Chapter 27
The day Larry picked to see the O.P.A. in Washington was the day after a Federal grand jury indicted the twenty Nazi sympathizers Arthur had been investigating. In the New York morning papers the story was front page. Larry had never gathered from talking about the case to Bemrose that they were sensational enough to be featured in the paper. Arthur had apparently established the fact that the crowd under indictment organized Nazi groups and distributed subversive literature, but he hadn’t been able to uncover definite acts of espionage. Since war news crowded the front page, and the story hardly seemed headline material, it was surprising that both papers gave it a feature box with more than a column carry-over. The Tribune even ran Bemrose’s picture. The story wasn’t page one. It must be Arthur’s connection with the case which made it news.
At the railway station a stockingless girl with waved platinum bangs teetered past Larry on strapped, platform soles, and he smiled at her. The greenish platinum face spat her annoyance— Papa-out-for-a-Pickup. He didn’t care about the girl, although she was pretty enough in the artificial new way of the young. He was grinning because Bemrose—damn it, you couldn’t keep him anonymous—had hit the jackpot again. So he was going to hold an inconspicuous place in Tom’s office, a number, not a name any more, a forgotten bureaucrat, a group man. This pat idea of disposing of the old Bemrose had lasted—how long?—about three months, and today he was back on page one. Maybe it was going to be more difficult to live down the Haynes tradition of individualism than Bemrose thought.
For humid minutes Larry hopped from island to island on the ramp outside the station trying to squeeze into a cab headed Northwest, and at last was assigned to one. He talked steak with a Navy man just back from Guadal, turned down the driver’s offer of an old Ingersoll for twenty-five dollars, grabbed his briefcase as they pulled up in front of the Department of Justice building, and shoving a generous tip into the driver’s hand, made a dash for Bemrose’s office.
Larry used his elbows to get through an impatient crowd of reporters and photographers spilling from the door. He found the Dale Carnegie secretary who remembered his name and face from the last trip, and was promptly shown in.
Arthur had on a conventional blue business suit that fitted him. The absence of his loose, conspicuous tweeds jolted Larry. In smooth cloth which hugged his shoulders, neck, and waist, Arthur looked like a drawing in crisp line instead of crayon, a man unblurred by the loose evasiveness of the tweeds.
Seated next to his desk, Larry saw Davis Shore nervously raveling the corner of a used envelope. Shore jumped to his feet. “Why, Mr.——”
“Frank,” Larry assisted. “How you doing?” he asked Bemrose.
“Frank. Frank. My memory for names—” Shore sat down, confused. “I wish you’d give the boy a try,” he said to Arthur.
“We have a strict rule in the Department,” Bemrose explained. “We don’t hire sons, relatives, or friends of friends. If you start that kind of thing in Washington, there’s no end to it, Davis. A man comes along with the right experience, someone you really want to hire, and there’s no line for him in the budget.”
“But the boy has a fine record. He was in the Corporation Counsel’s office for three years. He did an outstanding job and has wonderful letters——”
“4F?”
Shore nodded. “He’d like to be closer to the War. His mother says it’s having a bad effect on him, seeing all his friends in uniform. She’s my only sister, and——”
“Too bad he’s your nephew, Davis,” Arthur said. “He sounds like we might be able to use him.”
“You can’t hold that against him,” Shore protested.
“Strict rule of the Department. If he wants to come to Washington, I’ll give him a card to Don Richberg. There’s a shortage of good young lawyers down here in the private shops.” He took a card out of his wallet and scribbled on it. “There, that will get him in to Richberg.”
“That’s the third time I’ve turned him down,” Arthur said, when Shore had left. “This time I hope he stays turned down.”
“He looked like his grandmother kicked him in the stomach.”
“—— his 4F nephew.”
“I remember when you used to crawl for the guy.”
“I’m trying to forget it,” Arthur said. “How’s Bessie?”
