Skyscraper

by Faith Baldwin

  She replied slowly, “I think it’s dishonest.”

  “What?” He stopped, mid-stride. “You’re crazy!”

  “No, I’m not. You’ve learned this—you couldn’t help learning it, in your position—and it’s supposed to be secret. Like a trust almost. You’ve talked it over with Bob Rawlson. With me. Little by little it will get out, reach the ears of the market manipulators. You’ve no right to cash in on your knowledge even in a small way,” she told him. “It isn’t honest; and it isn’t loyal.”

  “But it is honest,” Tom expostulated, “and as to loyalty—”

  “How is it honest?” she demanded.

  “It’s perfectly legitimate business,” he protested. “You can’t tell me that Gunboat and the others don’t expect to realize on it.”

  “They are officers of the bank,” she said, “and directors. That’s different. You—you’re just an employee. No, Tom, you’ve no right to do it.”

  “You mean to tell me I haven’t any right to buy a few shares of the bank stock at the present low?” he asked her. “Why, they’re always urging me to buy the stock, you know that!”

  “Of course, I know it.” Her chin went up. “And you’re at liberty to buy the stock. The few shares you can afford to buy, outright, won’t make any difference one way or another, and certainly wouldn’t put you or anyone else on Easy Street, no matter how high the stock goes after the merger. But you’re planning something else—you know you are. What is it?”

  He said sullenly, “Rawlson thinks that if we get to the right people we can borrow all we want to—”

  “You mean,” she said quickly, “you can sell your information. And you consider that loyal, I suppose—and honest.”

  “Well, why not?”

  She got to her feet. She was small and defiant, facing him. She said, “If you do this, I will never speak to you again!”

  He said, “But Lynn—” He tossed his hands out in front of him in a gesture of hopelessness. “But I was going to do it—for you. So that we could get married, so that we needn’t wait.”

  “I was willing to wait,” she told him hotly. “I care enough for you for that. But I won’t marry you on the proceeds of any breach of loyalty to the bank.”

  “I don’t owe the bank a damned thing,” he said stubbornly. “What has it ever done for me?”

  “It’s given you a decent job,” she told him, “and kept a roof over your head and fed and clothed you. I don’t care what a person’s job is, if it does that it deserved loyalty. Mr. Norton expects it of you. Your position with him carries with it certain obligations. Can’t you see that you are bound to know a lot more than other people in the outside office? And bound to keep it—confidential? That’s your job. Confidential secretary. I didn’t think,” she said, and her voice shook, “that you’d ever listen to or be influenced by people like—like Bob Rawlson.”

  “You never liked him,” he accused her absurdly.

  “No, I never have, and my hunch was right!”

  “Oh, hell—” He sat down wearily in the nearest chair, leaving her standing. Conscious of her tension, she forced herself to move about, emptying ash trays, straightening blinds, doing the trivial and unnecessary things women when they feel they have reached a crisis.

  He said gloomily, “Gee, Lynn, I never thought you’d look at it in this way. I just said yes to Bob because it looked all right to me. It is all right,” he argued suddenly, with returning confidence. “That’s the way fortunes are made. It’s perfectly legitimate, Lynn; can’t you see it that way?”

  “No,” she told him stubbornly, “I can’t and never shall. You haven’t any right to use the information for your own ends; and if you go into whatever scheme Bob Rawlson has cooked up, you’ll find yourself in a lot deeper than you bargained for. The few shares you two could buy on your own, that would be nothing. He’s got more than that up his sleeve and you know it.”

  “It didn’t,” confessed Tom very naively, “sound that way when he talked about it. Look here, do you mean what you said? I mean, that you wouldn’t speak to me again if—”

  “I mean it,” she said unhappily.

  “All right—” He rose, hands sunk in pockets.

  “Tom!” She ran to him, put her arms around him, looked up into his gloomy young face, “Tom, you mean that too. That you won’t—”

  “I suppose so. Lord, I hate to let Bob down.” Tom said, squirming inwardly at the thought. “What a piker he’ll take me for.”

