HER NAME WAS JULIE EDWARDS.
Her hand clutched her water glass as the dining car lurched. Silverware jangled on the table, the car bucked on its trucks, the water in the glass flung itself about and sloshed over the rim, wetting her fingers coldly.
After the car became steady she blotted her hand dry with the napkin. She threw a disapproving glance at the snow-streaked night spinning past the windowpane. For a moment she was frightened.
An alert, tall girl, she had a face somewhat longer than oval, a restrained manner. She looked twenty or twenty-two—she was twenty-six—and the youthful appearance was a source of satisfaction. Never, to anyone, would she have confessed that she sometimes found it disquieting to be twenty-six and unmarried, but it would be worse to look twenty-six. Her height, Walheim’s statement that she was average-sized to the contrary, was above average for her weight: five feet seven and a hundred and twelve. She had an expressive face, especially around eyes and mouth, but this mobility was apt to go unnoticed, unless one looked for it. Otherwise her features, her carriage also, gave the impression of great reserve, almost tension.
“Yes ma’am!” The waiter, teeth shining, whisked away the damp napkin, snapped another into its place. He radiated warm efficiency. “The broiled trout is sho fine, miss!”
“Thank you.”
The waiter saw her order was not yet written. He bustled away, active, sure-footed, the giddy lunging of the diner not bothering him at all.
She had practically decided on the Special Dinner. Her tentative choice was the soup du jour, the roast duck, french fries, asparagus tips, parfait, coffee. She picked up the pencil and drew the order pad to hand. Then, noticing the price of the Special Dinner for the first time, she was shocked. She began frowningly to study the à la carte, weighing prices and probable values for her money.
Pooh! This was her vacation! The Special Dinner it would be! Decisively she wrote down the different items, beginning with script, but when the demented movement of the diner made the words illegible she scratched out the script and printed carefully in large letters. She examined what she had put down, thoughtfully ... She drew a line through roast duck, substituted broiled trout.
Frowning, pencil poised, she contemplated the substitution of trout for duck. She was disturbed, feeling the change might imply a weakness, a knuckling under to the waiter’s hawking of the broiled trout. She definitely preferred duck.
“Yes ma’am!” A hand swooped, carried away the pad.
“Wait! I believe I shall have the roast duck instead.”
“Broiled trout’s sho good, miss!”
“The duck!” she said firmly.
“Yes ma’am!” The waiter’s hand planted the menu in the holder between the windows, spiked the pencil into the place that was there for it. “Rost duck’s sho fine, too!” The great white teeth glistened agreeably.
“Do you have drinks?”
“Yes ma’am!”
“I think I’ll have a cocktail, if you please.”
“A nice scotch and soda?”
“A cocktail. Martini, a very dry one.”
“Yes ma’am! A martini comin’ up!”
There! She leaned back, conscious of quite a feeling of having won a victory. She felt warmly about it, as if a necessary act had been accomplished. Her gaze settled intently on the window, the storming night being sucked past it, and—inwardly, firmly—she declared: I am going to fight against being dominated by anyone! I am going to use my own ideas, be an individual!
I’ll fight! ... If nature does succeed in making an introvert of me, nature is going to know it has been in a battle!
She bowed her head, studied her clasped hands. Twenty-six was rather old to begin to remake oneself. But she had determined, irrevocably, to do that.
She hated a fight. She liked to keep warily at a distance from action, to think things out, to deal only in her mind with doubts, uncertainties, fears; she preferred to strike no actual blows; the thought of fray, thrust and counterthrust, filled her with trepidation. This, she had realized vaguely for a long time, was no way to live a balanced life. And lately she had seen that normalcy, sanity even, demanded that she fight her way to a better adjustment.
She was a small-town family doctor’s office assistant. Her job, for twenty-two dollars a week, was making blood counts, urinalyses, filing prescriptions, developing X-ray films, soothing crying babies while old Dr. Cooper treated the mothers. She helped on OB cases. Dr. Cooper’s patients were predominantly farmers, whose women birthed their babies at home. She fixed beds, got the mothers ready for delivery, dressed the babies. It was not work for a reserved, oversensitive person. She faced each day as a nightmare.
