He was plainly bitter. He had vouched for me to his friends and I had let him down badly. I could not stop babbling. I leant across to take his arm. He was unaware of my touch. Jimmy had lost all concentration. He stared vacantly up at the gas-globes overhead, grinning to himself. Had we both gone mad? I could not then see any reason for his reaction.
It was shock, of course. I had to make notes, puzzling over that meeting many times before I realised why, quite suddenly, he began to laugh. I stared at him in amazement.
‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’ He was helpless. ‘We’ve sweet-lined our own asses!’
He had no reason to take the whole blame. Part of the moral responsibility was mine.
I have never been one to deceive myself in such matters.
Biddena natla’ ila barra. Mashi yesma’.
SEVENTEEN
THE CAUSE OF other people’s mirth is a subject which has frequently defeated me. Jimmy Rembrandt’s reaction to my dilemma remained a baffled note in my diary for some years. Even as I parted from him outside Plunkett’s Cafe he was still occasionally seized by an attack of snorts and grimaces. He wished me luck, ‘though I guess Roffy and Gilpin need it more’. Speechless once again he gave a shaky salute and walked rapidly up Monroe Street to vanish in the electric shadows.
I saw little humour then in my situation and none at all the next day when, coming empty-handed from the Western Union office, I saw Pandora Fairfax jump from her car with an agitated shout and run towards me. She asked me if I had seen either of my partners. It emerged both had disappeared, leaving rent unpaid on their own apartments and mine. They also owed considerable sums to various printers, designers, model-builders, researchers and advertising agencies in the city. She herself had been promised cash for the hire of her plane and in expectation of an agreed consultant’s fee had made a down payment on another aircraft. ‘There’s a rumour,’ she said, ‘that Boss Crump’s men have orders to bring them in dead or alive.’
By that evening I was in the extraordinary position of trying to explain why my partners had left no forwarding address. I believed they were based in Washington, I said. One of Boss Crump’s hard-faced lieutenants said he would check. He seemed angry and suspicious of me but his common sense must have made him realise I was telling the truth. Also he was aware of my standing with certain members of the community and it was obvious even to him that I was innocent of any fraud. Nonetheless I was taken to a little office over a dairy depot on Union Avenue and interviewed by E. H. Crump himself. He was quietly spoken and polite, taller than I had expected, and dressed in a pale blue suit. He had round, smooth features, manicured hands and wore horn-rimmed glasses. He, too, was quickly convinced that I knew nothing of my partners’ whereabouts and had not been aware of the amounts of money owed in the city. Of course, he now began to deny he had placed any trust in the two men and claimed never to have heard of the $450,000 warranty demanded of us. It would have been imprudent to tell him that if the demand had not been made, the bills would have been quickly paid and Memphis would have been richer in a dozen ways before the year was out.
In fairness to Roffy and Gilpin, I did not offer my own opinion, that my partners, convinced I had deliberately betrayed them, had fled in panic. Unable to raise the extra $150,000 they had taken their own money and abandoned the project. I am not one to lay the blame for my own misfortunes on others. I had let them believe I was wealthy. They had acted in good faith. If they had wanted revenge on me they could have revealed what they knew of my past. Thus I remained convinced of their basic integrity. Some of us are stronger than others. Whereas, in their shoes, I might have stood my ground and explained my predicament, they had lost their nerve. My main regret, of course, was that another far-sighted, bold and commercially viable project had been shelved. Boss Crump’s political machine had turned against anything to do with my plans. He made that clear. My association with Major Sinclair could have contributed to this, I now realise. Because of his misguided stand against the Ku Klux Klan, Crump never really succeeded in pushing Memphis to her full potential. This opposition, reflected in the prejudices expressed in the Catholic-dominated Commercial Appeal, was the single reason he never reached the high office for which his excellent judgment and character were suited. Perhaps he saw the Klan as a rival. An alliance would have given him national, rather than merely local, influence.
For a while I was also puzzled by the disappearance of Jimmy Rembrandt. I wondered if perhaps he feared my anger, believing he had let me, as well as Roffy and Gilpin, down in some way. Possibly he was still embarrassed over the $500 he owed me. Nervous of Roffy’s anger, he might also have decided not to risk involvement if by chance I was murdered. Presumably he had returned to New York.
My moral and practical problems were not eased by having to hear my friend Major Sinclair’s honest opinion that Roffy and Gilpin were ‘a pair of scallawags’ who had used me for their own ends. I could not see what they had gained from their association. There was no point now in explaining my own part in their predicament, but I assured him only the most terrible circumstances could have forced the two men to abandon me. I pointed out I had lost no cash in the affair. I was not responsible for the Aviation Company’s debts, nor my partners’ personal debts. In my wildest flights of speculation I wondered if alien interests, scheming the ruin of our great venture, had not kidnapped them or otherwise disposed of them. It has long been obvious to me that all major airship disasters of the 20s and 30s were the result of Zionist sabotage. Alternatively, my partners could easily have fallen into the clutches of Jewish or Italian moneylenders. Loan sharks were known to deal savagely with defaulting debtors unable to pay their exorbitant interest. That would also explain why Roffy and Gilpin seemed so desperately frightened towards the end, when I could not produce the money. I explained this theory to the police officers who called on me. They promised to explore the matter thoroughly. But they were Crump men through and through. Their conviction was that I and the city had been victims of ‘a pair of high-class con-artists’.
Privately, of course, I blamed myself for the whole unfortunate business and continued to defend my partners even at police headquarters where I was asked to make a formal statement and was afterwards interviewed by the press. But the next day’s headlines, needless to say, were not favourable to Roffy and Gilpin. I received some sympathy but ironically they were branded ‘villain’ just as I had been in France. I suppose Kolya defended my name as vociferously as I defended theirs, with equal lack of effect. Once the press makes a scapegoat it will not relent. The case in point was Adolf Hitler, of course. Nobody ever writes about the benefits he brought to Germany; they merely reiterate the bad things. Such injustices become all too familiar when one has lived as long and seen as much as I. They cease to be worthy of comment. The world falls into Chaos. Justice is a fantasy, soon to be forgotten, as the white race which invented it is forgotten. Anyone will tell you I am a man of feeling, of intellect, of unusual moral strength. I am prejudiced against no race or creed. But when me and mine are threatened by a blood drinking brute, what shall I do? Say nothing? Make no defence? In their moment of trial the two old men fled. If they had remained they might now be heroes, statues in Overton Park. Yet, as it was, their decision was to prove of considerable benefit to others, though they would never receive public recognition for it. They ran away from the devastated dream which had been so close to achieving enduring reality and left me with no choice but to accept at once the Imperial Wizard’s commission. I would fly to Atlanta and from there would take up my banner, marching side by side with noble knights in a mighty crusade whose aim was nothing less than to rescue sanity, justice, decency and freedom for the whole world. I reached my decision within a day of my partners’ disappearance. A certain element in Memphis seemed determined to cast doubt on my credentials, my sincerity, my very honour. Twice I was harassed in the street. Mr Baskin arrived to give me notice to quit my apartment. Even Mrs Trubbshaw, who I thought at first had come to offer me consolation, had some ludicrous claim that she had lent Mr Roffy $2,000 and insisted I had a ‘moral duty’ to pay it back to her on his behalf. Time alone would show who bore false witness and who, in fact, was the victim of deceit!