Gentleman Called (12 page)

The switchboard girl came to the door. “A Mrs. Mellody is on number three, Mr. Tully.”

“Thank you, darling,” said Tully and took the phone.

“Eddie Murdock gave as reference the president of the Society of Magicians,” she said. “I certainly should have remembered that. The reason I accepted him in the first place was my hope that he might entertain us a bit.”

Free, Tully thought. “And did he?”

“No. Not ever.”

“What address did he give you when he applied for admission?”

“Membership, not admission, Mr. Tully. Why, the address on his application is the Grover Hotel.”

“And the date?”

Mrs. Mellody gave it. Eddie Murdock had used that address six months before he moved into the hotel, probably from the day he got on their waiting list. Curious and confusing. Tully thanked the woman and hung up.

He swung around on his swivel chair. “Miss Ryan, where’s the Big Man? I want his authorization for a flying trip to—where am I going? Sando, Ohio.”

He took his supper at the airport, and finding himself with almost a half hour before flight time, he walked about and thought of some of the things he should have done and hadn’t. His eyes fell on the push-button flight insurance machine. He put in his coin and took out twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth. Making out the application, he put down Mrs. Annie Norris as beneficiary. He then went to a phone booth and called her.

It was Jimmie who answered.

“I suppose I should hang up,” Tully said. “You know, ‘if a man answers…’ Could I speak to Mrs. Norris, Jimmie? I’m calling from the airport.”

“I’m sorry, Jasp. She’s not here. Any message?”

Tully grunted his disappointment. “Tell her I just put her down as beneficiary on my life insurance.”

“That should cheer her up,” Jimmie said.

“Downcast these days, is she?” Tully said, feeling good about that at least.

“You don’t come around as often as you used to,” said Jimmie.

“There’s answer to that one, too,” Tully said, “but you never can tell these days where your telephone conversation is going to turn up. Okay, my lad. I’m off to see a magician about a man. I’ll be back in a day or two.”

“I’ll give her your love.”

“Do, and a smack where she’ll forget-me-not.”

M
RS. NORRIS STARTED HER
assignment for Jimmie by a scouting expedition. She joined the morning crowd of shoppers pushing into Mark Stewart’s. She was shocked by their number. In the old days Mark Stewart’s had the air of a cathedral. It was no better now than an air terminus…which reminded her that she would like to have been home the night before to hear what Mr. Tully had to say for himself.

She saw the perfume counter and studied the girls behind it. Between the hair-dos and the face-dos, they had managed to trim themselves to the looks of youth. But they’d have to be careful, especially of their smiles cracking open the makeup. And a cautious smile was no smile at all. Like a kiss at a charity ball. Which one was Daisy Thayer, she wondered.

Daisy. The only creature she had ever known by the name was a spotted cow. And, she thought now, she’d as soon have her acquaintance. She turned to the umbrella counter. There was but one clerk on duty there, and she was a cloudy day.

The counter opposite was gloves. That was the place for her, Mrs. Norris decided. The little stools gave it an air of permanency. Mrs. Norris took up her position on one of them.

“I want someone to wait on me who has been with Stewart’s a while,” she said, in her best Victorian manner. “I am an old customer, and I know what I want.”

“I’ll get Mrs. Shaw for you,” the young woman said. “She’s been here for ages.”

Mrs. Norris gave her a neat smile, and settled herself more firmly on the stool. She began to remove long buttoned kid gloves which she had had to get out of the trunk that morning. She had determined to go out of the house a lady, no matter how the day might send her back into it.

Mrs. Shaw came up, managing a chill smile. Nothing bode so ill of a customer to a seasoned clerk than her assurance that she knew what she wanted.

Mrs. Norris said: “How d’you do,” and described the gloves she was looking for.

They were easily found and fitted, much to the clerk’s pleasure, and easily paid for, to Mrs. Norris’, since Mr. James would do it. Having attended that pair, and finding out on the way that Mrs. Shaw was a widow who had reared three children while working in Stewart’s, Mrs. Norris asked for something to wear in the evening. “My son takes me out now and then,” she said, and put a brave face on what she hoped was not the biggest lie she had ever told.

“What does he do?” Mrs. Shaw asked and volunteered in the same breath: “I have a boy living home, too. He’s an actor.”

Mrs. Norris threw her hands in the air. “Now isn’t that remarkable! My Jamie’s an actor, too.”

