wear it on my coat like a campaign-ribbon it will be nice to hang in my den alongside my Harvard B.A. diploma and the moose I didn't kill—it was the Indian guide but they don't count—in New Brunswick."
Arthurjean laughed. "You sure do make your help sing for their supper, angel," she told me. "And just because I call you angel don't you start worrying about that nice wife of yours. From now on, I'll make like a sister."
So I smacked her on the porte-cochere and ordered her out of the room until I got dressed. As the door closed behind her and Vail, I rang for the nurse and asked to have my bags packed.
"Goodness, Mr. Tompkins," she exclaimed. "Don't you like it here? We understood that you wanted a rest-cure."
She stood just a fraction of an inch too close to me and I was aware of pretty brown hair under her starched nurse's cap, a whiff of something that smelled far more expensive than antiseptic, and a pleasingly rounded effect underneath the prim blouse of her uniform. So I put my arm around her, gave her a friendly kiss and said, "Name, please, and when do you get off duty?"
"Emily Post," she answered, "so help me, but don't let that stop you, and nine o'clock tonight."
"Good," I told her. "Will you join us for dinner and a drink at—what's the best hotel here now we've a war on?"
"The Governor Baldwin," she replied.
"Meet us at the Baldwin, then, as soon as you can get away. I'd like you to meet my friends socially and—"
She nodded brightly and hurried from the room, with a distinctly unmedical motion of her hips.
A moment later Dr. Folsom came lounging in, his strangler's hands dangling at his side.
"Sorry you feel you must leave, Mr. Tompkins," he told me. "Here's that certificate. It will stand up in any court east of the Mississippi if you have to use it. That will be five thousand, as agreed."
I sat down at the little writing-desk and laboriously made out three checks: one for five thousand to the order of the Sanctuary, one for one thousand to the order of Pendergast Potter, and another for one thousand to the order of—
"Any initials, Dr. Folsom?" I asked.
"A. J.," he replied, "but just make it to the Sanctuary."
"A. J. Folsom," I wrote on the final check and endorsed it with "W. S. Tompkins," as well as I could with my still bandaged fingers.
"What—" Folsom was startled. "Gosh! You're a white man, Mr. Tompkins. And Potter will be glad to have this, too. He is—"
"Think nothing of it!" I announced grandly. "The market's been working for me all week, and this won't even cost you income-tax; I'll put it down as a gift."
Folsom's face was positively transfigured with gratitude and a devotion that would not have been out of place in a stained glass window.
"By George!" he insisted. "Youarea white man. I'd be proud to go before the Supreme Court of the United States and testify—" He stopped abruptly. "Are these checks good?" he inquired.
"Oh, come, doctor, who's loony now?" I demanded. "Why would I expose myself to a bad check charge just to keep out of a private asylum with my lawyer fully equipped with a writ?"
"That's so, that's so!" he beamed reassured. "Well, sir, it's been fine having you here and any time—day or night—if you want refuge from the stormy blast, just come out to the Sanctuary. We'll always be honored to put you up and give you the best we have for as long as you care to stay. Believe me, Mr. Tompkins, it may seem odd but you'll never find warmer hospitality or a more sincere welcome than right here in this little old asylum."
The grill in the Governor Baldwin was not crowded and we had no trouble getting a pleasant table in the corner, while four colored men blew into metal objects, hit things and delivered themselves of various rhythmic noises. From time to time they paused, in order to allow the perspiring couples who jiggled and writhed on the dancefloor time to cool off. While waiting for Emily Post to appear, Arthurjean was very subordinate, calling me "Mr. Tompkins" and acting, quite as the boss's secretary should act when out for dinner with the boss. Merry Vail was in high spirits and insisted on having the deputy who had helped serve the writ join us for a drink. But the deputy was a pallid young man with—he told us—a heart-murmur that kept him out of the armed forces and he never touched anything strong.
So we shed him ahead of the time when the nurse from "The Sanctuary" showed up in a slick dancing-dress that seemed painted on her torso and a make-up that was a tribute to the skill of the advertisers of cosmetics. Vail took one look at her and his face lit up like Broadway.
"Spring is in the air," he remarked to the world at large. "Will you dance, Miss Post?"
She flashed a smile that promised some and hinted at more, and said, "You bet!"
I watched them as they took the dance floor and the music took them. I turned back to my secretary.
"What gives, angel?" I asked.
She beamed at me. "Winnie," she observed, "you'reit. Perhaps the most famous man in Wall Street, in a quiet way. You caught the market just right. Mr. Wasson and Mr. Cone pulled out just right, before the big operators decided they must be patriotic and support quotations before you made too much money. We've cleaned up nearly three million dollars and Mr. Cone's so happy about it he's got him a brand-new girl-friend."
"How about Wasson?" I asked. "Has success gone to his head?"
"Oh, he's just the same as ever. He didn't bat an eyelash except to say that you were one wise so-and-so to figure the break."
"And how about yourself, Arthurjean?"
She grinned at me. "I guess a girl can tell when she's washed up with a swell guy. But you're not Winnie—not the Winnie I knew—and there aren't going to be any fun and games from now on, I guess."
She took a hearty pull at her highball.
"So we're friends," she announced. "You've got a swell wife waiting for you. If you ever need me, I'll be around. If you don't, that's okay too. But Gawd, honeychile, we did have us some fun—Winnie and I. He had a theory that monogamy was a kind of hardwood that grows in the tropics, and that made him kind of nice to play with. What gives with you?"
I gave her a fill-in on the Washington trip and the events that had brought me to The Sanctuary, and she listened with a growing smile.
"Why—" she began, but the music stopped, and Vail and Miss Post returned to the table.
