A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  After a moment’s silence, March said, “Well, I don’t think you’re right; you don’t know O’Sullivan. He wouldn’t stand for hankypanky from his informants.”

  “No, but I’ve got this hunch. I’m an old stock-market gambler, I like hunches. Grant me my hunches. Humor me—” he said, grinning graciously—“I’m too old to spoil, I’ve got this bee in my bonnet and I won’t be satisfied till I’ve paid my pride this little bonus—I just want to see O’Sullivan—you can be there—and ask him, ‘Do me this favor, name one of your informants and let me satisfy myself.’ There,” he said, flinging wide a great palm, “that’s a naïve request, but I stick to it. I don’t like to think I’ve been sold down the river. Keeps me awake nights.”

  March said, “If you’ve got this bee in your bonnet, I’ll see O’Sullivan. I know him better than you. I’ll sound him out, whether he knows this informant of his very well, and what his character is. And I’ll tell him that you’re suspicious, too; and perhaps O’Sullivan will get after this character.”

  “Yes, do that,” cried Grant enthusiastically, smacking him on the back as they rose, “just to humor me.”

  He rushed up to Flack’s home as soon as the market closed, and discussing the campaign, thrusting his chin in and out, his face smoking darkly, told him what he had said to March.

  “How do you like that? Do you think I did it right? Do you think he smelled anything? Maybe he did. Let him. I think we’ll get something out of him.”

  When he got his next check, which was for $750, Flack exulted. But Grant said, “Always paying back half. Does that mean a split that he can’t get back, or does he think he’ll get out of this with at least fifty per cent profit?—And did you hear any more about his boy?”

  “Yes, they say he’s left the city.”

  Grant rubbed his hands and walked up and down, his eyes sparkling. “Looks like the hand of God, eh? You can’t get away with everything all the time. Give a boy a father like that, and he’ll turn out bad. Serve him right.”

  “Grant, have some pity.”

  “Not for him! Telling me that rigmarole. Every penny! I want to know Edda’s opinion. I’m coming home with you.”

  “Edda thinks it’s a swindle, but he won’t pay in full.”

  His face became overcast, “She does, hey? Well, I can only try. I’ll give him waking nightmares, anyhow.”

  Grant waited till the daughter Edda had come home from work, and the two men sat down to eat, asking her advice, as they put the finishing touches on the “next day’s play.”

  Flack said, “Ask him for the details, drive it home hard.”

  They telephoned March at his Connecticut home at six-thirty, and arranged a conference at his office the next morning. Grant went alone to March’s office. He wore a depressed expression this morning and began his spiel in a low, earnest voice.

  “Hugo, I’ve been having Flack make up my accounts for the year and I’m depressed, very depressed, to see what I spent for that damn blondine. I want to put it down in red and black, and learn it by heart and chew it over, so it will be a kind of lesson to me. I have to look out for women, always been my weakness. Now, I’ve got a kind of chart and what I notice, I have no details. To save my self-respect, I’d like to have a few details on the various bits of information your informants—I mean the regular ones, not that one fellow who was the weak link in the chain—gave me from time to time. Now this fellow Carter, is he your personal friend? I don’t want you to tell any tales out of school. I mean, does he know your wife, your daughter, your son? Or is he a business acquaintance, one of your clients? It’s unimportant, that’s why I’d like to know. I’m like a man who shuts the door after the horse bolted. Ha-ha. It isn’t funny: it depressed me very much. I felt myself all over and thought, ‘Am I getting sick or silly? Am I getting old? How old is this Carter? Why would he give me this information? Is he a man my age?’ Perhaps if I went to him and told him the inside story, he might laugh at me—but he might take pity on me and say, ‘Look, I’m sorry you’ve wasted so much time and money and I’ll clear it up for you once and for all.’

  “What I want is a line of demarcation: what she is and what she isn’t. Now I’m establishing a plan of my own, and where I lack details, I thought of going to the people concerned and throwing myself on their mercy, saying, ‘I’m an old fool, a woman bought me and sold me, now I’m through with her, but do one favor and I’ll do you one any time: what is the truth? Tell me, so I can sleep at night.’ Now, can you give me an introduction to Carter? And I don’t care if you say, ‘This is the sucker who fell for that blonde spy.’ I’ll see him and I’ll tell him, Hugo March and his friends, Arthur Pantalona and Francis O’Sullivan, took my money and arranged for me to get a lot of information and saved my neck, and I’m grateful. Now, when was the first date you saw Carter for me? Then there was a later date, when Carter arranged for his Number Two man to abstract a file for him, wasn’t there? So if you could give me a vague idea, January 17, May 5, I could include them in my letter to Carter, when I say I’m your friend, I’m the man in question.

