Рекс Стаут - How Like a God

You felt strongly that the counter of that drug store was the place for you, but the real truth is that you shrank from so formidable a task! Jane undertook it blithely, as one goes for a walk, and you packed up and went off for your third year.

Only one thing was then in your mind. You had accepted Jane’s generous offer, and you had bowed to the necessity of postponing the fulfillment of your own responsibilities, only because you were going to have a career as an author. That winter you did write two or three stories, and one day read one of them to Millicent, with whom you were by now enmeshed in a strange and peccant intimacy. When you had finished she said:

“I like it, but I’d rather...”

She was never verbal.

A leap of nearly two years to the next marked and fateful hesitation. You and Dick Carr were seated in a cafe on Sheriff Street in Cleveland, having just come in from a ball game.

“It would mean giving up my writing,” you protested for the hundredth time. You had two stories published in a Chicago magazine.

Dick went into details. “I’m going to be the works down on Pearl Street, but I want you along. If Dad hadn’t died when I was a kid I suppose I’d be going to Yale or taking up polo, but that’s out. I see where the real fight is, and I’m going to be in it.”

“You don’t have to fight so hard, do you, if you’re worth five million dollars?”

“You bet you do. Old Layton at the bank told me yesterday that the business had been going back for two years. He said young blood was needed. Right. I’ve got it. So have you. There’s going to be the devil to pay when I start firing those old birds down there about a year from Thursday. I want you in on it.

“The set up down there is that I own half the stock and Erma owns the other half. She’s more than willing to let me run the thing, provided her dividend checks come along. I’m going to be elected to the Board, and President of the company, at the meeting next week. What I want to do is get the whole thing right in my fist. I’m going to spend most of the winter in the plant at Carrton, and meanwhile you’ll be picking up all you can here at the office. You can start in at any figure you want within reason — say five thousand a year. Later you can have any damn title there is except mine.”

In his brusque and eager sentences Dick was already the Richard M. Carr who is now on forty directories. And already he was saying within reason — but that’s unfah, for his offer was generous and uncalculating. A hundred dollars a week was to you affluence.

It was like Erma not to have mentioned the garden episode again. At the time of her first trip to Europe she probably still Intended to take you eventually — possibly not. One of your longest sustained curiosities was to see that unlikely husband of hers, whom she claimed to have picked up in a fit of absent-mindedness on a beach somewhere east of Marseilles.

Then one December morning she unexpectedly opened the door of your private office in New York. By that time you were Treasurer of the Carr Corporation.

“Here I am,” she said. “Isn’t it silly? To come back from Provenge at this time of year! I must be getting old, I honestly think it was the thought of Christmas that brought me.”

It became apparent though that Erma had another motive. She had not been in New York a week before she told you that she was “fed up with that ’sieu-dame stuff,” and it may have been as simple as that, but that did not explain why she again selected you. By that time you had become much more articulate than on the day of the famous garden scene in Cleveland, and on the morning that she made the announcement, you put it up to her squarely.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she replied brightly. “Do you mean that you feel yourself unworthy of me?”

To end the argument she took things into her own hands, and the following autumn there was an effective climax to what the newspapers called a youthful romance. This whole thing had been consummated without your having reached a decision of any kind.

This is scarcely the picture of a man who would execute a desperate enterprise. What are you doing, making another gesture in a last effort to impress yourself? The woman up there doesn’t believe in it. Last night she said:

“I’m afraid well enough. But not that you’ll hurt me that way. Call it contempt, it doesn’t matter what you call it. We’ve been fitted for what we’ve done together, but I’ve been me and you’ve been you. There’s nothing changed now if you don’t bring words into it. You know I have always lied to you and always will. It isn’t the truth you look for in me.”

Not halfway up the first flight, he stopped and listened. That was the basement street door closing. Mrs. Jordan putting out the milk bottles. He almost called to her. She would have called back, what d’ye want, in a tone that advised him to want as little as possible.

His right hand left his overcoat pocket and took hold of the rail; when it left the handle of the revolver it felt as if it were letting go of something sticky and very warm. The wires hummed and buzzed in his head.

Just what is it you expect to accomplish? You, who have all your life been tied to your sister’s apron strings. The fact is, Jane has always been the woman for you; all the security and peace you have ever known.

You’ve never thanked her for it; it has always been futile. The time you went home from Cleveland for your things, having definitely agreed with Dick, Jane listened quietly to your grandiose plans along with the rest of the family.

The following morning Jane came into your room while you were packing.

“Bill, I’m afraid you’re being driven into this by your feeling that you’ve got to do something for the family. You shouldn’t. The store’s doing better than ever and the way this town’s growing we can sell it for a lot of money in a few years. Meanwhile it can keep all of us nicely. What if you don’t make much by your writing for two or three years?”

Futile. In your pocket was the five hundred dollars Dick had advanced, more than you had ever seen before.

She tried again four years later, when the store was sold and you went down to help take the sucker off the hook, as Jane put it in her letter. In reality there was nothing for you to do but sign papers; Jane had made an impeccable deal.

“I’m going to New York and take Rose and Margaret along. Mother wants to stay here with Aunt Cora. Thanks to your generosity Larry can go to college next month without anything to worry about.”

As neat as that. And you longed inexpressibly to say: “Take me to New York with you. Let’s be together. I’ll write of I’ll get a job or I’ll do anything. Maybe some day you will be proud of me.” But you did not.

Even more to the point by way of futility have been your own efforts at Larry, who bounded out of the West into New York one day like a calf arrogantly bumping its mother for a meal.

Larry was pleasantly impressed but not at all overawed by your elaborate office. “Have you decided where I’m to start blowing up the buildings?” he laughed.

He was leaving it all to you, and you were thrilled by this, unaware that it was only because to his youthful eagerness and ardor details were unimportant. Also it has already been decided. Dick had been extremely decent about it.

He spent six months in the plant in Ohio, six more in the Michigan ore mines, some few weeks in New York. He proved himself. Young as he was he rose in importance by his own ability and force, but during all those months that became years you felt a vague uneasiness about him.

The explosion came at a difficult moment, and unexpectedly. Only the previous week Larry had won new laurels by bringing to a successful close the Cumberland bridge negotiations, down in Maryland. The difficulty though had come through Erma, whose pretty teeth had shown themselves for the first time the night before in a most inelegant snarl. When, immediately after you and he had been seated at the usual corner table in the Manufacturers’ Club, he announced that he was going to leave the Carr Corporation, you were at first merely irritated.