"Winnie," Vail announced, "spring hath come to Hartford, Conn., and I've decided to take a room at this hotel. This is a mighty fine little city, isn't it? Clean, vital, New England honesty and all that, not to mention insurance. And—" His eyes strayed fondly in the direction of the nurse who sat with eyes demurely downcast.
"Okay," I told him. "This is the official opening of spring. Just give me those papers I wanted to sign. The money for Dr. Rutherford, I mean."
He stared at me.
"You don't mean to say you were serious about that!" he exclaimed. "I thought it was a gag to tip me off that you were being railroaded to the asylum. Hell, I'll have the stuff drawn up and you can sign it on Monday. There's nothing doing in town over the week-end and Rutherford can wait. If you like, I'll try to beat him down. For my money, he'll settle for five thousand and to hell with his family honor."
I shook my head. "No dice, Merry. It's fifteen thousand—a gentleman's agreement."
"Hell! no gentleman has any business making agreements. That's what lawyers are for."
The music started up with a rather miscegenated attempt to marry Mendelssohn's Spring Song to "Pistol-Packing Momma." He grabbed Emily Post by the arm. "Come on," he urged. "Got to dance. I'll show you some steps that aren't in the book of etiquette."
"Why, Mr. Vail!" she agreed, and they were off again.
I resumed my talk with Arthurjean. "You'd better stay here, too," I told her. "It's getting late and they lock up the trains on the New Haven road along with the cows."
She looked the question at me.
"Nope!" I replied sturdily. "I'm going to drive back and see whether spring has come to Bedford Hills. Even commuters have children now and then," I added. "They used to blame it on sunspots or Roosevelt but now I guess they'll have nobody to blame but themselves."
In return for a five-spot the hotel door-man told me how to find the nearest Black Market gas-station, so I tanked up the Packard and worked myself across country until I hit the Parkway.
The night was clear and cool but there was a hint of blossoms in the air.
Vail was right. Spring had come to the commuters and I thought sardonically of what could be expected at every country club the next night—Saturday. I missed the turn-off for Bedford Hills and wasted a couple of hours wandering amiss through the maze of Westchester roads, but finally I found myself on a familiar road and soon eased the Packard to a slow stop on the crackling gravel of the entrance of Pook's Hill.
I left my bags in the car and walked quietly along the grass until I let myself in at front door. A muffled woof from the kitchen showed that Ponto had drowsily recognized my tread as I tip-toed up the stairs and into my bedroom. It was three o'clock in the morning and the frogs were still jingling in the marshy meadows as I stood by the window and tasted the night air. Then I undressed rapidly and put on a dressing-gown and slippers. I turned off the lights and tip-toed across the hall to my wife's bedroom.
Her door was closed but, when I turned the handle, it proved not to be locked or bolted. I closed it softly behind me and approached the edge of the bed. Germaine was sleeping quietly, the faint glow of the starlight outlining her dark hair against the white pillow.
Suddenly she started.
"What? Who's that?" she cried.
I leaned over and brushed her hair with my lips.
"It's me," I told her truthfully. "Everything's all right."
"Hurry!" she murmured. "You'll catch cold."
A moment later, she remarked conversationally, "Heavens! Youarecold."
Then she burrowed herself against me and wordlessly raised her lips to mine.
When I opened my eyes in the morning the bed felt strangely deserted. I reached over and found that I was alone.
"Jimmie!" I called. "Jimmie!"
She appeared at the bathroom door.
"Hullo," she remarked. "Where did you come from? And what are you doing there? Don't you know that all respectable married couples sleep in separate rooms, according to 'House and Garden'?"
"I'm not respectable," I told her. "Please notify the editor."
"You certainly are not!" she observed. "You nearly gave me heart-failure, sneaking into my room like that when you were supposed to be in Hartford. It would have served you right if I'd called for the police."
"I'm just as good as the average policeman," I suggested. "Come over here and I'll show you how we Tompkinses—"
But she evaded me.
"No, sir. We must set a good example to the servants. It's way past breakfast time and I don't want Myrtle to guess that we're absolutely shameless."
Breakfast was waiting for us when we came downstairs and we gave a reasonably good impersonation of an elderly married couple at the breakfast table. I read the financial section of the "Times" and Germaine again busied herself with the social page of the "Herald-Tribune", now and then reading brief items about marriages, and divorces, while I grunted noncommitally about the state of the market. As a matter of fact, we both believed we had succeeded admirably when our attention was attracted by a meaning kind of cough.
It was Mary-Myrtle.
"What is it, Myrtle?" Germaine asked with a radiant smile.
"It's not my business to say so," the maid stammered, "but I wanted to know whether you would really keep me on. I—I like it here—and I'm so glad you're happy, Mrs. Tompkins."
"Of course, you're going to stay with us, Myrtle, but however did you guess?"
"You can see it in your face, Mrs. Tompkins," she said, "and Mr. Tompkins he was looking at the sporting page and talking about U.S. Steel and A.T.&T. And—oh, it's nice."
And she fled from the room.
Germaine looked at me like the angel at the Gates of Eden. "There!" she exclaimed. "That's what happens when I trust you. You can't even find the right page in the paper to fake from. Next time I'm going to marry a man who doesn't look so damned happy it's a give-away."
"It's spring," I explained stupidly.
"You know, Winnie," my wife said suddenly, "speaking of spring, I've been thinking about Ponto. You've had him for five years now and I think he's getting a little queer. Don't you think it would be a good idea to send him to the kennels and have him bred? Perhaps that's all that's been wrong with him."
"Spoken like a woman, Jimmie," I said, "but I agree that it wouldn't do any harm. I'll phone Dalrymple after breakfast and have him send over for Ponto's Sacre du Printemps. He's got championship blood and, unlike holy matrimony, there's money in it."
She shrugged her shoulders unspeakably.
