A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  When Flack, nervous, expressed his loathing of the foolish intrigue, Grant would say, exercising his sweetest smile, his most affectionate manner, “You’re my brother! I never had a real brother! You’re my brother! Bear with me—I know it’s dull for one who doesn’t get the honey; and I don’t want the honey—I just want revenge, just a whim, bear with me—it’s only a matter of a day or two. Is it money you’re anxious about? Take money.”

  And he would drag out a handful of change, or even half pull his pocketbook from his breast pocket.

  One of these days March came to Flack and asked him if Grant could really be as rich as Flack thought. “The monkey always shies away from talking about the market. He don’t join in; and there’s this obsession about the blonde; he doesn’t act like money to me.”

  “You forget, his father and mother were Europeans. Robbie has a lot of that in him. He doesn’t talk about money because, first, he doesn’t want you to know he has any; second, he sincerely thinks it’s vulgar.”

  March said, “If it’s an act, it’s too deep for me.”

  Flack explained with excitement, “He loves luxury—to the luxurious, money is vulgar.”

  “I can understand that kind of luxury. If a man finds what he’s been looking for all his life, forty thousand dollars is peanuts to pay for it. But tell me, who saw the receipts?”

  Flack laughed. “I didn’t.”

  “But I could give that blonde a job in my business. She can roll ’em. You mean to say you waited four days in the Charles Wagoner? What’s he giving you? I wouldn’t hunt other men’s moose. If you want my two cents, let him muddle through, if he’s so British, his own way. It doesn’t put any soup bone in your stew.”

  “He’s taking Edda and me to Canada to look over his Hoot-Owl Hostel he’s bought in the St. Lawrence; he says he’s making it over with a boudoir for Edda.”

  “This fellow gives me the heebie-jeebies. I can’t make head or tail of him,” said March.

  12

  They reached the middle of May, 1942. March telephoned Grant to tell him he was sending Hoag over with an important message. Hoag told Grant that a secret round-up of spies was rumored and that March’s friend, Carter, and his “top secret-service contact,” had been advised of the movement of the blondine from Washington to New York and of the simultaneous payment into a New York bank of a large sum of money in an account which the blonde regularly drew upon. Although there was nothing implicating the blonde directly, it was released to March that the blonde had known, as a girl in Prague, a German skating champion who had got her into the spy game. At present they could not put their hand on her—“that is the way they put it,” said Hoag—but she met numerous people of all nationalities mostly in some kind of official position, at strange places, and if not a spy, she might be a smuggler. She, who a few years ago had nothing, now had accounts in several banks under different names, one of them amounting to $20,000. Out of this she took large checks at regular intervals. Immediately after going to the bank, she would go uptown to the room of a man who had been her coiffeur for many years, a relatively humble coiffeur, to tell the truth, a man of Sudeten-German parentage. Before or after her arrival other strange birds would fly there, as manicurists, clerks, and so forth.

  “It’s overwhelming,” said Flack, when he heard this.

  “She’s not smart enough.”

  “Didn’t you tell me she was a great calculator? Also, she knows four or five languages.”

  “I always thought there was something phony between her and that coiffeur—Marcel is his name, Marcel. Never liked the man. He never did anything for her. Besides, she just winds it in a knot—that’s what got me first. I myself gave her forty thousand dollars! She got it honestly. In trade,” and he laughed robustly.

  “Every blackjacker in Sing Sing has some sweetheart who believes in him,” said Flack.

  “Yes, yes. She loved this chauffeur. She bought a garage for this gigolo. Now this coiffeur. I know she had an affair with him. Knew before. It shows, at any rate, she’s disinterested. Doesn’t go for money. She goes for romance. She don’t look like it—but I don’t either. You should see that blondine in a café or restaurant! She’s sweet, charming—to everyone there—not only men, women too. She’s nice to the woman in the toilet, she’s nice to the waitress. She can talk by the hour to the waiter and the manager, to the elevator boy, to the bellboy! She’s a real democrat. I believe her when she says she’s a radical. She must be. She talks to everyone in the hotel. And such sweet expressions—believe me, my boy, that apart from our intimate conversation—when she’s with me—that woman is as charming with a waiter as she is with me. That’s not a woman who’d sell out for money. And you should see her with that little white furpiece, that bloody white stuffed cat. She loves it. She sleeps all curled up round it, holding it to her chest—like a baby. It’s touching. I swear I had tears in my eyes. I thought, there’s a woman took the wrong turning, this bloody German ice skater at the bottom of it. The fellows suspect everyone. A woman goes out with a lot of men—you’ve got to suspect her. Everyone would, I would. But I’ve got to be shown. Show me. That’s all I ask.”

