by Thorne Smith
And because Sally did not know she nodded vaguely and, taking a coin from her pocket, flipped it into the waste paper basket.
“Does that win?” she asked hopefully.
“Wait!” cried Steve. “Don’t touch it. I’m matching you.”
He flipped his coin again, caught it dexterously as Sally watched with admiring eyes a little tinged with envy, flattened the coin on the edge of the desk, then peered greedily down into the waste paper basket.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Good! It’s heads. You owe me another two dollars.”
Sally’s, or rather the face she was wearing, grew blank.
“What?” she demanded. “Already?”
“Don’t stall,” said Steve, “you big stiff.”
“All right,” replied Sally. “Seems very strange to me. I’ll have to owe it to you. Is that all that we do, or is there more?”
“Not unless you want to double it or nothing,” observed Steve.
“Let’s play nothing,” said Sally. “I really must be going.”
As she absently made her way to the ladies’ rest room she decided that hereafter she would shun the company of Steve Jones.
“It cost me just four good dollars,” she thought to herself, “to get pounded on the back. That’s not as it should be.”
The ladies’ room when she found it was a place of many partitions, which arrangement accounts for the fact that at first the presence of one they had good and sufficient reasons to believe to be a man was not noticed by several girls busily engaged in tightening their stockings upon their well-turned limbs. The conversation of these girls interested Sally and made her still further forget herself. It had to do with the price and quality of stockings and the best places to purchase them. So interested did she become, in fact, that she innocently approached the girls and attempted to join in the conversation.
“My dears,” she began in the most friendly of feminine voices, “where do you buy your—”
Her question was neither finished nor answered. Never before had Sally realized that women could work up so much noise at such short notice. The air was pierced by a series of ear-splitting shrieks. Partition doors slammed and the figures of frantic women dashed clutchingly about the room. Sally stood appalled as she saw these figures break for the exit and heard excited voices carrying the name of Mr. Willows to the nethermost recesses of the Nationwide Advertising Agency. It was only a matter of moments before she had the room to herself, or nearly to herself.
“Oh, God, I’ve done it now,” she groaned. “I’ll never be able to live after this. What happens next?”
Unable to bear this thought she dragged at a partition door, only to have her efforts rewarded by a fresh outburst of shrieks and lamentations.
“Be quiet!” gasped Sally. “I’m a woman myself at heart.”
“Oh, what a liar,” came the voice. “You’re just a nasty man and you should be ashamed of yourself.”
Sally threw open another door, jumped in and snapped the catch just as Miss Reeder, the president’s personal secretary, bounced into the room with an expression of set purpose solidifying the wrinkles on her sharp, faded face. At the moment she was in her glory. She was hounding a man. At last she had the goods on one of the members of the sex that had neglected her for so many barren years.
“Mr. Willows,” she called in a harsh voice.
“He’s not here,” said Sally from her place of concealment.
“Oh, he is so,” cried the girl in the other compartment. “Make him go away, Miss Reeder.”
“I know where he is,” replied Miss Reeder complacently. “I can see his big feet. You might as well come out, Mr. Willows.”
“I can’t come out,” said Sally sadly.
“And why not, pray?” demanded Miss Reeder.
“I don’t feel like it,” replied Sally desperately. “Can’t you see I don’t feel like it.”
Then followed a period of silence which was even more unnerving than the shrieking of many voices.
“Well, Mr. Willows,” came the voice of Miss Reeder presently, “are you ready to come out? I’m waiting.”
“I’m never coming out,” declared Sally.
“Then I’ll send some men in,” said the determined woman. “They’ll break the door down and drag you out.”
The prospect of being besieged in a ladies’ rest room proved too much for Sally. She opened the door and with great dignity walked past Miss Reeder and out of the room where an informal reception committee was awaiting her arrival. Disdaining any words of explanation Sally averted her gaze from the faces of the interested group and walked slowly back to her husband’s office while the eyes of all the stenographers and clerks in the world seemed to be following her progress with hideous concentration. A memorandum was waiting for her on the desk. She picked it up mechanically and read:
Mr. Gibber will continue his talk on Brevity at 10.30 a.m. in the conference room.