"Poor Winnie!" she mocked. "You'd be worth millions if you'd been paid, like Ponto."
"It mightn't be a bad idea, at that," I remarked. "If you realize the years of apprenticeship and training, the high degree of professional skill required—"
"Come here, then," she ordered, "I'll pay you."
She did.
"You won't forget about Ponto," she added breathless after her kiss. "The poor darling oughtn't to be celibate in this household. I wouldn't want it to happen to a dog."
On the morning of Monday, April 23rd (the date seemed unimportant at the time), I took the early morning train into New York. Spring had done its fell work and the club car was full of middle-aged business-men, with dark circles under their eyes, prepared to fight at the drop of a hat anyone who said they weren't as young as they felt. With Jimmie's perfume still in my nostrils, I hadn't the heart to deride them, so I did the next best thing and talked them into a poker-game.
By the time we pulled into Grand Central I was eighteen dollars and seventy cents ahead, thanks to a full-house just before we reached 125th Street.
Instead of joining my fellow-brokers in their Gadarene rush for the downtown subway express, I strolled north along Park Avenue to the Pond Club.
At the Pond Club I found Tammy engaged, as ever, in polishing the glasses behind his gleaming little bar.
"My! Mr. Tompkins," he exclaimed. "You look as though you'd just made a million dollars," he told me. "The usual, sir?"
"It was nearly three millions, Tammy, and accept no substitutes. What I need is concentrated protein. How about a couple of dozen Cotuits and some black coffee?"
The steward raised his eyebrows knowingly.
"I'll mix you one of my Second Day Specials, sir," he said. "Funny thing about that drink. One night, young Mr. Ferguson—he's a new member, sir—was feeling merry and felt a sudden sense of compassion for the statue of Civic Virtue in front of the City Hall. Of course, I've never seen it but they tell me that it's a very fine work of art, by a person named Mac Monnies, I believe. He wasn't a member of the club, of course, but that's what I understand the name to be. So Mr. Ferguson would have nothing for it but to take one of my Second Day Specials down to the Civic Virtue and give him a drink. It seemed that Mr. Ferguson felt quite sorry for the statue down there in front of LaGuardia without any company. So he took a cab downtown and poured the drink down the mouth of the statue for a joke, like. But here's the odd thing, sir. They had to throw a canvas over the statue and send for a man with a hacksaw before the Mayor decided it was proper to expose it to the citizens again."
"Then bring me a double Second Day Special, without cold chisels or hacksaws, if you please," I ordered.
He smirked knowingly but had the tact of good club servants to say nothing. I sipped his concoction, which tasted entirely unlike the egg-nog it outwardly resembled. A moment later, I tried another sip. It was not at all unpleasant, so I drained the glass. This, I decided, was exactly what I needed, so I drank the second one without drawing breath.
"Ah-h-h!" I beamed. "That is much better. Now if anybody phones me, say I'm not here, unless it's one of my friends."
"Would that be true of that Mrs. R., sir?" he inquired. "That lady with the red hair you told me about, Mr. Tompkins?"
"If Mrs. Rutherford calls," I said, "let me know."
He smiled slyly. "Then I was to deliver a message to you from her, sir. She wants you to call her at the apartment, she said. Circle 8-7326, the number is. She said it was important."
I dialed the number. Virginia answered.
"Winnie?" Her voice was cool and amused. "You'd better come up here in a hurry. It's urgent."
"Where is here?" I asked.
"At our place, the apartment," she said.
"Better give me the address," I suggested. "I can't seem to remember."
"Winnie, that particular joke is getting tiresome. You know perfectly well it's 172 East 72nd Street and the third floor front. The name, naturally, is Smith."
"John Smith?" I inquired.
"Natch! And hurry, unless you want to be in worse trouble than you can imagine."
I signaled to Tammy. "One more Second Day Special, please."
He looked worried. "Are you quite sure, sir," he demurred. "Two is as much as I've ever seen a man take."
He returned to his mystery and produced the fatal brew. I drank it slowly. By Godfrey! this was more like it. I tossed him a five-dollar bill.
"Just remember that you haven't seen me," I told him.
"Quite, Mr. Tompkins."
I managed to snag an uptown taxi and rolled in comfort to 172 East 72nd Street.
I pressed the button marked Smith and was rewarded by a clicking of the latch. I climbed the stairs and on the third story tapped the little brass knocker. The door opened and Virginia appeared clad somewhat in a white silk dressing-gown and with her red hair sizzling out at me.
"Come in, stranger," she said.
She closed the door and settled herself comfortably, with a cigarette, on the suspiciously broad day-bed. I sat down in a very deep easy chair, facing her, and lighted a cigarette too.
"Well?" I inquired.
"Winnie," she began, "you know I never try to interfere with your private life or try to ask questions, but don't you think this farce has gone on long enough?"
I flicked some ash on the carpet and tried to look inscrutable.
"You know what you are doing, of course," she continued, "and your performance in Washington was magnificent, but just between ourselves, can't you relax?"
Although the windows were open, the room seemed oppressively warm. I threw back my coat and confronted her without speaking.
"Of course," Virginia continued, "I know we've got to be discreet. There can always be dictaphones and detectives and it seems that the F.B.I. knows all about this place, but can't you just—"
She jumped up and faced me. With an angry movement, she snatched off her dressing-gown and flung it on the floor.
"There!" she said. "Is there anythingwrongwith me? Am I repulsive? Or don't you care?"
It must have been the three specials that lifted me from the easy chair and whisked me across the room to the embattled red head, but it must have been my guardian angel that prompted my next move. I pulled out my fountain pen and wrote rapidly on the back of an envelope: "I suspect that we are watched."
Her eyes widened and she quickly grabbed her gown and draped it around her. I laid my finger to my lips.
