Big Money (63 page)

“Don't you think that our dear Eleanor looks happier and younger for it?” The Archimandrite was beaming into the crowded room. J.W. nodded doubtfully. “Och, a lovely graceful little thing she is, clever too. . . . Perhaps, Mr. Moorehouse and Mr. Savage, you'd come to the service and to lunch with me afterwards. . . . I have some ideas about a little book on my experiences at Mount Athos. . . . We could make a little parrty of it.” Dick was amazed to find the Archimandrite's fingers pinching him in the seat and hastily moved away a step, but not before he'd caught from the Archimandrite's left eye a slow vigorous wink.

The big room was full of clinking and toasting, and there was the occasional crash of a broken glass. A group of younger Russians were singing in deep roaring voices that made the crystal chandelier tinkle over their heads. The caviar was all gone but two uniformed maids were bringing in a table set with horsdœuvres in the middle of which was a large boiled salmon.

J.W. nudged Dick. “I think we might go someplace where we can talk.” “I was just waiting for you, J.W. I think I've got a new slant. I think it'll click this time.”

They'd just managed to make their way through the crush to the door when a Russian girl in black with fine black eyes and arched
brows came running after them. “Oh, you mustn't go. Leocadia Pavlovna likes you so much. She likes it here, it is informal . . . the bohème. That is what we like about Leonora Ivanovna. She is bohème and we are bohème. We luff her.” “I'm afraid we have a business appointment,” said J.W. solemnly. The Russian girl snapped her fingers with, “Oh, business it is disgusting. . . . America would be so nice without the business.”

When they got out on the street J.W. sighed. “Poor Eleanor, I'm afraid she's in for something. . . . Those Russians will eat her out of house and home. Do you suppose she really will marry this Prince Mingraziali? I've made inquiries about him. . . . He's all that he says he is. But heavens!” “With crowns and everything,” said Dick, “the date's all set.” “After all, Eleanor knows her own business. She's been very successful, you know.”

J.W.'s car was at the door. The chauffeur got out with a laprobe over his arm and was just about to close the door on J.W. when Dick said, “J.W., have you a few minutes to talk about this Bingham account?” “Of course, I was forgetting,” said J.W. in a tired voice. “Come on out to supper at Great Neck. . . . I'm alone out there except for the children.” Smiling, Dick jumped in and the chauffeur closed the door of the big black towncar behind him.

It was pretty lugubrious eating in the diningroom with its painted Italian panels at the Moorehouses' with the butler and the second-man moving around silently in the dim light and only Dick and J.W. and Miss Simpson, the children's so very refined longfaced governess, at the long candlelit table. Afterwards when they went into J.W.'s little white den to smoke and talk about the Bingham account, Dick thanked his stars when the old butler appeared with a bottle of scotch and ice and glasses. “Where did you find that, Thompson?” asked J.W. “Been in the cellar since before the war, sir . . . those cases Mrs. Moorehouse bought in Scotland. . . . I knew Mr. Savage liked a bit of a spot.”

Dick laughed. “That's the advantage of having a bad name,” he said.

J.W. drawled solemnly, “It's the best to be had, I know that. . . . Do you know I never could get much out of drinking, so I gave it up, even before prohibition.”

J.W. had lit himself a cigar. Suddenly he threw it in the fire. “I don't
think I'll smoke tonight. The doctor says three cigars a day won't hurt me . . . but I've been feeling seedy all week. . . . I ought to get out of the stockmarket. . . . I hope you keep out of it, Dick.”

“My creditors don't leave me enough to buy a ticket to a raffle with.”

J.W. took a couple of steps across the small room lined with un-scratched sets of the leading authors in morocco, and then stood with his back to the Florentine fireplace with his hands behind him. “I feel chilly all the time. I don't think my circulation's very good. . . . Perhaps it was going to see Gertrude. . . . The doctors have finally admitted her case is hopeless. It was a great shock to me.”

Dick got to his feet and put down his glass. “I'm sorry, J.W. . . . Still, there have been surprising cures in brain troubles.”

