A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  Grant walked up and down. March continued in his full-stomach voice, “I personally wouldn’t spend five hundred dollars to find out about any cow in the U.S.A., and I think you’re a sucker if you do, but it’s your poison, and you’re the doctor. No blonde is worth five hundred dollars to me,” and he added a commonplace obscenity which made Grant writhe.

  He said hastily, “I got to find out who she is, because she tried to take me over. If the detectives are in with the real S.S., can you trust them, or do they split?”

  Lazily March said, stretching his short, fat legs, “They split both ways, one for you, one for partner, two for me; but what do you care?—you get your share. I mean they’re whores, but if you want to try it that way first, I can get you the most honest of the whores, he’s a pal of my good friend, Francis O’Sullivan. But O’Sullivan’s a sick man; he’s waiting to retire and I think he’ll go in with this Grey, Samuel Doncaster Grey, that’s the private detective. That’s how I know about it.”

  Grant anxiously walked up and down, “I never buy without a sample! Would I buy raw furs without a sample? They’d send me tips and tails perhaps. I want to see the goods first. Let them give me a couple of lines—only a couple of lines—and then I’ll see what they’ve got and pay if it’s worth while. But they can’t plunder me because of a woman.”

  March said contemptuously, “Suit yourself, it’s your show. If you’ll pay, there’ll be maybe a song and dance, maybe a striptease, maybe a good spy story; if you don’t pay, the curtain won’t go up, my good friend.”

  “I can’t believe it, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”

  Flack cried, “You don’t think they choose cross-eyed hunchbacks for spies?”

  March said, “Better than a winsome blonde who dances with attachés in the Diplomat Hotel.”

  Grant walked up and down, “She’s always in bed. And you have to be up bright and early to be a spy.”

  “Not a lady spy; she works at the other end of the clock,” said Flack.

  Grant stopped in front of them and declared, “Look, I know some fella got her fascinated out in California and some gigolo at Saratoga—”

  “First I heard of that,” said Flack, laughing.

  “Never mind, and at Washington she’s in with some naval fella. She’s pretty, she wants a good time. She wants to get married. What does that prove? No, no. I know the answer. It doesn’t suit me to pay out five hundred dollars to get the same answer out of the machine. I don’t know these friends of yours. Maybe you don’t know them. Five hundred dollars—I want a sample before I go into it. Five hundred dollars—and then I hear— We don’t know the lady: you’ve got war-fever.”

  “O.K. by me, let’s forget it. I wouldn’t pay out five hundred dollars for any blondine—I love that!—and as for a White Russian or whatever she says she is—”

  Grant walked up and down. “She’s fascinated by the gigolos in uniform. I’ll tell you the kind of girl she is: she’s lazy but she’s honest; selfish, but wouldn’t take a penny but what she feels she’s entitled to. That I’ll swear to. She takes money from men—good; who doesn’t? Your own wife does. She’s selfish, she never did for me what that other one did, she stays in bed till twelve, she wouldn’t make a good wife. My own wife, do you know what I had to do? Send out the laundry, count the laundry, ask the servant to sew on buttons. I was a young fellow, didn’t want to bother her. But my blondine—well, I’ll tell you, she has a weakness for animals. She used to keep a little bird flying about the apartment in Paris when she was with that skating champion. He objected but she clung to it. When she moved to the U.S.A. she brought it with her. She said the bird didn’t like New York air. She let it out every day; one morning she found it dead. She cried when she told me, she said—it just died, quietly, without a sound; and she burst into tears. By Jove, she wouldn’t cry for me like that perhaps. Never mind. She said it in French—she learned French in Lausanne. She said, ‘II est mort comme ça, tout tranquillement.’ She had those—what is it?—Siamese cats. At first I thought it was an ornament on the mantelpiece. She had a little white cat, with blue eyes, deaf; she said they’re always deaf. And that lazy ’ooman would run after those animals—I couldn’t stand them myself—giving them water, cleaning them—worrying when one of the cats went whimpering round the place because she wanted—wanted—honey, I suppose, just like me.”