Larry offered to clear out and make room for the reporters, but Arthur was wound up. He wanted to talk about the indictments. Janice’s old suspect, Richter, had given him the clue which helped crack the cases. Bemrose had sent to the F.B.I. for the art dealer’s file, and on a hunch, wired him to come down. Sure enough. Before the War, Goering’s agent in Berlin had ordered Richter to negotiate for a Titian. Richter located the painting but lost money on the exchange. This must have turned him against the Nazi gang in Germany, and he had been looking for a chance to get even. During the thirties he had met some of their sympathizers in this country, and knew where many of them hung out. Nervous because the F.B.I. had a file on him, Richter was willing to tell what he could and clear himself.
Bemrose promised him immunity if he talked, and immediately put a staff to work on the leads he gave them. In a couple of months they had rounded up enough facts for the indictments, and the rest was window dressing, building the evidence into a story.
“So Janice was on the right track all the time when she suspected Richter,” Larry said.
“I don’t think he had any paintings with him on the boat that time,” Arthur said. “Once the War started he was too smart to be caught. But he’s a bad egg. She was right about that.”
The buzzer sounded, and it was Newton on the phone, asking Arthur to see the reporters. Bemrose insisted to Tom that he was the chief and ought to see them, but Newton argued that the case belonged to Arthur. Since he had the details, he ought to hand out the story.
“What’s the use, Tom? There aren’t any new angles,” Bemrose protested. “I gave them a complete release.”
Newton, from what Larry could gather, must have urged him to see the photographers, even if he wouldn’t bother with the reporters.
“How about that picture in this morning’s Tribune?” Arthur objected. “Just a minute, Larry’s saying something.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand.
“Refusing fees again. Don’t spend the rest of your life refusing fees,” Larry repeated.
Arthur uncovered the receiver. “Okay, Tom. I’ll see them.”
“I thought I was through with that baby stuff,” he told Larry.
“I suppose you want Tom to be grateful to you the rest of his life.”
“Putting myself in solid,” Arthur admitted.
He sent word to his secretary to let the photographers in, and asked Larry to stick around. “They’ll fuss with the lights for a while. We’ll have time to talk.”
Luckily the man Larry was supposed to see at the O.P.A. agreed to put off his appointment. Arthur seemed relieved that he could stay. While the photographers slid their plates into position and changed their flash bulbs, he inquired about Lucy.
“Fine,” Larry assured him. “Better looking than ever.”
Tensely Bemrose rubbed his palms along the leather arms of his chair. “Did she say anything about coming down?”
“As soon as Marge is straightened out.”
“Is Phil around?”
Larry nodded toward the photographers who were getting ready to shoot.
When they finished, a kid with fresh blue eyes turned as he was leaving, and said out of the corner of his mouth, “Thanks, Mr. Next-Attorney-General.”
“The rumor mill,” Bemrose explained. “They have Tom running for the Senate, and they have me his successor. I doubt if the voters in Tom’s district know about it.”
“Mr. Attorney-General. Wouldn’t Janice like that.”
A flash of red came through the door, and Janice stood astride before them, both hands planted in the patch pockets of her bright coat. “What would I like?”
Larry nodded toward Bemrose. “The next Attorney-General.”
“Not according to my sources. That’s a job for a good party man.”
“Why can’t I go into politics without a party?” Arthur asked.
Larry appealed to Janice. “He’s been telling me to get out of politics for twenty years, and now he wants to know why he can’t get in. A few months ago he was going to be a cog in a machine——”
“What machine?” She rocked on her heels. “Tom Newton’s? Ed Flynn’s?”
“Not a political machine,” Larry explained. “One of Henry Ford’s. He was going to be one of those pistons that go up and down like every other piston, doing a job, not bothering the other pistons——”
“When was all this?” The straight mouth broke in a dozen delighted places.
“And today when I walked in here, the Nobody had locked out a crowd of reporters and was fighting to keep his name out of the papers.” Larry shrugged. “I don’t know what it proves. Maybe that you can’t keep a good piston down.”
