Root of His Evil

by James M. Cain

  “Are you acquainted with Mr. Lewis?”

  “Well, I hope so. I came up through the miners.”

  “To me he seems very theatrical.”

  “Like all specialists in power, he knows the value of underestimation of his abilities on the part of his adversaries. The newspapers call him the great ham, and I don’t say he doesn’t love the boom of his voice. But theatricality is not the dominant side of him. John L. is the greatest specialist in direct action that has ever been seen in the American labor movement, and to that extent I think he has a profounder understanding of labor than anybody we ever had, not even excluding Furuseth, who was a great man. What is a strike? They call it a phase of collective bargaining, but it is really coercion. It suits John L. to be thought a ham, for it distracts attention from his club. The club’s the thing, just the same. He has a side though, that not many know about. At heart he’s a boy and loves things like jumping contests. He can put his feet together and jump the most incredible number of steps on the front stoop of the hotel, or wherever it is. And over tables—anything. Or could. That was in the old days. I haven’t seen him since the row with Murray.”

  “You went with Murray?”

  “Aye, and there’s a man, too.”

  “But aren’t we culinary workers A.F. of L.?”

  “Oh, there’s plenty of fraternizing in areas where there’s no real conflict, if that’s what’s worrying you. There is in any war.”

  “Are you in charge of our strike?”

  “I wonder.”

  “Well—don’t you know?”

  “All I expected to do when the little fellow phoned me earlier in the evening, was go over and pull together a meeting he was getting somewhat worried about. But developments since then—”

  “Meaning me?”

  “Quite nice development, I would say.”

  He looked me over in a very bold way, and I could feel my face get hot, and I reached over and turned up the radio, as he had tuned it down during some announcement or other. The singing came through again, beautiful things I had never heard before, and I hated it when a waiter came in with our supper, and interrupted it. When the waiter had gone we began to eat the sandwiches, and Mr. Holden came over beside me. For the first time I felt a little frightened, and after a few minutes said: “I’ll fix up the deposit slips.”

  I got out the money and counted it again, and put it in hotel envelopes, and then made out the slips, which I always carried with me. He watched and put the tray outside to be collected. The singers sang a song I loved, “All Through The Night.” Mr. Holden came closer to me, and the music seemed to be saying a great deal to him. We looked at each other and smiled. Then he put his arm around me. Then he took off my hat and laid it on the table in front of us. Then he kissed me. I was very frightened, and at the same time I was very limp and helpless. He kissed me again and I felt dreamy and carried away, and that time I kissed back.

  I don’t know how long I sat there in his arms, but it must have been quite some time, because my dress was all disarranged, and I didn’t care whether it was or not, and I kept feeling that this was something I had been hungry for a long time. And yet at the same time there was something about it I didn’t like. So long as the Strollers were singing, and I felt sad and at the same time happy, I was very glad about it all, but now there was nothing but swing music coming out of the radio it wasn’t the same. I knew I had to get out of there, or something was going to happen that I was not in the least prepared for in my own mind, and that I did not want to happen. I loosened his arms and sat up, and began to shake my hair as though to straighten it out. “Do you have a comb?”

  He got up and went in the bedroom. I grabbed my hat, the envelopes with the money in them, and my handbag, and scooted. I didn’t wait for the elevator. As soon as I was in the hall I dived for the stairs, and ran down them, four or five flights. When I reached the lobby I ran out of the hotel, jumped in a taxi and told the driver, “Straight ahead, quick.”

  He started up, and I was so busy looking back to see if anyone was following, and straightening myself up, that I didn’t notice how far we had gone. When we got to Fiftieth Street I told him to turn west, because I had to go to the bank before I went home. But it was a one-way street going east, and I paid him and got out to walk the one block to Seventh Avenue. I got to the corner, turned it, and started for the night deposit box. As I did so, somebody grabbed my arm from behind.

  I jumped, shook loose and dived for the deposit box. I flipped the envelopes in, spun the cylinder, and turned around. If it was a bandit, I was going to scream. If it was Mr. Holden, I didn’t know what I was going to do. It wasn’t a bandit, and it wasn’t Mr. Holden. It was Grant standing there and looking very sheepish. “I had an idea that money would be deposited.”

  “My, you frightened me.”

  “Feel like a walk?”

  “It’s terribly late.”

  “It’s two o’clock—about the only time you can walk in this God-awful town. But that isn’t the real reason.”

  “And what is the real reason?”

  “You.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  Three

  WE BEGAN TO WALK over toward the East River, but I wasn’t any too friendly because while I was really glad he was there, I couldn’t forget the way he had let me be dragged off from the hall without doing anything about it. So he began asking questions about the union, which I answered as well as I could. It was rather hard to explain it to him, however, as he apparently thought there had been a lot of preliminary phases, as he called them, all occurring in some extremely complicated way, although all that had happened was that some of the girls had become dissatisfied with conditions, and when they found out about the big op deal that had been made, had themselves gone to the union for help. Then the word was passed around, and one thing led to another, and it all happened very quickly with hardly any of the elaborate preliminaries that he seemed to think were involved. He kept asking me if I had read this or that book on the labor movement, but I hadn’t, and didn’t even know what he was talking about. So he died away pretty soon, and then he said: “I guess that about covers it. It’s what I’ve been trying to find out.”