A family would have been an aid to adjustment. She had none now. Her father, particularly, could have given comfort. She remembered him as a kindly, tall, reserved man, direct in thought and action. He had taught American literature at the State Teachers College. Her mother, a small, active woman, she recalled as an outward personality, well adjusted to marriage. They had both been killed—an automobile accident—when she was sixteen, and she did not think they had left her any heritage of timidity, unsureness, indecision. Nor had her grandparents, as far as she knew. Grandmother Gates had died at a robust, corncob-pipe-smoking age of a hundred and one, and Grandfather Edwards she distinctly remembered, at eighty-seven, as a loud, risqué old rogue.
Yet her life had tended to arrange itself into a distressing pattern. She saw clearly that she was withdrawing from everything. She had few friendships, only one—Martha Baxter—that was very close. She saw too, darkly, that she preferred to be alone and was a better lone worker than a team worker. She was very much at ease with ordinary people, but not at all at ease with superiors. Worst of all, while she knew all this clearly, her objections were no more than violently verbal, were not reflected in her behavior—she did nothing about it.
Well! She was fighting now!
I am cornered, she thought. I am at any age, twenty-six, when there is little time for remaking. I shall have to smash clear of the rut now or surrender and resign myself to crawl forever in it.
She threw out a hand, steadying herself against a riotous lunge the diner gave—suddenly it occurred to her that her own mood was akin to the wild one of the coaches. She, like the train, was going somewhere in a headlong way. Impulsively, swiftly, desperately, she and the train together.
Wouldn’t Martha be surprised? She smiled slightly, imagining Martha’s amazement.
Julie! My God, it can’t be! Julie darling! Have you actually left Kirksville? I couldn’t believe your telegram! You’ve left Kirksville—isn’t that your secret?
Of course she had telegraphed Martha that she was coming:
HAVE RECEPTION COMMITTEE GRAND CENTRAL 2 AM TRAIN FRIDAY BRINGING SECRET FOR YOU LOVE
JULIE
The secret? She was going to leave the small town, leave Kirksville. If she could, she would get a job in the city. Secret? Martha would love that. Martha—adventurous Martha—adored the unexpected. But probably she would guess it from the wire message, because she had urged Julie, often, to climb out of the rut.
“Dry martini!” The cocktail was whisked before her. “Yes ma’am!”
She touched the thin-stemmed glass, explored its inviting coolness with her finger tips. She took it up.
To Martha! The pale amber liquor in the glass caught and reflected twinkling lights. Martha was the very closest friend she had ever had. To Martha!
It was amazing, incredible, that someone should approach her the next moment and say: “Hello! Hello there ... Aren’t you Martha’s friend Julie Edwards?”
He did not do it quite that abruptly. But almost.
She was struck with, arrested by, an awareness of him as soon as he entered the diner. He came in firmly, almost violently, using a breadth of shoulder to throw the door back out of his way.
He was a tall man with a bony but presentable face, and large hands, a man with a great deal of quiet force and a directness in using it. His gaze brushed the diner in a heads-up fashion, small lights sprang from his shining blond hair; his eyes met hers and held them, then his up-thrown hand beckoned the steward.
The steward hurried to him, bent a head deferentially; they conferred, the steward with his head tilted in attention. Then the steward wheeled, came toward Julie’s table.
With a precise bow that bent him exactly at the waist the dining-car steward addressed her: “I beg your pardon, miss. Do you mind if I seat another at your table?”
Well! Her composure tottered.
“But I ...” She felt embarrassment stain her cheeks. “Of course.” Taking up the cocktail quickly, she touched the glass to her lips and drank.
“Thank you!”
And I wasn’t going to let anyone impose on me! she thought.
The steward snapped out the chair across the table, held it ready; his eyes signaled the man. The man came forward. He walked firmly, mastering the instability of the on-flying diner, with an air of competence and sureness.
“Thank you, sir!” The steward had received a dollar.
Upset, Julie gave the window close attention. Outside the night ribboned past, colored bone-gray by the snow. A handful of colored lights spun by; the faint bong-bong of a crossing bell leaped out of the darkness and was instantly gone, taking with it the crossing and a truck that stood there, radiator enveloped in steam.
His voice, deep and of good timbre, laid a firm hold on her attention.
“Aren’t you Julie?”
She gave him her startled gaze.
“Hello ... Hello there. Aren’t you Martha’s friend Julie Edwards?”
She half rose, her lips parted. She could do nothing at all but look at him blankly for a moment.
