"Nope. We've seen enough movies. You don't mind, darling?"
"No, Billie-willie," she sighed fatalistically. "As long as —"
"— as long as we're together," he finished for her. He was pleased to note that he no longer minded so much knowing what she was going to say before she said it.
He took her into a cigar store and called his secretary at the office. "Miss Kay," he said, "look up Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Burke for me. They're the ones who inherited Nicholas Perry's estate, Superior, Wisconsin. We handled the case."
"Just a moment, Mr. Hale." He heard her walk away from the telephone, and listened interestedly to the clattering sounds of the office force. He had often wondered whether they behaved so efficiently when neither he nor Johnson was there. They did; at least, he didn't hear the chattering of a normal staff. Johnson must have —
"Mr. Hale? Central Park West, sir. We have a complete record of their activities since they inherited the estate. Would you like me to read it to you?"
"No thanks. Central Park West, eh? Pretty high class. I won't be down to the office today, Miss Kay. If anything important turns up, leave word at my apartment."
He took a taxi up. Gloria wanted to know all about the Burkes; she hadn't known he had friends, and why hadn't he seen them until then? But Hale decided against telling her the spectacular story of his rise. She was a snob, as she couldn't very well help being. It would be better for her to meet the Burkes casually, without knowing their backgrounds.
The Burkes' apartment house was tall, modern, and impressive. "Pretty swanky," said Hale. "I think it'd be sort of nice living here next to the Park. When we look out, all we see is roof-tops."
"Oh, I wouldn't like it at all," Gloria replied, as if he had suggested a slum neighborhood. "Nobody worth while lives here, just climbers and rich criminals."
He shrugged and entered. The doorman followed. "Whom do you wish to see, sir?"
"Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Burke. My name is Hale, William Hale."
The doorman called the apartment on the house telephone and gave the message. He turned to Hale. "Would you mind speaking to him, sir?"
"Hello," said Hale cheerfully. "Mind if I come up?"
Delightedly he heard the wheezing adenoidal voice: "Which Hale are you? I can't place you, mister."
"Remember the sick guy in the rooming house — the one who wouldn't go to the hospital? That's me."
"Say! Sure, I remember you! Come on up. The apartment's 6K.
Entering the huge, ornate lobby, Hale gloated. The simple Burkes certainly ought to be happy, living here with an independent income. And he was responsible for the whole thing. It made him feel godlike to know that he could cause joy as well as misery.
He half expected the door of 6K to be open, with the Burkes waiting for him. Instead it was closed. An eye stared coldly through the peephole. Then the door opened slightly, held with a chain, and a maid asked: "You folks selling anything? We ain't buying —"
"Not a thing." Hale grinned, though he didn't feel at all amused. "This is just a personal call." He was less certain of himself. Had wealth debased the Burkes? They never used to be suspicious.
Chapter XX
"YES, sir," Burke said with dogged persistence. "Just like a dream, it was, wasn't it, Molly?" His wife nodded abstractedly.
"Just like a dream," he repeated. "This guy Perry kicking the bucket and leaving us his whole fortune. Molly ... Mrs. Burke never even knew they were related, and here he cashes in —" Burke wagged his head. "You don't exactly look like you're starving, either. I wouldn't recognize you. You certainly looked mighty lou — bad, last time."
"I'm doing pretty well," Hale replied. There was an embarrassing silence. Hale took advantage of it to study the Burkes and their home. Something wasn't quite right. It certainly wasn't the apartment, which had obviously been furnished by a competent decorator. The Burkes sat stiffly, smiling with a faintly despondent air, in graceful, slightly upholstered frame chairs placed with artistic precision on the sides of a false ivory-and-gilt fireplace.
"You have a beautiful place, Mrs. Burke," Hale said at last.
For a moment she brightened. "Isn't it nice?" Then she lapsed back into her fixed, uncomfortable smile.
Burke looked at the rug and closed his perpetually dry mouth to swallow. "I don't know. Either it's too nice for some, or it ain't nice enough for others. I mean ... well, I hope you didn't get sore when Ada asked you if you were selling anything, did you?"
"Not at all," said Hale hastily.
Burke nodded gravely. "That's good. You know how it is. Some of your old friends come around to see how you're getting along. I mean they're all right. They're real friendly. Only —" He gestured feebly at the dainty room.
"They don't feel right," Hale supplied.
"That's it. They get kind of scared. Sit on the edge of their seats and get the hell out — sorry, Mrs. Hale — beat it first chance they get. Then there's the other kind —"
"Edgar!" Mrs. Burke protested.
"Well, I can't help it, Molly. They'll feel insulted if I don't tell them how come Ada asked them that. Folks we used to know, and strangers, too, trying to sell us all kinds of stuff. I don't know —"
"Don't listen to him," Mrs. Burke entreated. "He ain't used to having it nice. He keeps mooning around because he ain't ... hasn't got so many useless friends."
Burke slapped his thighs and smiled bravely. "Cut it out, Molly! We're sounding like a couple of funerals. Sure, Mr. Hale, it ain't all fun, but we're having a real fine time for once in our lives. Ain't we, Molly?"
"You bet! Going to the Met — the opera, you know; plays —"
"Them I don't care for so much," Burke said thoughtfully. "I like a good picture myself; don't have to listen so hard and you can see faces. But then there's the summer. One good thing about dough — you don't have to sweat in the city, begging your pardon, Mrs. Hale. We can go to one of these summer resorts. Like Rockaway."
"Oh, you wouldn't want to go there!" Gloria said, speaking for the first time. "It's so cheap and dirty."
The Burkes looked uneasy. Burke said: "Well, maybe you're right. It's Newport we'll probably wind up in."
"Newport!" Gloria exclaimed. "Why, nobody goes there now!"
Mrs. Burke nodded wisely. "I told you so."
Burke stood up and glowered. "That's the whole damn trouble. When you got dough, you got to know where to go and have the right friends —"
"Edgar!"
He subsided, grinning shamefacedly. "Yeah, it's right you are, Molly. But it's kind of tough at first. Your old friends don't come around, and I can't say I blame them. I knew a fella, got himself a big job. Before that we used to be real bosom pals. Then I didn't feel so good, seeing him. He had plenty of dough to spend, and I had to be kind of careful. That's how our old friends are now. The real ones, I mean. The others don't count. They're after what I feel like throwing them. And I ain't the throwing kind, so they stop showing up, too.
"The folks with our kind of dough" — he smiled resignedly —"we go around and say hello, and they don't return the visit. I guess they don't make friends as fast as poor folks, because they got to worry about who's out to trim them.
"But, hell, I'm having a swell time. I don't have to get up at five any more to go to work. Soon as we get to know the ropes we'll get along swell. When I get to feeling kind of low, all I got to do is think about all the things we got to make us happy, and I perk up."
Mrs. Burke asked: "How about some coffee? Ada can bring it in a jiffy."
"No, thanks," said Hale, rising. "We have to be running along."
"How about coming around some night?" Burke offered.