  He blushed. He paused; then continued, “And she wouldn’t even clean a pair of gloves for herself. You may say she’s tough with tender spots. But she was nice to me, too, at times. You may say she made me pay through the nose. But I’m not ashamed, I’m not ashamed. Why does some little fella write anonymous letters to the income-tax about me? Because he is jealous I can pay forty thousand dollars for a woman who is no better than the next one. But—I offered it to her! She didn’t beg it out of me. She didn’t dun me. Of course, she knows how to get it without asking.”

  He was sitting down, pulling up his cuffs and coat sleeves, showing his large, blond, hairy wrists and hands. He passed his large hands over his hair. He got up and looked at himself in the mirror, rearranging his hair and tie, “I won’t say she had a great passion for me—maybe; it isn’t possible. A long nose, thin hair. I didn’t quite understand her. She thinks I let her down. I did let her down. I want to be fair.”

  “What do you want me to do—burst out crying?” asked March.

  The three sat silent for a while. Grant’s unraveling, self-interrogation went on for another half hour and Flack, ashamed of wasting March’s time, said, “Why not try this detective, Grey, for a week?”

  They discussed the cost. Grant held out “for proofs first—this detective could keep me dangling.”

  “It’s a cash-first business. You’ll need my recommendation to get a detective to do it even on a weekly basis,” said March.

  Grant could not make up his mind.

  March burst out laughing, “Well, now I’ve seen a great lover in action.”

  Grant frowned, “I got to know first if there are files on her.”

  “You expect fancy women to let you sample first?”

  Grant would not answer.

  “Well, the first time I’ve seen a great lover in action,” said March.

  “I got to know there’s a file first.”

  “What files? Is this to be Treasury, Immigration, or State Department?” inquired March.

  Grant was confused. He looked to Flack, “How do I know? For all I know, it’s a myth, it’s an idea of Flack’s, not worth a baked bean.”

  “Don’t say me, Grant; you know—”

  “All right, all right.”

  “It’s no business of mine. You just have to make up your mind whether you’re going to spend your money on aspirins or on finding out! I’ll give you my opinion, which you can have without spending a nickel—you’re a fleecy lamb if you spend one more cent on the damn blonde; I’m one hundred per cent with you there. You’ll do better to keep the five hundred dollars in your pants, or give it to your boy friend here.”

  “I don’t know anything about all this. I’m out of this picture. For me women aren’t something you can buy,” said Flack.

  “A real woman can’t be bought,” said March, looking sidewise at Grant.

  Grant squirmed and fought with himself, “I spent twenty-four hundred dollars in sterling silver I brought from England, and I ordered a silver dinner service; and she’s got a silver frame there. Two hundred and fifty for photographs—she went to the best photographer in town, they made her look like a Du Barry. She’s all right as she is, but they made her look better. I’m out a fur coat I got from Goodwin, wholesale, eighteen hundred dollars—”

  “That cost you eighteen hundred dollars wholesale? It’s murder,” said Flack.

  Grant frowned, “I’m not talking about the forty thousand dollars.”

  “I’d like to take that blonde into my business,” said March.

  “She met a Christmas tree,” said Grant.

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p; “Well—what is it to be—a Sitz or a Blitz?” said March.

  Flack said, “Come, Robbie, you’ve kept us here two bloody hours and we still don’t know where we’re going to start, or if at all.”

  “I’m damned if I’ll spend another five hundred dollars on her—and no honey,” cried the miserable man.

  The other two burst out laughing. March said, “Look, my friend, I think you’re crazy and it’s none of my business, but I’ll ask my friend Morales—”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Someone I know in Washington, to do a little exploring. Would you say the State Department secret files would be the best, if—only—mind I say only if—if there’s funny business?”

  “All right, all right. Ask your friend Morales.”

  “He won’t do it for nothing.”

  “What does he want?”

  “I’ll see, but not five hundred dollars, less than five hundred dollars. He’s under an obligation to me.”

