PART I
The two men who stepped out of the elevator ahead of Larry dropped their voices and talked in a whisper as if they were in the safe-deposit vault of a bank. Larry recognized the reaction because he had often experienced it himself on the tower floor of 40 Wall Street where Arthur H. Bemrose had his offices. The cold ribbon of gray marble floor and walls did it—the neat gold arrow painted on the outside hallway and the carefully designed block lettering which pointed to the law firm of HAYNES and BEMROSE. The two men walked on past the door of Arthur’s office, and Larry, standing in front of the clouded glass, his hand on the doorknob, took on their respectful mood. It usually made him feel as if he had an extra thousand dollars in his pocket just to walk into these offices. During his time at law school Judge Haynes had been God, Jesus Christ himself, to almost every student. Larry had grown up in the fall-on-your-face-and-worship-Haynes tradition. Now Judge Haynes was dead, and Arthur H. Bemrose, from Larry’s own class at law school, was carrying on the practice. Larry could still feel the Judge somewhere around as he entered the reception room. He could picture him in dark robes which overwhelmed his spare frame and could recall his low, precise voice, even though it was more than six years since the Old Man had died.
Without looking to see if there were any clients of the firm waiting, Larry gave his name to the boy at the reception room window. Mr. Bemrose would be tied up a while, the boy explained, inviting him to sit down. Larry pinched a wilting carnation in the buttonhole of his overcoat, and shook the melted snow off his hat. He stopped for a moment at the antique table in the center of the room. The Judge had found the table in Italy one summer. Twenty years of accumulated dust clung to its elaborate carving, and Arthur Bemrose, probably out of respect to the Judge’s memory, had left it just as it was when the Old Man died, unpolished, impassive, and dead-centered in the room.
Larry picked up a law journal to read while he was waiting for Arthur, and deposited his overcoat on a chair that wobbled, probably another museum piece that had belonged to Judge Haynes. The chair steadied itself, and Larry sat down with care on the next one, resigned to a long wait. He had no sooner opened this week’s issue of the advance sheets, which reported court decisions before the bound volumes came out, than the Judge’s old clerk, Tim Hoxter, called to him from where he must have been sitting all the time across the room.
As he rushed over to shake hands with Hoxter, a Haynes fixture in the old days, a faithful adjunct in an alpaca coat who had trailed the Old Man with legal papers for twenty-five years, Larry couldn’t take his eyes off the girl sitting next to Hoxter, wondering if she could be his daughter, and how, if she were, Tim had managed to keep her quiet all these years. She was the last person Larry expected to find among the relics of Judge Haynes in the tradition-ridden reception room of HAYNES and BEMROSE, an improbable client to be waiting for Arthur H. Bemrose, who specialized in corporate work, and incongruously young to be connected with old Tim.
“Will he be tied up much longer?” Tim complained. “She can’t wait. She’s on her lunch hour.” He nodded to the girl and introduced them. “Miss McVail. Her grandmother was an old friend of mine from out in Iowa,” he explained. “Lucy, this is Mr. Frank.”
Larry watched to see if the girl’s handsome gray eyes would go on, but they looked up at him coldly unlit, as if he might be to blame because she had to wait for Arthur H. Bemrose. Larry noted gratefully that Miss McVail did not fidget while she waited. Her spine conformed placidly to the rungs of her chair, and she remained calm except for the eyes, which stubbornly refused to show any emotion, and with their lack of expression somehow managed to reproach him. It was as if she said, “I’m beautiful when I’m turned on, but if this lawyer I’m waiting to see is your friend, I’m not going to make any effort for you.”
“How long have you been waiting, Tim?” Larry asked.
The old man leaned forward confidentially. “She’s having trouble with a no-good brother about some money the grandmother left her. I figure that Arthur——”
The old man was getting deaf. He must be close to eighty.
“Busy at your office, are you?” Tim strained toward him.
Larry brought his mouth close to Hoxter’s ear. “Not enough to give the income tax people any serious trouble, but doing all right. I can’t kick.”
“They tell me that Arthur has hung on to most of the old practice.” Tim straightened proudly. “It sure would have tickled the Judge. I’ve been telling Lucy the store he set by Arthur.”
“He’s done a lot better than hang on,” Larry shouted, looking around to make sure no one else had walked in. “If you can believe the newspapers, he’s picked up a few clients of his own.”
