The Rat Race by Jay Franklin (book club books txt) 📕

a white cameo brooch at the "V" of a bodice which suggested a potentially undemure Quakeress. I noticed that she had angry eyes, a sulky mouth and a puzzled expression.

"I'm sorry, Jimmie," I replied, after a good look at her, "but I have decided that I simply couldn't go through with it."

"Do you mean to say—" Dr. Rutherford began, only to be hushed by Germaine. "Let me handle him, Jerry," she whispered. "You'd better go. He's tight. I'll phone you in the morning."

"All right, if you say so, dear," the doctor obeyed.

"And be sure to send me a bill for this call," I added. "Professional services and what-not. And don't come back to my house without my personal invitation."

Dr. Rutherford emitted a muttered comment and disappeared into the gloom of the hall. My wife followed him and I could hear a series of confused and comforting whispers sending him on his way. I had finished my Scotch and poured myself another before my wife rejoined me.

"Have a drink?" I asked.

"No thank you!" she snapped.

"Mad at me?"

"What do you think?" Her tone was cool enough to freeze lava.

"You have every right to be!" That answer, I had found by experience, was unanswerable.

"What do you mean?" she asked in some bewilderment. "Yes, thanks, I will have a drink after all. You see, Winnie, after we had talked it all over the other night after the Bond Rally Dance and realized how we felt about it all, the four of us decided to be—well—civilized about things. And now—"

"I don't feel civilized about my wife," I said, pouring her a stiff one.

Her eyes glittered and her cheek was tinged with color. In spite of her anger, she responded to the idea of male brutes contesting for her favor.

"I didn't think you cared a damn," she said at last, "and it's pretty late in the day to make a change now. After all, there is Virginia."

That was the cue to clinch the situation. "To hell with Virginia!" I announced. "I'd rather live with you as your friend than sleep with la Rutherford in ten thousand beds. I can't help it," I added boyishly.

She leaned forward and sniffed. "You have been drinking, haven't you?" she remarked.

"Of course I have! Today, in town, I suddenly realized what a damn fool I'd been to throw away something really fine for something very second-rate. So I drank. Too much. And the more I drank the more I knew that I was right and that it was here where I belong, with you. If you don't want me to stay, I'll go over to the Country Club for the night. I'll even phone Jerry Rutherford for you—him and his moustache—but I'm damned if I'll go running back to Virginia. She's not pukka!" ("How'm I doing?" I added silently for the benefit of the Master of Ceremonies.)

"Well—" she said, after a long pause. "Perhaps—It's so mixed up—Perhaps you'd better go to bed here and we can talk it over in the morning. All of us."

I shook my head. "I don't want to hold any more mass-meetings on the state of our mutual affections. If you want that tenor tonsil-snatcher, you're welcome to him but I'm damned if I'll be a good sport about it. If you insist, I'll buy you a divorce, but I won't marry Virginia—that's final!"

Germaine's face relaxed. She smiled. "We'll see how things look to you in the morning," she said.

Now was the time to play the trump card.

"Oh yes," I said. "I brought home a present for you."

I walked over to the hanger in the corner and pulled the Tiffany packages from my overcoat pocket.

"Here you are, Jimmie Tompkins," I said, "with all my alleged love."

"Alleged is right!" But she picked eagerly at the wrappings and swiftly ferreted out the diamond brooch. "Why, Winnie, it's lovely—" she began, then whirled on me, her eyes blazing. "Is this a joke?" she demanded.

"Of course not! What's the matter?"

Her laugh was wild. "Oh, nothing, Winnie. Nothing at all. It's just that you should have decided to give me—on her birthday—a brooch with her initials in diamonds. See them! V.M.R."

So that's the catch, I thought. I should have guessed there would be something wrong with the set-up and I kicked myself for not having bothered to trace out the monogram.

"Don't you see what I mean," I grated, "or must I spell it out for you? Some time back, when we were considering all this civilized swapping of husbands and wives, I put in the order at Tiffany's for Virginia's birthday present. Today, when I picked it up, the clerk smirked at me—he knows your initials don't begin with V—and I suddenly knew I couldn't go ahead with the whole business. So I brought the brooch back to you as a trophy, if you want it. You can do what you like about it. It's yours. You see, Jimmie," I added, "that's the way things are. I'm burning all my bridges."

"Oh!" she said. Then after a long pause, she added, "Ah!"

"I don't think," she remarked, after another pause, "that I'll want to keep this and I'm far too fond of Virginia Rutherford to humiliate her. I think I'll just take this back to Tiffany's and get something else."

So I had led trumps.

"Here's something else to be going on with," I told her. "I got this for you, anyhow, win, lose or draw"—and I produced the gold bracelet. "I thought it would go with that dress and your cameo and—if you still want to wear it—your wedding ring."

She cast quick glances from side to side, like a bird that suspects a snare.

"It's good," she sighed. "Winnie, it's so good. I guess...."

There was a knock at the door. It was Myrtle-Mary.

"Will the master be staying for dinner, Mrs. Tompkins?" she asked.

"Of course I will, Mary," I said. "Is there enough to eat?"

"I'll see, sir," she replied in a manner which was practically an insult to us both.

"And keep a civil tongue in your head," I added.

She handed it back to me. "And keep your hands to yourself, sir," she said as she closed the door.

"Winnie." It was Jimmie's hand restraining me, as I started up.

