by Ayn Rand
He blushed. He thought with a shudder of what would be left of his bank account, if anything. But he was too much of a gentleman to refuse.
“All right,” he said humbly. “You’ll get it tomorrow.”
“Now, don’t forget, I want the chiffon dress flame-red and the silk one electric-blue. And I want the panties real short, see, like the ones I have.”
And she held out the dainty little cloud of lace that she had thrown into one of his desk drawers. She didn’t blush; but he did.
“All right,” he said, “I’ll remember. . . . Goodnight, Miss Winford.”
“Goodnight—Mr. Damned Dan!”
——IV——
“I can’t figure it out!” Vic Perkins was saying acidly, on the next morning. “Spray me with insect powder if I can figure it out! For one thing, I don’t see anything so brilliant in these stories of his. And for two things, all this news he’s getting first, well, it’s just a fool’s luck. And why all this fuss the Editor’s raising over that McGee bum what never got two words in print before is more than my intellect can digest!”
Vic Perkins was not quite satisfied with the turn of events. The Dawn’s morning number had come out with blazing stories, each bearing a line in big black print: “by Laurence H. McGee.” Practically the whole front page was by Laurence H. McGee. There was even a picture of him. And Victor Z. Perkins, the Dawn’s star, had to be satisfied with two measly columns on the third page, where he expressed his opinions on the great crime, and they sounded like a mouse’s squeal, compared to the roar of Laury’s flaming stories.
It had been reported, to City Editor Jonathan Scraggs’ extreme satisfaction, that the Dicksville Globe was seriously perturbed by his brilliant new reporter’s activity. There could be no one to compete with Laurence H. McGee. He was getting all the news hours ahead of everybody else. He seemed to know just where to go to get it. He interviewed Miss Winford’s parents, her servants, her friends. He wrote heartbreaking stories on the vanished girl. He wrote terrifying warnings to parents to watch their children. He seemed to burst with inspiration, and Dicksville’s citizens were beginning to gulp eagerly every issue of the Dawn for its gripping, thrilling articles.
“My congratulations, Mr. McGee,” said the Managing Editor himself, when Mr. Scraggs announced Laury’s raise in salary. “I have a presentiment of a brilliant future for you!”
“Great, Laury, kid, great!” Mr. Scraggs chuckled rapturously. “You have a positive genius for that kind of stuff! Oh boy, ain’t we cleaning up, though! Extras go like pancakes!”
Laury sat in Mr. Scraggs’ comfortable armchair, his feet on the editorial desk, and looked bored. Some of the Dawn staff’s elite had found a few minutes to gather around him and congratulate the new star. Laury was smoking one of Mr. Scraggs’ cigars, and it made him sick, but he looked superior.
“Your stories are . . . are gorgeous! Just simply . . . simply wonderful!” muttered an enthusiastic and anemic little cub.
“How d’you do it?” asked Vic Perkins gruffly.
“It’s all in the day’s work,” answered Laury modestly.
“Oh, Mr. McGee!” cackled Aurelia D. Buttersmith, the flower of the Dawn’s womanhood, who wore glasses and had never been kissed. “I’m doing a story on Miss Winford’s personality. Do you think it will be appropriate to call her ‘a sweet little lily-of-the-valley that the slightest wind could break’? Will it suit her?”
“Perfectly, Miss Buttersmith,” Laury answered. “Oh, perfectly!”
“That whole affair is a godsend!” Mr. Scraggs enthused. “By gum, I almost feel I could thank the guy who pulled it!”
Early that afternoon, Mr. Scraggs had another thrill that sent him jumping in his chair like a rubber ball. Laury rushed into the city room, his shirt collar flung open, his hair like a storm, his eyes like lightning.
“An extra!” he cried. “Quick! I’ve got the letters Winford received from the kidnapper!”
“O-oo-ooh!” was all Mr. Scraggs could answer.
It was lucky for Laury that no one noticed the fact that the Dicksville Dawn received the copy of the two letters half an hour before the postman delivered the originals to Mr. Winford. . . .