The old man smiled. Apparently he did read the newspapers. “I hear he’s in pretty thick down there,” he admitted. “I hear that Tom Newton’s always sending for him——”
“He has to go down to Washington about three times a week.” Larry held up three fingers by way of clarification and moved his lips slowly so that Tim had time to read them.
“Manages to handle both, does he?”
Good for the old man. His mind wasn’t hard of hearing. He was sharp enough to realize that it took some doing for Arthur H. Bemrose to be in solid down in Washington and to pal around with Tom Newton, the Attorney-General, while with the left hand he managed to swing a Wall Street practice.
“Weren’t you two fellows in the same class at law school?”
Larry nodded and sat down next to Tim, thinking about the night many years ago that Arthur Bemrose had first received a message from Judge Haynes to come and see him.
It was toward the end of their last year in law school, and the rest of them had been playing poker in Cy O’Malley’s room. Bemrose showed up late that evening and made it in about two strides from the door to the card table, his pants flopping around his ankles like excited pigeons.
“Just talked to Judge Haynes in Albany,” Arthur had reported briskly. “He phoned to find out if I’ll be his law secretary next year.”
The game broke up temporarily. Cy rushed over and pumped Arthur’s hand, and Tremont Friendly, dropping his usual punctilious manner, jumped up to pummel Arthur’s back. There was an envious buzz around him.
“Nice going, boy.”
“Gee, fellow, that’s great.”
“Imagine the luck of some guys!”
Larry remembered standing in a kind of daze by himself until Arthur broke away from the others and came over to him. “What’s the matter, Larry? Don’t you think it’s a good offer?”
Even in those days Arthur used to talk things over with him, not always taking his advice, of course, but using him to discover how his ideas sounded out loud. He was still doing it today, in spite of the difference in their incomes.
Back there in Cy’s room almost twenty years ago, Larry had said, “It’s a great offer, kid. You’d better grab it.”
That wasn’t the moment to tell Arthur that he’d often had the notion they might hang out a joint shingle someday, BEMROSE and FRANK. Arthur would supply the brilliant big ideas, and he would look after the details. Already in those days, at twenty-three, Larry had sensed his own limitations. He was cut out to be an office lawyer. He didn’t have what it took for big trial work. With Bemrose the front man, going to court, they’d make out all right. He sensed that Arthur functioned better when he was around, felt easier when Larry was on hand and he could talk things out with him.
“I don’t think Judge Haynes will pay me much,” Arthur pointed out practically. “He didn’t mention money over the phone. I have to go up there next Thursday. He said he would discuss the details when he saw me.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the money,” Larry advised. “It will mean a lot to your future. How many fellows have a chance——”
That’s what he said out loud to Arthur Bemrose, but all the time he was thinking about how much better it would be for him, Larry Frank, if they had offices on either side of the same glass partition and could go to lunch together, or talk over a cross-examination when Arthur came back in the late afternoon from court. Back to the offices of BEMROSE and FRANK.
Arthur stood at the poker table strained and flushed, and Larry urged him to sit down and take a hand. He finally did let them deal him into the game, but his attention wandered from the cards. “Are you sure I can swing it, Larry?” he asked while he was waiting for Tremont to call the hand. “You know his reputation. He’s supposed to be hell on secretaries.”
Bemrose laid down a pair of nines, and Tremont reached for the pot. While someone dealt, Arthur said quietly so that the others couldn’t hear, “Suppose I take it, Larry, and the Judge finds out I’m not good enough.”
“You’ll be good enough, kid,” Larry assured him, discarding then and there the pipe dream about BEMROSE and FRANK. If he didn’t find another congenial fellow with whom he could share an office, he’d start in practice for himself. It would be slower without Bemrose maybe, but he’d make out, and after all, no one was depending on him for a living. His older brother took care of the folks, and Larry had no one to think about supporting but himself.
Larry lost interest in the poker game that evening and quit early. For the rest of the week, whenever he thought of Bemrose going up to Albany to see Judge Haynes, he felt that maybe he ought to try and talk Arthur out of taking the job. But he never did. It would have been putting his own interests ahead of Bemrose’s, and that wasn’t the way Larry Frank liked to operate.
Aloud to Tim Hoxter in the law offices of HAYNES and BEMROSE, Larry said, “At school the fellows always figured that someone like Justice Brandeis would make him an offer if the Old Man didn’t. They were always looking for Law Review men, and Bemrose was the editor of Law Review in our time.”
