Cabot Wright Begins: A Novel

by Purdy, James

  “Of course,” Keith went on, in reply to a comment from Zoe that was both cynical and indifferent, “I mean to make you work for your money and I mean to pick your brains. My own career is—I’ll be open with you—always in the balance.”

  She looked up quickly on hearing his last remark, but finding it, as she thought then, merely rhetorical, went on with her apologies for turning down his offer: “I’m afraid you want things I don’t have,” she explained to him. As soon as she had said this, she realized it was obvious she wanted to back out only because she had felt the temptation of his offer, and because the sum he had named was so huge.

  “If you want more money,” he said coolly, “that can be arranged.”

  “Now you’ve frightened me even more,” she was truthful. “The fact is, Prince, I couldn’t write a novel if I tried, and I know next to nothing about prison, rapists, or indeed Bernie.”

  “Perfect. You don’t need to know a thing about any of them,” he informed her. “I want somebody who can write…” He pulled from a battered briefcase Bernie’s manuscript. “The book is nearly all here,” he thumped on the soiled stack of paper. “We need more facts, details, and less of Bernie’s kind of mentality, which he calls imagination. We’ll need to know more from the rapist,” he paused suddenly and looked far away, out into Central Park, “and by the way, speaking of that,” he spoke in hushed legal tones, “I’ve checked and doublechecked. The man below Bernie is the rapist. It’s Cabot Wright,” he explained, “living in the room beneath our Chicago car-salesman.”

  Now she was really surprised.

  “We need you, dear Zoe, for the English language and for brains. Nobody else can give us those but you. I don’t want to call in any ghost.”

  “You’ll have to let me go on taking in the facts,” Mrs. Bickle had then replied to his peremptory command that she decided at once about his proposal.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have time for the luxury of procrastination,” Princeton Keith said swiftly. He looked both menacing and bilious. She was taken aback by his look of gritty cold determination, so that she flushed again, which he noted.

  “If you don’t say yes to this offer, Zoe, you’re a bigger idiot than anybody who ever lived. One would even doubt you really love your husband, for I don’t see how you’ll be able to provide for his old age, which I imagine will be a costly one, on the salary you’re earning now.”

  “I’m still getting over my surprise,” she said, an odd tone in her expression, as if she hadn’t heard his last speech.

  “Over what, may I ask?” he was immediately cautious.

  “Over your enthusiasm.”

  Keith sat back in his chair and groaned. “Look,” he began, in exasperated paternal explanation. “I’m in business. I’m in business for Al Guggelhaupt. Could I have enthusiasm and work for him, do you suppose, or work for myself? What’s more, I don’t think you have enthusiasm either. It’s what endears me to you. Besides, it’s a dangerous emotion, primitive American, I judge, and it’s the first thing to watch if one wants to avoid decline. I don’t think, as I say, you ever had it, and you won’t catch it from me, thank hell, and you won’t catch it from New York.”

  “BUT WHAT ON earth do you see in Bernie’s writing?” she cried, and she stared at the manuscript beside them on the marble-topped table.

  “Dear little girl,” Princeton patted her arm. “Be in touch,” he begged her. “Do be in touch.”

  “No, Prince,” she was gloomy. “You’ll have to explain better than you’ve been doing, or I can’t say yes to your offer.”

  It was his turn to flush.

  “I’m where I am because of offers such as I’ve made to you,” he said, grim. “And I intend to stay where I am.”

  “At the top,” she smiled.

  “All right, wherever I may be,” he spoke now almost savagely. “And you can go back where you came from if you’re happy there.”

  When Princeton suddenly became silent, to indicate he was thinking about terminating their interview, she let the words slip out again in only slightly different phrasing:

  “But, Prince, you couldn’t want his book for the idea!”

  “And why ever not?” he countered.

  She saw then he was in earnest.

  “But anybody could think it up!” she said.

  “Anybody could think it up after some boob had done so,” he informed her.

  She began to see faintly then what it was all about.

