Two-Thirds of a Ghost

by Helen McCloy

  But Wharne is not content with this easy path to social acceptance. His disturbed spirit wants to know the answers to all the great questions man has been asking himself for the last six thousand years, so Wharne sets forth on a pilgrimage to the sources of our thinking. He reads every book he can lay his hands on. He works his way through Harvard and enters a divinity school. Just as he is about to be ordained, the dean discovers the story of Wharne’s past. Once again he is expelled in an acidly etched scene that excoriates the professions of conventional morality.

  For the first time Wharne is assailed by doubts of his own innocence and the goodness of God. He sets off on a journey that takes him to London, to Rome, and finally to the Far East—seeking, always seeking, the great answer and never finding it. In the end, Wharne dies of syphilis in a night club in Singapore. In a splendid, moving passage he describes the old Chicago days to a Eurasian whore. ‘I want to tell you good-bye,’ he says simply. But she is not even listening. She is not interested in anything but herself. And so this great fugue ends in a cry that has a dying fall of futility. Even Wharne’s last words break against an inattentive ear and he sinks to dissolution, unremembered and unloved for all his striving….

  Basil’s eyes were musing as he laid the review aside. Was Wharne a self-portrait with eroticism substituted for alcoholism as the consuming vice and the church for medicine as a profession? With a sigh, Basil realized he ought to read the whole book, but it was too late in the evening to tackle its four hundred and fifty pages. He went to sleep with the question still unresolved in his mind.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  On Wednesday the cold spell broke. It was one of those sudden caprices of the New York climate when the thermometer shoots up twenty-five degrees, the snow melts to muddy slush, the sun shines with warmth as well as brilliance and the more literate citizens begin quoting: “Fairest hour of unborn spring, through the winter wandering.”

  Breakfast at the Veseys’ on school mornings was always a mad scramble, particularly on those winter mornings when the weather was unseasonably mild. The period from seven-thirty to eight-forty was a long symphonic variation on one simple, recurrent theme: “Mommy, it’s so warm! And none of the other girls wear leggings. Only babies, who go to nursery school, wear leggings. Jane Smith doesn’t wear leggings. She wears slacks. Sally Stevens doesn’t wear leggings. She wears knee socks. Why do I have to wear leggings? The sun is shining and I don’t like leggings!”

  Hugh was old enough to dress himself sensibly with some dispatch and eat his breakfast with a normally standardized appetite. Polly was old enough to dress herself, but not sensibly. And not with dispatch, and her appetite was still as capricious as an April day. There was no time for Meg to eat her own breakfast, if Polly was to leave the house properly washed and brushed and clad by eight-forty.

  This morning as usual, Meg listened with dismay to her own voice growing sharper and more cackling every moment and realized that she probably looked and sounded very much like a mother hen rounding up a recalcitrant chick with pecks and raucous cries. Gus quietly drank his coffee and glanced at his mail as if he were a thousand miles away. Hugh was allowed to go down to the lobby and board his school bus by himself, but Meg always slipped a coat over her housedress and went down in the elevator with Polly to make sure that Polly didn’t wander into the middle of the street.

  The “bus,” run by a very progressive kindergarten, was actually a station wagon. Polly crossed the sidewalk with the slow and stately step of a princess entering a coronation coach. She had kissed her mother before the bus came. Now it was here, she didn’t wave to Meg or throw her a backward glance or acknowledge her relationship in any way. That would have been babyish, the sort of thing you did when you were little and went to nursery school. The door of the station wagon shut with a bang and it swung into the stream of traffic. Meg could see Polly’s hat and braids through the car window, her gaze fixed sternly, looking straight ahead of her.

  Meg sighed. These kindergarten departures were the beginning of many farewells that would take Polly farther and farther away from her, to school and then to a job, to marriage and motherhood, to war—or whatever the dark womb of the future was gestating for Polly’s generation in this most unpredictable of all historical periods. When she tried to peer into Polly’s future like this, Meg felt as if she were watching a tiny figure of Polly dwindle as it receded down a corridor as infinitely long as the queer, inverted vista seen from the wrong end of a telescope.. It was the corridor leading to the unimaginable time when there would be no mommy to insist on warm clothes in winter or anything else, and Polly would be a grown woman with children of her own, repeating the same cycle again. For an instant, Meg longed to run after Polly and take the child in her arms and cling to her just as she was now, holding time back by sheer force of desire for one little, stolen moment, one unfated kiss.

  Meg came back into the dining room where Gus was still opening his always abundant mail. He handed her a large, thick manila envelope. “Please read this today if you get a chance. God knows what we’re going to do with it!”

  “What is it?”

  “Short story. Hard-hitting, well-written, fascinating background material, vivid characters.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  Gus groaned aloud. “It has a plot.”

  “Then why should I bother to read it?” cried Meg indignantly. “Send it back at once.”

  “I know.” Gus shook his head. “I’ve told that guy again and again that there is no market anywhere now for a story with a plot. But he seems to have some sort of neurotic compulsion—he just can’t write a story without putting a plot in it.”

