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

still stubborn as a mule. Tell me, to change the subject, you say that you remember me. Tell me what I seem like to you, now that you've changed, as you say, aside from age, sex, scars and distinguishing marks, if any, and marital status."

I closed my eyes and thought of Dorothy as she had been that last night in Hartford before she walked out and I decided to join the Navy as a Reserve Officer.

"You are piano music on a summer night—something Scarlatti or Mozart—thin, cool, precise, gay. You are apple blossoms against a Berkshire hillside. You are the smoke of fallen leaves climbing into the cool October sky. You are surf on a sandy beach, with the gulls wheeling and the white-caps racing past the lighthouse on the point. You are bobsleds and hot coffee and dough-nuts by a roaring wood fire. And you're a lost child, with two pennies in your fist, looking in the window of a five-cent candy-shop."

Germaine relaxed. "Except for that last bit, Winnie, you made me sound like a year-round vacation resort or an ad for a new automobile. You've mentioned almost everything about me except the one thing I obviously am."

"Which is?"

"A simple, rather stupid woman, I guess," Germaine sighed, "who's had everything in life except what she wants."

"All women are simple," I pontificated, "since what they want is simple."

"You moron!" she blazed. "Don't you see that no woman knows what she wants until she is made to want it. You ... you never made me want anything simple, except to crack you over the head with something."

After she had left, I sat for a long time. There seemed to be nothing to do or say. Winnie's domestic life was still in too much of a snarl for me to do the obvious thing and follow Germaine upstairs, and into her bedroom, lock the door, and kiss her tear-stained face and tell her that I was sorry I had hurt her.... Before it would be safe to accept her gambits I must first explore my business connections. Hadn't my wife said something about girls in the office?

My first stop in the morning, after I had been careful to take a late commuting train in to the city in order to avoid business men who were sure to know and greet Winnie Tompkins, was the Pond Club.

Tammy was behind the bar and as soon as I entered he turned and mixed me a powerful pick-me-up. I drained it with the usual convulsive effort and then pretended to relax.

"Thanks, Tammy," I said. "That's what I needed." "Good morning, Mr. Tompkins," he remarked. "I'm glad to see you back. You were looking a trifle seedy—if you don't mind my saying so, sir—when you were in here Monday afternoon."

"I took a day off in the country and got rested up," I told him. "I feel fine now. Anybody in the Club?"

"Not just now, sir. A couple of gentlemen were asking for you yesterday afternoon—that would be Tuesday. That was Commander Tolan, sir, and a friend of his, a Mr. Harcourt his name was, who hasn't been here before. They asked me if you were at your home but I just laughed. 'Him gone home?' I said. 'Not while he has a girl and a flat on Park Avenue.' Begging your pardon, Mr. Tompkins, I knew you didn't want to be bothered wherever you were and so I said the first thing that came to my head."

"You're doing fine, Tammy," I assured him. "I don't want to see anybody for a couple of days. Now then, I'd like you to tell me what happened here Monday afternoon. It's the first time in my life I've ever drawn a complete blank."

"Well, sir," the Club steward recited. "You came in about two o'clock and sat down in your usual chair—that one in the corner. You said something about having had lunch at the Harvard Club, sir, and had a couple of Scotch and sodas here."

"Was I tight, Tammy?"

"Not to call tight. You didn't show it, and after a time you went to sleep, like you was tired out. You was still sleeping when Mr. Morgan, Mr. Davis and Commander Tolan came in. That would be a little after three o'clock, sir. They made some talk about how you were sleeping through the noise they made, that it would take a bomb to wake you. Then, sir, I guess you had some kind of a dream. You began talking like and thrashing with your arms and making noises. So Commander Tolan he said, 'Jesus we can't drink with that going on' and went and shook you by the shoulder until you woke up. You'd been dreaming all right, Mr. Tompkins, because you talked wild when you woke up, about Alaska and where were you. The others joked a bit about it after you left but I'd take my oath, sir, that you weren't really what might be called tight, Mr. Tompkins."

"Thanks a million, Tammy," I said. "That's a load off my mind. I drew a blank and didn't know where I'd been or what I'd been doing. Can you let me have some money? I'm a bit short of cash."

"Of course, sir. How much will you need?"

"A couple of hundred will do," I told him, "if you have that much."

"That will be easy, sir. If you'll just sign a check, like the house rules says, I'll get it from the safe."

He nearly caught me. Signing checks was something I simply could not do until I had learned to imitate Winnie Tompkins' signature. I had tried in the guest-room at Bedford Hills, the previous evening, and found that my original signature as Frank E. Jacklin was completely unchanged by my transmigration, and that my own copy-desk scrawl was the only handwriting I could commit. I had burned the note-paper on which I had made the crucial experiments and flushed the ashes down the toilet. One of my objects in coming to the Pond had been to see if I couldn't get money by simply initialing a chit.

I hastily looked in my bill-fold. There was still a fair amount of money left. It would last me until I found a way to draw on Winnie's bank-account.

"Never mind, after all," I told Tammy. "I guess I have enough to last me until I get down to the office. If anybody asks for me, you haven't seen me since Monday and don't know where I am."

"Very good, sir," he agreed. "I'll take any messages that come for you, sir, and not let on I've set eyes on you."

