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

you're old enough to know what you're doing and so am I. If you want to stay on and really help me through a hard time, I'll double your wages. If you'd rather go—and I wouldn't blame you—I'll pay you six months wages in advance and you can clear out. But I can't be worried about you and your feelings when I have a big problem to clean up here. Will you go or stay?"

The girl thought for a moment, then rose, straightened her apron and gave me the first friendly smile I had received, since my arrival from the Aleutians.

"I'll stay, Mr. Tompkins," she said. "And here's a pick-me-up I mixed for you. Better drink it before you see the Rutherfords."

"Okay!" And I drank it and it worked its beneficent will upon me. "Now I'll go and kill Dr. Rutherford, if you'll toss me my flit-gun and, thanks!"

Dr. Rutherford was pacing, with surgical precision, up and down my den. He looked slightly more self-possessed than the day before and seemed to be in excellent physical condition. I guessed at the contour beneath my wadded black silk dressing gown and re-considered my original plan to throw him bodily out of the house for having come without my invitation.

"See here, Tompkins," he said briskly. "We're both men of the world, I hope. Things can't go on like this. I was up all night with Virginia. You're not behaving at all well, you know, old man."

I sat down in the corner of the leather lounge and looked up at him—a move which gave me a slight advantage of position in dealing with the higher emotions.

"Let's not mince words, Jerry," I said. "Suppose you just state frankly what you think we should do."

"Germaine loves me and does not love you," Rutherford stated crisply. "You love Virginia and she loves you. None of us wish a divorce. Hang it all, Winnie, we're civilized. These things happen, you know, and we might just as well face them. We agreed that the four of us should do as we liked, and no hard feelings."

I sighed. "Jerry," I said. "What you say was true as of yesterday noon but if these things can happen, they can also un-happen. Whatever you and my wife decide to do is your own affair but I'm damned if I intend to allow her to use my home as a place of assignation and I'm damned if I'll let her become the subject of gossip. So far as Virginia is concerned, whether or not she is in love with me, I'm no longer in love with her and I'm damned if I'll play gigolo to spare the feelings of a bulging red-head who carries the torch for anything in trousers, up to and including scarecrows—myself included."

"I can't allow you to talk that way about my wife, Tompkins. It's rotten bad form and anyhow we both know that people are the way their glands make them and nothing can be done about it."

"Here, have a drink!" I suggested. "This is all under the seal of a confessional. I'm not quarreling with you. I'm consulting you. I don't love Virginia and I don't believe I ever did. If you wish to wriggle out of your marriage, that's your affair."

"And it's yours, too, ever since that night at the War Bond Ball," he said. "Don't forget that I caught you—"

"Rutherford," I replied. "As a medical man you have surely seen far worse than that. You can't sue me for alienation of affections, because all Bedford Hills is aware of Virginia's glands and because it wouldn't help your practice. For the rest, I'm willing to listen to anything as a way out of this mess."

He paused in his precise pacing. "The four of us will have to talk it over," he said, "as soon as I have that drink you offered me."

"Okay," I agreed. "The girls are in Jimmie's bedroom. Perhaps you know the way better than I do. I'll follow your lead."

Germaine was propped up in a frilly four-poster bed amid a wallow of small satin cushions. I barely had time to notice that she was wearing a rather filmy night gown, when I turned to reap the whirl-wind in the form of five foot six of red-haired determination and curves.

"Now, Winnie," she commanded. "What's all this nonsense?"

I caught a tell-tale glimpse of uncharitable diamonds at my wife's breast and hastily averted my eyes from the monogram.

"Virginia," I replied, "There's nothing wrong. Nothing at all. It was just that yesterday I realized that I couldn't go through with it. I don't pretend to be moral but I won't go in for mixed-doubles at my age. It's undignified."

"What!" Mrs. Rutherford's mouth hung open in amazement.

"Only this, Virginia. Whatever I have been in the past, I'm going to try to be different in the future. I know it's hard on you but—"

The red-head laughed like tumbrils rolling to the guillotine. "Nothing to what a breach of promise suit would be to you, Winnie dear. Don't forget I have your letters."

"Now we're getting somewhere," I remarked. "How much?"

"Winnie!" my wife gasped. "It's blackmail!"

"Of course it's blackmail," I agreed, "and there are times when it's wiser to pay than to fight. This is not one of them. Virginia, I'm not interested in buying back those letters. Save them for a rainy day. I'm going to settle with your husband. How about it, Jerry?"

"You swine!" Mrs. Rutherford was going definitely Grade-B in the pinches. "Do you think that you can drive a wedge between me and my husband?"

"No, my wife has already done that for me. He loves her and he tells me that she loves him. I've told him that they're welcome to a divorce but I won't have my house used for any hanky-panky and won't have people gossip about Germaine. They can make up their minds what they want to do about it."

"You were saying downstairs, Tompkins," the doctor hastily interrupted, "that you would listen to any reasonable offer."

"Check! What's your price?"

"I want out," said Dr. Rutherford. "Lend me the value of a year's practice—fifteen thousand would cover it—and I'll get in a substitute and take a crack at the Army Medical Corps. They've been after me for a couple of years."

"Done!" I said, "and if you like I'll have the bank dole it out to Virginia while you're gone, so she won't use it up too fast."

"What about me?" asked my wife. "I thought Jerry said he loved me."

"What's your price?" I asked.