"What I came to see you about, Virginia," I said, "is to tell you, once and for all, that all is over between us."
That was a mistake. She gave me a wink, dropped the gown and came and sat beside me on the arm of the chair.
"I too, Winfred," she said dramatically, "have become increasingly distressed by your apparent coldness."
She cuddled down and planted her lips on my ear while her tongue flicked like a little snake's.
"No," she continued, "the time has come, Winfred, when we must face the facts, unpleasant though they may be. I was never meant to be a part-time girl for any man."
Her sharp little teeth nipped my neck savagely.
"Virginia," I said, "what I had to say—what I mean is—"
I never said it. Her mouth was suddenly glued to mine and she melted into my arms.
"Damn you!" I told her. "There."
The apartment door-bell was buzzing like an accusation.
"Tell them to go away," she murmured. "Say we're not at home."
I disentangled myself, ran to the door and jiggled the button that released the downstairs catch. "Go and make yourself decent," I told her. "I'll stall them if you aren't too long."
I listened as the footsteps slowly mounted the stairs. It was a man's step. Then came a brisk tap on the brass knocker. I opened up. It was A. J. Harcourt of the F.B.I. He seemed rather surprised to see me.
"Good morning, Mr. Tompkins," he began. "I thought that—"
"Oh, come on in," I urged him. "Mrs. Rutherford will be out in a moment. I—we...."
He nodded. "You certainly do get around," he admitted. "Last the Bureau heard you were a patient up in Hartford, and here I find you in—"
"In a love-nest," I suggested. "A den of perfumed sin. A high-priced hell-hole. I got here about ten minutes ago. Mrs. Rutherford said that I might be in trouble but she didn't get around to explaining what trouble."
He grinned. "When a girl speaks of trouble, she means herself," he orated.
"Oh, is that so?"
Virginia appeared at the entrance to the bathroom, completely though revealingly clad, and advanced into the room brandishing her sex like an invisible shillelagh. "And what has the F.B.I. to do with me, Mr. Harcourt?" she demanded.
Poor Harcourt looked abashed but made a speedy recovery, getting out of the rough in one stroke.
"Now that Mr. Tompkins is here, Mrs. Rutherford, mam," he said, "I have nothing to see you about. We heard he had gone to a private asylum in New England and I was told to see you and ask if you knew any of the circumstances."
"Oh!" Virginia sat down on the rumpled day-bed. "That sounds rather like a lie, you know."
"That's not my fault, mam," Harcourt replied. "My chief gives me my orders and I follow them without being asked for my opinion. If the Bureau wants to check on Mr. Tompkins through his friends—"
Virginia beamed and dimpled. "You couldn't do better than come to me," she admitted.
"Well, here I am," I told him, "and Mrs. Rutherford needn't feel bothered. What is it now?"
"We just wanted to get the rights of your run-in with the Secret Service," he told me. "Our liaison there told the Director that you stood Chief Flynn on his ear and that Flynn threatened to swear out a lunacy warrant against you. How come?"
I gave him a full account of my encounter with the Secret Service and ended by producing the certificate of sanity signed by Dr. Folsom.
"There it is," I declaimed.
The Special Agent smiled. "You're nothing if not thorough, Mr. Tompkins. Have you had any luck filling in that blank period before Easter? The Bureau would feel much happier if you could remember. Now don't get me wrong. The case against you is closed. You're off our books. We believe that you're telling the truth, but just the same it seems funny you can't remember."
Virginia Rutherford turned on him, like a battleship bringing a battery of 16-inch guns to bear on a freighter. "Perhaps he has a good reason for not remembering," she remarked. "Perhaps he went somewhere, with some one—in skirts!"
"That's just what puzzles us," Harcourt admitted. "We've had fifty agents from the New York office alone making checks, as far north as Montreal, in Portland, Boston, Providence, and even Cincinnati and Richmond. We've checked trains, buses, airlines and the garages, as well as the hotels, boarding-houses and overnight cabins. There isn't anybody that can remember seeing Mr. Tompkins, with or without a woman, during that week."
"Then you're still investigating me?" I asked, while a chill went down my spine.
The Special Agent shook his head. "Not at all, Mr. Tompkins. Like I told you, the investigation was called off last week, when we established your Z-2 identity. This is just the result of the inquiries we started the week before last."
"And you can't find a trace?" I asked.
"Not a thing," he said.
Mrs. Rutherford turned to me, flung her arms around me and planted a far from sisterly kiss on my lips. "Winnie, old dear," she observed, "you are simply incredible."
And she left the apartment.
"Wonder what she meant by that?" Harcourt mused.
"We're probably happier in ignorance," I told him. "Come on, A. J., I'll buy a taxi down town. I've got to stop in at my office and gather some of my unearned income. They tell me we've made nearly three million dollars in the last ten days."
Harcourt consulted his note book. "The Bureau's figures put it at two million eight hundred seventy thousand and two hundred forty-six dollars and seventy-one cents, if you want to know," he said.
"So youarekeeping me watched," I remarked.
"What doyouthink?" asked Special Agent Harcourt of the F.B.I.
"What's the big idea?" I demanded. "I thought I was in the clear."
Harcourt looked somewhat embarrassed.
"Perhaps I oughtn't to tell you this, Mr. Tompkins," he explained, "but like you said, you're in the clear with the Bureau. We've checked and double-checked and any way we slice it, you're still okay. Maybe you're Tompkins with a lapse of memory, maybe this yarn of yours about Jacklin is on the level, but we're sure ofyou."