“Why, yes ... But who—Martha—yes, I’m Martha’s friend.”
“I was sure you must be.”
“I don’t believe I know you.”
“Of course not. I’m Molloy—Chance Molloy. I know Martha, too.”
He did not present her with the necessity of shaking hands, and she liked that. In a moment, seeking composure, she lowered her eyes, carrying an impression, distinctly, of strong character, restrained force, a capacity for doing things or getting them done. She remembered particularly the wide and rather serious mouth, the pleasant brown eyes, marked faintly by fatigue. Looking up at him again, she noted the businesslike neatness with which he wore his clothes, the careful barbering, the rugged sweep of jaw and shoulders, neatly manicured nails. Thirty-five, or a bit over, she decided; a man who mixed thinking with action.
“I ... This must be some sort of a coincidence.”
“It is indeed.”
“How did you ... ?”
“Know you? I recognized you from a picture Martha keeps on her table.”
“Oh!”
“Did I startle you?”
“Yes, you did.”
“I was startled myself. My seat is three cars forward. I saw you pass, and something clicked, but I did not place you at once. Then I suddenly realized you must be Martha’s friend.”
“I’m surprised you recognized me.”
“I was lucky.”
“It’s hard to know people when you’ve only seen their picture.”
“It is a good likeness.”
“Yes, I remember the photograph.”
He’s Martha’s type, she thought. Her conclusion, quickly reached, was that he combined qualities, mental depth and straight-line methods, for example, and probably other things, that Martha liked. Not the man Martha would fall in love with necessarily—women didn’t always fall for their own qualities in a man—but he was definitely the sort Martha admired. He would, she surmised, turn out to be self-made and successful; he would be modest, but in an unhumble manner, the way a mountain is modest. He would—she felt certain she could safely translate him in terms of Martha—like adventure; he would prefer adventure movies, adventure stories; he would be an adept planner and schemer along with it, but his conniving would always have a very direct purpose.
“I hope you don’t mind my speaking to you.”
“Not at all.”
“Are you going to New York?”
“Yes.”
“You must look up Martha. You plan to, don’t you?”
“I’m going to visit Martha.”
“Swell!”
“Yes suh!” The waiter was there with his flashing teeth, menu-snapping and napkin-flourishing. “The broiled trout is sho nice!”
“A T-bone steak, french fries, a crisp salad, blue cheese, coffee, a brandy with the coffee if you have a good one.” Chance Molloy had not glanced at the bill of fare.
“Ain’t no steak on the menu.”
Molloy matched the waiter’s shining smile with one of his own. “Trot out that special big one, Charlie. Medium rare, and tell the cook to throw on plenty of mushrooms.”
“Yes suh!” said the big waiter delightedly. “Yes suh, indeed! Steak comin’ up!” He lunged away.
Julie was surprised. “Do they really have steaks when they’re not on the menu?”
“Usually. Want one?”
“No, thank you. I have ordered ... Mr. Molloy ... ?”
“Yes?”
“I wonder—do you know—is Martha in the city?”
“I imagine so.”
“Would you—could you tell me when you saw her last?”
“Yesterday.”
“Martha didn’t say anything about going out of town?”
“No.”
She gave him an embarrassed smile. “You see, I decided suddenly, without advance planning, to make this trip. I wasn’t sure that Martha would be there.”
“She probably will be.”
“Thank you, Mr. Molloy. You’ve certainly relieved my mind.”
“So Martha doesn’t know you’re coming?”
“Oh yes! Yes, she does, if she got my telegram. I sent her one.”
“When?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
He nodded amiably. “Then she surely received it.” He took out a silver case, offered her a cigarette, which she accepted; flame jumped to the wick of a gold lighter in his hand; leaning forward to touch the tip of her cigarette to the flame, she noticed that his hand was tanned, finegrained, the fingers long, with blunt, capable tips.
He has not, she thought, been forward at all. She felt at ease with him; she liked him. He had a quiet, direct strength that reached her warmly, reassuring her so that she was not plagued by the curse which, as an inward person, she bore, the curse of being utterly ill at ease when she met a striking man. He had lighted his own cigarette, and he placed case and lighter on the table to his left; he then moved his water glass slightly so that, should a lurch of the on-flying diner throw water over the rim, case and lighter would not get water-splashed. He was, Julie decided, foresighted about small things.
“I hope Martha got my telegram.”