  “Then I’m very glad to be of help, if that’s what you wanted because if it was really me you were interested in you took a strange way to show it.”

  “Well—here I am.”

  “Rather late, don’t you think?”

  “I told you. I like it this time of night.”

  “Between this time of night and that time of night three very fateful hours have elapsed. A lot can happen in that time.”

  “Happen? How?”

  “There are other men in the world besides yourself.”

  “They don’t start anything at Lindy’s.”

  “I haven’t been to Lindy’s.”

  “You—?”

  “Some people are more enterprising than you.”

  He stopped, jerked me by the arm and spun me around. “Where have you been?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I asked you where you’ve been.”

  “With a gentleman at his hotel, if you have to know.”

  “So.”

  We went along, he about a half step in front of me, his head hunched down in his shoulders. Then he whirled around in front of me. “And what did happen?”

  “None of your business.”

  We had reached Second Avenue by that time. He looked at me hard and I could see his mouth twitching. Then he turned around with his back to me and stood at the curb. I waited and still he stood there. “I thought we were taking a walk.”

  “We were. Now we’re waiting for a cab.”

  “For what purpose, may I ask?”

  “To send you home. Or to a gentleman at his hotel. Or wherever you want.”

  “Very well.”

  We stood there a long time, and still no cab came by, for it must have been getting on toward three o’clock.
He lit a cigarette and something about the fierce way he blew the smoke out made me want to laugh. But I merely remarked: “If anything had happened I hardly think I’d be out here at this hour and under these circumstances— at least not this night.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t do things by halves.”

  I couldn’t help saying it, he looked so silly. He sucked at his cigarette and the light came up very bright. Down the street a cab appeared and when it got near us it cut in quickly and slowed down. He threw away his cigarette and waved the cab on. “We were taking a walk, did you say?”

  We got over to Sutton Place and stood at the rail watching the sign come on and off, across the river. A fish flopped and we waited a long time hoping to see another. It was so still you could hear the water lapping out there. But no other fish appeared, and we started back. He hooked his little finger in mine and we swung hands, and it wasn’t at all expert, but it was sweet and there was something about it that was exactly what hadn’t been there on the sofa with Mr. Holden. A cop came around a corner, and we broke hands, but he said: “Don’t mind me, chilluns,” and we laughed and hooked fingers again. We came to a place where the sidewalk was barricaded over a water pipe or something, with two red lanterns on each end. Grant let go my hand, put both feet together and jumped over, then turned around to see what I was going to do. I pulled my handbags up over my wrist, took hold of my dress and held it away from me so it wouldn’t fly up over my head, and then did a kind of one-hand cartwheel over the barricade. I came up right in front of Grant and made a little bow. He stared at me, then took me by the arms and pulled me toward him, and I thought he was going to kiss me but he didn’t. He just kept looking down at me and his voice was shaky when he spoke. “Gee, you’re swell.”

  “Am I? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody else could have done that. Coming up cool as a cucumber that way with no foolish squealing or anything. And you’ve got no idea how pretty you looked—going over, I mean.”

  “That was nothing. I can turn back flips.”

  “I believe it.”

  We got to the Hutton and there was no doorman out there or anything, at that hour, and we stood there under the marquee for a minute. He took my arms again and seemed to be thinking about something. “Are you going to be down there today—for lunch, I mean?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “It’s a public restaurant.”

  “There’s something that bothers me.”

  “What is it?”

  “I want a certain half dollar back.”

  “Why?”

  “I want it back. I—don’t want to feel that we started with me giving you a half dollar.”

  “Have we started?”

  “I don’t know what we’ve done. But I want it back.”

  Now that half dollar was much on my mind up there in the room with Mr. Holden. Because when I made out the slips for the union money I also made out the slip for my own regular deposit, and ordinarily that half dollar would have gone right in the pile with the rest of it. But for some reason I had kept it in the coin purse of my handbag. “How do you know I still have it?”

  “Well, then—if you still have it.”

  “All right, then, I kept it. But I want it.”

  “Is that why you kept it?”

  “It might be.”

  “All right, then, we’ll make an agreement. I’ll keep it. But I want it back.”

  “Very well, but I want something.”

  He looked a little funny, but fumbled around and then handed over his gold tie clip. “It—it seems to be about the only thing I have.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid that won’t do.”

  I then held up my face in a very fresh way. He caught me in his arms and kissed me, and was very clumsy about it, but I kissed him back and held him there a long time. Then I drew back, and just before I skipped into the hotel I held out my hand and left the half dollar on his fingers.