Tim Hoxter nodded. “The Judge and his wife took him right in and started treating him like a son. That must be why he stayed with the Old Man after he left the bench. The Old Man was afraid he wouldn’t stay, you know.” Tim paused. “He figured that Arthur might be restless and want to start in practice for himself. It would have killed the Judge to see him go. He was all wrapped up in that young fellow. I never could figure it out. He and Mrs. Haynes kept everybody else at arm’s length. They weren’t the kind to ever want a son.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Larry said.
“How’s that?” Tim sat up straighter.
“Don’t you remember? Mrs. Haynes liked cats,” Larry shouted.
Tim shook his head. “Cats or no cats, she was the cold type. I think it was the Judge. The Judge made her take him in to live with them. The Judge was always telling everybody that Bemrose was good—” The hand on Tim’s knee was a relief map of heavy blue veins. “What makes him good, Larry? Ever figure it out?”
“I guess you’ve never watched him handle a jury. He has it all over Dunninger. When Bemrose finishes with a witness, there isn’t a thought in the fellow’s head that hasn’t been undressed, waiting for Bemrose to pluck it in the nude.” Larry looked to see if Miss McVail responded, but she was assiduously tending a cuticle. Not a pale eyelash flickered in the blonde fringe around her extraordinary gray eyes.
“My niece’s boy went to court the other day and heard him.” Tim Hoxter’s voice cracked. “He’s a fine boy. Studying law at N.Y.U. He puts Arthur in a class with John W. Davis. Maybe that’s going too far. But he must be good. For the young ones.”
Larry smiled, recalling an old saw from law school. Under forty-five a lawyer is a bright young man. At sixty he shows promise, and by seventy he’s a respected member of the bar.
Tim leaned back in his chair fretfully and nodded at Miss McVail who industriously continued to ply the cuticle of one finger with the thumbnail of the other hand. “Better ask at the window again, Larry. Tell that young fellow she’s on her lunch hour.”
“Maybe we should leave and phone him tomorrow.” Miss McVail studied an old-fashioned gold watch suspended by a ribbon from her coat lapel. Her voice was a toneless gray as she looked past Larry. “Oh, there’s someone——”
Larry recognized Arthur’s secretary, motioning to Tim and the girl to come inside. As Miss McVail disappeared through a door in the direction of Arthur’s office, Larry took note of the snugly made hips, shapely and small like her neatly indented waist, and wondered how much of the set-up Arthur H. Bemrose would inventory, or whether, with him, it was always strictly business. It probably was, or he wouldn’t be rattling around alone in that three-story house the Judge had left him. In six years he should have located something female and decorative to brighten up the mausoleum. Let’s see. Arthur was going on forty-three now. He might begin to think about settling down. Whatever his bond with the Old Man which put the law first and women second while Haynes was alive, it should have ended with the Judge’s funeral. But from hearing Bemrose talk about women Larry always had the idea that Arthur thought he was doing them a favor to spend time with them, and that, given his choice, he’d rather devote the same number of hours to practicing law. He apparently never picked a woman who had a chance of being able to compete in interest with his practice. His taste ran to flashy, dark divorcées who patronized the local bridge clubs. They lasted with him three months, six months, sometimes almost a year. Until they brought up the subject of marriage, was Larry’s guess. He had a hunch that Arthur H. Bemrose concentrated on the purely social type because he wanted to prove something to himself. He probably insisted on being convinced that a woman was good for bed or a wasted evening and not much else. As long as he specialized in women who had similar views about men, he could hang on to the theory. Larry thought that when the Judge died, Arthur might look around for someone who at least was a good listener, someone to fill the hours he used to spend talking to the Judge. She wouldn’t have to be a great brain for that. All she’d have to do was listen. Larry thought of the McVail girl in there with him. She didn’t look as if she’d talk a man to death. Not if the way she acted in the reception room was a sample. Well, what the hell was it to him what Bemrose did about his sex life? Larry thought of himself and Bessie. There was no use trying to sell marriage to Arthur H. Bemrose because he and Bessie were more than reasonably contented, or because Bemrose had inherited a big, empty house. There were plenty of fouled up marriages, and living alone in an empty house wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to him.
The boy at the reception window called out to say that Mr. Bemrose would only be tied up a few more minutes. Larry leafed through the advance sheets, but none of his own cases were reported, and he seldom enjoyed reading law for the sake of reading law. It was his father, not Larry, who had decided he ought to be a lawyer. His father had acted in the tradition of many men who had emigrated to this country and thought the eldest son should be a business man and provide for the family while the other sons concentrated on surrounding the family name with the prestige of the professions. In legal circles the name, Frank, still wasn’t surrounded by an aura, but Larry’s father never lived to find that out, and it suited Larry fine to earn a modest living at the law. Without straining. His friend, Arthur H. Bemrose, strained enough for two of them, and produced results when he strained.