  He turned pathetically to Hoag and Flack, and spread out his right hand, “Do me a favor, show me something! Give me a small scrap of paper, a bit of writing—a photograph—anything—just show me. You have no evidence.”

  “You can’t believe you could be taken in,” said Flack, laughing.

  “By a woman I—by that woman? No. Im-possible. And then she loves a chauffeur, a coiffeur, a gigolo? Impossible. She’s disinterested. It’s love.”

  “Have it my way! She’s a tramp and she’ll take money from anywhere for her turtledoves,” said Flack.

  “No, sir, no, sir, no, sir.”

  “You don’t get anywhere by roaring, ‘No, sir.’ Save your money. I don’t care.”

  “No, sir, take it from me, sir. Impossible.”

  In the end he agreed to March’s proposition sent by word of mouth of Hoag, to pay any incidental expenses in Washington for March, who was going there on the next day to see his friend Carter about some other matter. Hoag said, “It’s serious; it’s not the kind of thing you can interfere with. There are personal reasons why Carter can’t appear in such a thing, especially with this spy scare on. You’ll have to be ready to put up one thousand dollars to have a partial transcript made of certain files. They won’t be all the files, but they’ll be enough to convince you of part of the story.”

  “I’ll pay one thousand dollars to be convinced, but they ought to give back the money if they’re wrong.”

  “Carter doesn’t act on a whim. He’s doing this for March who is sorry to see you being taken for a ride by a dangerous woman. He doesn’t care what you do with women, but he does care about you getting mixed up in a business like this.”

  Grant became very anxious before they were through, and Hoag went off carrying with him a check for a thousand dollars made out to March, who would cash it and plant the money where it was needed. Grant paced up and down the office. Without telling Flack, who might relay the news to March, he presently rushed uptown to Goodwin’s loft and told him everything, adding, “I’ve made up my mind to check on their story, to see if I’m being shown the etchings. If it’s etchings, I’ll make them pay back every cent with interest.”

  Goodwin left him to consult the detective James. James recommended his friend Bentwink, a “retired Washington man.” This man, Bentwink, a likable gray-headed six-footer, about fifty years old, had a small gray Ford which, from now on, was stationed in the cross street in the fifties in which stands the Charles Wagoner. He arrived there before eight in the morning and did not go away till ten at night, being relieved at times by an assistant, and sometimes by Grant, Flack, and even Edda. Of these only Grant had seen the blonde woman. Mrs. Kent left her hotel at twelve or after, usually with her mother. She went to the same restaurant, the same shops, and then home. She never stayed out late and, in fact,
was so abnormally circumspect in her movements that she never received anyone at the hotel, spoke to no one in the lobby but the clerk, the bellboy, and the doorman, and would not speak to strangers on the telephone. Bentwink had a plan of the hotel. She could leave by one or two service doors; perhaps she did, for almost certainly she escaped their watch. If she went out the front door of the hotel, she would not take a taxi in front of the hotel but would walk to the corner. Once she walked past the watching car and looked furiously at Bentwink.

  “What’s the use!” cried Grant.

  “An honest woman doesn’t take two taxis to go to Longchamps, she walks,” said Flack.

  “That blondine never walks,” said Grant.

  He passed sleepless nights. He arrived at the waiting detective car at eight in the morning. Impatient of the long sitting, he would get out of the car, rush past the hotel door, pounce about on the corner of the block, walk up and down the other side of the street, so that the most nondescript man would have been noted, far more a man of his height and manner.

  To make matters worse, March, who had been in Washington, sent for Grant to come to his office and there showed him a sheet of paper, unsigned and undated, which read as follows:

  This party is known to be an experienced agent, having connections through a German coiffeur with an enemy country; and is believed to be the local paymaster. Is considered as being in a key position. Send in any information you pick up about this party.