  “You’re impressed by his idea yourself, but you won’t admit it,” he scolded again. “Your towering pride, Zoe. Ten miles high—you’ve always been so.”

  “A young man from Wall Street rapes 300 women, is convicted on the testimony of one of his victims, is sentenced, gets out, comes home to Brooklyn.” She shook her head.

  “It’s splendid, it’s sumptuous, it works,” he tore a paper cocktail napkin in two. “And it’s a book, my dear.”

  “Do you mind telling me,” she wondered, “if you get all your ideas from boobs?”

  “I’d say so,” he answered without hesitation.

  “And where do you find them? The boobs, that is.”

  “That’s the fine thing about New York,” Keith intoned, half-closing his eyes. “They’re nearly all here, the boobs. It’s a city based on them, and if one feels he needs someone in any field, a walk around the block, a hop on the subway, a random telephone call—he’s supplied. You don’t think I’d be where I am without them?” he inquired. His voice now sounded like that of a man much older than his years, say that of an Al Guggelhaupt.

  “Well, Prince, I guess you’re in earnest,” she conceded, mild, even melancholy.

  “I’m not earnest, silly. I’m acting successful.”

  “All right, you’ve found one boob in Bernie, and I don’t suppose I should protest too much if you find another in me. But I’d like to know the details as to how you’ll use me. That’s all.”

  “You’ll put things together for me, Zoe, dear, and you’ll keep an eye on Bernie, of course. When I feel I’m running thin, you’ll pour me thick again. It won’t be too hard. But, Zoe, I can’t do it so well without you, and that’s why I’m offering you that sum of money that made your eyes so wide. You’ll have to stay. As I’ve said, I’ll make it more than advantageous.”

  She stared at him.

  “I’ve heard of offers like this,” she thought again of the money, “but I never quite believed them.”

  “Everything finally happens, Zoe,” he told her. “And here it happens again and again.”

  Some tears came into her eyes, and though tears never pleased him enough even to notice them, he dried hers quickly for her.

  “You’ve been good all your life, dear,” he told her, “and if you think you’re going to be bad—and I know that’s what you are thinking—you’ve the right to be so. Once you’ve got your money you can be good again all over—to Curt, to everybody. Your role, sweety, which you picked for yourself early, is to hang on some kind of cross more or less continuously. What I’m offering you will frequently be pure inferno, so you should feel at home most of the while. If you won’t do it, some other smart person will come along and do it for you. For while I mentioned the boobs, I didn’t mention the brains. I pick them both.”

  “I feel I have already signed the papers,” she was smiling, though disconsolate.

  “Come, come, Zoe,” he said. “No posturing and let’s have a cup of hot tea now to make us both feel better.”

  He called to a boy in Arabian costume, and gave him the order.

  “And I can’t even think the offer over,” she said when the tea had arrived and its warmth and excellence began to cheer her.

  “Only until you’ve heard the whole proposal, my dear. I’ve only told you half.”

  She looked up then as if she had suspected as much, and an expression of uneasiness passed over her face and clouded her eyes.

  “You probably can guess what the second part of the propos
al is in any case,” he was firm, but she felt he too looked pale and worried despite his jauntiness and cold confidence.

  “I don’t want you,” she heard Princeton Keith’s voice, “I don’t want you merely as a writer, good as you are. And as a matter of fact while we’re talking about writing, let me say something. It was you who were the writer. That’s why your marriage to Curt, I suspect, never worked out so well as it might. He should have supported you, and you should have written, not him. You’d be rich today. However,” he took out his pocket watch with the heavy chain, “I don’t have forever even with you. After all, we are planning to publish other books next season too in my house. I’ll come to the point. You’ll have to see Cabot Wright. That is, you’ll have to see a lot of him. You won’t run any risk or danger that you wouldn’t be running right home in Chicago. I’ve seen to all of that in any case. If necessary we’ll get you a bodyguard, but it isn’t that way of course. I know all about him, Cabot. He’s harmless and, if you ask me, he always was. Then there’s Bernie for protection for you. We want you, though, to talk to Cabot, and find out the things that have to be found out. Cabot’s the kind of chap who wouldn’t talk to another man, mind you, and never in an eternity to someone like Bernie. But I think he’ll talk to you. I have a sixth sense about such things. Sometimes I’m wrong, of course, but hardly ever in a case this refined. As I said, it’s not an easy assignment, and there’s some danger, but I think that’s why you’ll take it. Don’t refuse me, Zoe, or it’ll break your heart. Just say yes, dear, and then I can run on back to work.”