Restlessly Larry got up to have a look at the famous Haynes letters in the lighted breakfront cabinet, occupying an entire wall of the reception room, where Arthur had them embalmed. These were the more noteworthy originals of the Haynes-Didier letters, published in three volumes a year ago for fifteen dollars a boxed set. Larry bought them at the time but couldn’t wade through the first volume. The old duffers, Judge Haynes and his French colleague, Didier, had liked to toss Greek and Latin quotations across the ocean, probably with posterity in mind, and Larry hadn’t gone in for a Latin declension since high school.
The cabinet reminded Larry of a mental Kremlin where the Old Man’s brains were on public view. He squinted at one of the yellowed sheets dated April 10, 1881 and tried to decipher the fading characters of the text, recalling, as he read, that once before he had been puzzled by this particular letter. His entire generation at the bar had grown up in the belief that Haynes was a great labor judge, a man who recognized the right of labor to organize when his contemporaries had used the word, labor, from the bench in about the tone reserved today for the word, fascist.
But in spite of his reputation as a great labor judge, Haynes had written in confidence to his friend, Didier: “Your friend, the common man, is a fumbling pleasure-loving dolt. He delights in the sloth of his overstuffed ignorance.”
If he really felt that way and still turned himself inside out to give labor a break in his court, you had to hand it to the Old Man, Larry reflected. Back in those days it couldn’t have been profitable, politically, to hold pro-labor views. He must have done it for something rooted inside, some prodigal instinct for fairness that had flourished in spite of the snobbish New England background. The interesting fact was that a man who had privately tagged millions of his fellow citizens as “fumbling pleasure-loving dolts” lived out his years publicly as champion of the dolt, as a leading friend and patron of doltism. Known to the world as “labor’s friend,” the chances were that Judge Haynes had never gotten around to shaking the hand of a man in overalls, Larry reflected.
The thought amused him. He couldn’t help but contrast the Old Man’s views with those of Arthur H. Bemrose, truck driver’s son, born enough of a common man to want to forget it. For keeps. No bending over backwards by Bemrose to understand the common man. He knew all he wanted to know at first hand. Consequently, Arthur H. Bemrose specialized in the uncommon man, the no-dolt, especially when he practiced law. Counsellor to the uncommon man. That was the firm’s reputation today. Bemrose doesn’t take every case. He handpicks his clients. How often Larry had heard other lawyers discuss this enviable prerogative of a successful lawyer.
Shifting uneasily away from the cabinet of letters, Larry returned to his chair along the wall, wondering how Miss McVail was making out inside with Bemrose. She was probably impressed as hell with the ballroom-sized office, but not letting on, hiding behind the say-nothing gray eyes and giving him the impression that she spent every other lunch hour with Wall Street lawyers. A self-possessed one, Miss McVail. Bemrose ought to make something of it.
The thought was interrupted by Bemrose’s secretary who came out to tell him that his brief was typed, the brief for the Court of Appeals, which Bemrose was helping him polish. The secretary invited him to come into Mr. Bemrose’s office and take a look at the revisions.
“He’s just finishing with a client. He’ll be free to work with you in a few minutes, Mr. Frank. Meanwhile you can go over the brief and study the changes he’s suggested.”
Outside the door of Arthur H. Bemrose’s private office, Larry paused a moment before knocking. The low Bemrose voice, familiar to blue ribbon juries, was pitched even lower than usual out of consideration for Tim, whose deafness shut out high sound frequencies. Larry had often noticed that Bemrose used his voice with a studied cadence which gave time for important points to come through.
He must have just been making such a point to Miss McVail. Larry heard her complain, “You don’t know my brother, Mr. Bemrose. He’ll leave town, and then we’ll never be able to——”
“Why don’t you write the letter for her, Arthur?” Tim Hoxter suggested. “You can let her send it, but you draft it for her.”
The extra heavy cream in Bemrose’s voice rose to the top. “A fine idea, Tim. I’ll try to put it tactfully,” he promised Miss McVail. “Let’s have one more try, and see if we can’t phrase it so that he’ll want to answer this time.”
“You don’t know my brother,” the girl insisted. “When we were young, he’d do things for me, but now——”
“I take it you need the money,” Bemrose said briskly, cutting through her objections.
The girl must have nodded.