  Gus buried his nose in another typescript.

  “Better open your letters before you start on scripts,” said Meg.

  “You open them,” murmured Gus.

  Meg made three neat piles of bills and appeals for charity and advertisements. There was only one personal letter. It was on Hotel Waldorf stationery, and the return address was a room number.

  She opened it and began to read.

  “Oh…”

  The weakness in her voice startled Gus. He put down the typescript, rose and came around to her side of the table. She gave him the brief handwritten note. “It’s from Vera.”

  He frowned as he read.

  “What on earth does she mean, Gus?”

  He hesitated, then: “Damned if I know!”

  Meg forced herself to go on. “It sounds like—blackmail.”

  “It is blackmail,” agreed Gus promptly. “But I’m not going to buy a pig in a poke. She’ll have to be a little more explicit than that. I think she’s bluffing.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” said Meg slowly. “What could make her think she has any knowledge that you would pay her to keep quiet about?”

  “That’s the bluff,” said Gus. “Vera is angry because I am getting twenty-five percent commission on Amos’s posthumous earnings. She wants me to get ten. She’s implying that there’s something shady about my deal with Amos. Something she’ll expose if I don’t go down to ten percent.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” cried Meg. “You did everything for Amos! You and Tony. Where would he have been without you two?”

  “I wonder if Tony got one of these?”

  “Why should he?”

  “Vera didn’t like his fifty percent of subsidiary rights either.”

  “The woman’s mad!” Though Meg spoke vehemently, her very vehemence showed a lack of conviction.

  Gus began stuffing papers into his dispatch case. “I think I’ll drop in at Tony’s on my way to the office.” He put on his overcoat and gloves and picked up his hat. Meg brought him the dispatch case and lifted her mouth for a kiss. “Gus!” She caught the lapels of his coat in either hand. “There wasn’t anything shady about your deal with Amos, was there?”

  “Of course not,’’ Gus said stoutly and smiled. “Don’t worry.”

  One advantage of the ce
ntral neighborhood where they lived was that Gus could not only walk to his own office but to most of the other offices he had occasion to visit as well. He went down Park to Fourth, detouring around Grand Central, enjoying the sun and the relaxed look the weather brought to faces of other pedestrians. The ancient elevator creaked up to the floor occupied by the editorial offices of Sutton, Kane, and the receptionist gave Gus a welcoming smile. “Mr. Kane just got in, Mr. Vesey. Go right ahead.”

  Even for Tony’s easy-going office this was a little surprising. She elaborated. “He just told me to get you on the phone. He wants to see you at once.”

  Gus passed down a corridor. Through open doors on either side he could see the men and women who worked as assistant editors busy at their desks. They were all young, fresh from college, for Tony paid the lowest salaries in the business. As soon as you had any experience or reputation, you went to another firm where subeditors got a living wage, and Tony culled the finest flower of the graduating classes once again. He had trained more editors than any other publisher in New York.

  “Hi, Gus!” Tony stood by the window, looking down at Fourth Avenue, a cigarette in his mouth, his hands in his pockets. “You can’t have got my call yet. Telepathy?”

  “Coincidence.” Gus tossed Vera’s letter on the desk.

  “Oh—you got one, too. Our little Vera is thorough. She doesn’t miss any bets.”

  Gus stood looking at Tony’s face, wreathed in smoke, and thought. He’s much harder than I am. Running a publishing house single-handed takes a lot more gall and grit than being an agent. When Tony’s hackles are up, he really looks like a very tough customer. I couldn’t look as ruthless as that if I practiced every morning before breakfast….

  The people who knew Tony as a genial, apparently carefree host at Philippa’s parties would hardly have recognized him now. Neither would the authors to whom he showed such charming camaraderie and patient editorial help as long as they didn’t ink out too many of the clauses in the printed contract.

  Tony was comparing the two letters. “Carbon copy to Mr. Vesey,” he said grimly. “You’d think she’d address me in slightly different terms, but Vera hasn’t any literary imagination even when it comes to writing blackmail letters.’’

  “What are you going to do?” asked Gus.

  “There’s only one answer to blackmail,” said Tony quietly. “The classic answer: Publish and be damned!”

  “Millions for defense but not one cent for tribute?” murmured Gus.

  “Exactly. What have we got to lose?” Tony looked directly at Gus. “We have done nothing illegal.”

  “Thank God,” whispered Gus half to himself.

  “If Vera wants to make a scandal and wreck the sales of Amos’s posthumous books, that’s her business. She’ll lose as much as we do.”

  “You’re going to tell her that?”

  “I shan’t bother.” Tony tore his letter across once and again and tossed the scraps into the wastebasket. “I shall pay no attention to that impertinent communication whatever, and I advise you to do the same. If we ignore it, she’ll know we’re not scared.”

  “And we aren’t?”

