“What’s the matter?” she said. “Aren’t there enough chairs?”
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We got talking, somehow, about Berlin night life. Arthur giggled and became arch. Helen, who dealt in statistics and psycho-analytical terms, regarded him in puzzled disapproval. At length Arthur made a sly reference to “the speciality of the Kaufhaus des Westens.”
“Oh, you mean those whores on the corner there,” said Helen, in the bright matter-of-fact tone of a schoolmistress giving a biology lesson, “who dress up to excite the boot-fetishists?”
“Well, upon my soul, ha ha, I must say,” Arthur sniggered, coughed and rapidly fingered his wig, “seldom have I met such an extremely, if you’ll allow me to say so, eradvanced, or shall I say, ermodern young lady …”
“My God!” Helen threw back her head and laughed unpleasantly. “I haven’t been called a young lady since the days when I used to help mother with the shop on Saturday afternoons.”
“Have youerbeen in this city long?” asked Arthur hastily. Vaguely aware that he had made a mistake, he imagined that he ought to change the subject. I saw the look Helen gave him and knew that all was over.
“If you take my advice, Bill,” she said to me, the next time we met, “you won’t trust that man an inch.”
“I don’t,” I said.
“Oh, I know you. You’re soft, like most men. You make up romances about people instead of seeing them as they are. Have you ever noticed his mouth?”
“Frequently.”
“Ugh, it’s disgusting. I could hardly bear to look at it. Beastly and flabby like a toad’s.”
“Well,” I said, laughing, “I suppose I’ve got a weakness for toads.”
Not daunted by this failure, I tried Arthur on Fritz Wendel. Fritz was a German-American, a young man about town, who spent his leisure time dancing and playing bridge. He had a curious passion for the society of painters and writers, and had acquired a status with them by working at a fashionable art dealer’s. The art dealer didn’t pay him anything, but
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Fritz could afford this hobby, being rich. He had an aptitude for gossip which amounted to talent, and might have made a first-class private detective.
We had tea together in Fritz’s flat. He and Arthur talked New York, impressionist painting, and the unpublished works of the Wilde group. Arthur was witty and astonishingly informative. Fritz’s b)ack eyes sparkled as he registered the epigrams for future use, and I smiled, feeling pleased and proud. I felt myself personally responsible for the success of the interview. I was childishly anxious that Arthur should be approved of; perhaps because I, too, wanted to be finally, completely convinced.
We said goodbye with mutual promises of an early future meeting. A day or two later, I happened to see Fritz in the street. From the pleasure with which he greeted me, I knew at once that he had something extra spiteful to tell me. For a quarter of an hour he chatted gaily about bridge, night clubs, and his latest flame, a well-known sculptress; his malicious smile broadening all the while at the thought of the tit-bit which he had in reserve. At length he produced it.
“Been seeing any more of your friend Norris?”
“Yes,” I said. “Why?”
“Nothing,” drawled Fritz, his naughty eyes on my face. “Eventually I’d watch your step, that’s all.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I’ve been hearing some queer things about him.”
“Oh, indeed?”
“Maybe they aren’t true. You know how people talk.”
“And I know how you listen, Fritz.”
He grinned; not in the least offended: “There’s a story going round that eventually Norris is some kind of cheap crook.”
“I must say, I should have thought that ‘cheap’ was hardly a word one could apply to him.”
Fritz smiled a superior, indulgent smile.
“I dare say it would surprise you to know that he’s been in prison?”
“What you mean is, it’d surprise me to know that your
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friends say he’s been in prison. Well, it doesn’t in the least. Your friends would say anything.”
Fritz didn’t reply. He merely continued to smile.
“What’s he supposed to have been in prison for?” I asked.
“I didn’t hear,” Fritz drawled. “But maybe I can guess.”
“Well, I can’t.”
“Look, Bill, exuse me a moment.” He had changed his tone now. He was serious. He laid his hand on my shoulder. “What I mean to say, the thing is this. Eventually, we two, we don’t give a damn, hell, for goodness’ sake. But we’ve got other people to consider besides ourselves, haven’t we? Suppose Norris gets hold of some kid and plucks him of his last cent?”
“How dreadful that would be.”
Fritz gave me up. His final shot was: “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you, that’s all.”
“No, Fritz. I most certainly won’t.”
We parted pleasantly.
Perhaps Helen Pratt had been right about me. Stage by stage I was building up a romantic background for Arthur, and was jealous lest it should be upset. Certainly, I rather enjoyed playing with the idea that he was, in fact, a dangerous criminal; but I am sure that I never seriously believed in it for a moment. Nearly every member of my generation is a crime-snob. I was fond of Arthur with an affection strengthened by obstinacy. If my friends didn’t like him because of his mouth or his past, the loss was theirs; I was, I flattered myself, more profound, more humane, an altogether subtler connoisseur of human nature than they. And if, in my letters to England, I sometimes referred to him as “a most amazing old crook,” I only meant by this that I wanted to imagine him as a glorified being; audacious and self-reliant, reckless and calm. All of which, in reality, he only too painfully and obviously wasn’t.
Poor Arthur! I have seldom known anybody with such weak nerves. At times, I began to believe he must be suffering
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from a mild form of persecution mania. I can see him now as he used to sit waiting for me in the most secluded corner of our favourite restaurant, bored, abstracted, uneasy; his hands folded with studied nonchalance in his lap, his head held at an awkward, listening angle, as though he expected, at any moment, to be startled by a very loud bang. I can hear him at the telephone, speaking cautiously, as close as possible to the mouthpiece and barely raising his voice above a whisper.
“Hullo. Yes, it’s me. So you’ve seen that party? Good. Now when can we meet? Let’s say at the usual time, at the house of the person who is interested. And please ask that other one to be there, too. No, no. Herr D. It’s particularly important. Goodbye.”
I laughed. “One would think, to hear you, that you were an arch-conspirator.”
“A very arch conspirator,” Arthur giggled. “No, I assure .you, my dear William, that I was discussing nothing more desperate than the sale of some old furniture in which I happen to beerfinancially interested.”
“Then why on earth all this secrecy?”
“One never knows who may be listening.”
“But, surely, in any case, it wouldn’t interest them very much?”
“You can’t be too careful nowadays,” said Arthur vaguely.
By this time, I had borrowed and read nearly all his “amusing” books. Most of them were extremely disappointing. Their authors adopted a curiously prudish, snobby, lower-middle-class tone, and, despite their sincere efforts to be pornographic, became irritatingly vague in the most important passages. Arthur had a signed set of volumes of My Life and Loves. I asked him if he had known Frank Harris.
“Slightly, yes. It’s some years ago now. The news of his death came as a great shock to me. He was a genius in his own way. So witty. I remember his saying to me, once, in the Louvre: ‘Ah, my dear Norris, you and I are the last of the gentleman adventurers.’ He could be very caustic, you know. People never forgot the things he said about them.