“Am I to understand that you don’t think it’s wise to be in the market?”
“It’s wise if you’re willing to admit frankly that you’re gambling. But it isn’t wise if you think of it any other way. Because if you look at it any other way, you’re deceiving yourself, and when you start deceiving yourself, you’re not being wise. About anything.” George Lockwood unconsciously looked at the door through which his brother had passed.
“I could point out that you may be deceiving yourself, George,” said Turner. “A hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth.”
“No. I’m like that ancestor of ours that opened a store on the Conestoga Road. There was some risk, and he happened to lose. But he opened a store. He went into business. If he’d been luckier, he might have been as rich as the Astors. I’m going in the candy business, and I’m not risking my life, as our ancestor did. I’m not even risking bankruptcy. I could spend this money on a boat, speaking of Astor, but I don’t care that much about owning a boat. I’m doing something because I’d like to prove a point to my brother, and to you too, for that matter, Ray.”
“George, we’re going to have our arguments. We won’t be able to avoid it,” said Turner.
“Oh, I’m pretty adroit at avoiding arguments, Ray. I never argue to convince anybody. Only to learn something or to entertain myself.”
“Well, I hope you learned something today.”
“Thank you, I did,” said George Lockwood. “Life is a fascinating enterprise. Twenty-four hours ago I was congratulating some Italian cabinetmakers on some beautiful work they did for me. And not one thing that’s happened to me since then would I have been able to predict. Why, this time yesterday I had no intention of coming to New York.”
The three men agreed to meet again the next day, and George Lockwood walked up to Broadway and the office of Lockwood & Company. It was getting dark, and most of the office staff had gone home or were saying goodnight. Marian Strademyer was at her desk. “I have a message for you from your brother,” she said, as George Lockwood was passing in front of her.
“And that is?” said George Lockwood.
“You and Mrs. Lockwood are dining at his house tomorrow evening, eight o’clock,” she said.
“Thank you, Miss Strademyer.”
“You and he were very chummy today,” she said.
“Were we? Unusually so, did you think?”
“I thought so, arm-in-arm, going out to lunch,” said Marian Strademyer.
“Oh, well, I suppose that was unusual, in the office at any rate. But we’re very close,” said George Lockwood. He turned his head in the direction of his brother’s office, and continued, reflectively: “I don’t know of anything I wouldn’t do for him.”
“That’s nice,” she said, then, lowering her voice slightly: “I changed my mind about this afternoon, if you’re still interested.”
“I said four o’clock. Now there isn’t time,” he said.
“Oh, all right,” she said.
“You mustn’t be disagreeable, Marian. I don’t like disagreeable women. Have you any other messages?”
“No,” she said. She took her purse out of her desk drawer and angrily walked out. He went to his office and closed the door. “Miss Strademyer,” he said aloud, “you are a nuisance.” He seated himself at his desk and began speaking into the Dictograph, a summary of his conversation with Turner and Bohm. When he had finished he put the tube in his topcoat pocket. “I don’t like you any more, Miss Strademyer,” he said, and lightly tapped the Dictograph. “Not one damn bit.”
The office was now deserted; the first of the cleaning women had not yet arrived. He went through Marian Strademyer’s desk, carefully replacing everything he disturbed. None of the contents of the desk drawers interested him for long. He sat in her chair for a minute or two, and his next move was to the glass-partitioned bookkeeping room. He took down a large ledger stamped Payroll and placed it on a desk, and there before him was a complete record of Strademyer, Marian’s, salary-and-bonus history at Lockwood & Company. He closed the book, and was about to return it to the shelf, but he reopened it, read the payroll accounts of several other employes, and discovered that Strademyer, Marian, had never had a deduction in her pay cheques for an advance salary payment. In this respect she was unique. No one else had managed to go through any single year without at least one salary advance; several employes on a slightly lower pay scale had seldom got through a fortnight without borrowing money from the petty cash account. Strademyer, Marian, had never borrowed a cent. She seemed to manage very well.
George Lockwood wandered about the office, walking from room to room, smoking his pipe. Then abruptly he stopped walking and took from his vest pocket a small, gold-cornered pigskin notebook. He opened it, and carried it, open, to the vault in the cashier’s room. He read the combination from his notebook, and swung open the vault door. With the key at the end of his watch-chain he opened a file drawer marked Personnel Correspondence, and took out the Strademyer, Marian, folder. Soon he had a list of Strademyer, Marian’s, charge accounts, which had required routine references from Lockwood & Company. For a young woman who was earning forty dollars a week she had found it desirable to establish credit at a considerable number of luxury stores. Lucetta Shay was a small, exclusive dress shop that made Geraldine Lockwood complain of its prices; Milestone & Leigh was a small, exclusive jewelry-silversmith that did not advertise; Kimiyoto & Company, Marchbanks Limited, Barney’s Theatre Ticket Service, Edouard Parfumier were Madison Avenue and cross-street institutions that were semi-secrets of the rich, the chic, the spenders. Marchbanks Limited did not even state its business on its letterhead.
It was six-thirty when George Lockwood closed the vault and took the subway uptown. Geraldine was lying in the tub.
“You’ll have to get out of there,” he said.
“I was getting ready to,” she said. “Did you have a nice day with Pen? Tell me all about it, then you can ask me about what I did.”
“Thank God we’re going to have plenty of hot water in the new house,” he said.
“Didn’t we in the old? Wilma called and wants us for dinner tomorrow. I said yes.”
“I know. Pen left a message.”
“Where were you? I thought you’d be at the office, but they didn’t seem to know where you were.”
“Pen knew, but I guess he was being discreet. We had lunch with Ray Turner and Charley Bohm, then I stayed and spent the afternoon with them.”
“Did you make a lot of money?”
“Potentially. Potentially. But I tied up a large amount of cash.” He was undressing as she dried herself.
“I hope that’s not intended as a warning. I went back and saw Mr. Kimiyoto. I told him we were taking the vases. Positively, this time. He wants to send them by van, and one of his sons is going along to supervise the unloading and uncrating.”
“I should hope so. How was Mary?”
“Well, it shows what they think of them. Mary Chadburn? Weepy. Lawrence has T.B., and she was—”
“Lawrence? Who’s Lawrence?”
“Her nephew. Doug’s sister’s oldest boy, but Mary is devoted to him.”
“Mary gets devoted to anybody that will give her an excuse to weep.”
“I know, but she does an awful lot of good, Mary.”
“Well, maybe she can get the boy a new lung.”