"Then why all this interest in me?" I asked. "You've been swell with me personally, but it's getting on my nerves having you pop up all the time. Though I must say I was relieved when you showed up today. Mrs. Rutherford—"
He grinned. "Red heads spell trouble anywhere, any time," he observed. "No, it's this Von Bieberstein we're gunning for. Mr. Lamb at the Bureau has a notion that Von Bieberstein may have some connection with you that you don't know about. He might be using your office as a post-box or be somebody that you know as someone else. It sounds screwy, I know, but this Von Bieberstein is a slick baby. For all I know, he might even be a woman."
I glanced inquiringly in the direction of Virginia's apartment.
"Not for my money," he said. "We've checked her, too. And it isn't that Tennessee secretary of yours, either. There's a girl for you. We've got her biog right back to the Knoxville doc that delivered her. But the Bureau doesn't think it's an accident that you turned up in the middle of this case, so I've been told off to check on all your contacts. Seems mighty funny, you a millionaire and me an average guy even if Arthurjean still thinks I got a wife in Brooklyn, but it's the war, I guess."
"'Says every moron, There's a war on!'" I quoted. I scratched my head. "If only I could remember that blank spot, I might be able to help you."
Harcourt studied his finger-nails attentively. "We're taking care of your office contacts, of course, and we have a couple of men working up in Bedford Hills. But New York's the hell of a big town and almost anything could happen to you outside of your office and your clubs. Got any ideas?"
"What sort?"
"Well, there's always women but I guess we've carried that line as far as it will take us. We've checked the doctors and the dentists and the bars and the nightclubs. How about astrologers, say? Hitler made use of them in Germany. He might use 'em over here, though we've screened 'em all since before Pearl Harbor."
I laughed. "I doubt that a man like Tompkins would use astrology," I told him.
Harcourt shook his head. "That's where you'd be wrong. You'd be surprised how many big Wall Street operators go for that guff."
"It doesn't register," I replied, "but I'll phone the office and see if Miss Briggs knows."
When I made the connection, Arthurjean informed me that the phone had been ringing all morning and when would I be in. Vail, she reported, was still in Hartford with a bad case of Emily Post. I asked her about astrologers and she said she didn't know but would find out. In a little while she reported that Phil Cone thought I'd once gone to see that Ernestina Clump that used to advise the Morgan partners.
"Okay," I told her. "I'll be in about four this afternoon and will handle any calls or visitors then."
I turned to Harcourt. "It doesn't sound like much but Phil Cone thinks I once consulted Ernestina Clump. Want me to make an appointment?"
He nodded, so I looked up her number and dialed the office in the Chrysler Building where Miss Clump kept track of the stars in their courses and the millionaires in their jitters.
Arranging for an immediate appointment through the very, very well-bred secretarial voice that stiff-armed me was not easy until I said that I would pay double-fees. Then she believed it might be arranged. "That will be two thousand dollars," she imparted, "and you must be here at one o'clock precisely."
As we taxied downtown together, Harcourt was uncommunicative, except for the remark that it was right handy to Grand Central and would be no trick to stop off before catching trains.
Miss Clump, as it turned out, was a motherly woman whose wrinkled cheeks and plump hands suggested greater familiarity with the cook-stove than with the planets. Her office showed the most refined kind of charlatanry—everything quite solid and in good taste, with no taint of the Zodiac. At a guess, about ten thousand dollar's worth of furnishings was involved and I imagined that the annual rental might run as high as six thousand.
"Well, Mr. Tompkins," Miss Clump remarked in a pleasant, homey voice with a trace of Mid-Western flatness, "I wondered when you would be in to see me again. The stars being mean to you? Or is it another woman?"
"Let's see," I stalled, "when was the last time I consulted you?"
She cackled. "Young man, you've been comin' to see me, off and on, the last ten years. Last time was in March. That was about the red-head. Virgo in the House of Scorpio you called it."
I nodded. "That would be it, I guess. She's more scorpion than virgin."
She patted my hand comfortingly across the table. "They all are," she said, "unless they're really in love. Then even the stars can't stop 'em. What's the matter now?"
"Police," I said. "Loss of memory. Women and money are all right but I'm being followed and I've drawn sort of blank for the whole month of March. Can you take a look at my horoscope and tell me what the stars were doing to me then?"
She stared at me shrewdly. "Police," she remarked. "Land's sakes, I don't want trouble with the police. Young man, you—"
I hastened to interrupt her. "That's only a figure of speech. I'm in trouble with the government. Just tell me what I was doing in March and give me a hint of what lies ahead next month."
She examined the chart carefully and made a few pencilled notes on a scratch-pad. Then she looked up at me in bewilderment.
"This doesn't make much sense, Mr. Tompkins," she told me, "but here it is. So far as I can make out, in March you went on a long trip and had some kind of bad accident. There's Neptune and Saturn in conjunction under Aries and Venus in opposition. That could mean more trouble with that girl, I s'pose. Then early in April you came under a new sign—money it looks like, lots, of it, and Venus is right for you. It looks like happiness. Now for the future, there's something I don't understand. There's a sort of jumble—an accident mebbe—right ahead of you and then some kind of crisis. You're going to live quite happy with a woman for a while—and, well, that's all I can see, except—" she paused.
I raised my eyebrows. "Except what?" I asked. "I want the truth."
She lowered her head. "Itmightbe a bad illness," she said, "but it's the combination I generally call a death—somebody else's death, that is. You aren't planning to murder anybody, are you?"
I leaned back in my chair and laughed heartily.
"Good Lord, no! Miss Clump. And even if I did I have money enough to hire somebody to do it for me—like the government. Here's a check for you," I added. "Two thousand, I think you said."
"Be careful," she told me in a low voice, almost in a whisper. "Be very, very careful. I don't like to see that combination in the stars. It might mean bad trouble."
I rejoined Harcourt in the downstairs bar of the Vanderbilt Hotel and gave him a quick account of Miss Clump's forecast.