Arthur faked his distaste. “Let’s get out of here, Jan, before he starts making bad puns.”
“There’s no reason why he shouldn’t go into politics, even if some smart reporter did make a crack. He can’t be the next Attorney-General because the incumbent has been picked, but how about making him a Judge? What’s wrong with that?” Janice bore down on her pockets, balancing on the soles of her feet.
“A fine group activity for a group man,” Larry scoffed. “Our friend, Bemrose, alone behind the bench, and the group out in front pleading for justice.”
“Shut up, both of you. Hand me my crutches, and let’s get out of here.” He hooked Janice affectionately by the neck when she came over to help him. “We’ll take him along. He came down to see the O.P.A. and put off his appointment for us. We’ll have to do something nice for him. How about the car? Did Jim fix you up with gas?”
“He left a press car in front, and I’ll get a ticket if we don’t hurry. Come on, Larry.”
She had arranged a consultation for Bemrose with a new specialist at Johns Hopkins. The ride to Baltimore, impregnated with their happiness, with Arthur’s recent success, and with the warmth of late May, offered reprieve for an hour from the anxieties, frustrations, and inconveniences of wartime. Larry leaned back and enjoyed the luxury of riding again in a private car. Most of his friends’ automobiles were in storage. The taxis were rattletraps. Riding in something that had a decent pair of springs was a pre-War treat. Larry withdrew to a corner of the back seat and let the spring afternoon chatter to him. He must have dozed off because the next thing he knew, the car had stopped and Janice was climbing over him to help Arthur get out.
In the hospital waiting room, while Arthur was in with the doctor, Janice had a chance to talk to Larry. An ugly niche at one end of the white corridor, some hard chairs, and the inevitable tired plant that lives in public rooms at hospitals, supplied the setting. Larry had noticed before that people waiting in hospitals, drawn together by the proximity of pain, felt free to unburden themselves as Janice did now.
“His real sickness is over,” she asserted. “This other is inconvenient and makes it hard for him to get around, but it’s not as serious. Inside he has started to heal. The cancer that used to eat into him seems to be under control.” She hesitated. “At least I think it is. I think he’s over that crazy desire to own other people. I hope I’m right, Larry, and don’t wake up someday to find myself in a trap he has camouflaged to catch me in. I don’t want to be hopelessly—” She walked to the window, and the structure of her profile had the strength of an ancient coin. Larry tried to imagine a trap powerful enough to hold her.
“It’s been hopelessly for a long time, hasn’t it?” He rested his hands next to hers on the high white sill. “I wouldn’t worry too much about the change being temporary if I were you,” Larry cautioned. “I don’t think it was a cancer. A cancer spreads. Call it a tumor that’s been removed. I’d go ahead and make some plans now.”
She had been staring, trancelike, at the clouded window glass, but now her head tilted toward him. “Make personal plans today? How can we? They’d have to be changed a thousand times. I can’t think of any plans, including some of Eisenhower’s, that will stand up. There’s too much in the air that’s unpredictable. Of all the times in history to make plans for the future——”
“War maneuvers are unpredictable,” Larry agreed. “But people don’t have to be.”
“That’s heretical. It’s absolutely against the belief of our times,” Janice protested. “Don’t you know it’s things, things that don’t change? We haven’t faith in human beings. It’s things that stand up.”
“All right, but I’d make some plans just the same,” Larry insisted. “Soon. While he’s down here and happy with his job.”
“What about New York? What about her?” Janice asked.
“It’s okay with her. I’ve talked to her and I’m sure.”
Janice slipped her hand into the loose sleeve of her coat and pulled down her heavy bracelet. “The man you told me about?”
“Yes. He seems more for her. If she married him, they’d have children by now. I don’t think he’s rushing her into anything. He seems to understand about Arthur. But just the same I guess he’d be happy if she made up her mind.”
Janice rested a foot on the radiator pipe and turned away from Larry.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s the matter? Scared?”
