It actually had to do with his mother. The mere thought of that pale and fragile creature setting out to do battle with the forces of cynicism aroused all his pity. It was an uneven fight. Somehow he had to find a way to help her. (And hurt his father? But to that point Dane did not go.)
He considered for only one horrid moment taking the direct route, confronting his father with his knowledge, demanding, “Who is she?” The whole scene was too embarrassing to contemplate. His father would either grasp him by the neck and the seat of the pants and hurl him bodily from the premises (and isn’t the fear of physical punishment at those great father-hands deeply hidden inside you, Dane?) or, worse, he might break down and weep. Dane did not think he could stand either eventuality. (Or even a third possibility, which Dane did not consider: that his father might simply say, “It’s none of your business, son,” and change the subject.)
In any event, as Dane saw it, subterfuge was called for.
Ashton McKell’s movements were generally predictable. He had fairly fixed times for getting to his office and coming home, for going to his club, for reading his newspaper, his magazines, his Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling. Home at seven, dinner at eight, five days a week. It was on weekends that the elder McKell did his personal brand of carousing; but at those times he caroused in the open.
Except...
Except, Dane suddenly realized, that for weeks now — or was it months? — his father had not got home until far past his usual hour on one night of the week, Wednesday. Dane could not recall his mother’s ever commenting on this phenomenon; and all that his father had said, on the single occasion when Dane brought the subject up, was the one word: “Business.”
What “business” was it that recurred Wednesday nights regularly? It seemed an easy leap to the conclusion that on Wednesday nights Ashton McKell made rendezvous with his mistress.
Nothing could be done about it today, which was Tuesday. But tomorrow... His weekend plans would have to be scrapped, Dane told himself, nursing the hunch that it would be a busy time.
He turned to the mumble-sheet in his typewriter.
Jerry at the old stone quarry. Ellen comes, rest as noted. Okay, but. WHY does Jerry go there? To swim? April — too early. Maybe to fish. Check: fish in stone quarries?
He pulled at his lower lip. Then he cocked his head and his fingers raced over the keys.
The elder McKell left his office promptly at noon as marked on Taylor McKell’s old Seth Thomas clock in the inner sanctum. Judy would quit her desk at 12:10, return at 12:55. Ashton would be back at 1 P.M. sharp.
August 17th, 12:05 P.M.:
“Judy? Dane McKell. My father there?”
“He’s left, Dane. Is your watch slow?”
A rueful laugh. “Damn it, it is.” Then, in a rush: “Look, Judy, I’ve got to see him this afternoon, but I can’t make it till after five. Do you suppose—?”
“That’s far too late, Dane. Today is Wednesday, and on Wednesdays Mr. McKell now leaves his office at four. Can’t you make it before then?”
“Never mind, I’ll catch him later, at home. Don’t even bother mentioning my call. How are you, Judykins? But I’m keeping you from your lunch.”
Judy thought as she hung up: That was an odd conversation. But then she shrugged and went off to lunch. She had long ago given up trying to figure out Dane McKell; too much thought about him was no good for her, anyway. The secretary married the boss’s son only in the movies.
Out into the August sun went Dane. He rented a car, a two-year-old Ford. His own little red MG might be spotted.
He picked up the Ford at a quarter past three, and by 3:45 he was parked outside the McKell Building. He thought it unlikely that his father would sneak out through the boiler-room exit or one of the side doors. Sure enough, a few minutes later up drove the big Bentley with Ramon, his father’s chauffeur, at the wheel.
Dane pulled away and circled the block. Now he parked at an observation post across the street, some distance behind the Bentley, and settled down to wait.
Ramon was reading a racing form.
What am I doing here? thought Dane. What in God’s name do I think I’m doing? Suppose I find out who the woman is, “unmask” her? Then what? How would that help Mother?
There was one possibility. Suppose the woman did not know her sugar-daddy was a married man. Suppose he had filled her full of a lot of hop about making an honest woman of her. One flea in her ear, and she might give him his hat.
And what does that make me? the McKell son and heir ruminated. A first-class heel is what!
Still... Dane shrugged. The compulsion was powerful. He had to find out the woman’s name. He would take it — somewhere — from there.
At 4:10 he stiffened. The massive figure of his father came striding through the revolving doors of the McKell Building. Ramon dropped his racing form, jumped out, and held the rear door open. Ashton McKell got in, Ramon ran around to the front, started the Bentley, and the big car swished off into the traffic.
Rather frantically, Dane followed.
The Bentley headed for the West Side Highway. It went north past Washington Market, past the old Sapolio Building, past the docks where the Atlantic liners berthed like comic book monsters, Dane in the hired Ford keeping several lengths behind. Where were they going? Over the George Washington Bridge to some ghastly New Jersey suburb, where Ashton McKell was keeping the widow of some insurance salesman in bourgeois splendor? Or up to 72nd Street and a doxy’s teddy-bear-filled flat?
But the Bentley turned off at a midtown exit, crept east over to Fifth Avenue, and headed north again. Dane had no opportunity to trim his speculations to the wind — he was too busy trying not to lose the other car.
Suddenly the chauffeur-driven car pulled up before a stout stone building of three stories which Dane knew well enough. He was puzzled. If there was one building in New York where his father could not possibly be holding an assignation, it was at this, the Metropolitan Cricket Club, that arch-bastion of ultra-respectable aristocrats.
Cricket itself no longer occupied the energies of the club, which had been founded in 1803 (Dane found himself thinking of Robert Benchley’s After 1903, What? — a good question). For who was left for the Metropolitan Cricketeers to play? The puberts of the Riverdale Country School? No British team would stoop to play them; and if the club membership could have brought themselves to step out onto a bowling pitch against the supple West Indian immigrants who still played cricket up in Van Cortlandt Park, the result would have been mayhem... It was a club, like other exclusive clubs, whose principal virtue was exclusivity. And indeed Dane gazed up at his elderly cousin twice removed, Colonel Adolphus Phillipse, who sat, seemingly growing out of the floor, in his window, with the New York Times, doubtless growling over the dangerous radicalism of Senator Barry Goldwater.
The Bentley drove off; Dane snapped around in time to see his father walking briskly up the worn front steps as if it were Tuesday or Friday, his club days. What was he going to do? Have a drink? Write a letter? Make a phone call?... Dane settled himself.
At the other side of the window, separated from Colonel Phillipse, sat white-whiskered Dr. MacAnderson, immersed in one of the bearded tomes from which for fifty years he had been culling information to support his theory that “the mixed multitude” which accompanied the children of Israel out of Egypt was in fact the ancestral horde of the Gypsy nation. Colonel Phillipse slowly turned a page of his newspaper, intent on not missing a semicolon of the latest transgression of the Federal Reserve Bank. And Dane wondered how long his father was going to remain inside.