While the fresh extras were flowing from the press, Laury went out again, “to look for news,” he said. But this time, he went “to look for news” in Harkdonner’s big department store.
Laury thought that if he deserved a punishment for his crime, he got it, and plenty, in the hours that he spent at Harkdonner’s department store. He went from counter to counter, Jinx’s list in hand, perspiration gluing his shirt to his back and his hair to his forehead, and his face red as a tomato. He thought he had acquired a habit of stuttering for life before he got through with the lingerie counter. He did not dare to look at the courteous saleslady, for fears she would be blushing, too.
“It’s . . . it’s for my wife . . . for my wife,” he repeated helplessly, hoping desperately that no one would see him in the store.
And as it always happens in such cases, two stenographers from the Dawn passed by, saw him at the ladies’ lingerie counter, waved to him, giggled, and winked significantly.
And he almost murdered the salesman who, with an understanding grin, offered him a weekend suitcase.
Finally, with four huge boxes, two in each hand, Laury emerged from the store, put the boxes in his faithful old sports car, and left the car in a garage where no one could see it until evening. Then he walked back to the Dawn building.
His good humor returned to him on the way. Damned Dan’s name was all over Dicksville. It blazed on headlines of extras everywhere. It echoed in the terrified whispers of little groups of people gathered all along Main Street. It ran like the swift fire of a dynamite cord, spreading over the whole town to explode in a frenzy of general panic. Laury felt a personal pride.
Besides, he noticed that many passersby looked at him, pointed him out to each other, whispered, and turned around. “The one that writes those marvelous stories in the Dawn,” he heard.
And two charming young ladies even had the courage to stop him.
“Oh, Mr. McGee!” sang one of them in a lovely voice from lovely lips. “Excuse our boldness, but we recognized you and couldn’t help stopping you to ask about that terrible crime. Do you really think that man is as horrible as he seems?”
“Do you really think all of us girls are in danger?” breathed the other one, very becomingly frightened. “Your stories are so fascinating! I thought, ‘Here’s a man to protect us all!’ ”
And it was hard to decide whether their smiles sparkled with admiration for the stories or for the big gray eyes and tempting lips of the young man before them.
So Laury entered the Dawn offices, head high, whistling nonchalantly, with the proud air of a conqueror tired of victories.
“Hey, where on earth have you been?” shouted the copy boy, meeting him on the stairs. “The Editor’s hollering for you!”
Laury strolled into the city room, a superior smile on his lips.
“You nearsighted, blind boob!” Mr. Scraggs greeted him. “You brainless, straw-stuffed sap!”
“W-why, Mr. Scraggs!” Laury suffocated.
“Why the hell,” Mr. Scraggs roared, “why the hell when you brought us Miss Winford’s letter did you leave out the best part of it?”
“What?”
“Why did you omit the second postscript?”
“The second postscript?!”
“Look here!” And Mr. Scraggs threw to him an extra of the Dicksville Globe that had just come out, an hour after the Dawn, with the two sensational letters that Mr. Winford had received. Laury found Jinx’s letter and read:Dear Father,
If there is in your heart a single drop of pity for your unfortunate daughter, you will come to my rescue at once! I can’t tell you all the suffering I am going through. Please, oh! please save me! If you could only see what your poor daughter is doing now your heart would break. I can’t write very well b
ecause my eyes are dimmed with tears. I implore you to spare no effort to save me.
Your desperate daughter,
Juliana Xenia Winford.
P.S. I’m miserable, miserable!!
P.S.II Like fun I am!
“When interviewed on the subject,” the Globe added, “Mrs. Winford remarked: ‘Unfortunately, only the second postscript sounds like my daughter’s style of self-expression! ’ ”
Laury entered his apartment that evening with a scowl on his face, darker than printing ink. He threw the four boxes in the middle of the room, without answering Jinx’s greeting, and slumped down on the sofa, turning his back to her.
“O-oh! Isn’t that sweet of you!” Jinx cried, throwing herself eagerly on the packages.
In a second the living-room floor looked like a combination salad made out of a woman’s boudoir after an earthquake. And Jinx sat on the carpet in the middle of the waves of lace and silk, enthusiastically examining her new possessions.