  “Oh-ho, don’t think I’m angry. I’m not. It taught me a lesson. It’s a blessing in disguise. Now what is the name of his Number Two man and this fellow, the embezzler who needed one thousand bucks—perhaps he’s the one who bamboozled us, eh? No: you said you only saw him once—but give me his name at any rate and I’ll speak to Carter when I see him. What name, when, where, you know, what time of day. I’ll pin this fellow down. That’s the weak link in the chain. Eh? I’m ashamed and I’m shameless. I’ll go to Carter and confess everything. You just give me the names and dates and I’ll go and say, ‘I’m the one, I’m the sucker, I’m the one who paid out eleven thousand, two hundred and seventy-eight dollars for a blonde spy.’ Eh? So just give me Carter’s Number Two man and the embezzler, to begin with.”

  March looked sternly and thoughtfully at him. He said emphatically, “Perhaps I can sympathize with you: no one wants to be made a monkey of. But I suggest you let me handle this. Carter’s a big man, wouldn’t listen to you, your blonde is only Number Seventeen thousand, eight hundred and forty-three to him. I’ll give you names and dates if you still want them, but I think I can guarantee some satisfaction about that embezzler, for example. Now, why don’t you leave this thing to me? I know the parties and I have private information it would not be fair to give you. With your names and dates you’d get no farther, while I, without names and dates, can push the fellow to the wall. And I’m beginning to think you’re right about that embezzler, perhaps he did ditch me. You can’t touch that type without getting into trouble. They’re thieves. Why do business with thieves? A man like me comes along with a foolish request about a blonde, he thinks I’ve gone crazy, and he waits for the plums to fall into his mouth. So unless you’re hankering for a list of names and dates, let me do the arithmetic for you and I’ll guarantee to do better than you.”

  This negotiation went on for some minutes; a few days later, March sent Grant a check for $750, “in connection with the subject of our conversation the other day.”

  This banked, Grant and Flack found hilarity and profit in concocting “the new play,” and on the following day, Grant, who had been showing friendly concern, tenderness, and hospitality to March, took him out to lunch and discoursed as follows: “Getting this money back from the bottomless pit has done something to me, made me avaricious. I’m beginning to feel that there was more than one crook in this affair—and I don’t blame you, I blame myself. It was my blonde, not yours, and if I could be fooled I have to grant that you could be fooled, about the money. Now, anyone who pays out eleven thousand, two hundred and seventy-eight dollars for chasing a woman he’s already got must strike a man temporarily short as a fat goose ready for the plucking. Now, how about this detective, friend of Goodwin’s in Washington, this Morales? Now, that’s your friend, this James is friend of Goodwin, but James is friend of Morales—I found out—”

  “Well—�
�� said March.

  “One of those fellas might be dishonest. Now I’m going to take the trouble to send Flack to Washington to find out where James and Morales stationed themselves, a regular itinerary, and it’s only my right, those fellas are obliged to send in typed reports every day, and I saw no typed reports, but those typed reports must be in their offices, so I’ll send and take a look and say, ‘Do me a favor, tell me where you sat or stood or walked while you were taking my money. If you can’t tell me, I’ll get my lawyer to look into it, unless you can furnish a detailed report that I can check on.’ Because I can check on this and I will. It’s become a sort of hobby with me, but I feel so humiliated at being taken in this way by that blonde, and now by those fellas, that to save my pride, I must get a complete picture. When I get that complete picture down in black and red, I’ll hang it on my bedroom wall and it’ll be a blessing in disguise. Now I don’t doubt your friend Morales is all right, for he’s a friend of Carter, but this other one—probably some man down on his luck would be glad to do anything and say anything for a few ten-dollar bills, eh?”

  “Now, it’s a good thing you mentioned this to me,” said March. He lighted a cigar and leaned back in his chair, looking at Grant through the blue smoke, “I’m going to Washington this afternoon and I’ll see my friend Morales if you like this evening, fit it in somehow, to oblige you; I don’t see how you keep all this up. It would give me the heebie-jeebies. But I don’t care what you do with your life or your money, and I’ll do this for you. I’ll check up with Morales about this fellow James. If you think James took your money—how much was it?—I’ll check up and make him disgorge if I can. But if he’s a crook and he’s spent the money too, what will we do?”