"Let her go!" I said at last. "It's my fault, I guess. I haven't been happy and I did make a few passes. From now on, I'll try to be a bit more decent and livable. God knows I have plenty to be ashamed of, but nothing disgraceful ... I hope."

"So do I," my wife began. "If you...."

The telephone rang.

She picked up the receiver and listened for a moment, frowning.

"Yes, he's here," she said, passing me the instrument.

"It's for you," she observed. "It's Virginia calling from New York and she sounds most annoyed."

CHAPTER 3

"Winnie!" The voice that crackled at me over the wire had all the implacable tenderness of a woman who has you in the wrong.

"Yes, dear!" I answered automatically, with a passing thought for my own lost Dorothy, marooned in Washington with a job in the O.S.S.

"What is the matter?" the voice continued, in its litany of angry possessiveness. "What on earth happened to you? I've been waiting for you since three o'clock."

"Where have you been waiting?"

"Here—of course. In our place. In New York. Winnie, what's wrong?"

Not a pleasant spot to be in, even if it was only part of a trial-run in purgatory.

"It's a bit too hard to explain, Virginia," I said, "but something came up and I don't think I can go through with it. In fact, I know I can't go through with it."

There was one of those pauses which make a whole life-time seem like a split-second.

"Something came up!" The voice, now a pantherish contralto, purred dangerously. "Something went down, you mean. You see, Winnie, I've been talking to your friends. Johnny Walker, Black Label, that's what went down. At the Pond Club. Tommy Morgan told me all about it. You went to the Pond, had too much to drink, woke up about four o'clock—one whole hour after you had promised to meet me—and woke up talking wildly and then staggered out. Now I find you're back in Bedford Hills, and it—it's my birthday—" The voice ended in a choke which might have been a sob or a paroxysm of feminine fury.

I summoned the old voice of authority, as inculcated at Quonset, into the well-tanned vocal chords of Winfred Tompkins. "Virginia," I commanded, "just stop making a fool of yourself. I'm sorry I stood you up but things have been happening. I just can't go through with it. I'll explain when I see you."

"You'd better!" And the slam of the receiver left my ears ringing.

When I turned around, my wife was smiling, with a glint in her eye which was far from sympathetic.

"Poor Winnie!" she observed. "You'd better stick to your office stenographers and not go picking up red-headed married women in Westchester. You haven't got a chance."

I refilled my glass and hers, in that order—a husbandly gesture which put me, I felt, on a solid married basis for the moment.

"Jimmie," I announced. "I don't need to tell you that I'm an awful heel. Now that we've got the wraps off I wish you'd tell me what you really think of me and Virginia."

Mrs. Tompkins' nostrils flickered slightly. "I never cared for bulging red-heads myself," she said. "When she was at Miss Spence's we called her Virgin for short, but not for long. There never was a thing in pants, up to and including scarecrows, that she wouldn't carry the torch for. When she married Jerry Rutherford it was a great relief to her relatives. She had no friends."

"A very succinct summary, for all that it should be written in letters of fire," I remarked. "And now what do you think of me?"

She took a long sip of her drink and leaned forward. "You're fat, soft and spoiled, Winnie, physically, mentally and morally," she began, "and you know it. If you weren't so stinking rich you'd—well, I don't know. There's something about you that's—Well, after you bought me from my parents, I wanted to kill myself and then I sized you up. There's no real harm in you, Winnie, it's not hard to like you, but you never were love's young dream."

"What you say is absolutely on the beam," I admitted. "But while we're on the subject I wouldn't call Jerry Rutherford the answer to a maiden's prayer. That Hollywood doctor type with the swank suburban practice and the soft bedroom manner gets me down. He has only three ideas in the world and all of them begin with 'I'. After the first antiseptic raptures you'd have nothing in common but your appendix and he'd want to get away with that—for a consideration."

Jimmie giggled. "You forget that he already has it," she said. "That's how I was first attracted to him, under the ether cone. I was sick as a dog and he held my hand and told me I was being very brave."

"And sent the hell of a bill to me," I added.

"Well," she asked, after a pause. "What do you really think of me?"

"I think, Jimmie, that you're lonely, bored and unhappy. All three are my fault but they are driving you to make a fool of yourself. Nobody has tried to understand you"—which is catnip for any person of either sex, once you get them talking about themselves—"least of all your husband. You need what other women need—children, a home...."

"If this is a build-up for obstetrics, the answer is 'No!'" she snapped angrily.

"Skip it!" I urged. "I'm telling you the truth, not making a pass at you. We can talk some more about you in the morning. In the meantime, I think I'll turn in. I'm very tired, a little tight and I've had a lousy day."

She flashed me a curious look. "Go on up, Winnie," she said. "I'll put these things away. You'll need your strength for the morning, if I know Virginia Rutherford."

Guided by luck and the smell of pipe tobacco, I found what was obviously the Master's Room—with a weird amalgam of etchings of ducks and nude girls, including one Zorn, and all the gadgets for making sleep as complicated as driving an automobile.

I was awakened in the morning by a hand on my shoulder. It was Mary-Myrtle.

"You'd better get up and put on your pyjamas and dressing gown," she remarked conversationally. "Dr. Rutherford is downstairs and Mrs. Rutherford is talking with Mrs. Tompkins in her bedroom."

"Stormy weather?"

"I'll say so—and see here—" she began.

"Sit down, Mary!" I ordered.

She subsided on the edge of the bed and looked at me rebelliously.

"From now on, Mary," I announced, "things are going to be different around here. I won't refer to what is past, because