“She was in New York yesterday, so the chances are that she did.”
“Well, I certainly hope so. I was afraid I might be on a wild goose chase. I don’t ordinarily throw orderly planning to the winds, but Dr. Cooper—I work for the doctor—decided suddenly to close the office for three weeks and go elk hunting in Wyoming. He decided yesterday. I’ve wanted to visit Martha for a long time. So I rushed down and bought a ticket, and discovered the only reservation I could get was for that afternoon or for five days later. I couldn’t wait. You see, I wanted to use my three weeks to find a job in New York.”
“A job?”
She nodded. “I don’t like what a small town is doing to me.”
“That might be imagination.”
She frowned, shook her head gravely. “No, it isn’t imagination.”
His eyes touched her pleasantly; if she said so, his gaze explained, it was probably true.
“So there wasn’t time to get an answer to your telegram to Martha?”
“No time, that’s it.”
“Did you mention the train you would be on?”
“Why, no—yes. That is, I said the two o’clock morning train, Friday ... Oh! Martha could have wired me on the train, then, couldn’t she? She hasn’t! Do you suppose that means she didn’t receive my message?”
“No need to be alarmed. She probably got it.”
“I wish I knew though. It would be so silly if she wasn’t in the city. I would feel such a fool ... I did try to telephone her, but her apartment didn’t answer, and I supposed she was at the office. Anyway, the New York operator said there was no answer.”
“Did you think of trying her office?”
“Her employer, Mr. Copeland? ... Yes, I did, but there must have been a mix-up, because the New York operator professed to be unable to find a phone listed for a Transfa Air Industries.”
“You asked for Transfa?”
“Yes.”
“That explains it then. Transfa Air Industries no longer has a New York office—everything, all the closing out of the concern’s assets, is being handled from the West Coast ... If you had thought to ask for Mr. Paul Roger Copeland, no doubt you would have had better luck, although I am not sure that Mr. Copeland maintains a Manhattan office any longer.”
“It’s no wonder the telephone operator didn’t find Martha, then.”
“No ... Martha, I understand, does her work at Copeland’s place on Long Island. Huntington.”
“Do you know Mr. Copeland?”
“Martha’s employer? Not well—I have met him.”
“He is in ill-health, I understand.”
“Yes, so I have heard.”
“Martha seems to love working for him.”
“That is understandable. Mr. Copeland is a charming, efficient gentleman who managed to take many millions of dollars from the aircraft industry during the war.”
“By any chance, are you in the aircraft business too?”
His gaze lowered to his cigarette, became contemplative, and he carefully removed ash from the cigarette tip by touching it to the tray. “In a slightly different branch of it,” he said.
Startled, Julie shifted her own attention to the window. Why, he’s pumping me, she thought! He has drawn a great deal from me, and done it directly and capably and without devious device! He has drawn information from me, turning me on like a faucet, for a flow of words.
This man was enormously adept! ... Or what was her imagination doing to her?
For the space of a minute the cars seemed to hang suspended and headlong, as if there was no longer force coming from the locomotive. This, it suddenly proved, was the pause between cutting the throttle and applying the brakes. In a moment air hose swelled rigidly, air hissed from leaky couplings, brake shoes slapped themselves against wheel rims, the whole train groaned, labored, under deceleration.
“Do you really know Martha?” Julie asked dubiously.
“Know her?”
“Very well, I mean.”
“Fairly well.” His voice was quiet, modulation unchanged, but suddenly somehow she felt tension in him. “Care to see Martha’s latest picture?”
“Picture?”
“I have it here.”
The wallet that came from his inner coat pocket was of ostrich with neat pockets for currency, a window for a photograph. He spread it open, pushed it toward her, presenting the photograph for her attention. Her eyes lowered, touched the picture, and became rigidly fixed on it.
My God! she thought in shocked wonder.
The train jerked, groaned, wrenched convulsively. Ice had narrowed and made irregular the frame of the window glass; in the outer world the lights of a large town reeled past, precise processions of street lamps, the yellow glowing freckles of lighted windows, all followed each other at decreasing speed.
Chance Molloy—he had not given the window any attention—spoke dryly. “Rochester, I imagine,” he said.
Julie said nothing, did not move, did not take her eyes off the photograph.