  Mrs. Bickle didn’t disappoint him after all. She looked at him hard and said yes.

  6

  SECOND ENCOUNTER

  It is doubtful if Mrs. Bickle would have ever been able to meet Cabot Wright or get one word or fact from him had she not, during a three-alarm fire, fallen through the skylight directly above his quarters.

  Before her descent and encounter with Cabot, Mrs. Bickle had suffered mental and moral anguish, as a result of her having signed the pact with Princeton Keith and (from her own viewpoint) Madison Avenue. Though she felt more or less guilty, if not dishonest, after agreeing to carry out her assignment, she came to a quick decision that if she was to “see” Cabot Wright, the only sensible, if most unpleasant, plan was to cart herself bag and baggage to the See-River Manor.

  Zoe Bickle, as Keith had reminded her so many times, had known nothing but genteel poverty all her life, and she had just begun to enjoy the luxury and ease of the Gramercy Park apartment. But it was for that very reason she moved to Brooklyn, for she saw that otherwise she would do her assignment from a false and distant standpoint, whereas, once uncomfortably settled in the Manor, she might at least be able to face the truth, even if she did not entirely understand it.

  She had telephoned Princeton Keith about her change of address. His attitude toward her, now that she had agreed to what he wanted, was that of watchful waiting and studied indifference. He did not care how she obtained her story and, borrowing the attitude of his former analyst, he expressed neither approval nor disapproval of her action, and seemed unimpressed that she had decided to live in dirt, vermin and danger.

  Bernie Gladhart had likewise cooled somewhat toward Mrs. Bickle after his first cordial reception in his weakened condition. His early Chicago impressions of her as a double-dealer made him uneasy once more, and every time he thought of her he was reminded that because of her remark to Carrie he had come to Brooklyn in the first place, and through her he had actually lost everything he cared about. And her sudden election by Keith to write the book for him—this was a final confirmation of his vision of her as the force which spun his destiny. He began to drink heavily, and was now seldom seen by her, for he decided she had sinister designs against him, when she rented a room in the Manor on the same floor with him.

  Zoe no longer stopped to ask herself why she had accepted Keith’s assignment. She felt somehow that the large sum of money (so large that it would have to be paid to her over a period of years) was no more important than the nature of the assignment itself. By reason of its intractable difficulty and ambiguous fascination, it had held her from the first.

  Once established in her tenement work-room or, as she called it, her detection center, she was assailed neither by fear of rats or physical violence so much as by an uneasiness of more practical consideration. How was she to get herself introduced to the rapist in the first place? Even were this accomplished, how was she, considering her own personality, ever to be able to obtain information from him which would be usable? Thinking this over, she went into so black a despair that she was tempted to call off her agreement and go back home to Curt in Chicago.

  She was saved by a fire that started in the building next to hers and that she mistook for a conflagration in the Manor itself. Frightened by the piercing clangor and nearness of the Brooklyn fire engines, Mrs. Bickle had hurried out into the hallway looking for an exit and quick access to the fire-escapes. In her haste, she inadvertently opened a door marked Keep Closed, tripped on the uneven stairs leading from the door, and before she could regain her balance had fallen into a glassed-in aperture, which gave under her weight and propelled her into the room below.