  He cares, thought Lynn furiously, more for what that shifty eyed person thinks than what I think.

  He didn’t, of course. What she didn’t realize was the curious twist of something called masculine pride, looking back to those talks with Rawlson, over dinner tables, planning, arguing, excited, not alone by the barely passable liquor they consumed, but by their gilt-edged plans. What she didn’t realize was that, at twenty-three, the word piker is an unpleasant one—and relates pretty closely to the cowardly custard of little boyhood. At twenty-three no man wishes to be accused of women’s apron strings binding him to a promise of caution; at twenty-three every man is secretly a soldier, a pirate, a highwayman—gallant and dashing and very gay. And talk of honesty and loyalty, putting so different a complexion upon high and thrilling deeds, is, to say the least, sobering and depressing.

  There was something, Tom reflected glumly, of the schoolteacher in Lynn.

  But that was an authentic disloyalty. Here, here she was in his arms, very small and sweet and warm, and, so she assured him, entirely his own. But she wasn’t his own; and it was to make her so that he has planned and talked and listened, across the dingy table to Rawlson’s persuasive low voice—“Chance of a lifetime, Shepard—”

  Lynn detached herself without any effort from Tom’s arms. She said, walking across the room and picking up a cigarette with fingers that shook, “Of course, if you think more of Bob Rawlson than you do of me!”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” was Tom’s immediate return. “I—oh, I’ll tell him tomorrow that I’m not having any.” But his voice was without enthusiasm. He was feeling as sulky, as sacrificial, and as wounded as the small boy caught the instant before committing some household crime and haled before the explanations and warnings of the judgment seat, stubbing his toe at a rug, and thinking, Gee I hadn’t DONE anything, had I?

  “That’s all right then,” she said. But she wasn’t sure that it was all right. She searched his face anxiously, every familiar and beloved feature of it. It told her very little. She said, suddenly conscious of weariness, of a growing headache, “If—do you mind going now, Tom? I’m awfully tired. I’d like to get some sleep before the girls get in.”

  That was her mistake. But everything seemed so flat, so letdown between them. A good quarrel might have cleared the air. Perhaps, if she had mentioned David Dwight’s weekend invitation—? But she hadn’t; not would she. Perhaps if she had let him stay, a little longer, had turned her mind and his from the recent disagreement, from her triumph, which somehow didn’t seem a triumph now? But instead, because there suddenly seemed nothing to say, she lifted her face for his kiss and heard the door close behind him, heard him go clumping down the stairs, and then for no good reason, it seemed, turned her face to the back of the shabby chair and wept.

  It wasn’t Tom’s fault of course, she admitted, lying awake, staring into the darkness, searching in vain for the good sleep she had offered as an excuse for inhospitality. No, it wasn’t his fault. He was—gullible. He was enthusiastic and impulsive and sick of grubbing on that fatal $50 a week with no future near enough to seize and look at and rejoice in; and Rawlson was older, cleverer. Tom wasn’t, she told herself, not for the first time, a business man. He was perfectly at sea in graphs and dollars and cents and tickers and market reactions and “big business.” He was an engineer, an inventor; his mind was wholly mechanical, constructive. She thought, he’ll never make good—in the bank. But what else was there for him to do?

  Drow
sily she wondered about Mara. Where was she? And with whom?

  The door bell rang violently.

  Tom?

  She rose, fumbled her way into robe and slippers, and went out into the living-room. She opened the door. Bill Burt stood there, glowering at her. The normal exclamation, “Why, Bill!” rose to her lips, and he brushed it away as one does an annoying trivial insect.

  “Where’s Mara?”

  “She’s out,” said Lynn.

  “That’s nice. With whom?” asked Bill.

  She thought of her own mental query. Well, she knew nothing, and was glad of it.

  “I haven’t the least idea,” she said, and started to close the door.

  But Mara’s husband was a stocky and determined young man. His foot was in the door. He said grimly, “Oh, no, you don’t. I’ll come in—and wait—if you don’t mind.”

  “But I do mind. I’m alone here,” she told him angrily. “I’d gone to bed. You can just wait until tomorrow!”