  Grant, nearly frantic that he could not in six days get the addresses and times of her appointments, said furiously, “Why doesn’t the Government arrest her then? It’s unpatriotic. I don’t believe it! What’s ‘this party’—what’s ‘key position’? I want the facts, I want the names. What about the German coiffeur?”

  March laughed at him coldly and assured him that Carter had told him enough to convince him, “And I’m a hard bird to fool. I think you’re not only playing with fire, you’ve got your big fist right in the red-hot coals and you don’t even feel it, you’re so woman-struck. Look at you paying out a private flatfoot to do what the Government is doing for you! Do you think she doesn’t know that sleuth is waiting there in the car every day? You can tell from the way she behaves, she does. No wonder she went through your pocketbook. You’re not born yet. If she weren’t too hot, I’d give her a job in my business—but I wouldn’t touch her—for honey or money.” He looked at Grant with a sinister grin.

  Then he smiled in a better way and relented, “Grant, you don’t want to land in the pen for a woman. You’re not that much of a romantic. I want to save you from yourself. I’m no Galahad, but I’ve seen friends of mine get tangled with a dame before this. It don’t happen to me, but it happens. I’ll do this out of personal regard. I kept looking around when I was in Washington, and I spotted a certain party I know who is in a jamb—a big gambler, no luck and no sense, I took him out, got him drunk, and though he didn’t spill as much as I had hoped, I smelled embezzlement from his song and dance. I did some more fishing, on my own, it’s a private sport of mine, and I figured the amount he’d taken. Now I am sure this boy, who’s been up on charges before, can be bought for two thousand dollars, but cash. He’s an official in the F.B.I. and has only to ring a bell and say, ‘Bring me the file on a certain party,’ and they bring it, no questions asked. I’ll ask either for a complete transcript or for the file itself. At any rate for enough to convince you—and flashlights of your sleepytime gal, if you want ’em. Though I’d as soon rent my bedroom to a real, live rattlesnake. Now, I give you my personal guarantee. But just tell me what you suspect—for if I can throw them something, too, it’ll help; and I’ll see what I can get on those points. I understand the files on her are voluminous. And remember, it’s cash. You can’t buy even a wrong guy in the U.S. Government with maybes.”

  Grant held off for several days, but as March was going to Washington again and began treating him with contempt, and as Bentwink, the detective, had no results, Grant gave a written promise and he did pay $2,000 in a check to March, when March came back and presented him with a bill of charges written in mysterious terms. Upon receiving the check, March delivered the following document:

  KENT, Barbara, alias Adams, Jones, Paul, Texier, born in England, 1908, father Richard Texier, Luxembourg, mother, Maria (Popovna) born in Moscow, the mother without a passport, “White Russian.” Went to school in Lausanne, ran away, met German skater Braun, lived with him, when cast off by him went to Paris, lived with artist, “Paul” (other name not known). Paul’s means of livelihood not known. Braun then and probably now in German secret police. After Paul, lived with correspondent, Paula Russell, in Switzerland…(Her Washington relations are left out.) Closest friend, Paula Russell, American-born, who introduced her to James “Alexis,” Boer-Dutch, called British, magnate, with whom Russell and Kent have close relations. Kent went with “Alexis” to Saratoga, and to Palm Beach…(Here followed an account of her relations with the gigolo, the chauffeur, known to Grant.) Paymaster for the East Coast spy-constellation known as the “Ursus” ring…Meets regularly for conferences—Alfred Goodwin, Betty Goodwin, Paula Russell, “Alexis,” chauffeur Wilson, coiffeur (File No. ——) and File Nos. (five numbers omitted)…At present apparently estranged from Robert Grant (File No. ——). See Hilbertson, New Orleans.

  Grant read this in silence, not jingling his money, wrestling with the air as he usually did. When he looked up his face had changed color and lengthened, “Good God!”

  “It’s a knockout blow, isn’t it? You know how to pick ’em. I couldn’t have picked that bird out of the basket if I’d tried for a year. I love that. She’s so innocent. You’re naïve, Robbie.”