There was more wrenching and groaning; the train had slowed greatly, and now the brake shoes locked, skidding the cars the last few inches to a stop. The result, a sudden descent of silence, was somewhat uncanny. All activity in the diner stopped, jaws became still, hands poised holding forks, and this arrested animation held until there exploded a raucous shout of: “Telegrams! Take your telegrams!” A uniformed messenger sprang into the diner. “Send your telegrams! Telegrams!” he howled.
Molloy bent toward. Julie. The general expression of his face had become quite wooden.
“Has Martha changed much?” He touched the photograph.
“This—is not Martha!”
“Oh, but it is.”
“It isn’t Martha—I’m positive,” Julie said tensely.
The drawn, fibrous cast remained on Molloy’s face as, catching the uniformed telegraph messenger’s roving eye, he lifted a hand, beckoned. The boy gave him a pad of telegram blanks and pencil. A grim humor, a thing far from amusement, flickered darkly around his thinly compressed lips as he wrote out a telegram, the pad resting on his knees, away from Julie’s eyes.
A. C. KIGGINS
HOTEL REGIS NYC
GIRL NAMED JULIE EDWARDS IS MARTHA’S FRIEND BUT DOES
NOT RECOGNIZE MARTHA’S PICTURE HER CONNECTION WITH MATTER IS PUZZLE ADVISE YOU USE GREAT CAUTION
M
Molloy took two one-dollar bills from the wallet and handed those with the telegram to the messenger. He said, “No change.” The boy counted the words. His, “Say, mister, thanks!” was pleased.
The messenger went away with the telegram. Molloy picked up his cigarette from the tray rim; it was now burned short, and he stubbed it out firmly, took any other from the silver case, and lit it. The dark humor, by now a fierce excitement, was more mobile about his mouth, and he fell to watching Julie’s face. Faintly, from the next car rearward, came the messenger’s boisterous yells of: “Telegrams! Send your telegrams!”
“So you think that isn’t Martha?”
“It isn’t!”
“It must be. I took it myself. It is a very good likeness.”
Julie leaned forward to look closely at the photograph. She was upset. She was a naturally high-strung person, her emotions wild, intense things which needed continual restraining and were always seeking an excuse to get out of hand. The shock of being shown this picture—not Martha’s picture—in the way it had been shown her had given her a banging around.
She shook her head decisively. “It is not, absolutely is not, Martha Baxter.”
“Do you know this girl?”
“No.”
“Ever see her before?”
“No.”
Gently and with an air of great power, as if it had regenerated and renewed its strength for a further attack on darkness and distance, the train went into motion. The drab vista of station, a flow of gray concrete platform and narrow-roofed shed, was chopped off; the Streamliner moved through crowded yards, sidings ribboning past; boxcars were lonely and ghostlike; they passed a yard engine that was bundled completely in the cotton of its own steam. All this time the train gathered pace, and presently it regained in full frenzy its headlong tide of speed.
Julie Edwards gathered purse and gloves, opened the purse, put fifty cents—forty for the martini and ten cents tip—on the table, then looked squarely at Molloy.
“I don’t know what you’re pulling,” she said. “But I don’t like it.”
“No?”
“Unless you have an explanation—I’m not going to stay!”
Regret slightly touched his face, but made, apparently, no impression on the straightforward path of his purpose.
“No explanation,” he said.
She stood up and left the table, eyes straight ahead. The door of the diner surged open at her shove; she was in the dark, boisterous vestibule, skirts wind-whipped. She shivered, but more from the stinging cold than panic. She was not particularly frightened. She was upset, though, which was to be expected, for her emotions were sensitive, and their behavior familiar processes; she knew the signs well, the nerve tingling at finger ends, the flutterings at her diaphragm. They were old and despised acquaintances.
More than anything, she was angry because this man, this Chance Molloy, had had his way with her. That was exactly what he’d done—had his way. She was puzzled, too, to know why he had shown her a girl’s picture and said it was Martha. It wasn’t Martha at all!
The vestibule, with its clanging steel, was quickly left. She moved into a compartment car; here was cozy warmth, and she moved calmly, fending with her shoulders against the corridor walls whenever a skittish motion of the car set her off balance ... Ahead of her, as she remembered, were five cars she must travel before reaching her seat. She stepped out firmly, convinced that the pleasant drowsy sleepers and coaches, even the murky, storm-battered vestibules, would hold nothing unpleasant for her ...