  “Telephone me tomorrow,” said Grant, as if to a clerk.

  “I’ll telephone you—at your office—since I’m doing you a favor—when I goddamn please.”

  Grant and Flack went out, talking emotionally.

  “This Morales—he gives us names, not the goods,” Grant kept crying fretfully.

  “You’ve got to trust March in a case like this.”

  “I drew a report on him; it was better than I thought,” Grant agreed, with respect.

  Two days later March let Flack know that there was “something for him from Washington.” Grant sent Flack to March and met him afterwards in a bar just off Broadway. Flack said, “You can’t ask more from March than this. He got Morales to make a preliminary inquiry and he went to bat for you, said you had to know whether it was a wild goose chase. Morales says she is being watched, there is a file on her, and she has several aliases, Kent, Adams, Brown, and another they won’t state. You are in honor bound to give March the amount Morales asked—one hundred and fifty dollars. It’s nominal—it’s very cheap. And I want to say one thing, Robbie: if you try any three months’, six months’, and nine months’ notes techniques with this baby, you’ll never hear another word from him. I know March. He’s tough, and he never forgives.”

  “The information’s dear at any price,” cried Grant. But when March called him about the $150 owing next morning, in his slow, hard voice, Grant said he’d send a boy over. March called him two hours later and said something had happened to the boy with the $150 check. “There are no vouchers, only cash talks, Grant,” he said sweetly. Grant then sent a boy over. No sooner did he send the check than he felt a curious exaltation. He rubbed his hands, telephoned Flack, and said, “I think at last we’re getting somewhere.”

  Nevertheless, he would not authorize “Morales” to do any more work. Morales would not say in which department he had found her. It was not enough for the money. He would use a detective and not the detective mentioned by March but one he would find himself. He asked Alf Goodwin to do him a favor, go to Washington, do an errand in the Department of Commerce, and at the same time set a cheap detective on the trail of the blondine. “Anyone could trail her, a three-year-old child could trail her. I know her habits. She’s always in public, except when she’s with her mother.”

  At the end of the week he had the following report from the detective, James, picked by Goodwin: that Mrs. X went out for long drives with young naval officers and a pro-Franco attaché, who was evidently very fond of her. The attaché had given her papers in a restaurant. She had been followed to a pharmacy, and had handed the sheet of paper to a pharmacist. It turned out to be only an old European skin balm. Cost of this inquiry—$70. Grant read it through and through and thrust it at Flack.

  “Nothing,” said Flack.

  “Nothing!” Grant sat silent again. He said, “Weakness for uniforms: fell for that gigolo attaché!” He thought again, turning the pages, remarked, “Very reasonable, seventy dollars, very reasonable. Should I have him go on?”

  “What can you find out in a week? What are you doing it for?”

  “She’s got under my skin. Cheaper than that Morales—and told me more. But what does it prove? If I employ him on a week-to-week basis, he’ll dole it out to me, just feed me enough—a serial story. Nothing doing. It’ll be his market. I’ll never get seventy dollars’ worth.”

  “It’s your lunacy,” said Flack.

  Grant could not make up his mind and took the report to several friends, Goodwin, friends of the blonde, business associates. At last he came back to Goodwin, “Have patience with me, my boy. I’ll tell him to go on another week, but he hasn’t got carte blanche. No carte blanche. I want results. If he don’t turn up something serious next week, it’s all off. It’s up to him. Tell him that. If this doesn’t work, I’ll go back to March and see what he thinks.”

  The next day Hoag came to Grant’s office downtown, casually, but mentioned that March had seen his friend, Edison Furnivall Carter, who had asked him in the course of conversation what was all this about Mrs. Kent? Carter had hinted that there was something in it, and “his friends,” whoever they might be, would like to know more about her. He could not give away Government information, but he guaranteed Morales, knew him.

  “Think Carter gets a cut?” inquired Grant.

  “Of a hundred and fifty dollars?” said Hoag elfishly.