Germaine yawned and the shoulder strap of her gown slipped indiscreetly. "Since nobody seems to want me," she declared, "I'm going to stick around and see the fun. I wouldn't miss the sight of Winnie Tompkins trying to lead a changed life for all the doctors in the Medical Corps."

"Me too!" spat out Mrs. Rutherford. "There's something pretty mysterious going on here and I'm going to stay until I learn all the answers."

There was a tap at the bedroom door and Myrtle appeared, pulling two neatly set breakfast trays on a rubber-tired mahogany tea-wagon.

"I thought you would rather have your breakfast upstairs with the Master, mam," she remarked primly, in a far too English country-house manner. "Breakfast is waiting for Dr. and Mrs. Rutherford in the dining-room," she added.

And as she bent over the table and began to straighten out the breakfast things, the girl had the impudence to slip me a wink.

CHAPTER 4

After a pleasant breakfast, in the course of which my wife read the social news in the New York Herald-Tribune and I the business news in the New York Times, I excused myself and returned to my bedroom. Winnie's bathroom was fitted with all the gadgets, too, and there was an abundant choice of razors, from the old-fashioned straight-edge suicide's favorite to the 1941 stream-lined electric Yankee clipper. I tried out the scales and found that my involuntary host weighed over 195 pounds—a good deal of it around the middle. Oh, well, a few weeks of setting up exercises would take care of that. A cold shower and a brisk rub made me feel a little more presentable and I climbed shamelessly into Winnie's most manly tweeds.

"Are you catching the ten o'clock, dear?" Germaine called from her bedroom.

"No such luck!" I warned her. "Phone the office, will you, and tell them I'm feeling under the weather and won't be in till sometime tomorrow."

This seemed like a good chance to do some exploring—since the Rutherfords had temporarily abandoned the field—though I needn't have bothered since I had seen photographs of suburban houses like Pook's Hill in a score of different slick-paper pre-war magazines. There was the inevitable colonial-type dining-room, with dark wainscoting below smooth oyster-white plaster, electric candle-sconces, and the necessary array of family silver on the antiqued mahogany sideboard. The windows gave a vista of brown lawn, with the grass still blasted by winter. There was the inevitable chintzy living-room, with a permanently unemployed grand-piano, two or three safely second-rate paintings by safely first-rate defunct foreigners. There was the usual array of sofas, easy chairs, small, middle-sized and biggish tables, with lots of china ash-trays, and a sizable wood-burning fireplace. Of course, you entered the living-room by two steps down from the front hall and there was a separate up-two-steps-entrance to my den. And sure as death and taxes, there was a veritable downstairs lavatory.

I slipped on my coat and hat and stepped out through a French window which led from the living-room to the inevitable paved stone terrace. There were galvanized iron fittings for a summer awning and in the center was a cute little bronze sun-dial. This had an exclamation point and the inscription, "Over the Yard-Arm" at the place where noon should be, and a bronze cocktail glass instead of the sign for four p.m. All the way around the rest of the circle was written in heavy embossed capitals, "The Hell With It!"

My meditations on this facet of the Tompkins character—and I wondered whether I oughtn't to spell 'facet' with a u'—were interrupted by Myrtle.

"Oh, Mr. Tompkins," she called from the kitchen window, in complete repudiation of her earlier appearance as Watson, third lady's maid at Barony Castle, "the man from the kennels is here with Ponto. Where shall I tell him to take the dog?"

I hurried back indoors—there was still a chill in the air and I really prefer my trees with their clothes on—and found a gnarled little man who reeked of saddle-soap and servility.

"Well, sir, Mr. Tompkins," he beamed the Old Retainer at me. "That dog of yours had a close call, a mighty close call. Thought he was a sure-enough goner. Tried everything: injections, oxygen, iron lung, enema. No dice. Then yesterday afternoon he just lay down and went to sleep and I thought, 'My! Won't Mr. Tompkins feel bad!' But he woke up, large as life and twice as natural, and began carrying on so that I guess he wanted to come home to his folks. He's a mite weak, Mr. Tompkins, very weak I might say, but he'll get well quicker here than at my place and I'll pop in every other day to keep track of him. Never did see anything like the recovery that dog made in all my born days. Now about his bowels—"

I waited until he had to draw a breath and made swift to congratulate him on his professional skill. "I wouldn't have lost Ponto for a thousand dollars," I said. "Let's get him out of your car and up in my bedroom," I added. "He's been like a member of the family and—"

A series of deep bass backs interrupted me, followed by ominous sounds of a heavy body hurling itself recklessly around inside a small enclosed space.

"There!" said the vet. "He recognized your voice. Come on, Ponto. I'll fetch you. He's pretty weak, Mr. Tompkins, but he'll get strong fast if you feed him right."

The vet twinkled out the front door and returned shortly, leading a perfectly enormous coal-black Great Dane on a plaited leather leash. Ponto did not look very weak to me, but I've always been fond of dogs and I figured that kindness to animals might count in my favor. "Good dog," I condescended. "Poor old fellow!"

The poor old fellow gave a low but hungry growl and lunged for me with bared teeth, dragging the vet behind him like a dory behind a fishing schooner. I jumped into the den and slammed the door, while Ponto sniffed, snapped and grumbled on the far side of my defenses.

"Tell you what, doctor," I called through the panels. "Take him upstairs and put him in my room. It's the one to the right at the head of the stairs. He's just excited. Shut him in and as soon as he's calmed down I'll make him comfortable."

While this rather cowardly solution