  “You may be. I’m not. What on earth is there to be afraid of, Gus? Even financially it doesn’t matter now. I’ll admit that Amos was damned useful when I put the pressure on Dan Sutton to make me a partner. I laid it on the line with Dan. I said, ‘I’m tired of being on a salary. I want a full partnership and a piece of the firm.’ Dan knew I hadn’t enough money to buy into the firm, but he also knew I’d got our one best-selling author in my pocket; and, if he didn’t make me a partner and let me take half my salary in stock for the next five years, I’d go elsewhere and take Amos Cottle with me. Dan was licked. He died two years later. I’ve been running Sutton, Kane ever since.

  “Now Amos is no longer our only best-selling author. We have Bradstreet and Ellen Gabor and about a dozen top-flight authors who bring in nice money in aggregate, to say nothing of our small, solid mystery list and our textbook line. I can get along very nicely without Amos Cottle, if Vera wants to upset the apple cart.”

  Gus nodded slowly. It was true. Amos had brought in a great deal of money each year, but Sutton, Kane was now in a position to survive his death without going into bankruptcy or even pinching pennies.

  “It’s the same way with you, Gus,” went on Tony. “You have Giles Simpson for prestige and Irving Crossman and Arthur Agate for dough. You can get along without Amos now.”

  “It’s a little more difficult for me,” insisted Gus. “As I told Meg the other evening, a really big best seller like Amos can make or break a small agency like mine.”

  “You may have to pull in your horns a little, but you’d be better off that way than paying blackmail to Vera,” retorted Tony. “Besides, one of these days you’ll have a stroke of luck and pick up another Amos.”

  “You think so?” Gus looked at Tony sharply.

  Tony smiled for the first time that morning. “Why not? Tear up Vera’s letter and forget it. And now run along. I’ve got work to do.”

  “All right.” Gus started toward the door, then paused to look back. “I suppose you phoned me to find out if I’d got the same sort of letter from Vera this morning?”

  “Right.”

  “I wonder if anyone else got a letter from her this morning?”

  “Could be.” Tony shrugged. He had taken his line and he was going to stick with it no matter what Gus did. Gus, going down in the elevator, envied Tony his composure and wondered just how much Vera knew….

  There was nothing in Philippa’s life that compelled her to rise early. She woke at any time she pleased from nine to noon. When she had no guests, she always rang for breakfast to be served in bed. Most of her youth had been spent at a French school in Switzerland where breakfast was served to all students in bed. This is one habit that is hard to break once acquired. The sensible French never considered it a luxury. The cheapest student hotels in the Sorbonne district of Paris automatically supplied a tray of cafe au lait or chocolate with rolls and butter to their patrons. True, the French breakfast was not the best in the world. There was no fruit or egg and, as you descended the financial scale, the coffee might be overloaded with chicory and the bread a little stale. Even then it was more agreeable to Philippa than the best breakfast in the world prepared by herself. She did not really mind cooking a buffet supper for intimate friends. It was rather fun to put a becoming silk organdie apron over a cocktail dress and play around daintily with casserole dishes and salad dressing if you didn’t have to wash dishes afterward. But, as she had once remarked quite seriously to Tony, the really bad thing about poverty was having to get your own breakfast while you were still sleepy.

  As life usually gives us the things we really want most, Philippa had achieved the certainty that when she woke and rang a bell long after Tony had driven to the station, some Katie or Amanda or Simonetta would appear a few minutes later carrying a big tray with little legs to stand on, a pretty embroidered cloth and napkin, a single flower in a small vase, Bavarian china ornamented with forget-me-nots, a silver coffeepot and fruit, eggs and toast, all just as hot or cold as they should be. And with it, of course, came the morning mail to be perused leisurely over the second cup of coffee.

  Her maid always weeded out the bills, advertisements and charity appeals and set them aside for Tony the following evening. Philippa never got anything but personal notes and invitations, and breakfast time was usually rather like a pleasant hour’s gossip with old friends. This morning the letter from the Waldorf was the last one she slit neatly with the pearl-and-silver paper knife. As she read it her knees jerked and the coffee in her cup sloshed over into the saucer, spattering the fine linen napkin. Philippa couldn’t bear to eat or drink from a soiled tray. She put it on the bedside table without finishing her coffee and leaned back against the lacy pillows.

  In her whole life she had never received anything like a threatening letter. She had never so muc
h as dreamed that such a thing as blackmail could happen to her. In this first moment of shock she was not so much aware of danger as of an atrocious breach of taste. Truly Vera was a creature out of the gutters and sewers of New York, a dirt-and-disease-carrying insect to be destroyed without compunction.

  But Philippa had a shrewd mind, and as she calmed herself she began to realize that it would be difficult to destroy Vera. It would be like a boxing match with someone who had never heard of Queensberry rules. Vera was not restricted by any sort of code whatever. The only thing she would respect was superior force.

  Philippa bathed and dressed with more haste than usual and then looked at the timetable. If she got the next train she would reach New York shortly after one.

  She left her little Austin in the parking lot at the station and caught the train just as it was pulling out. At Grand Central she took a taxi and gave the driver an address in the East Seventies.

  It was the first time she had been to Maurice’s apartment. She never thought of him as “Leppy.” That masculine, hail-fellow-well-met nickname belittled him in her mind.