J.W. was standing with his lips in a thin tight line, his big jowl trembling a little. “Not in schizophrenia. . . . I've managed to do pretty well in everything except that. . . . I'm a lonely man,” he said. “And to think once upon a time I was planning to be a songwriter.” He smiled. Dick smiled too and held out his hand. “Shake hands, J.W.,” he said, “with the ruins of a minor poet.”

“Anyway,” said J.W., “the children will have the advantages I never had. . . . Would it bore you, before we get down to business, to go up and say goodnight to them? I'd like to have you see them.”

“Of course not, I love kids,” said Dick. “In fact I've never yet quite managed to grow up myself.”

At the head of the stairs Miss Simpson met them with her finger to her lips. “Little Gertrude's asleep.” They tiptoed down the allwhite hall. The children were in bed each in a small hospitallike room cold from an open window, on each pillow was a head of pale straw-colored hair. “Staple's the oldest . . . he's twelve,” whispered J.W. “Then Gertrude, then Johnny.” Staple said goodnight politely. Gertrude didn't wake up when they turned the light on. Johnny sat up in a nightmare with his bright blue eyes open wide, crying, “No, no,” in a tiny frightened voice. J.W. sat on the edge of the bed petting him for a moment until he fell asleep again. “Goodnight, Miss Simpson,” and they were tiptoeing down the stairs. “What do you think of them?” J.W. turned beaming to Dick.

“They sure are a pretty sight. . . . I envy you,” said Dick.

“I'm glad I brought you out . . . I'd have been lonely without you . . . I must entertain more,” said J.W.

They settled back into their chairs by the fire and started to go over the layout to be presented to Bingham Products. When the clock struck ten J.W. began to yawn. Dick got to his feet. “J.W., do you want my honest opinion?”

“Go ahead, boy, you know you can say anything you like to me.”

“Well, here it is.” Dick tossed off the last warm weak remnant of his scotch. “I think we can't see the woods for the trees . . . we're balled up in a mass of petty detail. You say the old gentleman's pretty pigheaded . . . one of these from newsboy to president characters. . . . Well, I don't think that this stuff really sets in high enough relief the campaign you outlined to us a month ago. . . .”

“I'm not very well satisfied with it, to tell the truth.”

“Is there a typewriter in the house?”

“I guess Thompson or Morton can scrape one up somewhere.”

“Well, I think that I might be able to bring your fundamental idea out a little more. To my mind it's one of the biggest ideas ever presented in the business world.”

“Of course it's the work of the whole office.”

“Let me see if I can take this to pieces and put it together again over the weekend. After all there'll be nothing lost. . . . We've got to blow that old gent clean out of the water or else Halsey'll get him.”

“They're around him every minute like a pack of wolves,” said J.W., getting up yawning. “Well, I leave it in your hands.” When he got to the door J.W. paused and turned. “Of course those Russian aristocrats are socially the top. It's a big thing for Eleanor that way. . . . But I wish she wouldn't do it. . . . You know, Dick, Eleanor and I have had a very beautiful relationship. . . . That little woman's advice and sympathy have meant a great deal to me. . . . I wish she wasn't going to do it. . . . Well, I'm go ingto bed.”

Dick went up to the big bedroom hung with English hunting-scenes. Thompson brought him up a new noiseless typewriter and the bottle of whiskey. Dick sat there working all night in his pyjamas and bathrobe smoking and drinking the whiskey. He was still at it when the windows began to get blue with day and he began to make out between the heavy curtains black lacy masses of sleetladen trees grouped round a sodden lawn. His mouth was sour from too many cigarettes. He went into the bathroom frescoed with dolphins and began to whistle as he let the hot water pour into the tub. He felt bleary and dizzy but he had a new layout.

Next day at noon when J.W. came back from church with the children Dick was dressed and shaved and walking up and down the flagged terrace in the raw air. Dick's eyes felt hollow and his head throbbed but J.W. was delighted with the work. “Of course selfservice, independence, individualism is the word I gave the boys in the beginning. This is going to be more than a publicity campaign, it's going to be a campaign for Americanism. . . . After lunch I'll send the car over for Miss Williams and get her to take some dictation. There's more meat in this yet, Dick.” “Of course,” said Dick, reddening. “All I've done is restore your original conception, J.W.”

