Big Money (64 page)

“To shoot Bingham in the heart?” Dick's ears hummed as the elevator dropped.

J.W. nodded, smiling. “By the way, in strict confidence what do you think of Mrs. Johnson's project to put on a play? . . . Of course she's a very lovel ywoman. . . . Sheused to be a great friend of Eleanor's. . . . Dick, my boy, why don't you marry?”

“Who? Eveline? She's married already.”

“I was thinking aloud, don't pay any attention to it.” They came out of the elevator and walked across the Grand Central together in the swirl of the noontime crowd. The sun had come out and sent long slanting motefilled rays across under the great blue ceiling overhead. “But what do you think of this play venture? You see I'm pretty well tied up in the market. . . . I suppose I could borrow the money at the bank.”

“The theater's always risky,” said Dick. “Eveline's a great girl and all that and full of talent but I don't know how much of a head she has for business. Putting on a play's a risky business.”

“I like to help old friends out . . . but it occurred to me that if the Shuberts thought there was money in it they'd be putting it in themselves. . . . Of course Mrs. Johnson's very artistic.”

“Of course,” said Dick.

At twelve thirty he was waiting for J.W. in the lobby of the Plaza chewing sensen to take the smell of the three whiskeys he'd swallowed at Tony's on the way up off his breath. At twelve fortyfive he saw coming from the checkroom J.W.'s large pearshaped figure with the paleblue eyes and the sleek strawgrey hair, and beside him a tall gaunt man with untidy white hair curling into ducktails over his ears. The minute they stepped into the lobby Dick began to hear a rasping opinionated boom from the tall man.

“. . . never one of those who could hold my peace while injustice ruled in the marketplace. It has been a long struggle and one which from the vantage of those threescore and ten years that the prophets of old promised to man upon this earth I can admit to have been largely crowned with material and spiritual success. Perhaps it was my early training for the pulpit but I have always felt, and that feeling, Mr. Moorehouse, is not rare among the prominent businessmen in this country, that material success is not the only thing . . . there is the attainment of the spirit of service. That is why I say to you frankly that I have been grieved and wounded by this dark conspiracy. Who steals my purse steals trash but who would . . . what is it? . . . my memory's not what it was . . . my good name . . . Ah, yes, how do you do, Mr. Savage?”

Dick was surprised by the wrench the handshake gave his arm. He found himself standing in front of a gaunt loose-jointed old man with a shock of white hair and a big prognathous skull from which the sunburned skin hung in folds like the jowls of a birddog. J.W. seemed small and meek beside him. “I'm very glad to meet you, sir,” E. R. Bingham said. “I have often said to my girls that had I grown up in your generation I would have found happy and useful work in the field of publicrelations. But alas in my day the path was harder for a young man entering life with nothing but the excellent tradition of moral fervor and natural religion I absorbed if I may say so with my mother's milk. We had to put our shoulders to the wheel in those days and it was the wheel of an old muddy wagon drawn by mules, not the wheel of a luxurious motorcar.”

E. R. Bingham boomed his way into the diningroom. A covey of palefaced waiters gathered round, pulling out chairs, setting the table, bringing menucards. “Boy, it is no use handing me the bill of fare,” E. R. Bingham addressed the headwaiter. “I live by nature's law. I eat only a few nuts and vegetables and drink raw milk. . . . Bring me some cooked spinach, a plate of grated carrots and a glass of unpasteurized milk. . . . As a result, gentlemen, when I went a few days ago to a great physician at the request of one of the great lifeinsurance companies in this city he was dumbfounded when he examined me. He could hardly believe that I was not telling a whopper when I told him I was seventyone. ‘Mr. Bingham,' he said, ‘you have the magnificent physique of a healthy athlete of fortyfive'. . . Feel that, young man.” E. R. Bingham flexed his arm under Dick's nose. Dick gave the muscle a
prod with two fingers. “A sledgehammer,” Dick said, nodding his head. E. R. Bingham was already talking again: “You see I practice what I preach, Mr. Moorehouse . . . and I expect others to do the same. . . . I may add that in the entire list of remedies and proprietary medicines controlled by Bingham Products and the Rugged Health Corporation, there is not a single one that contains a mineral, a drug or any other harmful ingredient. I have sacrificed time and time again hundreds of thousands of dollars to strike from my list a concoction deemed injurious or habitforming by Dr. Gorman and the rest of the splendid men and women who make up our research department. Our medicines and our systems of diet and cure are nature's remedies, herbs and simples culled in the wilderness in the four corners of the globe according to the tradition of wise men and the findings of sound medical science.”

