“Oh, come now. Ted Souder wouldn’t be embarrassed by a thing like that,” said Mary Gallagher. “I know Ted Souder.”
“Not ordinarily, he wouldn’t have been. But Stimson was no ordinary guy. His walk, for instance. He walked very slowly. In the morning, or after lunch, he’d come in the office and walk as though he were pondering some weighty problem. Umbrella tapping the floor. Bowing to this one and that one. His entrances were always an event. ‘Ralph P. Stimson is here! Everything is under control,’ he seemed to be saying. The fact that he was getting a lousy twenty-five bucks a week didn’t seem to make much difference to him. And it didn’t. He knew he was good. That’s really why Ted promoted him, of course. They gave Stimson the Madame Olga account. A headache that everybody else tried to duck, but he did the whole magazine campaign by himself, and the old bitch not only liked the campaign but more to the point, it sold perfume. So Stimson got his raise and his promotion. And then he promptly quit.”
“He quit the agency?” said Mary Gallagher.
“I asked him why he was quitting and he said he’d always suspected that there wasn’t really very much to the advertising business. He wanted to try something else.”
“And he had money of his own,” said Mary Gallagher.
“He had some money of his own. But he was far from rich. He had a ground-floor apartment on East Fifty-first Street. Two rooms and a garden. Probably seventy-five a month. He needed every cent he got. He used to go to 21 before it was 21, and he had a car. A Baby Renault touring car. His clothes, I suppose he could run up a bill at his tailor’s. And he made all the deb parties and on Sunday he’d always be in a short black coat and striped trousers. Free lunch. Cocktail parties. Sunday night supper. In those days a young bachelor could get by on fifty a week if he played it right. But it took a certain amount of arrogance to give up that job.”
“And courage, I suppose,” said Mary Gallagher.
“Courage? Well, courage of a kind. More arrogance. And you can be sure he wasn’t going to starve. Arrogant self-confidence is what he had. He quit his job and read the scripts of all the big hit plays for the previous five years. Then he sat himself down and wrote a play. I don’t even remember the name of it. But he got it produced and it was sold to the movies for $10,000. And he was to get $250 a week to adapt it.”
“I don’t remember any of this.”
“Probably because if I’d told you how easy it was for him, you’d have tried to coax me into writing a play.”
“No doubt I would have,” said Mary Gallagher.
“But he told the movie company that he’d be glad to work for them but not on his own play. He said it needed a fresh point of view, and he’d worked on it for five years, which was a God damn lie, and he’d rather work on something else. The play wasn’t a hit, and they could have come back at him and said five years seemed a long time to spend on a play that folded in three or four weeks. But they wanted it for one of their stars. Nancy Carroll? Or Claudette Colbert. In any case, they had bought his play and a big star was going to be in the movie version. Therefore, he was the author of something that the studio was going to spend a lot of money on, and therefore he might come up again with another good idea. So they agreed to his terms, and he went out to Hollywood and learned everything he could about the movie business.”
“Is he still there?” said Mary Gallagher.
“God no. He lasted there two or three years at the most. I’ve only seen his name on a couple of pictures. This one tonight and maybe two others. I suppose that being Stimson, he figured he’d mastered the art of the cinema just as he conquered the advertising business.”
“Did he ever marry?”
“Oh, yes. Do you remember an actress called Mavis Ware?”
“Vaguely. Was he married to her?”
“Yes. She was never one of the top stars, but she was quite good. You see her on TV once in a while, in old movies.”
“You do. I don’t,” said Mary Gallagher.
“Well, anybody that likes George Raft.”
“I adore George Raft. Don’t you say anything against George Raft as long as you can watch Elissa Landi, for heaven’s sake. And who’s that other one that—Priscilla Lane! Mavis Ware was something like them. Wholesome.”
“Mavis Ware didn’t happen to be wholesome. If you really knew anything about the stars of that era, you’d recall that Mavis Ware figured in one of the worst scandals that ever rocked the motion picture industry to its very foundations.”
“She was still wholesome. What scandal was that?”
“A scandal that rocked the motion picture industry to its very foundations,” he said.
“You said that. What was it?”
“That night at Ciro’s when she danced naked to the waist.”
“I don’t remember that at all.”
“Well, you see?”
“That wholesome, sparkling-eyed pieface danced naked to the waist, at Ciro’s? With somebody, or alone? I never heard anything about that.”
“It was never printed. Only hinted at.”
“I don’t recall that she had very much to offer in that department.”
“Well, you’re just about as wrong as you can be, I’ll tell you.”
“Only fair, nothing sensational,” said Mary Gallagher.
“Hunh. What she had was real, not falsies. And she proved it.”
“Did they kick her out of pictures?”
“They did not. They had to officially pretend it never happened.”
“Is that why your friend Stimson left her?”
“You have the chronology all wrong,” he said. “The thing at Ciro’s happened long after she divorced him.”
“Why would someone as smart as he was supposed to be marry a dumb little cluck like her?”