My next stop was at an old hang-out of mine and Dorothy's from my early newspaper days: a place on East 53rd Street, where you can get a good meal if you have the money to pay for it and the time to wait for it—and I had both. I knew that none of Winnie's friends would be seen dead in the place and I didn't want to try lunch at the Harvard Club, where I'd have to sign the dining-room order or the bar-check. The place was reasonably uncrowded—it was not quite noon—and I had a pleasant lunch.

It was a little after one o'clock when I reached the Harvard Club. The door-man glanced at my face and automatically stuck a little ivory peg in the hole opposite the name of Tompkins on the list of members. I checked my hat and coat and strolled through the sitting-rooms into the large lounge-library beside the dining-room. A couple of men nodded and smiled as I passed them, so I nodded back and said, "Hi!" in a conversational tone. In the lounge I found a chair and a copy of the World-Telegram, so I decided to catch up with the war-news. The German Armies were beginning to crumble but there was still talk of a stand along the Elbe and Hitler was reported fortifying the mountain-districts of Southern Germany into a redoubt for a last Valhalla Battle. The Pacific news was good. The fighting on Okinawa was going our way and the clean-up in the Philippines was well in hand. The Navy Department discounted enemy reports of heavy damage to American warships by Jap suicide-pilots but, as an old Navy P.R.O., I could tell that it had been plenty. I'd heard about the Kamikazes from some of our pilots who had seen them off Leyte and I had no doubt that they were doing a job on the 7th Fleet. Roosevelt had gone South for a couple of weeks rest at Warm Springs, Georgia, and Ed Stettinius was in the final throes of organizing the United Nations Conference at San Francisco—

"Hi, Winnie? Don't you speak to your old friends any more?"

I looked up to see a lean, wolfish-looking man, with a gray moustache, a slightly bald head and definitely Bond Street clothes.

"Oh, hullo!" I said and returned to reading the paper.

The newspaper was firmly taken out of my hands and the man sat down beside me.

"We've got to have a talk," he said.

"Why? What's happened?"

"There's been a lot of talk about you running around town in the last twenty-four hours, Winnie. None of the other alleged friends we know had the guts to tell you. But I thought your room-mate—"

"So you're Merry Vail," I said stupidly.

"You're in worse shape than I thought you were, Winnie," he replied. "Yes, I'm Merriwether Vail who started his life-long career of rescuing Winfred Tompkins from blondes and booze at Harvard in 1916. Now, if you'll just crawl out of your alcoholic coma and listen to me for five minutes before you take off for your next skirt, you'll learn something to your advantage."

"How about a drink, Merry?" I asked, to keep in character.

"Not before five, so help me, and you'd better lay off liquor till you hear this. Here it is. There's a story going the rounds that the F.B.I. is after you. At any rate, at least one obvious G-man has been reported in full cry on your foot-prints."

I sat up, startled. This was too much, even for purgatory. What had Winnie been up to?

"What am I supposed to have done, Merry?" I asked. "Trifled with the Mann Act? Told fibs on my income tax return? Failed to notify the local draft board that I was taking the train to New York? Bought black market nylons for my mistress? or what?"

Vail looked mysterious. "For all I know I may be letting myself in for Alcatraz, old man, but the dope is that you've been violating the Espionage Act, communicating with the enemy, or stealing official secrets."

I leaned back in my chair and shook with laughter. "Of all the pure, unadulterated b.s. I've ever heard! I give you my word of honor as a Porcellian that there's not a syllable of truth in it."

Vail looked increasingly distressed. "If you're really innocent, you'd better be careful. Ten-to-one you haven't an alibi, and you'll need a lawyer. Slip me a bill now and retain me as your counsel. No, this isn't a gag. Something's cooking, even if it's only mistaken identity, and I've seen enough of the law in war-time to know that you'll be better off with the old cry, 'I demand to see my attorney,' when they march you down to the F.B.I. headquarters to answer a few questions."

"Thanks, Merry," I said, "and here's twenty bucks to go on with. If the police are looking for me, I'd better go down to my office and see that things are apple-pie before they lock up the brains of our outfit.

"Besides," I added, "you've just given me an idea of how I can make a hell of a lot of money."

CHAPTER 7

Tompkins, Wasson & Cone maintained sincere-looking offices on one of the upper floors of No. 1 Wall Street. The rooms were carefully furnished in dark wood and turkey-red upholstery, in a style calculated to reassure elderly ladies of great wealth that the firm was careful and conservative.

The girl at the reception desk looked as though she had graduated with honor from Wellesley in the class of 1920 and still had it—pince-nez and condescension—but she was thoroughly up-to-date in her office-technique.

"Oh, Mr. Tompkins," she murmured in a clear, low voice, "there's a gentleman waiting to see you in the customer's room, a Mr. Harcourt. He's been here since ten o'clock this morning."

"He's had no lunch?" I inquired.

She shook her head.

I clucked my tongue. "We can't have our customers starve to death, can we? Send out for a club sandwich and some hot coffee. Give me five minutes to take a look at my mail and then send him in. When the food arrives, send that in, too."

She blinked her hazel eyes behind her pince-nez to show that she understood, and I walked