“Would you have coffee now, Mr. Bingham, or later?”

“Coffee, sir, is a deadly poison, as are alcohol, tea and tobacco. If the shorthaired women and the longhaired men and the wildeyed cranks from the medical schools, who are trying to restrict the liberties of the American people to seek health and wellbeing, would restrict their activities to the elimination of these dangerous poisons that are sapping the virility of our young men and the fertility of our lovely American womanhood I would have no quarrel with them. In fact I would do everything I could to aid and abet them. Someday I shall put my entire fortune at the disposal of such a campaign. I know that the plain people of this country feel as I do because I'm one of them, born and raised on the farm of plain godfearing farming folk. The American people need to be protected from cranks.”

“That, Mr. Bingham,” said J.W., “will be the keynote of the campaign we have been outlining.” The fingerbowls had arrived. “Well, Mr. Bingham,” said J.W., getting to his feet, “this has been indeed a pleasure. I unfortunately shall have to leave you to go downtown to a rather important directors' meeting but Mr. Savage here has everything right at his fingertips and can, I know, answer any further questions. I believe we are meeting with your sales department at five.”

As soon as they were alone E. R. Bingham leaned over the table to Dick and said, “Young man, I very much need a little relaxation this afternoon. Perhaps you could come to some entertainment as my guest. . . . All work and no play . . . you know the adage. Chicago has always been my headquarters and whenever I've been in New York
I've been too busy to get around. . . . Perhaps you could suggest some sort of show or musical extravaganza. I belong to the plain people, let's go where the plain people go.” Dick nodded understandingly. “Let's see, Monday afternoon . . . I'll have to call up the office. . . . There ought to be vaudeville. . . . I can't think of anything but a burlesque show.” “That's the sort of thing, music and young women. . . . I have high regard for the human body. My daughters, thank God, are magnificent physical specimens. . . . The sight of beautiful female bodies is relaxing and soothing. Come along, you are my guest. It will help me to make up my mind about this matter. . . . Between you and me Mr. Moorehouse is a very extraordinary man. I think he can lend the necessary dignity. . . . But we must not forget that we are talking to the plain people.”

“But the plain people aren't so plain as they were, Mr. Bingham. They like things a little ritzy now,” said Dick, following E. R. Bingham's rapid stride to the checkroom. “I never wear hat or coat, only that muffler, young lady,” E. R. Bingham was booming.

“Have you any children of your own, Mr. Savage?” asked E. R. Bingham when they were settled in the taxicab. “No, I'm not married at the moment,” said Dick shakily, and lit himself a cigarette. “Will you forgive a man old enough to be your father for pointing something out to you?” E. R. Bingham took Dick's cigarette between two long knobbed fingers and dropped it out the window of the cab. “My friend, you are poisoning yourself with narcotics and destroying your virility. When I was around forty years old I was in the midst of a severe economic struggle. All my great organization was still in its infancy. I was a physical wreck. I was a slave to alcohol and tobacco. I had parted with my first wife and had I had a wife I wouldn't have been able to . . . behave with her as a man should. Well, one day I said to myself: ‘Doc Bingham'—my friends called me Doc in those days—‘like Christian of old you are bound for the City of Destruction and when you're gone, you'll have neither chick nor child to drop a tear for you.' I began to interest myself in the proper culture of the body . . . my spirit I may say was already developed by familiarity with the classics in my youth and a memory that many have called prodigious. . . . The result has been success in every line of endeavor. . . . Someday you shall meet my family and see what sweetness and beauty there can be in a healthy American home.”