Signed: G. M. REEDER, Sec’y.
By the time Sally had located the conference room the chairs at the table were nearly all occupied. Sally’s belated arrival created no little interest. The distracted girl in man’s image was painfully aware of the amused glances of numerous pairs of eyes. Mr. Gibber himself regarded Sally with a stern, censorious eye as she found a chair next to Steve Jones and sank down on it.
“What’s the matter?” Steve demanded in a low voice. “Are you turning into a nasty old man or did losing all that money temporarily derange you?”
“Don’t ask me now,” pleaded Sally. “I can’t bear to talk about it yet. Maybe I’ve gone mad. I don’t know.”
“Gentlemen,” began Mr. Gibber, “yesterday, as you doubtless remember, I was discussing the subject of brevity.”
“Yes, sir,” put in Dolly Meades helpfully. “You had just got to pith.”
“I had left pith,” replied Mr. Gibber, looking at the young woman reprovingly. “And I do not intend to return to it. In other words, we’ll waive pith.” He squared his shoulders, then leaning over the table, made a fresh start. “Gentlemen,” he said, “do you want to know something?” From the indifferent expressions on the faces of the gentlemen addressed it was only too apparent they had no desire to know anything.
Sally felt that some answer should be made to Mr. Gibber’s neglected question, but as no one seemed to give a hang she answered it herself.
“Yes, Mr. Gibber,” she said. “Go right ahead. I’d like to know something.”
“What do you want to know?” asked Mr. Gibber suspiciously.
“I haven’t the vaguest idea,” replied Sally. “Whatever you were going to tell us.”
“The question was merely rhetorical,” said Mr. Gibber.
“Sorry,” answered Sally. “I thought you were speaking on brevity. One can hardly be brief and rhetorical at the same time.”
Mr. Gibber’s face turned dangerously red and his eyes looked dangerously angry. Nevertheless he got hold of himself and made his third attempt.
“Boys,” he called them this time, “this is what I want you to know. It’s easy enough to write words, beautiful words. It’s as easy as falling off a log. It’s a joke. Any one of us here could sit right down now and dash off a novel or a play. We all could do it. And why don’t we? I’ll tell you—we have more important things to do with our words. I know it, because I have done it. Not a year passes that doesn’t see a new book or a play or sheaf of verse that has been turned out by my pen. Why do I do it?”
“Yes, Mr. Gibber,” asked Dolly. “Why do you do it?”
“Just for fun,” thundered Mr. Gibber. “Just for a lark. I never even take the trouble to let a publisher have them.”
“A business, a man, or an idea that can be put on a paying basis must be fundamentally sound, must be essentially moral. But the vast majority of writers—these poets, playwrights and novelists—are not on a paying basis. Therefore they are neither sound nor moral. Some of them offend us while others amuse. All very good in
their way, but after all, just froth—lightweights. We read them. We use them. We dismiss them. There’s no money in that sort of writing. They never get out of the red. Froth.” Once more a portentous pause. “Now, boys,” he continued, gaining inspiration from the sound of his own voice, “get this fact through your heads: we are the people. It is we who create the literature of progress and plan the campaigns of commerce. Right here in this quiet, gorgeously appointed conference room with my old golf trophies around us and souvenirs of the hunt looking at us from the wall—” Here Mr. Gibber interrupted himself to point at the moth-eaten head of a misanthropic-looking moose gloomily surveying the people.
“He doesn’t seem to be tickled to death to see us, that silly-looking old moose doesn’t,” observed Miss Meades.
“What has the moose got to do with this discussion?” demanded Mr. Gibber.
“I don’t know, Mr. Gibber,” replied Dolly sweetly. “You seemed to be presenting him to us or us to him, so I thought——”
“Don’t,” broke in Mr. Gibber. “What I was saying, gentlemen, is that right here in this room, moose or no moose, we are the people who are doing the real writing to-day, the real inspired creative work.”
