“Banks are so heartless,” I said sympathetically.
Charlotte Ray took life seriously, and she took our bank account more seriously than life. Frosty haired, tight lipped, austere, she acknowledged forty-seven summers, and I had a shrewd suspicion that she was passing up about fifty percent of the winters. However, she could certainly keep books, and she could handle the income tax as well as anybody could with Killigen’s finances.
Killigen came in while Miss Ray was still sitting there.
“Hello, everybody,” he said, cheerfully tossing his hat at the hatrack in the corner, and pausing with his hand on the knob of the mahogany door marked Mr. Killigen, Private. “Cheer up, Miss Ray; it’s only the twenty-fifth of the month. There won’t be any bills to pay for another six days.” He grinned at me.
“I suppose,” she said acidly, “it wouldn’t interest you to know that you have absolutely nothing with which to pay any bills.”
“Not in the least,” he told her, grinning.
“Moreover, I’ve just received a notice from the bank that you’re overdrawn again.”
“Fine,” he said. “Some people have a checkerboard career. I have checkerboard finances — all black and red.”
She couldn’t take his kidding. She turned away, blinking back tears.
“Why can’t you be sensible?” she pleaded. “When you want to draw money, why don’t you let me check it out of the account? In that way we can at least keep the account balanced.”
Killigen seemed to be giving the idea grave consideration. “How would that help?” he asked.
“Can’t you see?” she said. “I’m trying to keep the books of this business. You sign checks and scatter them around like confetti at New Year’s. I think we have money in the bank, and it turns out we’re broke. You might at least tell me when you draw a check. Then we wouldn’t have overdrafts.”
“How much are we overdrawn?” Killigen asked.
“Three hundred and forty-two dollars and seven cents.”
“Now then, let’s see,” Barney said. “Under your system, we wouldn’t be overdrawn, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“In other words, when I wanted money, I’d come to you and get it.”
A ray of hope showed in her face. “That’s right.”
“And under those circumstances, you’d have stopped me drawing out that last three hundred and forty-two dollars and seven cents?”
“Exactly,” she said.
“In that event,” Killigen said, “I’d have been poorer by three hundred and forty-two dollars and seven cents, or looking at it the other way, the bank would have had that much more money, and I’d have had that much less. Therefore, Miss Ray, it seems to me you should be working for the bank instead of me. Under the circumstances, I think our system is excellent.”
He walked on into his private office, and left us sitting there, Miss Ray looking as though she were on the verge of hysterics.
“I swear,” she said, “I never saw a man like that in my life. Of all the irresponsible, scatterbrained individuals, he’s the worst.”
“Well,” I said, “there’s one satisfaction. He doesn’t have a huge pay roll to meet.”
“Well, he has us two,” she said. “I don’t know how you feel about your salary, but I want mine on the first, and... and there isn’t anything to pay it with — there never is.”
“Cheer up,” I told her. “We always get it before the tenth. He’ll turn up something. He always does.”
She found that I wasn’t going to sympathize with her so she picked up her checkbook and went back to the outer office. A few minutes later, she rang my phone and announced that a Mrs. Frank Whiting was waiting in the outer office to see Mr. Killigen on a matter of the greatest importance.
I put on my best office manner and went out to see if Mrs. Frank Whiting offered any possibilities of ready money.
One look at her and I knew the answer was negative.
Her hands were the hands of a woman who has worked all her life. Her face had the drab expression of one who has forgotten how to laugh; her eyes looked at me with pathetic resignation. I’ve seen the same expression in the eyes of a dog that had been whipped too much, by too many different people.
“Good morning,” I said. “I’m Miss Graham, Mr. Killigen’s private secretary. You wanted to see him?”
She didn’t have any objections to telling me her business, which was another sign she didn’t represent ready money. People who intend to pay a reasonable retainer always at least go through the motions of refusing to talk to a secretary.
“Yes,” she said, “I wanted to see Mr. Killigen. They say he is very sympathetic and understanding.”
“He’s all of that,” I told her. “What did you want to see him about?”
“My daughter.”
“What about your daughter?”
“She’s been arrested, charged with burglary — and my daughter’s honest. She couldn’t be guilty. Of course, she’s living in a different age from what I did when I was a girl, and things are different, but—”
“Just a moment,” I said. “I’ll tell Mr. Killigen you’re here, and see if he wishes to talk with you.”
“Oh, thank you so much,” she said.
Charlotte Ray caught my eye, and made a wry grimace, as though she’d bit into a lemon.
That’s a funny thing about the bookkeeping complex. It never occurs to a bookkeeper that clients are human, and that fees represent one phase or another of human misery. All a bookkeeper can see is figures, marching in columns down ledger pages.
I walked past her, through my office, and into Killigen’s. He was seated, tilted back in his swivel chair, his feet up on the desk. He looked up at me over the sporting page of the morning newspaper, and said:
“Hi, Wiggy. Want to bet on the ball game?”
When I first started to work for Barney Killigen, I’d put the dictating marks on his letters, “BK: wig,” the “Wig” standing for Winifred Ilsa Graham; and so Killigen started calling me “Wig.” Later on he made it “Wiggy.” I’d become so accustomed to it, I considered it my real name.
“No takers,” I told him.
“This is a swell bet.”
“Not for me, it isn’t,” I said.
“You’re getting too conservative,” he told me. “I think it’s association with Miss Ray that’s made you that way.”
“I came to tell you there’s a client in the outer office.”
He grinned. “I hope that cheered Miss Ray up, Wiggy.”
“You should be more considerate,” I said. “She’s more loyal to you than you are to her.”
“Quite possibly,” he admitted, “that’s true, but she worries too damn much. I don’t like to worry. It would make me lose my spontaneity, and that wouldn’t be so good for my business.”
“But,” I said, “you could be more considerate. Charlotte Ray deals in figures; they’re her life. Your casual offhand manner in regard to money is bad enough, but when you throw her balance all out, that’s worse. I suppose you’ve been gambling.”
“Gambling?” he said, arching his eyebrows. “Why, no.”
“I gather,” I said, “that outside of your regular expenses, you’ve written some twenty-five hundred dollars’ worth of checks in the last thirty days.”
“I suppose so,” he admitted casually, as though dismissing a minor matter, unworthy of serious consideration.
“That,” I told him, “sounds like gambling to me.”
“It isn’t,” he protested. “Mostly it was charity.”