“Then why not let Tim and me advise you on the best way to handle it?”
Tim and me. Larry smiled. Winning her confidence through Tim whom she already trusted. A good Bemrose tactic.
Larry scratched at the half-opened door and apologized for breaking in on them. Instantly Bemrose was on his feet and had his arm around him. This special quality of warmth was almost unique with Arthur H. Bemrose. In a busy, cynical world, he was one of the few persons around who had the power to convince Larry that he was genuinely glad to see him, that his greeting was more than a formality, and when he said, “How are you?” he really gave a damn about the answer. This warmth of Arthur’s, Larry reflected, was one of the sure things in his life, like the greenness of trees, or the thirst-quenching property of fresh water.
Bemrose introduced him to Miss McVail, gave him a chance to greet Tim again, and handed Larry a sheaf of typewritten pages from his table. They constituted the new draft of the brief. Quickly Bemrose pointed out the major revisions he had suggested and settled Larry in a small adjoining office where he could go over them undisturbed.
“Don’t just accept my changes,” he cautioned. “Make sure they’re what you want. I dictated the revision in a hurry and may have slipped up on something you specially wanted to stress.”
Larry smiled. It was Arthur’s gracious way of giving him an out in case he didn’t check with his suggestions.
He settled down and started to read the brief, but in a few moments his attention wandered through the door which Bemrose had thoughtfully left open. Bemrose was taking a phone call, and Miss McVail had moved her chair away from his desk a little as though she were swimming for shallow water. Maybe Bemrose was too much for a girl from—where was it?—Iowa?
Larry overheard enough of the phone conversation to know that Tom Newton, the Attorney-General, was calling Bemrose from Washington. There was some subtle sparring while Newton apparently tried to persuade him to stay over on his next trip and take the sleeper back to New York. It had to do with meeting some Senator down there, a friend of Newton’s. Bemrose pretended to be in no sweat about obliging his pal, the Attorney-General. It wasn’t going to be easy to change his plans. He made that clear. Before he got through, Newton must have been begging him.
Arthur put down the phone and came in to bum a cigarette from Larry. “That was Tom, looking for some free legal advice,” he said with an easy, self-contented smile.
Larry looked up and gave him a light. “Well, Tom’s not a bad lawyer. Someday you may want to ask him for some legal advice.”
Through the open door he had a good view of Arthur H. Bemrose’s enormous room—the heavy walnut desk with carved rope edge and morocco top, the lawn of billiard green carpet, the stained oak walls, woodburning fireplace and gold draperies. The Old Man’s room had been shabby by comparison, filled with black leather and horsehair. This Fifth Avenue decorator’s job might alarm some of the firm’s older clients but it must go down easy with the Washington boys. Larry tried to concentrate on his brief, soothed by the quiet answers Miss McVail gave Bemrose as he probed for details about her family that might be pertinent to settling the grandmother’s estate. Her quiet ought to appeal to him, Larry mused. With his hectic practice, he should be able to use a little peace and quiet at home.
The phone rang again, and this time Larry gathered that it was Jim Carson of the Evening Star. Larry had read a story of his only last week with a Moscow dateline. He must have just returned to this country. He had read Carson ever since he had met him once at Bemrose’s office, a slightly built man with deep scars in one cheek and missing front teeth so that every time he talked he made static. From what Bemrose was saying, Larry gathered that Carson wanted to change his will. Arthur invited him for dinner at the University Club and made Carson’s legal work incidental to hearing about Russia. He put himself out to cultivate good newspapermen, and they didn’t come any better than Jim Carson.
Before Bemrose hung up Larry heard him say, “If she’s a friend of yours, I’ll talk to her, Jim. I’m writing it down. Baldwin, Janice Baldwin. What did you say she writes for? Okay, I have it. Don’t worry. I won’t let her put me out.”
Larry shoved aside the pages of his brief, deciding that he might as well try to concentrate at the information desk in Grand Central. How could a fellow keep up the clip at which Bemrose lived and not show it? The same way a tennis champ could cover the court and look as if he hadn’t moved, Larry figured. It was a trick of easiness they all had, the good ones, whether on a tennis court, a putting green, in the ring, or in a law office. To look at Arthur H. Bemrose in the tweed suit that he bought extra big in order to have three inches leeway in the vest, anyone would take him for a gentleman farmer who had nothing but show dogs or a greenhouse on his mind. It wasn’t only the easy way he handled himself. It was the way he looked. At law school Arthur H. Bemrose had started a small, uneven mustache which had refused to thicken in twenty years. Its untidiness went with his flappy, oversized ears. His frame ambled and his arms hung loosely. With Bemrose for his lawyer, a client could be in hot water and still feel at ease. Larry wondered about Miss McVail, whether she had begun to let go a little.