“He hasn’t asked me. I can’t even tell whether he wants to.” She twisted away. “He talks about Lucy coming down. When I tell him I may have to go overseas, he doesn’t object. He probably doesn’t want to commit himself.”
“Maybe he thinks you know your mind, and when you’re ready, you’ll say so,” Larry suggested. “It’s one of the prices you pay for being independent. He’s probably waiting for some sign from you.”
Her jaw set stubbornly. “I don’t want to crowd him. I want him to be sure about us. As long as there’s a war, I don’t know how he can be. It’s like planning a future home in a trailer. I may feel permanent about Arthur and he may feel a little like that about me, but these aren’t permanent times.” She dug her soles into the rubber-matted floor. “We’re feeling the blast of blockbusters that are three thousand miles away. The ground is shifting under us. Washington, New York and Des Moines are as thoroughly bombed as London. Not that many people realize it now——”
Larry shook his head.
“You can put buildings together again, but you don’t hear of any post-War plans for restoring hopes,” Janice continued. “All you see and feel is the disintegration. If Arthur doesn’t want to pretend a permanence he can’t feel, I don’t blame him. He tried to use marriage for ballast once, when he was restless before the War, and what happened? The ballast turned into dead weight. That mustn’t happen to him again. I won’t let it. I’ve waited all this time, and I can wait another few years to see what comes out of the mess. If he and I have anything in the way of happiness that will help give it meaning— Meaning!” She shrugged. “That’s too much to expect. Survival is what I’m trying to say. Freedom to enjoy parts of some days, the feeling that it’s good to be together, and when we’re apart it stays good—I’ll settle for that. He doesn’t have to sign any papers.”
“But you have waited,” Larry insisted. “Supposing you do make plans and have to tear them up. You’d have the satisfaction now of making them. I wouldn’t let things ride. I’d have a talk with him,” he told her.
“I’m going to wait and I’m going to be patient,” she decided. “This time there’s something to wait for. This time, if he’ll have me——”
She flung herself on Larry, sobbing, and an elderly woman with a line-ridden face, who slumped heavily in her chair across the room, leaned forward startled. He stroked Janice’s smooth dark head, mumbling comfort into her hair. When she lifted her face, he dried her off with a fresh handkerchief. The tears stopped, and she brightened. “This time I’m going to hold out for the big thing. I want him to marry me.”
The elderly lady had returned to her own brooding, and they were sitting quietly on a wicker sofa near the door when Dr. Turnbull’s nurse called them.
In a room at the end of the hall they found the spare, balding physician who had been a research man on antibiotics at the Rockefeller Institute before he accepted the post at Hopkins.
“Well, I’ve completed the examination,” Dr. Turnbull reported.
Arthur interrupted him. “I’m straight garden variety, not even interesting material for the medical journals.” Complacently he puffed a cigarette.
“Fortunately no unusual complications,” Turnbull continued. “But some new things we’ll be able to try someday. Miss Baldwin spoke to me about penicillin. I can’t see that penicillin notatum, the kind we work with now, will do much good. I thought of suggesting streptomycin, but that’s off the track.” He turned to Janice. “I may be wrong, of course. There hasn’t been enough work done to exhaust the possibilities of any of these newer drugs.”
“Antibiotics are your field. You’re the one person who would know the possibilities.” Janice’s active, bony fingers reached toward him.
He had been constrained at first, but now he unbent. “The longer you work in a field, the less you are sure of anything. Every country doctor today knows more than I do about penicillin. He’ll tell you just what to use it for and how much to give——
“A year ago we were working on a mold that is close to streptomycin in some of its effects but has one characteristic which makes it a possibility— I’m not saying it will work, but in multiple sclerosis it’s certainly worth a trial,” the doctor continued. “The project has stopped during the War, but as soon as personnel becomes available and we can reorganize, I’ll have some material for experimental purposes. If Mr. Bemrose will keep in touch with me——”
The doctor shook hands. “Try to be patient,” he admonished Bemrose. “Give us six months from V-J Day. Until then we’ll have to be patient and wait.”