"That looks pretty hot," he allowed, "except that it sounds like anybody. The usual line is money coming in, successful trouble, and just call again sometime. Anyhow, the Bureau doesn't handle murder and you don't look like a killer to me, even though you've got yourself back in good shape, physically, I mean."
"She sounded pretty much in earnest," I told him, "but I'm damned if I know where I'd begin if I went in for a career of killing."
"So you think she's on the level?" he asked. "It's all hooey to me."
I considered carefully before I answered him.
"The astrologers claim," I told him, "that they practice an exact science. They have won law-suits based on that claim and have won exemption from the old statutes against gypsies and fortune tellers. Miss Clump is a good showwoman. Her fees are high as the Chrysler Building and her office costs plenty. No stuffed owls or dried bats or any junk that would make a businessman think he was going slumming. When she talked to me she seemed honestly surprised at what she claimed she saw in the stars and she certainly sounded entirely in earnest when she warned me. My guess is that she's on the level and has nothing to do with Von Bieberstein, if there is such a person."
Harcourt sipped his Coca-Cola, being on duty and hence not drinking, in official silence.
"Yeah," he agreed at last. "Could be, though we'll have to check her and her secretary and her clients, right up to butnotincluding Democratic Senators and Cabinet officers."
"How about barbershops?" I asked him. "Or drugstores? I've always thought they'd make the best intelligence centers in America. You can't keep track of everybody who buys a dime's worth of aspirin or a package of Kleenex. What's to prevent the cigar counter at any hotel or drug store being the place where two Nazi agents meet. The clerks wouldn't know them and in a town like this nobody would even notice them."
The Special Agent finished his drink and banged the glass down on the table. "That's just the trouble with this town," he announced. "There's so many services here that everybody uses you can't possibly check them. Well, you run on down to your office and see if you can't find out something else. Thanks for the lift on Miss Clump. Now I've got to call headquarters and get a special detail to go to work on her."
"You don't seriously think that she knows anything about Von Bieberstein, do you?" I asked.
He smiled ruefully. "No, I don't, but the way you describe her, she's a sort of nice, old-fashioned woman, and yet she drags down a thousand bucks for fifteen minutes of astral horse-feathers in this tough burg. There's something screwy about a set-up like that. Now I've seen the files on most of the big-time astrologers that operated here—Evangeline Adams and Myra Kingsley were tops in their time—and there's not one of them can touch this Clump woman for money. I don't forget that the first woman I ever arrested—it was before I joined the Bureau and I was on the homicide detail in Raleigh—was just as sweet and gentle as your Aunt Minnie. All she'd done was poison her husband and her two children so's to be free to sleep with her brother-in-law. So it's going to be plenty work for the Bureau to check this one, before we're sure she's okay."
I told him that I didn't enjoy being put in the position of an F.B.I. Typhoid Mary, who automatically exposed his acquaintances to immediate visitations of G-men.
"Shucks! Mr. Tompkins," he assured me, "they'll never know we're around. We got a pretty smooth outfit now and we have ways of checking you never dreamed of. When we go to work, we do a neat job and if we don't learn anything, well, that's that—but we don't bother folks while were doing it."
"All right," I agreed. "I'll be down at the office until the morning."
The highly respectable receptionist at the office of Tompkins, Wasson & Cone almost smiled at me.
"There are several gentlemen waiting for you, Mr. Tompkins," she announced. "Some of them have been here since before lunch. Do you plan to receive them or shall I ask them to return tomorrow?"
"No, I'll see them in a few minutes," I replied. "Miss Briggs will let you know."
No sooner had I settled down at my desk, however, than Graham Wasson and Phil Cone came dancing in, wreathed in tickertape.
"We're rich! We're rich!" they chanted.
"Where's the Marine Band and 'Hail to the Chief'?" I asked. "How rich are we, anyway?"
"We cleaned up," Wasson said. "Just a bit under three million in one week. It was as you said. We went short of the market and after Roosevelt's death, boy! did they liquidate! And thanks to Phil here, we got out before the big boys put the squeeze on the shorts."
"That reminds me, Winnie," Cone interrupted, "one of the mourners in the customers room who's waiting to see you is Jim DeForest from Morgan's. He's been waiting here since two o'clock. You'd better see him quick, huh? We don't want to keep 23 Wall waiting, do we?"
"Nuts, Phil," I told him. "I'll see them in the order of their arrival. That's what they do at Morgan's when you haven't got an appointment."
I pushed the button for Arthurjean.
"Who's been waiting the longest, Miss Briggs," I asked.
She consulted a little pack of memo forms. "There's this Mr. Sylvester," she said. "He was here when the office opened and has been waiting here all day. He wouldn't state his business."
"Okay," I replied. "Send him in or he'll faint from hunger."
Mr. Sylvester was florid in a quiet Latin way and looked as though he might be anything from an operatic tenor to the proprietor of a gambling ship. He waited until my partners had withdrawn.
"Mr. Tompkins," he said, speaking quietly, "I represent a syndicate that's reorganizing the free market in meat. We need a real smart guy, well-connected, like yourself, to head it up and keep track of the money. We'll pay a million dollars a year any way you like it—Swiss banks, Havana, Buenos Aires, Mexico City—and no tax."
"I'm always interested in a million dollars but I never did like Atlanta," I told him.
"Atlanta!" He shrugged his shoulders. "We got lawyers could talk Capone outa Alcatraz and we got a fix on the Courts, too. What would you be doin' in Atlanta?"
"I doubt that they'd make me librarian," I said, "and I don't think I'd make the ball-team, so I guess I'd have to work in the laundry. What's the trouble with the black market, anyhow? Seems to me you've got O.P.A. right in your corner."