At lunch the children sat up at the table and Dick had a good time with them, making them talk to him and telling them stories about the bunnies he'd raised when he was a little boy in Jersey. J.W. was beaming. After lunch Dick played ping-pong in the billiardroom in the basement with Miss Simpson and Staple and little Gertrude while Johnny picked up the balls for them. J.W. retired to his den to take a nap.

Later they arranged the prospectus for Miss Williams to type. The three of them were working there happily in front of the fire when Thompson appeared in the door and asked reverently if Mr. Moorehouse cared to take a phonecall from Mr. Griscolm. “All right, give it to me on this phone here,” said J.W.

Dick froze in his chair. He could hear the voice at the other end of the line twanging excitedly. “Ed, don't you worry,” J.W. was drawling. “You take a good rest, my boy, and be fresh as a daisy in the morning so that you can pick holes in the final draft that Miss Williams and I were working over all last night. A few changes occurred to me in the night. . . . You know sleep brings council. . . . How about a little handball this afternoon? A sweat's a great thing for a man, you know. If it wasn't so wet I'd be putting in eighteen holes of golf myself. All right, see you in the morning, Ed.” J.W. put down the receiver. “Do you know, Dick,” he said, “I think Ed Griscolm ought to take a couple of weeks off in Nassau or some place like that. He's losing his grip a little. . . . I think I'll suggest it to him. He's been a very valuable fellow in the office, you know.”

“One of the brightest men in the publicrelations field,” said Dick flatly. They went back to work.

Next morning Dick drove in with J.W. but stopped off on Fifty-seventh to run round to his mother's apartment on Fiftysixth to
change his shirt. When he got to the office the switchboard operator in the lobby gave him a broad grin. Everything was humming with the Bingham account. In the vestibule he ran into the inevitable Miss Williams. Her sour lined oldmaidish face was twisted into a sugary smile. “Mr. Savage, Mr. Moorehouse says would you mind meeting him and Mr. Bingham at the Plaza at twelve thirty when he takes Mr. Bingham to lunch?”

He spent the morning on routine work. Round eleven Eveline Johnson called him up and said she wanted to see him. He said how about towards the end of the week. “But I'm right in the building,” she said in a hurt voice. “Oh, come on up, but I'm pretty busy. . . . You know Mondays.”

Eveline had a look of strain in the bright hard light that poured in the window from the overcast sky. She had on a grey coat with a furcollar that looked a little shabby and a prickly grey straw hat that fitted her head tight and had a kind of a last year's look. The lines from the flanges of her nose to the ends of her mouth looked deeper and harder than ever. Dick got up and took both her hands. “Eveline, you look tired.”

“I think I'm coming down with the grippe.” She talked fast. “I just came in to see a friendly face. I have an appointment to see J.W. at eleven fifteen. . . . Do you think he'll come across? If I can raise ten thousand the Shuberts will raise the rest. But it's got to be right away because somebody has some kind of an option on it that expires tomorrow. . . . Oh, I'm so sick of not doing anything. . . . Holden has wonderful ideas about the production and he's letting me do the sets and costumes . . . and if some Broadway producer does it he'll ruin it. . . . Dick, I know it's a great play.”

Dick frowned. “This isn't such a very good time . . . we're all pretty preoccupied this morning.”

“Well, I won't disturb you any more.” They were standing in the window. “How can you stand those riveters going all the time?”

“Why, Eveline, those riveters are music to our ears, they make us sing like canaries in a thunderstorm. They mean business. . . . If J.W. takes my advice that's where we're going to have our new office.”

“Well, goodby.” She put her hand in its worn grey glove in his. “I know you'll put in a word for me. . . . You're the white haired boy around here.”

She went out leaving a little frail familiar scent of cologne and furs
in the office. Dick walked up and down in front of his desk frowning. He suddenly felt nervous and jumpy. He decided he'd run out to get a breath of air and maybe a small drink before he went to lunch. “If anybody calls,” he said to his secretary, “tell them to call me after three. I have an errand and then an appointment with Mr. Moorehouse.”

In the elevator there was J.W. just going down in a new overcoat with a big furcollar and a new grey fedora. “Dick,” he said, “if you're late at the Plaza I'll wring your neck. . . . You're slated for the blind bowboy.”