  Flack said, “Carter is an intimate friend of”—he named two well-known statesmen—“and is known to be incorruptible.”

  “A week-to-week basis can last from here to Kingdom Come and I’ll be none the wiser,” said the unhappy man.

  “Why don’t you put down a lump sum, let one of Carter’s men do the work, remove the file, and have a peek at it? It’ll cost you less in the end. But you have to pay first. You’re not dealing with blue-sky peddlers, phonies; you’re dealing with incorruptible men who are doing March a personal favor,” Hoag said.

  “Favors and incorruptibles always cost more, you know that,” said Flack, laughing excitedly.

  “You’re not on the Curb, you’re on the big board, this way,” said Hoag. Hoag took back with him a check made out to Hugo March for $500.

  The next week this surveillance had a welcome end. Goodwin’s detective reported that Mrs. Kent and her mother had left Washington without a forwarding address, but had taken the train to New York. He named the train. A friend of his had seen the pair at the other end and followed them to the Hotel Charles Wagoner. The report cost $70 plus $50 for the friend. Grant gladly paid the bill, and said the $500 was as good as thrown down a sewer, he had always known it. He was on bad terms with Flack, March, and Hoag for several days. With them he sulked. Meanwhile, the chins of all his other friends and acquaintances wagged madly, set in motion by him, as over innumerable dinners, teas, and cocktails he discussed with them the possible meaning of the blondine’s life in the capital and of her departure and of her life now. For she refused to see him, would not even speak to him on the telephone. He asked hundreds of times, perhaps thousands, “What does it mean? What’s your interpretation? Give me your advice—what is she up to? Has she some game or is she an innocent woman?”

  However, one day, about midday, Flack, who was miserable under this cold treatment, telephoned Grant who was delighted to take him back into his following. He begged Flack to go at once, with Edda, if she was available, to the Hotel Charles Wagoner, to watch for the blondine and her mother: “See if Edda can get an afternoon off—I want her to see this cow too; I can’t leave the floor till two-forty-five—then I’ll join you.”

  On the protestations of Flack he only stormed, “Look, Davie, do me a favor. If Edda is working, all right, though I’m disappointed, I thought she had more liberty—go and sit in the lobby of the Charles Wagoner—at least you’ve seen plenty of photos of the blondine. You can have lunch first. Don’t spend too much time talking. Get a sandwich. We’ll have dinner tonight. I want to go over with Edda and you—ask your advice. Tell Edda to put off an
y appointment, if she has one. You needn’t get to the Cha-Wagner till two. She never gets out till then. I want you to tell me what she’s doing, what she looks like, who she’s with. If you miss, if she goes out before two, I’m half inclined to believe them tales of that Morris—”

  “Morales—”

  “The trouble with that Morris is, if he’s lying it’s wasted, and if it’s true, I don’t want to know it. Ho-ho.”

  Flack protested that he had an article to write—“on excess profits”; that Edda would refuse to go and sit two hours in a lounge, even if she were free; and that neither of them had the faintest interest “in your lunacy.” Grant was angry; he also cajoled. At length, Flack went to the “Cha-Wagner,” at two o’clock, saying dolefully, “But after this you hire a professional dick, Robbie.”

  “Wait till three-fifteen; I’ll take a taxi as soon as the market closes.”

  When he joined his friend in the lobby of the Charles Wagoner, Flack had seen several fur-loaded blondes of the type described by Grant. He had found that Mesdames Kent and Jones were still in their room. Grant asked to speak to Mrs. Kent. He came back from the house phone with a disturbed expression. “Of course, it’s the blondine, though her voice was lower, muffled, or the wire was bad, or she spoke through a handkerchief, but she said she didn’t know me.”

  The two stood about. The desk clerk observed them. Every time the elevator came down, Grant turned and stared.

  This went on for several days. The men waited, either together or separately, from noon to dusk, when Grant usually had an appointment. When Flack said he had work to do, Grant exclaimed, “You’re working with me; we’re together from now on. I’m fixing up our house.”