He returned to reading his brief, this time from back to front, the way he sometimes read a magazine or a newspaper when he had trouble concentrating. One of the new point headings stopped him: Mr. Alonzo Iturbi alias Newcomb. A Bemrose literary touch. Arthur H. was making it sound like a murder mystery. It didn’t seem to Larry like the kind of language that would win an appeal in a higher court, but judges were human and probably liked to be entertained as much as other people. There was this to be said for Bemrose’s instinct in such matters. He had used it to advantage in Albany more than once, while this case was only the third Larry had ever taken to the Court of Appeals. He wanted to be sure his brief was a good one, as sure as a lawyer could ever be. It was damned nice of Bemrose to look it over and take the trouble to re-dictate the brief.
Larry saw Miss McVail edge forward in her chair as Arthur’s secretary broke in on them, apologizing because Mr. Carson’s friend, the magazine writer, was on the phone and sounded as if she had to talk to Mr. Bemrose. Urgently. The carefully schooled secretary explained, especially for Miss McVail’s benefit, that she knew Mr. Bemrose didn’t wish to be interrupted when he was with a client, and she had tried to take his calls for him, all those which seemed as if they could wait, but this woman was persistent and——
Half-heartedly Miss McVail offered to wait. Bemrose rewarded her by sounding almost peevish with Miss Baldwin, the writer. Larry caught most of what Arthur was saying. He was insisting to the girl that there couldn’t be much public interest in another story about the Supreme Court. The readers of her magazine wouldn’t care if their average age were twenty-five and they all crooned like Bing Crosby, they must be sick of those same nine men. Larry gathered from Arthur’s end of the conversation that Janice Baldwin wanted to quote him on what Judge Haynes would have thought of the present day court if he were alive. Curtly Arthur told her that he wasn’t Conan Doyle and hadn’t any short wave set tuned into the hereafter. He couldn’t presume to speak for the dead. Besides, Judge Haynes had been his friend.
Finally she must have probed him about the current vacancy on the court, the real reason for her call, Larry figured. Bemrose was close enough to the top in Washington to furnish a pretty good dope story. Her editor would be smart enough to know that. But the subtlety of her approach had apparently been wasted on Bemrose. He told her that F.D.R. hadn’t taken him into his confidence, and if she wanted to find out about the next incumbent, she’d better try the White House herself.
Then, unexpectedly, he laughed, and Larry guessed that Miss Baldwin had gotten through to him. “Sure I’ll mind, and so will Newton. Only call us anyway.”
Miss McVail dandled her watch at him and suggested, when he had hung up, that they finish another time.
“She’s on her lunch hour,” Tim reminded him in a shaky treble.
“She’s been more than considerate about the interruptions,” Arthur told Tim. “I think we have enough facts to get started, and maybe if you both can arrange to drop in one day next week— This office tries to do right by any friend of Tim’s, you know,” he told her gently.
When Larry went in to say goodbye to Hoxter, he saw that Arthur had her by the hand and was letting it gush. The persuasive Bemrose charm that trapped juries was turned on full. Trying to resist it was like damming up Niagara, and Miss McVail was no engineer. She smiled, and a light spread over her pale, amber skin. It was like one of those breathtaking effects in a Fifth Avenue window, the kind display men use to convey an atmosphere of quality. Inside Larry whistled, pleased with himself for having waited out Miss McVail the past hour. He knew when he saw her in the reception room that she had something. Something beside trouble with her brother. His hunch had been right, and he felt as if the market had gone up two points the day after he bought a block of stock.
When Tim and the girl had gone, Arthur H. Bemrose, lost in looking at the carpet, marked off the room’s length pigeon-toed, linking heel with toe. “What do you know about Janice Baldwin?” he asked suddenly.
“She writes feature stories for Everett’s,” Larry offered. “I heard you talk to Carson.”
Bemrose slid into an easy chair opposite Larry, and bore down on the backs of his heels which were extended in front of him.
“Why do you want to know? Did she sound good looking?” Larry asked.
“I wouldn’t say good looking. She sounded smart.” Arthur laughed. “Could you figure out what she wanted from what you heard? She wanted me, as the only authentic living spokesman for Judge Haynes, that’s how she put it, to give her a story on what the Old Man would have thought of the Supreme Court. I should have told her that what the Old Man would have had in mind wouldn’t fit the print.”