“My goodness! What’s this?” she cried suddenly.
And she pulled out the nightgown that Laury had chosen for her. As his excuse it must be said that he had no way of knowing what girls wear at night and so he had chosen the most decent-looking gown in the store, which was an immense thing of heavy flannel with long sleeves, high collar, and little pockets, a dignified garment to which his grandmother could have found no objection.
“What do you think this is, an Eskimo raincoat?” Jinx asked indignantly, waving the gown before Laury’s eyes.
“Well, but . . .” he muttered, embarrassed.
“Have you ever seen a woman in a nightgown like that?” she thundered.
“No, I haven’t!” he answered sharply.
His face was dark and indifferent. And it did not change when, after carrying her new things away, Jinx emerged suddenly from the kitchen, wearing one of her new dresses.
It was the flame-red chiffon. The light red mist clung to her slim waist tightly like a bathing suit and then flowed down to her knees in wide waves that floated around her like trembling tongues of fire. She stood immobile, her head thrown back. Her hair looked tornado-blown. Her lips were parted, glistening like wet petals; and her eyes sparkled strangely with a joyous, intense, and eager glitter.
“Do you like it?” she asked softly.
“Yes!” he threw indifferently, without looking at her.
She laughed. She turned on the victrola, a thundering jazz record.
“Let’s dance!” she invited.
Laury turned to her abruptly.
“What did you write that second postscript for?” he asked.
“Oh! Wasn’t that clever?” she laughed, dancing all over the room, her body shaking with the gracefully convulsive jerks of a fox-trot. “You’re not angry, are you—Danny?”
“Please stop that dancing, Miss Winford! Do you want the neighbors to hear you?”
“Don’t call me Miss Winford!”
“What shall I call you? And leave that ukulele alone! You’ll wake up the whole house, Miss Winford!”
“My name’s Jinx!”
“No wonder!”
She laughed again. With one graceful leap she landed on her knees at his feet and her strong little hands turned his head towards her.
“Now, Danny,” she whispered tenderly, her hair brushing his chin, her laughing eyes fixed straight on his, “can’t you smile, just once?”
He did not want to, but he could not help it and he smiled. When Laury smiled he had little dimples playing on his cheeks, gay like flickers of light, and in his eyes—dancing sparks, mischievous like dimples. And the strange, eager, almost hungry look glittered again in Jinx’s eyes.
She pulled him up to his feet and threw his arms around her and pushed him into the gay rhythm of a fox-trot. He laughed wholeheartedly and obeyed. They glided, swaying, over the room. The victrola screamed joyously and in the buoyant roar of the jazz orchestra some instrument knocked dryly, rhythmically, like a cracking whip spurring the sounds to dance. Laury’s hands clasped her slim little body, the tremulous red cloud with the faint, sweet perfume. And Jinx pressed herself to him, closer, closer.
They danced until their feet could move no longer and then they both fell on the sofa, in the cozy tent of the window curtains that Jinx had arranged. She looked at him with smiling, encouraging, impatient eyes.
“You’re a wonderful dancer, Miss Winford,” he said.
“Thanks! So are you,” she answered indifferently.
“Are you tired?”
“No!” she threw coldly.
They were silent for several minutes.
“Have you ever kidnapped a girl before?” she asked suddenly.
“Now, just why do you want to know that?” he inquired.
“Oh, I just wonder . . . I just wonder if you ever kiss the girls who are your prisoners.”
“You don’t have to be afraid of that!” he answered, with a sincere indignation.
And he could not quite make out what the look that she gave him meant. . . .
They danced again; then, he played the ukulele and sang to her the songs he knew; and she sang the ones he didn’t know; and they sang together; and she taught him a new dance; and she thought that Lizzie Chatterton had certainly missed something having never been kidnapped.
When he finally stretched himself on his mountainous bed in the kitchen and turned off the light, Laury somehow did not feel like sleeping and the sweet perfume lingered with him, as though breathing from the other room, and he looked at the closed door.