  “I don’t like people to take me for a Simple Simon from Green Goods County because I’m fond of a woman.”

  “That would put us all in Green Goods County.”

  “Just to prove to the fellow he called the wrong number this time, I’d do my best to get it out of him even if he’s starving, and has two paralytic children and an ailing wife,” Grant laughed. He smacked his pocket.

  “I can’t say I disagree with you. I wouldn’t coddle a thief.”

  Three days later Grant received back the amount of the checks he had paid to Goodwin for “James.” He received this amount from March. Flack went over to see March, after a conference with Grant, and said what had been agreed upon, but in his own charming, friendly manner, “I don’t suppose, Hugo, you got that money back from the poor devil. You must have paid it out of your own pocket. I feel bad about it. You know Grant, he feels insulted and injured and he’s out for vengeance, but it does seem a shame for you to pay this money out of your own pocket. I know you can afford it, but why?”

  To which March replied, “I know, but Grant feels he’s been duped and he feels sore. And though I didn’t start him off on this crazy track, yet I was with him in it, and it’s a question of honor, you see. I have my code.”

  Flack returned shortly to Grant, who shouted, “By George, this Code is going to do overtime for us!”

  The next “play” was to have reference to the Canadian contacts; the following one, to James Alexis, now a friend of Grant, and reported to be a friend of Yves Troland; and the third was to be an appeal to the Code.

  All this took months, but in the end, March was unable to resist the long campaign of concert of the men, which he only partly understood, so that after eight months’ labor, Grant was reimbursed by March to the extent of $10,300. The $500 given to the blondine Grant said he would leave with her, but in the end began plaguing March for that too. It took him another year to retrieve the near thousand dollars which remained, but he got it all. Flack at last went to March and said with sincerity, “It was unnecessary for you to give Grant that last five hundred dollars—I feel sure you paid it out of your own pocket because Grant howled so much. I should like to know how much this mad blonde adventure of his cost you personally.”

  March kept his Chinese face and murmured, “I have my code; it looked as though I took him for a ride.”

  Flack said enthusiastically, “It’s my fault, perhaps; he’s my friend, I introduced you in the first place. I didn’t warn you he’s crazy.”

  “You warned me he’s crazy. I didn’t get the signals right. And you must have warned him I was a moron. Or you should have if you do anything for that salary of yours.”

  “What salary?”

  March laughed cheerlessly, “You’re crazier than either of us. What are you jackaling around for a wolf like that for?”

  “I love the guy: he’s my brother.”

  “He’s your ——.” March poured out two glasses of whisky and put them on the desk. He eyed his and smiled slowly at Flack.

  “He’s a maverick: he’s come a long way and he’s got no code. The blondine has got him. I don’t figure where you think you fit in in his scheme of things.”

  24

  Barbara, now Grant’s constant companion, had a strange medley of friends, floaters, promoters, “representatives,” “agents,” people who had once been in Hollywood or would go next month, or who had been in Berlin or Moscow, people whose political views were based on information, intimate, sound, personal from a “friend-of-mine” in Kiev, a friend-of-mine whose eyes were torn out by Bela Kun personally, a friend-of-mine in Lyons, France, brother-in-law in Lodz. Vociferously, insistently, persuasively, these intimates of history held forth in the White Bar and Manetti’s and the Silver Beach at Grant’s expense. They were busy all day about something mysterious, rarely disclosing their business addresses; they also did business at night. Some were customers’ men getting orders in those haunts of boredom and perversity and small talent that get the curious on their quarterly jaunt from the suburbs and New Jersey. Some were shady business men, in the black market, full of schemes for evading currency and tax laws. Their women repeated their chatter, always with something missing, so that it sounded like talk in a madhouse. These men did business in bars, houses of ill-fame, and on the sidewalk in the fashionable district. Some had as their office a desk, an automobile, or a hotel bedroom. Yet they lived better than workers or middle-class people and were always seen in expensive restaurants. They traveled by plane and Pullman, at times had money. Among them were self-introduced majors and counts, an occasional General X and Lady Y: an international scum which declared itself well-born and excellently educated, rich, but just now out of luck, thanks to Hitler, or even farther back—the Soviets.