E. R. Bingham was still talking when they went down the aisle to
seats beside the gangplank at a burlesque show. Before he could say Jack Robinson, Dick found himself looking up a series of bare jiggling female legs spotted from an occasional vaccination. The band crashed and blared, the girls wiggled and sang and stripped in a smell of dust and armpits and powder and greasepaint in the glare of the moving spot that kept lighting up E. R. Bingham's white head. E. R. Bingham was particularly delighted when one of the girls stooped and cooed, “Why, look at Grandpa,” and sang into his face and wiggled her geestring at him. E. R. Bingham nudged Dick and whispered, “Get her telephone number.” After she'd moved on he kept exclaiming, “I feel like a boy again.”

In the intermission Dick managed to call Miss Williams at the office and to tell her to suggest to people not to smoke at the conference. “Tell J.W. the old buzzard thinks cigarettes are coffinnails,” he said. “Oh, Mr. Savage,” said Miss Williams reprovingly. At five Dick tried to get him out but he insisted on staying till the end of the show. “They'll wait for me, don't worry,” he said.

When they were back in a taxi on the way to the office E. R. Bingham chuckled. “By gad, I always enjoy a good legshow, the human form divine. . . . Perhaps we might, my friend, keep the story of our afternoon under our hats.” He gave Dick's knee a tremendous slap. “It's great to play hookey.”

At the conference Bingham Products signed on the dotted line. Mr. Bingham agreed to anything and paid no attention to what went on. Halfway through he said he was tired and was going home to bed and left yawning, leaving Mr. Goldmark and a representative of the J. Winthrop Hudson Company that did the advertising for Bingham Products to go over the details of the project. Dick couldn't help admiring the quiet domineering way J.W. had with them. After the conference Dick got drunk and tried to make a girl he knew in a taxicab but nothing came of it and he went home to the empty apartment feeling frightful.

The next morning Dick overslept. The telephone woke him. It was Miss Williams calling from the office. Would Mr. Savage get himself a bag packed and have it sent down to the station so as to be ready to accompany Mr. Moorehouse to Washington on the Congressional. “And, Mr. Savage,” she added, “excuse me for saying so, but we all feel at the office that you were responsible for nailing the Bingham account. Mr. Moorehouse was saying you must have hypnotized them.”
“That's very nice of you, Miss Williams,” said Dick in his sweetest voice.

Dick and J.W. took a drawingroom on the train. Miss Williams came too and they worked all the way down. Dick was crazy for a drink all afternoon, but he didn't dare take one, although he had a bottle of scotch in his bag, because Miss Williams would be sure to spot him getting out the bottle and say something about it in that vague acid apologetic way she had, and he knew J.W. felt he drank too much. He felt so nervous he smoked cigarettes until his tongue began to dry up in his mouth and then took to chewing chiclets.

Dick kept J.W. busy with new slants until J.W. lay down to take a nap saying he felt a little seedy; then Dick took Miss Williams to the diner to have a cup of tea and told her funny stories that kept her in a gale. By the time they reached the smoky Baltimore tunnels he felt about ready for a padded cell. He'd have been telling people he was Napoleon before he got to Washington if he hadn't been able to get a good gulp of scotch while Miss Williams was in the ladies' room and J.W. was deep in a bundle of letters E. R. Bingham had given him between Bingham Products and their Washington lobbyist Colonel Judson on the threat of pure food legislation.

When Dick finally escaped to his room in the corner suite J.W. always took at the Shoreham, he poured out a good drink to take quietly by himself, with soda and ice, while he prepared a comic telegram to send the girl he had a date for dinner with that night at the Colony Club. He'd barely sipped the drink when the phone rang. It was E. R. Bingham's secretary calling up from the Willard to see if Dick would dine with Mr. and Mrs. Bingham and the Misses Bingham. “By all means go,” said J.W. when Dick inquired if he'd need him. “First thing you know I'll be completing the transaction by marrying you off to one of the lovely Bingham girls.”

The Bingham girls were three strapping young women named Hygeia, Althea and Myra, and Mrs. Bingham was a fat faded flatfaced blonde who wore round steel spectacles. The only one of the family who didn't wear glasses and have buckteeth was Myra who seemed to take more after her father. She certainly talked a blue streak. She was the youngest, too, and E. R. Bingham, who was striding around in oldfashioned carpetslippers with his shirt open at the neck and a piece of red flannel undershirt showing across his chest, introduced her as the artistic member of the family. She giggled a great deal
about how she was going to New York to study painting. She told Dick he looked as if he had the artistic temperament.