“Hear! Hear!” cried Sally enthusiastically. “You’re dead right, Mr. Gibber. That’s exactly what my husband always tells me. He says that a copy writer must get along on less facts than a writer of fairy tales.”
“Your wife you mean, Mr. Willows,” corrected Mr. Gibber, highly pleased to be supported from such an unexpected quarter. He forgave Tim Willows much.
“Of course, of course. How foolish of me.” Sally’s blush spread over her husband’s face. “Naturally, my wife.”
“Gentlemen,” went on Mr. Gibber, plunging his right fist into the palm of his left hand. “It’s up to us to write words that sell rather than words that please. And that’s hard, gentlemen, damned hard. That’s real writing. I admit it. I have done it. The famous Bingo Reversible Puppy Biscuit Campaign, one of the outstanding successes of modern advertising, was mine, all mine. But it called for work, men, work before words, push before phrase, concentration before copy. That’s what I mean. That’s what I mean exactly. That and more. We who are gathered here together in the presence of—”
“The moose,” suggested Miss Meades.
“—are carrying on a great work,” continued Mr. Gibber, brushing interruptions aside, “are shouldering a heavy responsibility. It devolves upon us to protect American capital and American industry from the insidious inroads of the deadly Red Blight. It is up to us to keep American labour contented and where it belongs—obediently on the job. It is my privilege, gentlemen, to be at the head of this splendid organization which I have created. Nay, it is my duty. I must face it. I must face it like an experienced field marshal standing in a—a—a—mdash;—”
“A field, perhaps,” suggested Sally. “That’s where he should stand by rights.”
“No, not a field,” gritted Mr. Gibber.
“In a daze, maybe,” put in Dolly Meades, not to be outdone in helpfulness.
“In neither!” cried Mr. Gibber. “Like Marshall Field standing—ha! Where am I? Oh, yes. Like a field marshal standing before the mast, one hand grasping the helm, the other one heaving the lead—”
“A considerable stretch, that, Mr. Gibber,” observed the accurate Miss Meades. “Especially for a field marshal who is much more at home on a horse. Now if you had said, ‘Like a field marshal clinging to his horse, one hand grasping his tail, the other one holding his tooth—’”
Sally laughed scornfully.
“Do you mean to say that that field marshal’s horse had only one tooth?” she demanded.
“No, not necessarily,” retorted Dolly Meades hotly. “It might have had two teeth. Then again, it might have been an old horse—a toothless horse.”
“They never send a toothless horse to the front,” replied Sally.
“Just a minute! Just a minute!” cried Mr. Gibber.
“We’ve got to settle this, Mr. Gibber,” said Dolly Meades. Then, leveling her gaze on Sally, she continued. “Why not?” she demanded truculently. “Why not send a toothless horse to the front? Horses are not supposed to eat the enemy.”
“I know,” replied Sally. “But it’s the looks of the thing I’m thinking about. Not nice to see a lot of toothless horses knocking about the front. Should retire the poor things on half pay.”
“I don’t see that at all,” Miss Meades objected. “If Marshall Field happens to like a toothless horse I see no reason why he shouldn’t ride one.”
“Who is this Marshall Field, anyway?” asked Sally. “I don’t seem to remember him, or is he a place where you play games?”
“I haven’t time! I haven’t time!” Mr. Gibber protested, looking considerably dazed. “We’ll drop Marshall Field—”
“And his toothless horse,” added Sally.
“Anyway, you know what I mean,” Mr. Gibber struggled on.
“I don’t,” spoke up Sally unhelpfully, but fortunately for this victim of Mr. Ram’s caprice Mr. Gibber did not hear her.
“And there’s money in it,” he continued. “Good money. Big money. Money enough for us all.”
Mr. Gibber pronounced the word “money” so succulently his listeners could almost taste it.