“Maybe because he got a preview of what they all saw the night at Ciro’s.” He laughed. “Not bad. A private preview.”
“She’d have to do more than that to attract attention nowadays.”
“Yes, but this was back in the Thirties, so don’t call her wholesome.”
“Well, I hope for his sake she wasn’t. Not as wholesome as she looked. Was she married to someone when she put on this exhibition?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”
“No, but you wish you had been,” said Mary Gallagher.
“You’re damn right I do.”
“If we hadn’t stopped going to the club dances, you could have seen the exact same thing last summer. The Brayton kid. Susan Brayton.”
“Not on the dance floor. Sitting in somebody’s car. And not Mavis Ware. The Brayton kid isn’t even attractive.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” said Mary Gallagher. “Then what happened to Stimson?”
“Became a communist.”
“A what? With that background, that history? Would they have him? I always thought they were—well, stuffy I guess is the word, when it came to people like that. He sounds like the last person they’d want around.”
“He wasn’t around very long. But he was active for a while.”
“Then what?”
“I guess he became an expert on communism and decided to devote his talents to something else. I know he went to Paris and started up one of those little magazines. But it wasn’t a very good time for starting up little magazines.”
“Where are we now, time-wise?”
“Time-wise, about 1931.”
“That’s the year I met you, so you see you couldn’t have said much about him when he was working for Ted Souder.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Gallagher. “Let me check.” He looked at the television program. “That picture was made in 1932. Or released in 1932. Could have been made before that. I seem to be all mixed up in my chronological order.”
“You jumped me quickly
enough when I was confused,” said Mary Gallagher.
“We’re supposed to remember things that happened a long time ago better than something that happened yesterday. At our age, that is. Everything I told you about Stimson was true, but from the time he quit the agency on, I’m going on hearsay. I never saw him again, except once. I saw him once in London during the war.”
“So that must have been ’43 or ’44.”
“Yes, it had to be. I could probably pin down the month.”
“Is it worth it?” said Mary Gallagher.
“It was about nine o’clock at night, but of course still practically broad daylight. I had just come out of the Royal Automobile Club and was walking along Pall Mall and I saw this guy coming toward me. I recognized him immediately, but when he saw me he darted across the street. I was never terribly fond of him, but trying to duck me like that aroused my curiosity and I crossed the street after him and yelled at him. As soon as I called his name he stopped. ‘You bloody fool,’ he said. ‘Don’t you know when someone’s trying to avoid you?’ Then he laughed and I invited him back to the R.A.C. for a drink but he said he’d rather give me a drink in his rooms. His rooms were one room in a seedy old hotel in the neighborhood. He had some sherry and a half a bottle of whiskey and what was left of a bottle of gin. I remember saying there was enough to get us drunk if we mixed all three, and he shook his head. He had a very light Scotch and water and so did I. He made some crack about my being a major and I made some crack about his not being anything at all, judging by his clothes. Tweed jacket and gray flannel slacks. Naturally I guessed that he was in something or other, so I said the obvious thing, that he was in O.S.S. To my surprise he said he was. ‘If I admit that I am,’ he said, ‘will you forget that you saw me? It’s really important that you do.’ So then it was my turn to laugh.”
“I should think so,” said Mary Gallagher.
“I told him that I was in O.S.S., in a different branch, but that I knew about the hotel where we were then sitting.”
“Oh, what about the hotel?” said Mary Gallagher.
“It had been taken over by O.S.S.”
“You never showed it to me when we were in London,” said Mary Gallagher.
“I couldn’t. It was bombed out, that same week.”
“And Stimson was killed?” she said.
“No! Three or four very good men were, but not Stimson.”
“Oh,” she said.
“It was an interesting thing about O.S.S. people. It was never very hard for an American in O.S.S. to put two and two together and figure out that another guy was in the organization. But having made that discovery, you’d often find that you were up against a blank wall. You just didn’t ask any more questions—unless you were specifically doing a job on the guy, which was quite another story. If they were running a security check on a guy, within the organization. But of course I wasn’t doing that with Stimson. Our meeting was purely accidental. Like hell it was.”
“What do you mean?”
“I simply mean that Stimson had been assigned to run a little check on me. The meeting was no more accidental than D-Day. It was planned deliberately.”
“How do you know? Did he tell you?”
“He certainly did not. The way I found out was when I was given the job of running a check on someone else, and the whole technique was the same.”
“Oh, then you’re not sure he was spying on you?” said Mary Gallagher.
“Of course I’m sure.”
“There are things you’re not telling me,” she said.
“That’s right,” he said.
“Why can’t you tell me now, over twenty years later?”
“Because I have no right to,” he said.
“All right. Go on with Stimson,” she said.
“Well, now that I think of it, I can’t. I have to stop right here.”
“Because of security?”
“That’s right,” he said.
“Oh, how aggravating, Sherry.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is,” he said.
“Why? Is he in the C.I.A.?”
“I have no idea. I have nothing to do with the C.I.A.,” he said.