  “I don’t intend waiting until tomorrow,” he told her, “and you can go back to bed. It may not be conventional but it won’t hurt you once. I’m not here to see you. I’m here to see Mara. I intend to know what she’s going to do. I haven’t heard a word from her since she walked out on me.”

  “Since you threw her out!” cried Lynn furiously.

  “Is that what she said? Well, it doesn’t make any difference.”

  “You—”

  But he had walked in and closed the door, spun his hat on a bookcase, and sat himself down in a chair.

  She had rather liked him, unhappy, sulky, complaining though he had shown himself to her. Now she disliked him very much. She said, standing there before him, dark hair ruffled about her face, “Mara was perfectly right to leave you—if you think she’s going to stand for the way you treated her and—” She stopped, conscious of delicate ground.

  “Oh, so she’s told you about Betty?” guessed Bill, and grinned without mirth. “Well, what did she expect?” he asked defiantly. “If a man knows he isn’t wanted he goes where he is—that’s all there is to it. What about Frank Houghton?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Lynn, “and as long as I haven’t the physical strength to put you out, I suppose you can stay. I’m going back to bed.”

  She did, but not to sleep, followed by Bill’s careless, “Suits me.” She lay there, all the drowsiness gone, wondering if there were any way she could reach Mara, warn her. Of course, she couldn’t. Equally certain was it that Mara was with Houghton. Would he bring her home? She hoped fervently that he would not.

  She heard the striking of matches as Bill sat there, smoking and waiting. If only Jennie would come. Jennie could handle him. But Jennie had said that she would be very late—“You and Mara better sleep in the bedroom,” Jennie had ended.

  There was no way in which to reach Mara.

  If only she would come home—alone.

  She did not. With a sick feeling, physical as well as mental, Lynn heard her coming up the stairs—with Houghton. It was long after midnight. They were talking. They thought themselves so safe. Lynn rose and groped for her robe and slippers again. She wouldn’t lie here like a coward, her head almost beneath the sheet, she’d stand by Mara; she had to.

  The door opened. “Good night, Frank,” said Mara to the man with her. “Bill!” said Mara, and screamed—not loudly but loud enough for Lynn to hear.

  Bill said, “Don’t get all hot and bothered. I haven’t a gun. Wouldn’t use it if I had. Just wanted to know where you were—and with whom. That’s all. I’ve found out now. Thanks a lot, Houghton—I suppose you are Houghton—for bringing my wife home safely. You can get out now,” he suggested, pleasantly.

  Houghton stepped forward, heedless of Mara’s frantic—“Go now—please go, Frank.” “I don’t like your tone, Burt. I see no harm in taking your wife to dinner. I’d be grateful you’d modulate your voice and somewhat change your attitude.”

  “I’d be grateful to you, if you’d get out,” Billtold him, rising and advancing toward the taller, more slender man. “I want to talk to Mara; and I’d rather do it in your absence. I’m not concerned about you. If Mara wants to dine—until midnight—with a man in order to keep her little tuppenny job she can do it—”

  “To keep her job?” asked Houghton, bewildered.

  “Sure, that’s how they all do it,” Bill told him, very ugly.

  “Good little old S.A. Vamp the boss—or the boss’s nephew and your job’s safe. And now—will you get out?”

  “Mara—”

  “Oh, please go,” she cried out. “Please—don’t—don’t believe him, Frank—”

  “You’d better believe me,” said Bill. “What good would it do you not to? You’re a married man, I believe. Mara’s married, too, although she appears to forget it sometimes.”

  Lynn said, appearing suddenly, “You’d better go—Mr. Houghton.”

  He went, withdrawing a shocked, bewildered face. Bill growled at her, “You don’t have to be in on this either, Lynn.”

  “I don’t intend to be,” she said clearly, “but—I’m right here, within call.”

  Bill Burt laughed. “I’m not going to beat her up,” he said. “She isn’t really worth the effort.”

  Mara was crying, in the same shabby chair in which Lynn had wept some hours since. She was saying—“Never been so humiliated—” and other incoherencies over and over again.

