The sleeper ended its journey at Jersey City and he took the ferry across the river and went directly to his office. It was too early for Pen to be there, but the members of the office staff were reporting for work. To George’s surprise, one of the early arrivals was Marian Strademyer. She was the real reason for his trip to the city, but he had half expected that she might take advantage of her relationship with Pen to assume certain small privileges, such as coming in late. She looked fresh and crisp, suitably businesslike and yet wholly feminine, and her femininity convinced him that he had obeyed an impulse that was timely in Swedish Haven and going to be timely in New York. She was wearing a dress made of a material that resembled blue serge, with a narrow leather belt at the waist and a white collar. It had almost the severity of a nun’s habit; a string of beads could have dangled from the leather belt, and the white collar could have been stretched into one of those starched bibs that nuns wore. But George Lockwood had never looked upon nuns as sexless women. That brothel in Paris where the inmates wore nuns’ habits had always seemed to George to require a degree of self-deception that was beneath his dignity; on the other hand, he had occasionally seen a genuine young nun whose complacent innocence he would gladly have investigated.
“We weren’t expecting you till the 29th,” said Marian Strademyer.
“No, something came up, and I came in on the sleeper.”
“Have you had breakfast? Could I send down to the Savarin?”
“Had breakfast in the station restaurant, thanks. Had a shave over there, too. The train gets in awfully early. How have you been?”
“Oh, just about as usual, I guess,” she said.
“Are you happy? You seem so,” he said.
“Happy? That’s something I never ask myself, especially at half past nine in the morning,” she said.
“Well, if you give the impression of being happy at that hour, then you must be,” said George.
“Oh, I guess that’s because I’m healthy.”
“Healthy, and young.”
“Don’t talk as if you were some eighty-year-old invalid,” she said.
“Oh, but I just came from the barber shop. The man’s beauty parlor,” he said. “What time do you expect my brother?”
“Usually a little after ten, and he didn’t say anything when he left last night, so I guess he’ll be in in about a half an hour or so.”
“Then I’ll wait for him. I expect to be in and out of here all day.”
“Will you need someone to take dictation? I can do it, or if you’re going to need someone all day, I’ll give you one of the other girls. We weren’t expecting you till the 29th.”
“Let’s see how it works out. I’ll need someone tomorrow, but possibly not today.”
“Very well,” she said, and left; but as she was leaving, with her back turned toward him, there was a hesitancy in her step that he took for a sign of reluctance to leave. Their relationship, he knew, had been replenished; his impulse had been based on sure instinct.
He filled in the time with some telephone calls to Charley Bohm, to Ringwall at the advertising agency, to the Carstairs for a room reservation. He was talking to the hotel when Pen entered his office.
“Hello, brother,” said George.
“Good morning,” said Pen. “What’s all the mystery about?”
“Sit down,” said George. “I just decided I wanted to get away from Geraldine for a few days.”
“You’re the damnedest man I ever heard of. You couldn’t just pack a bag and come to New York, the way any normal human being would.”
“There are subtleties that you don’t understand. How is Wilma?”
“Oh, she’s all right.”
“But not all right. How are you?”
“How am I? What do you mean, how am I?”
“Well, that answer tells me that things aren’t going very well for you.”
“We’re making money. If everything was as easy as that,” said Pen.
“You’re having trouble with your girl.”
“I’d rather talk about that some other time—if I have to talk about it at all, which I suppose I do.”
“Talk about it now, for Christ’s sake.”
“Let me go have a look at the ticker first. I want to see what something opened at. This is something of mine, a tip I got a couple of days ago.” He went out to the large office and stood at the stock ticker, with the tape resting on his hand. George could see him nod and drop the tape into the tall basket.
“Okay?” said George.
Pen nodded more vigorously. “As predicted. You don’t want to know what it is, do you? I’ll tell you if you want to know, but you have to stay out of it.”
“You’re speaking of a stock, and not your personal life.”
“Speaking of a stock, although you’re right, I could have meant either one,” said Pen.
“You could only have meant one, but it could have been taken either way. No, I’m not interested in your stock speculation, but I am in your love life.”
“Wilma has taken up with some fairy. That is, I think of him as a fairy. Half the men I know don’t seem to mind if their wives have some fairy around to dance attendance on them, and I wouldn’t mind either. But this fellow may not be a fairy. His name is Eugene Hyme, H, y, m, e. He’s a young Jew about thirty or so, related to some of those prominent Jewish families. Interested in music and all that stuff, but has a job downtown too, in the foreign exchange department of Glassman Brothers.”
“You don’t sound very worried about him,” said George.
“Well, I am and I’m not,” said Pen. “In the first place, he looks like such a long drink of water that a good screw would shake him to pieces. I could be wrong about that, too, but I don’t think he and Wilma go to bed together. In the second place, I don’t know what he sees in Wilma beyond the fact that through her he gets invited to houses that he’d never get invited to otherwise. In that respect he resembles me, except that after twenty years they’ve gotten sort of used to me. Wilma’s old New York society connections. So much for Mr. Hyme.”
“So much for Mr. Hyme,” said George.
“I’ll have to come back to him in a minute,” said Pen. “I had a couple of talks with Wilma, and I wish I’d been more like you. I’m not as good as you at these things. I tried to sound her out on the question of getting a divorce.”
“Oh, Christ,” said George.
“Oh, I wasn’t as clumsy as all that. I didn’t say divorce. But I put it to her that she seemed restless and unhappy, and I asked her if there was someone else.”
“You trying to be clever! You’re a blundering fool, Pen.”
“I know. But I had to find out how she would feel about a divorce because I wanted one. I’ve gone back with my girl, and I want to marry her. It isn’t fair to keep her from getting married if I’m not willing to marry her. She’s entitled to a great deal more than she’s getting under the present arrangement. In fact, she’s entitled to marriage, to be my wife. Wilma has everything and gives nothing in return, whereas my girl gives me the only happiness I’ve known in years and gets practically nothing. At least in a material way. So I wanted to find out what it would cost me to be free to marry her.”
“And you didn’t find out,” said George.
“Wrong. I found out that Wilma has no intention of divorcing me now or ever. It seems that after our first conversation, she confided in Mr. Hyme, and he guessed right away that I wanted the divorce, that I was restless and unhappy. And that I had a lady friend. And that’s about where the matter stands.”
“Wilma told you all that?”