  I had to walk up, and when I went in our suite I didn’t turn on the light and went carefully on tiptoe so as not to wake up Lula. But then I jumped because I could see her there, her eyes big and terrible-looking. I snapped on the light. She was sitting in her kimono facing the door and staring at me without saying a word. I spoke to her, and she began using dreadful language at me in a kind of whisper. “But, Lula, what on earth is the matter?”

  “You know what’s the matter!”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “And you know what you been doing!”

  “I haven’t been doing anything.”

  “Oh, yes, you have.” And she launched into the most terrible imaginary account of all that had taken place between me and Mr. Holden, and why I didn’t go to Lindy’s, and a great deal more that I prefer to forget. I thought it best to say that Mr. Holden had only wanted to take his calls, and talk a few plans with me while he was waiting, and that I had only stayed with him a little while anyway. “And, besides, I don’t see what you have to do with it. I don’t try to come between you and any of your friends, and certainly you have plenty of them.” Which was the truth because Lula was not at all particular where men were concerned, and certainly went out with them a lot.

  But nothing I could say had any effect on her, and she kept it up and kept it up, and it was easy to see that she was afflicted by some kind of jealousy which I didn’t understand and still don’t quite understand. But I think she had some kind of motherly feeling about me because she was several years older than I was, and it upset her to think I had at last taken some step with a man, as she assumed I had. She kept raving until long after daylight, and we got a call from the desk that we would have to keep quiet as people were ringing to complain. I didn’t close my eyes until the sun was shining in the windows, and then when the nine-thirty call came I was almost dead from lack of sleep, but Lula wouldn’t get up at all. “But Lula, you’ve got to go to work. And it’ll look bad if somebody isn’t there, the very day after we formed the union.”

  “To hell with the union.”

  “But we’ve all got to do our part.”

  “What I care about the union? Go on, let me sleep. Go on down and see your friend Holden. Stay out all night with him, stay out every night with him, do anything you please—but let me alone.”

  I went to work, and Lula didn’t come, and I said she wasn’t feeling well, and when I got back that night the hotel said she had gone and hadn’t left any forwarding address. She didn’t show up for work again. I would like this episode kept in mind, for it was the thing that caused most of my trouble later on, and if it had not been for Lula perhaps none of the rest of it would have happened. Or perhaps it would, I don’t know. But Lula was certainly a large part of it.

  Grant came for lunch that day, and the next, but was prevented from seeing me at night because of the tactics of Mr. Holden who didn’t exactly take charge of us, or quite get out but kept having meetings at his hotel suite. He insisted that I attend every night, and Clara Gruber, and the girls from all the restaurants in the chain so that, as he said, we could discuss the minimum basic agreement we were going to demand from the company. Some wanted one thing and some wanted another, for example, seventy-five cents an hour wages, with “Please Pay Waitress” instead of “Please Pay Cashier,” as it was felt the tips would be bigger if the waitresses presented the change, as they do in the hotels and higher class restaurants, and free uniforms. But I could see objections to all of these, from the management’s point of view, and I didn’t believe we could obtain them. What I wanted was the same hourly wages as we had, as what the restaurant paid us was only a small part of what we made anyhow, with a straight ten per cent charge for tips, as they have in a number of restaurants, with a minimum tip of twenty-five cents. Because in the first place it would be the customer who paid this, rather than the restaurant. And in the second place, it would come to more than the system we already had becau
se what cut our tips down was the people who sat around for a long time occupying the chairs in our station during rush hour, and then leaving a dime tip. So I thought my plan would yield us quite a lot more, without costing the restaurant anything.

  However, the others, and especially Clara Gruber, were all hot for making the management pay, and to my great surprise, Mr. Holden seemed willing to do whatever they wanted. This I could not understand until we were having some coffee in a restaurant one night, after the other girls had gone home. If he was going to see me alone, I had insisted that we go out. My running away that night, by the way, he had merely taken as a sort of joke and intimated that he would make progress with me yet. As to that, I had my own ideas, so I usually led the talk around to the union and our demands. His attitude he explained one night, first giving me a long wink. “Demands are poetry.”

  “They’re what?”

  “I’m surprised at the narrow limits of your soul. Let the girls demand. It expands their natures, makes them feel good, acts as a fine, stimulating tonic.”

  “But they won’t get their demands.”

  “Oh—now you’re speaking of settlement. That’s reality.”

  “Isn’t it all reality?”

  “Not at all. They demand the stuff that dreams are made upon. They settle for what they can get.”

  “But that way we’re sure to have a strike.”

  “No doubt we are.”

  “But that’s terrible.”

  “Think, my pretty friend—it’s August.”

  “Well?”

  “It’s hot. And a strike makes a holiday.”

  “They give vacations.”

  “Two weeks at Brighton, with mosquito bites. But a strike—there’s something real. They have speeches and parades and lofty thoughts, and patriotic music.”

  “My but you sound cold-blooded.”

  “The main thing to remember in all labor matters, the point they all forget about, is the state of the weather. Cold-blooded? It’s you that’s cold-blooded, thinking always of the money. I remember that workers are human.”