“What’s his name?” Mrs. Shaw said. “Should I know him?”

“Well, you should,” Mrs. Norris said hesitantly, an attitude, it turned out, easily understood by the mother of an actor.

“I know,” Mrs. Shaw said soothingly. “He’s at liberty, isn’t he? Arnold has been very lucky. Arnold Shaw’s his name.”

“I’ve heard of him,” Mrs. Norris said, and she had just then if not before. “Is he playing in something now?”

“As a matter of fact, he’s opening in a play tonight,
Raggle Toggle Tom.
You may have seen about it in the papers. It’s off-Broadway, and I say, that’s better than on. You know where you are for more than the one night. It’s a nice play and he has a lovely part in it. He’s a very good actor.”

“I’m sure he is,” Mrs. Norris said. “You can have all the radio and all the television and all the moving pictures. Give me a good play with real, live actors.”

“Ah, Madam, it does my heart good to talk to a woman like you. Hold up your hand, dear.”

Mrs. Shaw leaned close, pulling down the glove she was fitting, and Mrs. Norris said into her ear: “The dark-haired girl at the perfume counter—haven’t I seen her somewhere?”

“She says she’s a model.”

“What’s her name?”

Mrs. Shaw mentioned it and Mrs. Norris bit her lip; she had got the wrong one.

“The blonde looks familiar, too.”

“Maybe you’ve seen her in pictures,” Mrs. Shaw said, “but if you did, you’re the only one I know who has. And we’ve been watching, I can tell you. Miss Daisy Thayer, that is. She’s back on the job here after a year in Hollywood. Or so she says. My Arnold says she may have been—the hidden item on somebody’s expense account, if you know what I mean.”

“It would be hard to hide something like that,” Mrs. Norris said. A year, she thought: time enough to package a baby, poor thing. “And Stewart’s hired her back?”

“Oh the men swarm round her like bees, and it’s them buy the perfume, you know.” Mrs. Shaw gave her customer’s hand a pinch. “Arnold used to come into the store now and then. He’s very handsome if I do say so. That was the first time she noticed that I also was on this planet. She would smile over at me as though she had a lump of sugar between her teeth. Arnold took her out several times, and I never interfered. Then all of a sudden, she couldn’t see him for gold dust. A man half Arnold’s size and twice his age. With my own eyes I watched her pick him up.”

“Did you? She must be a bold thing to have done it right in front of you.”

“Not only that. When she came back from having lunch with him that first time, on her relief she went up to a friend in the Credit Department for information on him. And you know what kind of information they have up there.”

“What kind?” said Mrs. Norris.

“Well, it’s not going to tell her whether he goes to church on Sunday.”

“Of course not,” said Mrs. Norris. “It would be his financial status.”

“It would give his bank and credit references, and his home address which was Weston, Connecticut, and he certainly didn’t live there in a bird’s nest.”

Mrs. Norris wished she had all this in an affidavit. “How do you know she went up to the Credit about him?” she asked, as though she could scarcely conceive a thing so calculating.

“The girl she asked is also a friend of Arnold’s so it was right she should tell his mother something like that. And that information is confidential, you know, what Miss Daisy Thayer wanted.”

“Couldn’t you report her?” Mrs. Norris asked hopefully. The more witnesses the better.

“My dear, it was well over a year ago, all this. Closer to two, you know the way time goes. And at the time, I told it where it would do me and mine the most good. I told it to Arnold. And that put a finish to them.”

“Bully for you,” Mrs. Norris said with meager enthusiasm. “And did he believe you?”

“He believed her if he doubted me,” said the mother. “She wanted no more of him, having Connecticut in tow.”

Mrs. Norris wondered how close friends Arnold was now with the girl in the Credit Department, who was also a friend of Daisy’s at the time she hooked poor Mr. Adkins.

“I’ll take them,” Mrs. Norris said of the second pair of gloves. She had never bought two pair at once in her life till now.

“Charge and send?” said Mrs. Shaw.

“Cash and carry,” Mrs. Norris said, and counted out a great deal of money. “
Raggle Toggle Tom
—is it a play about gypsies?”

“Oh, no. Tom is a poor little street urchin.”

“I don’t care much for problem plays,” Mrs. Norris said.

“It’s not a problem play at all. Not every poor child’s a delinquent.”