“Not now, perhaps,”—and here Mr. Gibber held up a restraining hand, fearing he had awakened false hopes in the breasts of his listeners. “Not now, of course, but later. For everyone in this room who devotes his entire time, thought, and energy exclusively to the best interests of this great organization there is sure money ahead. I have your welfare at heart. I think you know me well enough to trust your futures to me. Your interests are my interests. Your hopes and aspirations are dearer to me than my own. I am satisfied to be of service to mankind. Only two things do I ask—loyalty and hard work. If you give me those you need have no fear. I will carry each one of you with me along the highroad of prosperity to a happier and fuller life.” Apparently overcome by the thought of the terrific task he had set himself, Mr. Gibber walked emotionally to a window while his prospective burdens, obviously much depressed, sat and gazed down that highroad where good money, big money, was never now, but forever and forever and for always just a little bit ahead.
Turning abruptly from the window through which he had apparently tossed his emotions, Mr. Gibber once more became his usual brisk, urbane self.
“So that, gentlemen,” he clipped out, “is what I mean by brevity. I thank you. Remember!”
“Thank you,” spoke up Dolly Meades sweetly. “We’ll never forget.”
While the conference, feeling rottenly let down, was slothfully disintegrating, Mr. Gibber was earnestly questioning Sally in a far corner of the room.
“How on earth did you manage to do it?” he asked, for Mr. Gibber was sincerely bewildered by the various stories he had heard.
“I didn’t try to do it, if that’s what you mean,” said Sally, equally in earnest. “I didn’t sneak in or plan to sneak in or await an opportunity. Can’t understand it myself. I was thinking of something—oh, yes—that chain store account. Had a swell idea and just didn’t pay any attention to where I was going.”
“But I’m told you approached some girls and tried to engage them in conversation,” Mr. Gibber continued. “Why did you do that? Why didn’t you make haste to leave after you’d discovered where you were?”
This was a very embarrassing question. Sally felt her nerve slipping.
“Still thinking about that chain store account,” she answered. “Wanted to get the girls’ reactions to a few questions.”
“You pick out a somewhat singular place for your investigations, I must say,” observed Mr. Gibber.
“No time like the present, I always say,” was Sally’s lame defense. “And of course legs mean nothing to me. I’m a married woman, Mr. Gibber, like yourself.”
“I’m not a married woman,” Mr. Gibber stoutly protested.
“Aren’t you?” replied Sally, genuinely surprised. “Funny. I always thought you were. Then you must be a merry widow or a divorcee.”
Sally smiled at the man archly and his face grew blank with amazement.
“I’m neither,” he said at last.
“Then all I can say,” replied Sally, “is that you must have a rather peculiar nature.”
Mr. Gibber almost swooned at this. His face grew red with indignation and Sally began to fear that his body was going to pop at any minute.
“I tell you, young man,” he thundered, “I have no relations with men.”
“I can’t help that,” said Sally calmly. “It’s your loss, not mine.”
“But I don’t want to have relations with men,” said Mr. Gibber in a tortured voice.
“All right,” replied Sally soothingly. “No one’s going to force you. How did we get where we are, anyway?”
“You said you were a married woman,” said the badgered Gibber, “and claimed that I was one.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Sally, suddenly seeing the dawn. “Of course I meant man. How perfectly absurd!”
“You seem to be having trouble with your genders,” said Mr. Gibber, a trifle mollified, but still suspicious.
“My genders?” cried Sally in alarm. “Why, Mr. Gibber! I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Do I show any symptoms of gender disease? Is it fatal, Mr. Gibber?”
“I mean you’re getting your sexes mixed,” the man explained wearily.
“Oh, that,” replied Sally, feeling greatly relieved. “Sex makes no difference to me. Man or woman—all the same. I’m practically sexless myself.”
Mr. Gibber received this gratuitous piece of information in a state of stupefaction.
“Listen,” he said at last. “I don’t want to talk with you. I can’t stand it. The things you say revolt me. They do indeed. But I will say this, and you can thank your stars it isn’t more serious. Keep out of the ladies’ rest room. I feel very sorry for you but more sorry for your wife.”
“You should feel sorry for her,” replied Sally feelingly. “She’s having a tough time of it.”
“I’m glad you realize that, at least,” said Mr. Gibber. “You may go.”