“Tim Hoxter wants you to take it up with the President,” Larry said. “He thinks you ought to give him hell for packing the Court. You ought to tell him it’s unconstitutional. He was giving me an earful out there in the reception room about how Judge Haynes wouldn’t have approved——”
“He’s a sweet old guy.”
“He has a sweet ward. If that’s what she is to him.”
“Miss McVail?” Arthur asked.
“I forgot. You go for brunettes.”
“What’s Miss McVail? A blonde?”
“Oh, my God.” Larry covered his ears.
“All right. Next time I’ll look,” Arthur promised.
“No, you won’t. You’ll never look.”
“The trouble with giving Miss Baldwin her story about the Court is that it’s strictly law journal stuff,” Bemrose said. “I’ve often thought about writing it, and someday I’ll get around to it, but when I do it will be what I think, Bemrose trying to stand on his own two brains, and not what the Old Man— Have you stopped to think, Larry, how easy it is to grow up a spokesman when you’ve lived around a great personality? Forty-two ought to be a good age to stop being a spokesman, even if there’s publicity in it.”
“I haven’t heard a word. I don’t listen to anyone who is too busy to notice women like Miss McVail. I figure a fellow like that has a blind spot, and eventually it’ll show in his work.” Larry pretended to be busy with his brief. “You forgot the date.” Laboriously he printed J A N U A R Y 1 5 , 1 9 4 1 across the cover page. “That writer, the Baldwin woman, really called up to buzz you about the C.J., didn’t she? She didn’t give a damn about the old stuff on a packed Court. She probably wanted to find out how much you know, and figured that if you hadn’t heard anything from the hill, then nobody——”
“Yep.”
Larry sensed his mood. If Arthur H. Bemrose had been told by the President or by Tom Newton who would succeed Justice Hughes as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he wasn’t picking any confidants.
“Does it read all right?” Arthur pointed to the brief.
“You’ve cut the hell out of it,” Larry complained. “I thought this stuff on page twenty was a pretty good argument——”
“Irrelevant. They’re interested in the law. There’s a big difference between presenting it to the Appellate Division and to the Court of Appeals.” He expounded on the jurisdiction of the Albany court.
“I’ll take the brief home and read it. You have your own work to finish,” Larry offered.
“Stick around.”
Arthur let the phone clatter a few times before picking it up. He swung a long, loose leg across his knee, and directed the operator to give him the call. “Yes, Davis, did you receive the opinion?”
It must be Bemrose’s client, Davis Shore, president of Eastern Power and Light. Bemrose had pulled the utility out of a jam, salvaged its franchise by bearing down on his Washington connections. Without Bemrose they probably still would have been cooling their heels in Washington, waiting for someone with authority to talk to them.
“Skip it. What the hell, Davis. You have enough business to take up at this meeting,” Arthur said.
“It isn’t stalling,” he insisted. “I’ll get around to it one of these days. Anyway, we won, didn’t we? Your credit’s good.”
He hung up and turned to Larry. “That was Davis Shore trying to get me to name a fee. They have a board meeting this afternoon.”
“Their stock’s selling at fifty-one,” Larry offered. “This sounds like a damned good time to send him a bill.”
“I don’t think I’m going to charge him a fee,” Arthur said.
The talk downtown was that Bemrose had received one hundred grand for a retainer before he even touched the case.
“You’re kidding,” Larry said. “You mean that your retainer covered the fee.”
“I didn’t ask for a retainer. I never take one from a friend.”
“Then you’ll have to charge him a fee.”
“I don’t think so,” Arthur protested. “I’ve collected a couple of fees this year. I’d be giving most of this one back in taxes.”
“I don’t get it. I just don’t get it,” Larry said. “Why did you take the case? To pass the time?”
“Hell, no. It was a swell fight.”
“And you had so much fun you decided to throw away a hundred grand. You know it was worth that to them. Every cent of it. Who do you charge if you don’t charge Eastern Power and Light? Jesus Christ, I don’t get it.”
“You have to give eighty percent of it back today,” Bemrose pointed out. “I’ll wait to charge them until I can hang on to the money. Right now I’m more interested in being good. Once you get the reputation for being good— Look at the Old Man.”
“You do all right now.”
“When I’m really good they’ll know about me. They’ll want me around, and not just for business. When I really get to be good enough.”