  Grant, still a solid man and a newcomer, was sucked into this circling scum. They surrounded him with affection and filled his life. They were ready to serve him and Barb, his favorite, in any way. They killed his boredom by opening his eyes to practices he had never heard of. He smiled, blushed, and eagerly listened. Vice was understood; it was, to them, maturity. It was their life-blood; it gave them food.

  In this setting, Grant and his blondine began to breathe air more impure, and yet to have a kind of suburban home-life together. They were a recognized couple. They had the same friends, resorted to the same eating places, and after the first two months when Grant was still busy with Flack on the “March Operation,” Grant and Barbara began to spend most of their evenings together. Sometimes, Miss Russell was there, and when she was there, they made up a quartet with James Alexis. He, at least, was no mean dubious character. He brought back to Grant the glitter of his former business life, true international commercial life and society. Alexis, an extremely corrupt old man, avid of depravity, laughed at Grant for his ignorance of variations in what Alexis called The Game. Grant was glad to degenerate. He felt a new sense of maturity, smiled at his former innocence. He had worked so hard, he thought, that he had grown almost old without knowing any fun. He often talked about his innocence, in their hours of flagrant vice. He was boundlessly flattered to be a partner of the rich Alexis in any undertaking. It now pleased him that Barb had been the mistress of Alexis.

  Alexis astounded Grant. He was sixty
-five, steel-gray with a wiry Vandyke beard and bloodshot, quick, gray eyes. He had, like Grant, risen from poverty, and now had begun to feel his age. He spent much of his time in gay company, though he was, like Grant, still scurrying from one capital to another, and even changing countries, pursuing interesting speculative lines of business, protecting his investments, and caring for his funds abroad. He had a wife and grown family somewhere, but lived the same life of bars, taxis, and bedrooms that Grant did. At the same time, his business knowledge, advice, and mental energy were remarkable. He and Grant discussed the stock market, and political news, every day in quick snatches in between meeting their women. As for the women, Alexis would take up with almost any woman, but he was Miss Russell’s “friend.”

  During these months, Grant scarcely saw Flack except to employ him as a friendly go-between to Hugo March. The money had slowly come in. Grant had used the name of Alexis to frighten March about the alleged bribes to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. This money, too, had come back. There had been no bribes.

  Grant no longer wished to marry the blonde. On the contrary, he wished she would marry again, and so reduce his expenses. He realized that he had been in the grip of a furious, lascivious passion, and now had cooled down. He even regarded Barbara as rather a poor little thing, useful enough and suited to his tastes, one who would do anything, but poor enough, not the best kind of woman he had ever had. He began to laugh about her to his friends, and to say what a miracle longing was, it involved you consciously, of course, but unconsciously, too, with people you knew were no good. He and Alexis exchanged partners sometimes. Grant was pleased: he had beaten a costly weakness. And he chuckled to Flack, “She thinks I’m still in love with her. She thinks she can count on me. That partly explains the way she goes to work on me—thinks I’m still hers for the plucking.” At other times it angered him that she was so obtuse about his dead passion. “Bloody ’ooman still thinks she can twist me around her finger. Well, I’m weaning her. I’ve got her down to forty dollars a week! From forty thousand dollars per annum to two thousand eighty dollars—good business, eh? And, you know, I think she’s a bit in love with me now—maybe regrets what she’s lost, eh? First time she ever found a sucker like me. Alexis is a night club man. Now her eyes are opened, she thought she was on plush for life, and she let me slip through her fingers. I would have married her, I was eating out of her hand, I knew what she was, too. Now, she’s sorry. It’s too late, though. She had me. Now she’s lost me. I’m looking for a better woman. That’s what I want. I got into her clutches. Not her fault. I take the blame, too. Now I know better. No more bloodsuckers. I’m going to get a girl with good taste, doesn’t waste money, mustn’t cost me above four thousand dollars a year, not that, a working girl is better, work half time; costs, say, only $1.40 extra? That’s a fortune to a worker and you’re doing her a favor; she can help out her mother or father. It’s a poor family. You’re their friend. Someone needs you. You go there and eat on Saturday, Sunday night, they don’t ask questions, Mother cooks for you. Home food. And they go to trouble, oh-oh, my boy, they get in a chicken, some wine, oh-ho, my boy, that’s the way to live, only the poor are generous. And she’s grateful for one per cent of the money that bloodsucker wants. You’re right, my boy; keep away from the spoiled girls, the parasites.”