  Grant, after a pause, said, “But they’ve got my name there, a file number.”

  “You give a nest egg that size to a rag and a bone and a hank of hair of that profession, and you don’t expect the police to take down your telephone number?” asked March with awful joviality, the quotation ringing in the room.

  “Give it to me,” said Grant, suddenly grabbing the paper. He rose, hooked his stick on his arm, and made for the door. “I’ll let Flack look through it and see what he makes of it.”

  “David will make out that two and two are five, which they sometimes are,” said March. Grant heard his peals of laughter as he got to the staircase. He ignored them.

  13

  He began going out regularly with March, because of the file on himself. How could he get at it? What, at least, was the number of it? He’d try his own relations in Washington. Surely, for the money he had paid, and cash on the nail, he could worm some more out of his friends in Washington? Grant took Hoag out twice by himself and asked him to see how the land lay, when next he was in Washington.

  Meanwhile, Hoag was once more the center of gossip and fun. He had married Mrs. Anne Warder, the attractive widow whose clothes he had once inspected for fire damage. Anne had turned the trick by pretending to be pregnant, said the “boys,” laughing noisily over every luncheon; but Hoag held out that she was pregnant and that he would be very pleased and proud to be a father at his age. The jokes took on a different color.

  One day March said to Grant, “You never did as well as Pete, anyhow: she bought satin sheets for when they were married; and she’s bought him a little car.”

  “Wish I could do it, don’t know how he does it,” said Grant.

  “You better ask him, watch his style.”

  “She must like him, if she bought him a car,” said Grant, smiling rosily.

  Hoag’s affair stretched over several weeks and Grant’s miserable involvement was never discussed by the circle of friends, even though Grant now went everywhere with them—to their fish places downtown, to their taverns, to their particular Italian place in the Village, and uptown—he went everywhere with them, pitiably trying to bring the talk round to the blondine, edging in a kind word for her or a vulgar anecdote, endeavoring to talk bawdy which he had never done, and falling back on his venereal
adventures because he could never remember a joke, and even now blushed at the filthy behavior of others. He liked to think himself both a moral and an immoral man. He did this by assuming that the world was a hard-working, well-behaved, respectable place in which a few devil-may-care men and women, pricked on by their own temperament, found vice irresistible, discovered, but kept to themselves, the great secret that there is gaiety in vice, like the son of a teetotal father astonished at the worth of wine. This could not be reconciled with the pedestrian view of March and his friends that corruption, vice, and crime were the essence of human nature, that the fools, the lambs, did not know it, but the wise soon found it out.

  Grant was reduced to talking his heart out to Peter Hoag, who suited his tongue to his company. Grant told him all he knew or imagined. Hoag said he was a fine fellow, not “a loose mouth like these boys,” and that Anne would be pleased to see him one night for dinner. Grant was happy. Since he could talk only of himself or, at best, entertained but one of any company, that is to say, some pretty, accessible woman, he was rarely invited out. Hoag said, “Mrs. Kent owes me something, though I never keep that kind of accounts; and I think she’ll come to dinner with us if I ask her.”

  Grant slept all through the night of this day, and dreamed of “something colored.” It seemed to him there were fields of colored cotton, blue, red, yellow, with a windbreak of trees, shining, tossing in the sun.

  In the morning before he went to work and in the afternoon after the exchange closed, he visited the detective Bentwink in his car. Grant had lied to March about this, pretending to have dismissed the detective, who had found out so little. But Grant believed in what he called “my system of checks and tallies.”

  Mrs. Kent met the chauffeur twice, the coiffeur three times, and once had dinner in a restaurant with James “Alexis.” Once she had been seen walking up Fifth Avenue with a young blond man; she was often with Paula Russell. Grant thus kept living with the blondine at a distance and became part of her life in a way that had never occurred to him before. He was now in her confidence, knew her friends and lovers, and interested himself in the spy business for her sake. He read books called Inside This, That, and the Other, and revelations of espionage, infiltration, influence, and the venality of the press and café society. He at last went back to David Flack, who liked international politics, and laughed at “the Wall Street gorillas whose only dream was to run barbed wire around the U.S.A.”