I took a deep breath and turned away, knowing I’d have to get out of Edwin’s house as soon as I could. At the same time, some instinct warned me against revealing my feelings to Fred.
“That’s some show,” I managed to say, with a smile.
Fred laughed delightedly, drew the curtain, and patted me fraternally on the shoulder.
“You’ll do,” he said, with the air of one giving a commendation.
I excused myself shortly and went up to my room and. started throwing things hastily into my suitcase. I still had thirty dollars out of the fifty Edwin had given me, plus ten of my own, and it would keep me, I hoped, until I could find something. When I got a job, I’d send the fifty back to Edwin with a note of thanks. Right now, I just wanted out.
I had my suitcase in my hand, my hat on my head, when I heard a woman’s voice crying out downstairs.
“Dan!”
I tossed my hat on the window seat, put the case inside my closet, and slipped into the hall.
“Dan!”
From below in the vestibule I could hear the sounds of a struggle, and I leapt down the stairs.
Philip Ordway had seized Felicia in his arms, and was trying to pull her into his room, and he was so busy, I don’t think he was aware of me until I gave him a judo chop on the neck. He flopped down across his threshold, and I pushed him inside and closed the door. Then I put my arm around Felicia and piloted her upstairs to my room.
“And you said you weren’t in any danger!” I said as she wept quietly. “This place is a pest hole. Listen, Felicia, I’m getting out. I’ve got my bag packed. Why don’t you come with me? This is no place for you, either!”
“Oh, I couldn’t leave Mrs. Owen,” she said, her hand at her breast, where two or three buttons of her uniform had been ripped away. “Besides, if I left without notice, I’d never get another position. And I need the money, too, Dan.”
“You don’t care if you stay in a place where you’ve been attacked?”
“I’m sure it won’t happen again. I’ll take better care of myself.”
“Like you did just now?”
She began to cry again, and I felt helpless. I got down on my knees and took her hands in mine.
“You go, Dan,” she said. “It isn’t right that you should stay here. I’ve got to. Mrs. Owen needs me. And I’ll be all right. I’ll report this to Mr. Gentry. He’s been very kind. I’m sure he’ll take care of me.”
That did it. The thought of Edwin taking care of Felicia stopped me cold, and I put all thoughts of leaving out of my mind.
“Never mind, Felicia,” I said firmly, cupping her chin in my hand. “I’ll be around to take care of you myself.”
I kissed her, and it was sweet.
And suddenly I wished that what had happened between me and Linda — hadn’t.
That evening Philip Ordway was not at supper nor, much to my relief, was Linda. Fred kept telling a lot of off-color stories until his father silenced him. Then, after a demitasse of Turkish coffee, Edwin motioned me to follow him into the library. I sat down on the sofa near the fire as he closed the big doors and locked them. Then after offering me a cigar, he sat down opposite me in an armchair.
He puffed in silence for a while, studying me until I felt uncomfortably isolated on that big sofa.
Edwin didn’t look like a genial bon vivant and host tonight. His welcoming eyes had turned calculating, and there was a glint of remorselessness in their dark depths. Then he smiled, and the hardness seemed to vanish.
“I’m very pleased with you, Dan,” he said. “First, you’re no prig. That gives me hope that you’ll be able to agree to my point of view on life and business. Second, you can make a quick decision, and you’re not afraid of violence.”
“You mean Phil?”
“Yes, the young ass. He’s through. I’ve been dissatisfied with his work for some time, and today, when he sneaked away from the office to come here, and — bah! A routine job is all he’s fit for. I want you, Dan, to take his place!”
“What sort of job is it?” I asked him.
“You like to write. I need reports. You’ll visit all the western cities where I have my outlets, and make a careful assessment of the activities of my dealers there. You will send the reports in once a week, and I’ll pay you per word what no newspaper on earth would pay you!”
“Sounds good. But what is your business, Edwin?”
He rose and went to a row of long drawers built into the wall. Unlocking one of them he took out three objects which he laid on the sofa beside me. The first was an egg-shaped piece of brown glass resembling a hand grenade, with a loop of wire at the top. The second object looked like a black pot holder enclosed in a plastic envelope, and the third was a blue steel tool of some kind, like a screw driver without a handle, and with a curious pattern of notches at one end.
I studied them a few seconds and then looked my question at Edwin.
“They are three of the hundreds of similar items which my company manufactures,” he said. “Those simple things range in price from fifty to two hundred dollars.”
“What makes them so valuable?”
“They supply a need, Dan.” He sat down on the sofa beside me. “First, let’s admit there is good and evil in the world.”
“Okay.”
“There’s nothing you or I can do about it, is there?”
“Not personally, perhaps, but—”
“We’re talking about individual enterprise, Dan. Evil is evil, and that is that. And where I can be sentimental about keeping an old lady like your grandmother in my house because your mother asked me to I can be ruthlessly practical about the fact of evil. There are moral people and immoral people, and nothing I can do will change that fact. And isn’t it true that business men make a profit out of producing things the good people need? They print Bibles, for instance, they manufacture religious artifacts, reproduce works of art, record fine music, and so on. But the natural criminals have their needs, too. All moralizing aside, who supplies them? A handful of manufacturers, in a very haphazard way. Well, I have organized an enterprise which supplies those needs very adequately. Whatever the appetite the criminal mind has, whatever evil desire, we supply the manufactured means of gratifying it.”
I just stared as he took the blue steel tool out of my hand.
“This is the most mundane example. A burglar tool of the most ingenious and effective design, which has our money-back guarantee. It retails for a hundred and fifty dollars.”
He picked up the brown glass egg.
“Arsonists will go to any length to satisfy their passion, especially if they can indulge it without risk of detection and. yet assure a quick and satisfying blaze. This item is so designed. And we ask two hundred dollars for it.”
“And they pay it?”
“Arson is often a sexual appetite, and not circumscribed to the poor alone.” Edwin picked up the black cloth in the plastic case. “But this is quite the most expensive, A cloth in a vacuum receptacle, saturated with an especially prepared fluid which, when held under the nose of the victim, instantly brings semi-unconsciousness and acts as well as an aphrodisiac, with no danger to the attacker. For the rapist, of course.”
I jumped to my feet. “You call this a business?” I yelled. “You want me to be part of it? I’d rather have a good clean flunky job, like cleaning out bed pans! You can go to hell, Edwin. Kate was right. You are a man to stay away from. And now, if you don’t mind, I’m getting out of here.”
The door was locked, of course, and the key was gone. When I turned, Edwin stood looking at me, his face cold and dispassionate, like something you’d see staring out at you at the Steinhart aquarium.