“I wonder.”
“You don’t have to wonder about that.”
“You wouldn’t tell me if you were,” she said.
“Probably not.”
“You realize, of course, that I’m going to be suspicious of everything you do. I think you are in the C.I.A.”
“But you wouldn’t say I was very active in it. Let’s see now. I play golf three times a week with the same fellows. I’m busy in my garden. Go to Mass almost every Sunday. The grandchildren every other Sunday. Just trying to think of where I could squeeze in some spy work. We average one trip a month to New York, during which I could be spying from about half past nine in the morning till dinnertime. Of course I could also be having a rendezvous with Mavis Ware.”
“I’d know that soon enough,” said Mary Gallagher.
“Here, I go to the club once a month for the meeting of the board of governors. At least ostensibly. When you don’t take me, I could easily be doing some undercover work. If it really comes down to it, you have many more opportunities than I have. How do I know you spend all that time at the supermarket and the hairdresser’s? I’m here, on our vast three-acre estate, or out playing golf with three other retired senior citizens. But you could be anywhere.”
“Now that you summarize our activities so thoroughly, we don’t lead a very exciting life, do we?” said Mary Gallagher.
“Oh, I don’t know. I was pretty pleased about my crocuses,” he said.
“And your eagle on the sixth.”
“Yes, my third shot would have been a hole-in-one on the second, the fourth, the eleventh, and the fourteenth. Sinking a hundred-and-eighty-yard approach. I forgot how long that famous shot of Sarazen’s was at the Augusta National. I must look it up again. It may be in The World Almanac.”
“While you’re looking it up, see if it tells how old Mavis Ware is,” said Mary Gallagher.
He went to the bookshelves. “Mavis Ware. Ware, Mavis,” he said. “God! She’s sixty! Mavis Ware is sixty years old.”
“I can believe it,” said Mary Gallagher.
“That would make her about two years older than Stimson,” he said. “I wonder where he is now.”
“What does it say about Sarazen?”
“One minute,” he said. “Just says he won it in 1935.” He put the almanac back in its place. “I don’t suppose there’d be any way of finding out what Stimson is doing now.”
“Well, not tonight, anyway. So I think we can put that off till morning,” she said. “Do you really care?”
“Oh, not terribly,” he said.
“No. He sounds rather worthless,” said Mary Gallagher.
(1966)
MEMORIAL FUND
Miss Ames came in and stood silently in front of the desk in an annoying way she had, waiting for him to speak.
“Yes, Miss Ames?” said Russell.
“There’s a Mr. Jarwin outside to see you,” she said.
“What about?” said Russell. “Who is he, and what does he want? You know how busy I am, Miss Ames.”
“I do know how busy you are, Mr. Russell, but this man said he was a classmate of yours and wanted to see you about the Duke Brady Fund.”
“Jarwin? . . . Oh, Lord, Jarwin,” said Russell. “All right, I’ll see him in five minutes.”
Miss Ames went out, and Russell got up and took down his college yearbook from one of the crowded shelves. “J. Jarwin. Economics Club. Candidate for track in sophomore year. Played in band in junior and senior years.” That was all, that was the recorded collegiate history of J. Jarwin. It was the opposite extreme from Russell’s own and Duke Brady’s li
sts of campus achievement, with their fashionable clubs, prom committees, athletic endeavors. Russell studied the picture of Jarwin, who had a thick pompadour and thick glasses and a high stiff collar, and he remembered the one time he had seen Jarwin away from college. That had been the summer vacation between junior and senior years. Russell had gone to visit some friends in the White Mountains, and in the intermission at the hotel dance Jarwin had come over to him: “Hello, Russell, do you remember me? I’m Jarwin. In your class.”
“Oh, yes. How are you?”
“Fine. This is my band playing here. We’re here all summer. How’s Duke Brady?”
“Duke’s fine. He’s working as a lumberjack, keeping in shape for football.” In September, back at college, Russell had kidded Duke Brady about running into his friend Jarwin, and the Duke hadn’t had the faintest idea who Jarwin was. But there was one thing about Brady that Russell never quite liked: the Duke was by way of being a campus politician, and for the remainder of his days in college Brady had made a point of speaking to Jarwin. That was from September to April. Brady had quit college in April 1917, joined the Army, and matched his football and hockey reputation with a D.S.C. and a Croix de Guerre with a couple of palms. And now, in another war, the Duke was dead, killed in the crash of an Army transport plane.
Russell signalled to Miss Ames, and presently Jarwin bustled in. Russell rose and the two men shook hands. Jarwin’s unfortunate pompadour was gone, and the glasses were perhaps a trifle thicker, but it was recognizably Jarwin, a curiously pushy little man whose pushiness had not got him anywhere in college. It was going to be just like that time in the White Mountains and the so-familiar mention of Duke Brady.
“You’ve got a nice office here,” said Jarwin. “It’s more like the kind of offices you see in England. I mean, the books all over the place and so on.”