Janice had said it a few minutes ago, and Dr. Turnbull was saying it now, Larry realized. Wait. Patience. Until the War is over. Until the War ends. It was like waiting for the millennium, or a small child on the eve of his birthday expecting to be three inches taller the next day. There was something wrong about believing that peace would bring abrupt improvements, and the day the War ended, plans and projects would get under way. That wasn’t the order of things. The chaos, the restlessness, the shifting values of now would carry over. The seeds for peace were already being sown. Peace would be a phase of war, not a separate state, as convalescence is a continued phase of illness. That’s why Larry disliked the postponements of the present time, the almost universal reliance on “when the War is over” as a solution for present problems. Peace would be no dead end, but a cross-country thoroughfare marked by the same old anxieties.
Outside the hospital Larry said, “I know one thing we can do without waiting for the War to be over. We can go to Reilly’s and have the finest shore dinner in Baltimore.”
He sat in front of the car with Janice to direct her to the restaurant. It was near the railway terminal, and had been recommended to Larry years ago by Bessie’s brother who ran a chain of clothing stores in Baltimore.
“I don’t think Turnbull would have promised to try the drug unless he thought it was going to work, do you?” she asked quietly so as not to disturb Bemrose who was stretched out on the back seat resting.
“Turnbull doesn’t know. How can he know until he tries it?”
“You could let me hope,” she said crossly.
“I thought Turnbull was very encouraging.” Larry patted her knee. “After going over the case, he seemed to think that with crutches Arthur’s in good shape. He doesn’t have to be completely well, does he? Who is completely well?”
She stroked the steering wheel thoughtfully. “I’m not.”
“That makes two of us.”
“I should have thought of that myself,” she said. “Look up there.”
She pointed to a star in the early evening sky, and Larry felt her happiness rocket to meet it.
Reilly, the restaurant proprietor, remembered Larry and brought the steamed clams to the table himself. They washed them down with a pungent sea broth, and later drank a dry white table wine with their lobster. The French bread was fresh and crusty, and as a special treat, Reilly produced a good fine with the coffee. Arthur who dissected the lobster with a steady hand, swapped Irish stories with Reilly, and while they ate they laughed, all three of them, not two paired against the third. Larry thought of it later as the best dinner of his life, and whenever friends took him to a favorite seafood restaurant, he remembered the vividness of Janice in her red jacket and the pleasure of Bemrose as he watched her from across the table.
After dinner Larry offered to drive the car back to Washington. The painted white line of the highway had grown dim with the War, and Larry became involved in the unfamiliar mechanics of steering and shifting. As they stopped for a light near Washington, he turned around and saw that Janice was asleep on Arthur’s shoulder.
“Pooped,” Bemrose said, cradling her head in his arm. “She dropped off right away.”
“I suppose Turnbull was right,” he added later. “No use doing anything in any department until the War is over. I have to make up my mind to wait. Helluva nice guy, Turnbull. It must be great to work with stuff like penicillin.”
“Turnbull was only talking about that new drug when he told you to wait. He didn’t mean to wait for other things. Conditions aren’t going to change that much with the end of the War. If you go ahead and make plans now——”
“It’s easier not to look ahead,” Arthur said. “I thought HAYNES and BEMROSE would go on forever. I thought when I married Lucy— What’s the good of planning?”
“You have to plan,” Larry insisted. “Things outside change and get messed up. Inside you have to have a blueprint. Then something is left when the outside falls to pieces.”
“I see what you’re driving at,” Arthur agreed. “The trouble is, I guess, I’ve lost faith in some of my blueprints.”
Janice’s voice came through the darkened tonneau. “Who’s building a house?”
“Arthur. I’m trying to talk him into building one,” Larry said.
“Is he going to ask us to live in it?” she inquired sleepily.
Blood and heart seemed to make more sense at the moment than a meticulous ten-year plan, and Arthur, answering her in the dark, demonstrated that he knew it.