"Too many amateurs and outsiders," he told me, "just like with Prohibition. Meat's bad and too many cops get a cut. We aim to do like the beer syndicates—organize it right, keep prices reasonable, have the pay-off stabilized, make it a good banking proposition. We've checked on you. You're smart. Would a million and a half do?"
I shook my head. "I've got a million and a half," I remarked.
"Okay," Mr. Sylvester straightened up, shook my hand and gave a little bow. "Think it over!" he urged. "If you change your mind put an ad in the Saturday Review personal column. 'Meet me anywhere, Winnie!' That's cute. 'Meet' and 'Meat,' see? Our representative will call on you."
I asked Arthurjean to send in the next visitor and to my surprise she announced DeForest.
"Hell!" I told her. "There must have been others ahead of him."
"There was," she said, "but they agreed to let him see you first. They said they'd be back tomorrow. They were from Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers so they wanted to give Morgan's first crack at you, I guess."
Jim DeForest proved to be one of the vaguely familiar figures I had noticed flitting around the Harvard Club.
"Winnie," he said, "I just dropped in to say that we have been pretty well impressed by the way your firm handled itself in this recent market. Mr. Whitney wanted to know whether it would be convenient for you to drop in and have a talk with him soon."
"Today?" I asked.
DeForest glanced at his Rolex. "Today's a little late," he remarked, "but give him a ring tomorrow. No, damn it! He's leaving for a short trip to Washington. Make it next week and he'll have plenty of time for you."
"What's it about, Jim?" I asked. "Don't tell me that I'm going to be offered a Morgan partnership?"
He looked as though I had burped in church.
"I hardly think so," he replied. "If that were the case, Mr. Lamont would have seen you somewhere uptown. You know the way they gossip in the Street. No, I rather fancy that Mr. Whitney wants you to be one of our brokers for floor operations. Or, he might, since you specialize in estate work, want you to help with some of the new issues we are planning to underwrite."
"Either way would suit me fine, Jim," I told him. "Do you know," I continued, "this is the second happiest day of my life. The first was when I got married."
DeForest seemed a bit relieved and permitted himself a worldly smile.
"And today," I continued, "I received the greatest honor that can come to an American in Wall Street. Believe me, Jim, this means more than having just cleaned up three million dollars in straight trading. After all, what is money worth if it can't buy what isn't for sale?"
This idea seemed to be taken under DeForest's advisement for future consideration but he let it pass. After all, a million dollars is dross compared to the approval of the employers of men like Jim DeForest, still limping along on twenty-five thousand a year twenty years after graduation.
"Grand to have seen you, Winnie," he said, indicating that the audience was at an end. "I'll tell Mr. Whitney that you'll see him next week. And of course, no talk about this. We don't like to encourage gossip about our operations."
I promised that I would be silent as the grave, not even telling my partners or my wife. "After all," I pointed out, "it's not a good idea to arouse false hopes. Perhaps Mr. Whitney will change his mind."
"I hope not," DeForest said solemnly, as though I had mentioned the possibility of the Black Death. "I most certainly hope not. We don't do business on that basis, you know."
"Well, Miss Briggs, who's next?" I inquired, after DeForest had withdrawn with the affable air of royalty inspecting a clean but second-rate orphan asylum.
"Since those bankers left, there's only three waiting. One's a general but he comes after this other man, what's his name, Patrick Michael Shaughnessy, whoever he is."
"Send in the Irish," I told her.
Mr. Shaughnessy was an Irish-American counterpart of the Mr. Sylvester who wanted to reorganize the free market for meat. He was a natty dresser and he spoke out of the corner of his mouth.
"Mr. Tompkins," he told me, "I'm from, the Democratic National Committee. The Chairman—and gee! Bob's a wonder—wanted to ask whether you'd consider a diplomatic appointment."
"Of course, I would," I replied, thinking of Germaine's artless desire to be an Ambassadress, "but that depends on where I'm sent and that kind of thing. What have you in mind?"
"There's only one post open right now," he remarked. "That's Bolonia or Peruna or hell, no, it's Bolivia. That's somewhere in America, ain't it?"
I agreed that Bolivia was located in the Western Hemisphere. "That's where the tin and llamas come from, Mr. Shaughnessy," I educated him. "The capital city of La Paz is located about twelve thousand feet high in the Andes and the inhabitants are mainly Indians. I don't think that Mrs. Tompkins would care for it."
His face fell. "You'd be an Ambassador, of course," he informed me, "and that's always worth something. But the Boss said—that's Bob, of course, we all call Bob the Boss—that if you wouldn't fall for Bolivia to ask you what about Ottawa. That's the capital of Canada. It's right next to Montreal and those places and there's good train service to New York on the Central any time you want to run down for a show or a hair-cut. Bob said Canada was a real buy."
"Oh, a buy?" I remarked.
Shaughnessy looked at me shrewdly. "Uh-huh!" he replied.
"How much will it cost me to be Ambassador to Canada?"
Shaughnessy was faintly aggrieved. "The Boss don't like to talk about money and jobs that way, Mr. Tompkins. He always says think of the chance to serve the country. Say, you're a good Democrat or if you aren't a Democrat you're the next thing to it, a Republican that is, and you want to make a contribution to the Party. We always got a deficit, see. If there ain't one now there's one coming right up. Say you lay two or three hundred grand on the line. That goes a hundred grand to the Committee and another hundred grand divided among the State Committees. You see, we got to take care of the Senate so they'll vote to confirm you and there are some operators up there what won't vote for nothing 'cept they get taken care of first. Then the rest we put into a dignified publicity campaign, to build you up with the public and let the Canucks see they're getting something special when the President nominates you."
I considered this one carefully. "Do you let me pick the public relations firm that handles that end of the campaign, Mr. Shaughnessy?"