“I would love to see it,” Mrs. Norris said. “Maybe I can get my Jamie to take me.” Before she left the counter she was persuaded to try to make it that very night when Mrs. Shaw would be there herself, and could introduce them to Arnold.

And before she left the store Mrs. Norris went up to the Credit Department and made out an application for a charge account in the name of somebody she didn’t know at an address where no one she did know lived. Meanwhile she studied the girls. She was quite certain she would recognize any of them she saw again. They were all clean and decent and acting themselves only, leaving all the airs to be put on by them opening the charge accounts. There were few things of which Mrs. Norris approved less.

“A
RE YOU SURE THAT’S
what she said?” Jimmie insisted. “It’s more important than I can tell you.”

“I’m in the habit of getting things right,” Mrs. Norris said. “Mrs. Shaw said she watched the hussy pick him up herself.”

“It isn’t her picking him up or putting him down,” Jimmie said. “That amounts to hearsay. But that Daisy Thayer went deliberately to check on Theodore Adkins’ financial information—that’s the thing to hand a jury. What I should like now is an affidavit on it.”

“Then take me to the play tonight, Mr. James.”

“But I can’t do that,” Jimmie said. “Don’t you understand? Suppose the Thayer woman were to show up herself tonight for this boy’s opening—she knows him, doesn’t she?—I’m going to be facing her in court, Mrs. Norris.”

“Well, Mr. James,” she said with Scots doggedness, “if it’s below your dignity to do what you ask me to do, all right. It seems to me an excellent opportunity for you to get first hand your ammunition. And tell me this—if she does show up tonight, is that the proper place for the mother of a fatherless child?”

Jimmie had to admit there was something to that. Besides which, Mrs. Norris had touched a sensitive point—his dignity. He was being too bloody zealous of it for his own liking.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll go.”

“Now I’ll have to call you by your first name, sir. I’ve told her you were my son.”

“What do I answer to if somebody calls me by my last name?”

Mrs. Norris gave that a moment’s thought. “Norris, I suppose.”

Jimmie grinned. “Won’t you tell me, mother dear, who my father was? I have the right to know.”

“Get out of my kitchen!” Mrs. Norris cried, and fanned herself with the evening paper.

Mrs. Shaw was waiting for them near the box office, having every confidence in their arrival. Just before the curtain went up on Raggle Toggle Tom, Mrs. Norris elbowed Jimmie.

“There she is! I was right!”

“Thayer?” said Jimmie.

“No. The girl from the Credit Department of Stewart’s, Daisy Thayer’s friend, or rather her ex-friend, I’d not be surprised. Here’s the way I figured it from something the mother told me: the boy probably went out on a double-date—she’s a pretty thing, isn’t she?—with her and Daisy…”

Jimmie was saved from following Mrs. Norris over the obstacle course of her reasoning by the play’s commencement. Sufficient to the needs of the night was the fact that the girl was here, the girl who could testify to Daisy Thayer’s calculations. As the play wore on and out, Jimmie thought of several nice things to say to the actors. They, fortunately, were better than their vehicle.

Afterwards, following Mrs. Shaw backstage, Mrs. Norris whispered to Jimmie: “Remember you’re an actor, now. Act.”

On his introduction to Arnold Shaw, however, Jimmie admitted he was only an occasional actor. He said he was in business.

“That’s where all actors should be,” Arnold said with a smugness Jimmie found it hard to forgive him. “Mrs. Norris…and Mr. Norris, I should like you to meet a friend, Miss Barbara Rossetti.”

Miss Rossetti was the girl from the Credit Department. Jimmie took his cue: “What do you say we all have supper together? Be my guests.”

At that point Mrs. Shaw hooked her arm into Mrs. Norris’. “Why don’t you young people go along without us? Mrs. Norris and I will have a nice quiet cup of tea somewhere, and a good talk.”

It was arranged before Mrs. Norris could get the tacks off her tongue, Jimmie thought, but by the look on her face she was ready now to start spitting them. He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Good night, dear mother of mine. Don’t wait up for me.”

Jimmie was not long in the company of these young ones before he felt his age, and furthermore, he knew they felt it. He did not intend to play-act much longer. He ordered their supper with an ease that impressed his guests; then he looked for a long moment at Miss Barbara Rossetti.

“You have a famous namesake,” he said.