“Oh! . . . Danny!!” a frightened voice screamed in the living room.
He jumped up and rushed to her. She threw her arms around him and clung to him, trembling, making him fall on his knees by the side of her bed.
“Oh! . . . I heard a noise . . . as though somebody was moving in the hall!” she whispered with a terror that looked almost perfectly genuine.
Her blanket was half thrown off and she clung to him, trembling, frightened, helpless. His hands clasped her nightgown, and the body under the nightgown, and he felt her heart beating under his fingers.
“There’s no one there. . . . What are you afraid of . . . Jinx?” he whispered.
“Oh!” she breathed. “Oh, I’m afraid the police might come!”
Laury was surprised to see that he was trembling when he returned to his kitchen and that it had cost him a hard effort to return there.
“I wish,” he thought, closing his eyes, “I wish the police would never come here . . . and for more reasons than one!”
——V——
“Extray! . . . Extray-ay!”
The sun was shining so gaily in the sky and in Laury’s eyes, on this following morning, that he did not pay any particular attention to the ominous roar bursting suddenly in the street under the city room windows. The sky was blue and Laury’s desk at the window looked like a square of gold. He had won back Mr. Scraggs’ favor by his brilliant story on the mysterious personality of Damned Dan, in the morning number. He was writing another article now, and the cubs around him looked respectfully at the great journalist at work.
So when the unexpected roar of yelling voices thundered in the street, proclaiming some eventful news, Laury was not disturbed and only wondered dimly what the Globe could have an extra for.
But he did not have much time for meditation. He was summoned hurriedly to Mr. Scraggs’ desk. His heart fell when he saw the Editor’s face. He knew at once that something had happened, something frightful.
“What excuse have you got to offer?” Mr. Scraggs asked with sinister calm.
“Excuse . . . for what?” Laury muttered, steadying his voice.
“I had an impression that you were supposed to cover the Winford case, young man?”
“Well . . .”
“Then how do you account for the fact,” Mr. Scraggs roared, “that a punk, lousy, measly paper like the Globe gets such news ahead of us?” And he waved a Globe extra into Laury’s face.
>
“News, Mr. Scraggs? News on the Winford case?”
“And how! . . . Or perhaps you wouldn’t call it news that Winford received a second letter from the kidnapper?”
“What?!”
“You heard me! And the letter orders him to deliver the money tonight!”
Laury saw stars swimming between him and Mr. Scraggs. He seized the extra, almost tearing it in half; and he read the great news. Mr. Winford had received this morning a second message from Damned Dan, fixing the time and place for the ransom money to be delivered. Mr. Winford had decided to obey, for, he had declared: “I would rather search for my money than for my daughter.” Therefore, he had refused to make public all of the letter and the place appointed for the meeting. The Globe’s reporter was only able to state that the kidnapper’s letter was written with a pencil on a piece of brown wrapping paper; and that it started with:Deer Ser enuff monkay biznes. Come across with the dough and make it pretti darn snappi or I’l get sor and wat’l hapen to yur gal then will be plenti. . . .
It was signed:
Veri trooli yur’s
Dammd Dan
Laury swayed on his feet, and Mr. Scraggs wondered at the color of his face.
“It’s . . . it’s impossible!” he muttered hoarsely. “It’s impossible!”
“What’s impossible? The Globe getting it first and you asleep on your job?”
“But . . . but it can’t be, Mr. Scraggs! Oh, God! It can’t be!”
“Just why can’t it be?”
Laury straightened himself slowly, straight and tense like a piano string.
“There’s something happening somewhere, Mr. Scraggs!” he said, white as a sheet. “Something horrible!”
“There sure is,” answered Mr. Scraggs, “and it’s right here, in my city room, from which you’re going to be kicked out, head first, if you ever miss a piece of news like this again!”
Eight hours passed after this conversation; eight desperate hours that Laury spent ransacking the town in search of some clue to that inexplicable development. He was too astounded to be quite conscious of what he was doing. He wondered if he was not going insane—the thing seemed so ridiculously incredible. He was searching frantically for something that would give him the faintest suspicion of an explanation.