  Most women in such circumstances would claim to have missed death by a narrow margin, but Mrs. Bickle knew that she had not fallen far, a few feet at most. Fortunately she landed on a Queen Anne sofa, which broke her fall. She was shaken up a bit, and she had several nasty scratches, but she stood up at once. When she was sure she had broken no bones, she sat down just in time to see entering from the adjoining room the once famous still good-looking face that had dominated the pages of the newspapers for such a long time.

  Cabot Wright, as if to show that nothing remains the same, was wearing a hearing-aid in his right ear, Zoe observed to her disappointment. Somehow it was the last thing she expected. Deafness in the young is at first not without charm, and Cabot lost nothing of that because of the “aid.” However, as Zoe was to find out on longer acquaintance, deafness, no matter in whom, is sad and annoying.

  Like many deaf people, Cabot did not pay constant heed to what was said, and spoke in a rather loud voice, inquiring whether she was hurt, then not listening to her answer.

  “Some bandage and a bottle of antiseptic,” he said, as if to the wallpaper, and went out of the room. He did not seem surprised at her arrival, but showed no interest either.

  When he had returned with gauze, bandages, and the antiseptic, she told him she didn’t think her injuries warranted this attention, and then again realized he had not heard her. Aware that she must be speaking, he touched something connected with his hearing-aid and seemed then to expect her to say something again.

  He kneeled down and bandaged one of the injuries on her forearm.

  “Friend of a publisher or a writer?” he inquired of her.

  This query seemed somehow even more upsetting to her than her fall through the glass partition. It made her feel he had been expecting her. She had forgotten, she realized, that Princeton Keith had known Cabot Wright, but why had Princeton told him about her and not simply introduced them in the first place? “Because the only people who come here are writers or people sent by somebody,” Cabot explained.

  “Well, you’ll pull through, I judge,” he said at last, when he had tended to her cuts. Getting up from his kneeling posture, he pulled up a small footstool and sat there, a careful distance away from her.

  “People warned me after I got out of prison,” he began, “that writers would come. So I thought they would swarm.” He smiled. “Not too many have got here, matter of fact, but they keep coming, a constant flow. But they all leave empty-handed, even though I give them what they say they want.”

  At that moment Mrs. Bickle saw what she was up against, and the thought that many had come to him, had asked for his story, been talked to, and gone away empty-handed, was startling and discouraging. She felt there must be innumerable writers composing novels, pl
ays, and even perhaps narrative poems about Cabot Wright.

  She allowed a sigh to escape from her, which he noticed, even if he did not hear it, for he said:

  “Need something?”

  “A glass of water,” she shouted. She had begun to feel a bit faint, and she realized that either her fall had disagreed with her more than she had first acknowledged or seeing Cabot Wright himself at last had been too much for her.

  He went into the next room, and returned almost immediately with an old-fashioned tin cup such as she had seen on farms as a small child. With some hesitation, she drank from it.

  “You’re disappointed,” he studied her.

  Looking up at him, Mrs. Bickle saw that he looked like the mythical clean-cut American youth out of Coca-Cola ads, church socials, picnics along the lake. Could he be—was it possible he was the real rapist? She compared him in her mind with Bernie, so much less attractive, the only other life-size criminal she actually knew. Yet the man who had brought her the tin cup looked—yes, impeccable.

  “I suppose you know what I’m doing here,” Mrs. Bickle began. “That I’m a writer or sent by somebody,” she quoted him, a little too low perhaps for him to hear, but at that moment her attention was attracted from the not overclean tin cup to an amazing spectacle in the next room which she had till then entirely missed. In this room from which Cabot Wright had first emerged she caught sight of a solid array of clocks on the wall, of all sizes and shapes, from large ones like those seen in public waiting-rooms, down to small alarm-clocks fastened by force to the wall. There were rather pretty old-fashioned ones, with large black hands, and finally the remains of an ormolu likewise nailed to the wall.

  He nodded to where she was looking. “A lot of those were here when I moved in,” he told her. “This was some sort of watch-repair place. But I’ve added a lot of them myself.”