He grinned artlessly. "I should say not!" he chuckled. "How do you think we boys on the Committee make a living? No, we pick the firm that does the job and that's all you need worry about. We own 'em. So you see you're protected right across the board. Any time we sell an Ambassadorship, we deliver."
"Doesn't the State Department have something to say about it?"
Shaughnessy told me exactly what the State Department could do about it, so I told him to let me have a few days to think it over. After all, three hundred thousand dollars was quite a lot of money to pay for a diplomatic post. It wasn't as though I could make it pay off in Scotch whiskey or mining shares as in the past.
"That's what you think," the agent of the Democratic National Committee rapped out. "Listen, Mr. Tompkins, if you buy that job take me along as your private secretary and I'll show you how to make it pay like a bank and no ifs. What shall I tell the gang?"
"Tell them I'm definitely interested," I replied truthfully, "but I'd like a couple of weeks to think it over."
My next visitor was General Forbes-Dutton of the Army Service Forces.
"Remember me, Winnie?"
"Why sure!" I replied with great cordiality. "If it isn't—"
"That's right," the General interrupted. "Well, boy, after Pearl Harbor I got me—I was asked to go to Washington to help out, so the bank said it was my duty, that they'd hold my job for me, and I've been there ever since. I'm on Westervelt's staff, in charge of financial procurement policies. Neat, eh?"
"So you're still working for the bank?"
"Notforthem, Winnie.Withthem. We're both working for the government. Financing war-contracts, you know. Now Westervelt's heard good things about you, Winnie. He was much impressed by the way you turned down that gang of chiselers who tried to horn in on the quinine deal. They're all out. He's got a big job in mind for you. How'd you like to be a Brigadier-General?"
"It's a little late for that," I told him. "The war's almost over."
He laughed very heartily. "It's a honey of a job, Winnie. Here's what gives. This war's almost over, as you say. Then the Army will have the job of selling off the stuff it doesn't need and boy! it has everything. We've just about cornered everything there is and the whole world's going to be crying for the stuff. We want a good trader in charge, who knows how to play ball with the boys, realistic that is. No star-gazer, eh? And that's where you come in. There's millions in it. Hell! there's billions. We got to go slow in selling it or we'd bust the market, wreck values and stall reconversion, so we had us a brain-storm when we heard how you cleaned up in the Funeral Market. How about it? Want to play ball and get next to the biggest break you ever heard of?"
I looked Forbes-Dutton squarely in the eye.
"Isn't it going to be a headache?" I asked. "I mean, won't there be a stink in Congress about it? I'm no fall-guy."
The General shook his head. "Congress is in on it, every man jack of them outside a few screwballs," he assured me. "We got a deal worked out in every District—all legal and clean, of course—so there isn't a Senator or Congressman that can't march right up to the trough and get his. Hell! there's so much of it—food, tractors, jeeps, clothes, ships, machine-tools, factories even—that we could buy every Congressman ten times over and still have plenty of glue. With you on top—"
"It still sounds as though you were looking for a fall-guy," I told him.
He again laughed merrily. "Anywhere you fall in this surplus game you'd still land soft and be in clover. What about it? Shall I phone the Pentagon?"
"Sorry to stall you," I said, "but I've got to think it over. I've got to talk to my lawyer. I'd still like to come down to Washington and study the angles."
"Angles? Hell! This hasn't any more angles than a big ripe watermelon. Brigadier-General's not a bad title for a post-war use. When these G.I.'s come back they'll want to find soldiers running things. Okay, Winnie, I see your point. I'll tell the General you'll be coming down to look the ground over. You'll get the Order of Merit, of course—"
"I've already got it," I informed him.
"The hell you say! That's wonderful. Well, then we'll fly you over to London or Brisbane and give you a couple of theatre citations to dress you up. After a couple of weeks on Ike's or Mac's staff you'll have a build-up like nobody's business. Then we make a killing. 'Bye!"
When the door closed behind General Forbes-Dutton I called for Arthurjean.
"Honey," I told her, "get me a snort of brandy and accept my personal apologies to the entire female sex for any time I have ever made use of the word 'whore'."
"What's eating you, Winnie?" she asked.
"I've just been propositioned by two gentlemen who would be complimented if you called them prostitutes," I told her. "The only honest man I've met today was that first little guy. All he wanted me to do was to help reorganize the Black Market. Who's left now?"
"There's only this one man who calls himself Charles G. Smith and has been waiting some time. He looks like a crank. Shall I give him a hand-out and tell him to go away?"
I shook my head. "I can't take much more of the current brand of patriotism."
Charles G. Smith was a small, wispy man, with a protruding Adam's apple, buck teeth and shabby clothes. He ignored my outstretched hand and advanced on me, with a glittering eye.
"Mr. Tompkins," he announced, in a curiously deep, velvety voice, "you have made millions of dollars that you must soon leave behind you. You have invested years of your life in collecting and keeping those dollars—little disks of metal, little slips of paper. What have you invested in the only thing you will be permitted to take with you when you leave?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I mean your immortal soul, Mr. Tompkins, your immortal soul," said Mr. Charles G. Smith.
"Oh Lord! A religious crank!" I exclaimed.
"Naturally," he agreed proudly. "I'd rather be crazy about God than nuts about money. Why not?"
I looked at him with growing respect. "Why not, indeed?" I thought.
"My case is out of your line, Mr. Smith," I told him.
"They all say that," he replied, "but God doesn't think so."
"My caseisdifferent," I repeated. "You see, I have not one but two immortal souls."
He nodded benignly. "I know," he said. "God told me that you were in trouble."
"That sounds as though you and I were buddies, Mr. Smith," I observed. "Where can I find Him? It will take God Himself to straighten out my case."
Smith shrugged his shoulders. "You can't find Him," he said. "You've got to wait until He finds you."