“Get to be, huh.” Larry shrugged. “I thought you were. I thought I was. I thought it was all down in black and white in the Declaration of Independence.”
Arthur knew what he was driving at. They had been trying to shell it out for twenty years, ever since they were kids, that concept of men being free and equal, but it wasn’t the kind of thing that was ever settled with talk.
“You know it. I know it. The trouble is they don’t know about us being free and equal,” Arthur said. “Can you be anyone’s pal? Can you?” He leaned over and tapped the desk irritably.
“Why not?” Larry said. “I’m your pal——”
“And I’m Thomas Jefferson. I think Larry Frank is every bit as good as the next guy.”
“Thanks.” Larry grinned and watched Arthur H. Bemrose get red in the ears.
“I didn’t mean—” Arthur apologized.
“Go on, I was riding you.”
“When you’re getting started at the law, you have to do something big for them to notice you. You can’t just plug along turning in a decent job. You have to produce something brilliant. You have to pick your chances.” He rocked a pencil between his fingers. “Once you’re good enough——”
“I want to get it straight.” Larry’s narrow forehead pleated. “Who doesn’t get a bill? Just Eastern Power and other million dollar corporations, or that McVail girl that our friend, Tim, brought in? What do you do about her?”
“I look after her all right,” Arthur assured him.
“Thanks, I feel better. I just wanted to make sure.”
Larry clipped together the pages of his brief. “I saw some pictures in Life this week of Shore’s Oyster Bay place. It looks like quite a dump.”
“He asked me down for next weekend. I think I might try to get there.” Bemrose walked to the window. It looked like snow again, and a haze blotted out the River. The leaden water and sky blended with Jersey factory smoke into a flat gray screen.
Larry picked up his papers and said goodbye.
Bemrose followed him into the reception room. “What has the organization decided to do about you? Have they named you for the job?” he questioned sharply.
“Named me? A lousy district leader? Of course not,” Larry said. “The Hall’s going to stage a comeback.”
Arthur kicked through the pile of the carpet, unconvinced. “And if it does——”
“Well, I won’t be taking trips to Washington and I won’t be pals with Tom Newton, that’s a cinch. I’ll still be a two-bit politician.”
The minute Larry said it he was sorry.
Arthur H. Bemrose frowned and hesitated. “They could nominate you when there’s a vacancy on the bench and they need someone from your district. They don’t have to hold out on you because you’re honest. This was one time they should have given you a break. If they keep passing over the honest men— The lousy bastards don’t deserve to come back.”
Larry shrugged. “I better run along.”
“Why don’t you let me introduce you to Swanson?” Arthur insisted. “You’ll stand a better chance with the labor crowd. Tammany isn’t coming back. Look, it’s seven years that they’ve been out of office, ever since the Seabury investigation ousted Jimmy Walker. What makes you think——”
“I like it around Second Avenue, that’s why,” Larry said. “I have a nice, colorful district where there’s very little discrimination.”
“Except against an honest man.”
“You never come down. You don’t know how it operates. Let me show you around sometime.”
“Go on, get out,” Arthur said good-naturedly.
“Not until you tell me what I owe you for revising my brief.” Larry shook a red paper envelope with strings that dangled, the professional badge of the New York lawyer.
“Get out.”
“What do I owe you? Remember, I’m not your friend, Shore, and what I pay isn’t going to make trouble for you with the internal revenue department.”
“I’ll win it from you in poker,” Bemrose offered. “When is the gang going to play?”
“The usual. Two weeks from Thursday. We’ll look for you.”
“I’ll be there. With poison.”
Larry shook the envelope. “Better change your mind and charge me. A man can go broke working for nothing. Especially a lawyer can go broke.”
Arthur H. Bemrose waved him out, laughing. “When I charge fees again, I’ll pick someone else to start with.”
The marble hall outside the offices of HAYNES and BEMROSE seemed less formidable than a couple of hours ago. As Larry waited for the elevator he couldn’t help thinking of all the suckers who still worked, or kidded themselves into believing that they worked to make money. Arthur H. Bemrose had other motives, different from making money, or at least he thought he did. Maybe Bemrose had arrived at something. With taxes what they were, maybe a man had to find some better reasons. Maybe if he didn’t think of his work in other terms and do it for the kind of tax-free currency that was around in January, 1941, he would wake up someday and find out that he’d been taken. Larry figured that as far as Arthur H. Bemrose was concerned it didn’t matter. Whatever motives Bemrose might have, wherever he was headed, he, Larry Frank, would stick around and observe.