  Lynn went back to the bedroom. There was nothing else for her to do. But there even with the door closed she could hear.

  Bill stood with his wife. He asked, “How far has this affair with Houghton gone?”

  “It isn’t an affair—how dare you—just because a man is decent to me!”

  “I see. Well, he needn’t be decent any longer. You’re coming home now. I’ve got a job out West. It starts in two weeks. You’re coming West with me.”

  “Why don’t you ask your beauty-parlor girl friend to go?” Mara wanted to know.

  “She doesn’t happen to be my wife. She’d make me, I imagine, a damned-sight better wife than you’ve made me,” said Bill, “but I married you.”

  “If you think I’m going to condone—”

  “You’ll have to,” he told her soberly “Granted I was unfaithful to you—what of it? There are worse things than that where a man’s concerned. Granted, if you like, that you’ve been unfaithful to me—”

  “I haven’t! I haven’t!”

  “No, I don’t suppose you have. You’re not the type,” he said sincerely, “to come across. That doesn’t matter either. We’re going to start over again, you and I, on what’s left. It wasn’t my fault that I lost my job—”

  “Nor your fault that you didn’t find another?” she demanded.

  “No. Do you think I liked it, sitting home day after day, waiting for you to come and remind me you were supporting me? That’s a hell of a position for a man to be in. You might have made it a little easier for me, saved my pride a little, encouraged me. But you didn’t. Every day it was the same—”

  “Every day you were the same,” she accused him, “growling about this, complaining, ugly—”

  “I had to have something left, didn’t I?” he asked her oddly. “What did you want me to do, run around and wash dishes and sing, ‘Goody, goody, the wife’s got a job, and I can stay at home and do the housework?’ What do you take me for? It wasn’t any easier for me to accept what you grudgingly gave me than for you to give. If my disposition was rotten—well—perhaps it wasn’t all my fault.”

  “What about Betty?” she demanded. “Where does she come in?”

  “Nothing. Nowhere. That’s over and done with. She was—kind. That’s more than you were. It’s over, I tell you. She understands. And you’re coming West with me.”

  She cried shrilly, “I’m not. I’m not. I never want to see you again. I’ll divorce you—”

  “Better be careful,” he warned her.

&nb
sp; “I’ll divorce you,” she repeated. “I can take care of myself!”

  Surprisingly, he said nothing for a moment. Lynn, in the bedroom, heard him walk to the door. There she heard him pause, and his words reached her clearly.

  “Think it over, Mara. You’ve got ten days before I have to start. You know where to reach me.”

  The door closed.

  “Brute! Beast!” cried Mara at the wooden barrier, and cast herself upon the couch and wept noisily.

  Lynn did not speak or stir. She was not so sure. She thought, Marriage can’t be like that. But it was. She thought, How can they go on, after the things they’ve said to each other? Bill said,” We’ll begin over again on what’s left.” What is left? They’ll get together again maybe, hating each other, underneath, if that’s marriage—she halted, frightened. But my marriage with Tom wouldn’t, it couldn’t be like that, she thought. Oh, if I believed for a minute that Tom and I could stand shouting ugly words at each other I—

  Somehow the business of Mara and Bill, who really mattered so little to her, made her feel insecure, soiled.

  A little later Mara came into the room, and shivering in the warm night air undressed and climbed into bed. Lynn, pretending to sleep, lay still, far over on her side of the mattress. Mara said, “You are awake, aren’t you? How you could sleep through that?—You heard what he said. Before I’d go West with him, I’d—I’d—”

  “What?” asked Lynn practically.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted forlornly. “Lynn, what shall I do?”

  “Do you—love Frank Houghton?”

  “Of course not,” replied Mara virtuously, “I’m married.”

  To her own and Mara’s astonishment Lynn laughed wildly. She said, “Sorry. Go to sleep, Mara; perhaps things will be different tomorrow.”

  They were. For when Jennie and Lynn entered the apartment together that evening they found Mara walking the floor. As they came in she turned on them angrily, and cried out, “I’ve lost my job!”