‘A lady wants to speak to you sir.’
‘Has she an appointment? Ask Miss Ranke… Wait a minute. Show the lady right through into this office.’ The card read Nellie Linihan McNiel. She was expensively dressed with a lot of lace in the opening of her big fur coat. Round her neck she had a lorgnette on an amethyst chain.
‘Gus asked me to come to see you,’ she said as he motioned her into a chair beside the desk.
‘What can I do for you?’ His heart for some reason was pounding hard.
She looked at him a moment through her lorgnette. ‘George you stand it better than Gus does.’
‘What?’
‘Oh all this… I’m trying to get Gus to go away with me for a rest abroad… Marianbad or something like that… but he says he’s in too deep to pull up his stakes.’
‘I guess that’s true of all of us,’ said Baldwin with a cold smile.
They were silent a minute, then Nellie McNiel got to her feet. ‘Look here George, Gus is awfully cut up about this… You know he likes to stand by his friends and have his friends stand by him.’
‘Nobody can say that I havent stood by him… It’s simply this, I’m not a politician, and as, probably foolishly, I’ve allowed myself to be nominated for office, I have to run on a nonpartisan basis.’
‘George that’s only half the story and you know it.’
‘Tell him that I’ve always been and always shall be a good friend of his… He knows that perfectly well. In this particular campaign I have pledged myself to oppose certain elements with which Gus has let himself get involved.’
‘You’re a fine talker George Baldwin and you always were.’
Baldwin flushed. They stood stiff side by side at the office door. His hand lay still on the doorknob as if paralyzed. From the outer offices came the sound of typewriters and voices. From outside came the long continuous tapping of riveters at work on a new building.
‘I hope your family’s all well,’ he said at length with an effort.
‘Oh yes they are all well thanks… Goodby.’ She had gone.
Baldwin stood for a moment looking out of the window at the gray blackwindowed building opposite. Silly to let things agitate him so. Need of relaxation. He got his hat and coat from their hook behind the washroom door and went out. ‘Jonas,’ he said to a man with a round bald head shaped like a cantaloupe who sat poring over papers in the highceilinged library that was the central hall of the lawoffice, ‘bring everything up that’s on my desk… I’ll go over it uptown tonight.’
‘All right sir.’
When he got out on Broadway he felt like a small boy playing hooky. It was a sparkling winter afternoon with hurrying rifts of sun and cloud. He jumped into a taxi. Going uptown he lay back in the seat dozing. At Fortysecond Street he woke up. Everything was a confusion of bright intersecting planes of color, faces, legs, shop windows, trolleycars, automobiles. He sat up with his gloved hands on his knees, fizzling with excitement. Outside of Nevada’s apartmenthouse he paid the taxi. The driver was a negro and showed an ivory mouthful of teeth when he got a fiftycent tip. Neither elevator was there so Baldwin ran lightly up the stairs, half wondering at himself. He knocked on Nevada’s door. No answer. He knocked again. She opened it cautiously. He could see her curly towhead. He brushed into the room before she could stop him. All she had on was a kimono over a pink chemise.
‘My God,’ she said, ‘I thought you were the waiter.’
He grabbed her and kissed her. ‘I dont know why but I feel like a threeyear old.’
‘You look like you was crazy with the heat… I dont like you to come over without telephoning, you know that.’
‘You dont mind just this once I forgot.’
Baldwin caught sight of something on the settee; he found himself staring at a pair of darkblue trousers neatly folded.
‘I was feeling awfully fagged down at the office Nevada. I thought I’d come up to talk to you to cheer myself up a bit.’
‘I was just practicing some dancing with the phonograph.’
‘Yes very interesting…’ He began to walk springily up and down. ‘Now look here Nevada… We’ve got to have a talk. I dont care who it is you’ve got in your bedroom.’ She looked suddenly in his face and sat down on the settee beside the trousers. ‘In fact I’ve known for some time that you and Tony Hunter were carrying on.’ She compressed her lips and crossed her legs. ‘In fact all this stuff and nonsense about his having to go to a psychoanalyst at twentyfive dollars an hour amused me enormously… But just this minute I’ve decided I had enough. Quite enough.’
‘George you’re crazy,’ she stammered and then suddenly she began to giggle.
‘I tell you what I’ll do,’ went on Baldwin in a clear legal voice, ‘I’ll send you a check for five hundred, because you’re a nice girl and I like you. The apartment’s paid till the first of the month. Does that suit you? And please never communicate with me in any way.’
She was rolling on the settee giggling helplessly beside the neatly folded pair of darkblue trousers. Baldwin waved his hat and gloves at her and left closing the door very gently behind him. Good riddance, he said to himself as he closed the door carefully behind him.
Down in the street again he began to walk briskly uptown. He felt excited and talkative. He wondered who he could go to see. Telling over the names of his friends made him depressed. He began to feel lonely, deserted. He wanted to be talking to a woman, making her sorry for the barrenness of his life. He went into a cigarstore and began looking through the phonebook. There was a faint flutter in him when he found the H’s. At last he found the name Herf, Helena Oglethorpe.
Nevada Jones sat a long while on the settee giggling hysterically. At length Tony Hunter came in in his shirt and drawers with his bow necktie perfectly tied.
‘Has he gone?’
‘Gone? sure he’s gone, gone for good,’ she shrieked. ‘He saw your damn pants.’
He let himself drop on a chair. ‘O God if I’m not the unluckiest fellow in the world.’
‘Why?’ she sat spluttering with laughter with the tears running down her face.
‘Nothing goes right. That means it’s all off about the matinees.’
‘It’s back to three a day for little Nevada… I dont give a damn… I never did like bein a kept woman.’
‘But you’re not thinking of my career… Women are so selfish. If you hadn’t led me on…’
‘Shut up you little fool. Dont you think I dont know all about you?’ She got to her feet with the kimono pulled tight about her.
‘God all I needed was a chance to show what I could do, and now I’ll never get it,’ Tony was groaning.
‘Sure you will if you do what I tell you. I set out to make a man of you kiddo and I’m goin to do it… We’ll get up an act. Old Hirshbein’ll give us a chance, he used to be kinder smitten… Come on now, I’ll punch you in the jaw if you dont. Let’s start thinkin up… We’ll come in with a dance number see… then you’ll pretend to want to pick me up… I’ll be waitin for a streetcar… see… and you’ll say Hello Girlie an I’ll call Officer.’
‘Is that all right for length sir,’ asked the fitter busily making marks on the trousers with a piece of chalk.
James Merivale looked down at the fitter’s little greenish wizened bald head and at the brown trousers flowing amply about his feet. ‘A little shorter… I think it looks a little old to have trousers too long.’
‘Why hello Merivale I didn’t know you bought your clothes at Brooks’ too. Gee I’m glad to see you.’
Merivale’s blood stood still. He found himself looking straight in the blue alcoholic eyes of Jack Cunningham. He bit his lip and tried to stare at him coldly without speaking.