The Fires of Spring

  “The kitchen?”

  “Yes, he’s whipping up an Irish stew. Hey, Claude!”

  Through the swinging door the frail, bearded man would appear with a towel wrapped about his waist. There would be halting introductions and then Claude would throw aside the towel and talk quietly with his visitor. It might be a college professor or a famous editor. Often they would find the stuffy air of the restaurant confining, and they would go into Washington Square and sit upon the benches. Then Mom would bellow, “All right, Dave! Hop out there and finish that stew.” That’s why the food was so bad at Mom Beckett’s. Claude was an abominable cook, but the people who took over for him when he left to talk in Washington Square were worse.

  Once David asked, “Mom, why don’t you cook?” and Mom replied, “Not this one! I long ago learned that the only work in this world too hard for women was what they call women’s work. You know, cookin’ and washin’ and scrubbin’ and liftin’ pots and pans all day. I like men’s work, like keepin’ track of money or sittin’ on your fat tail and givin’ orders.”

  Later, when Claude and his visitor returned from their abstract discussions, Mom would say graciously, “I’d be honored in the extreme if you would permit me to take you out to dinner. The food here is lousy.” And they would leave the dingy restaurant and the bootleg gin and the foul stew and David would watch them do down MacDougal Street, the big, proud, happy woman, the cave-chested poet, and the distinguished visitor.

  It was four-thirty on a drowsy July afternoon when Morris Binder’s ticker flashed the news that Oliver Banks Westfield had been murdered. The immense editor shifted his three hundred pounds quickly and grabbed a telephone. “World?” he shouted with a burst of energy that David had thought impossible. “Carey? Give me the dope on Beatrice Westfield. Yep. I have a theory. If it works out, you get the story. Call me back.”

  He struggled from his chair and heaved his massive body toward a file of old magazines. Thumbing through them hurriedly failed to disclose what he sought. He closed his eyes and stood very still for more than a minute. Then he said, “Of course!” and went to a steel file where he searched furiously. As he worked a big grin broke over his face, “Sure, that’s it!” he repeated to himself.

  Returning to his chair he cried, “Harper! Bring me the other phone.” With ponderous arms he brushed aside his manuscripts. “Operator. Get me the police in Miami.”

  Word sped through Clay Publications that Morris Binder was working on another murder. Miss Adams dashed upstairs, thin and fiery with excitement. “Take care of yourself,” she warned the hulking man, and something in the proprietary way she spoke betrayed to David that she had long loved the sweating editor. Then Tremont Clay himself appeared.

  “Is that the Oliver Banks Westfield of National Trust?” he asked.

  “The same,” Binder replied without looking up.

  “God! We can run this story for years!” Clay cried in real excitement. “Wall Street! Long Island! Is there an orgy angle?”

  “Maybe,” Binder puffed as he placed another call to the police in San Francisco.

  “Who did it?” Clay asked, licking his lips.

  “His wife,” Morris Binder grunted.

  “Unh-unh!” Miss Adams interrupted. “Ticker says his wife has been in Los Angeles for the last three weeks.”

  “She did it,” Binder replied stolidly. Then Carey at the World called. Binder listened attentively for several minutes and observed, “That’s the way I remember it, Carey. Well, nothing definite yet. But if I were you I’d get a lot of stories ready on Beatrice Westfield. Sure I know she’s in L.A. But she murdered her husband, all the same.”

  Next came a flurry of telephone calls to other parts of the United States. As the sticky evening wore on two police inspectors came into the office and smoked cigars. Tremont Clay, greatly excited by the poisoning of the great banker, sent out for sandwiches and coffee. He was already drafting headlines for Sex Detectives: “Did Oliver Banks Westfield Play Once Too Often?” He laughed at himself and said to one of the detectives, “Everybody who gets murdered should be named Oliver Banks Westfield! What a beautiful name!”

  At ten Morris Binder got the phone call he was expecting. It was from a small town in Illinois: “Yes, a ham actor named Chester Gates was registered at the hotel. Arrived Thursday. Practically no money. Wouldn’t admit anything, either. But he did have a picture of Beatrice Westfield in his wallet. Sure we’ll hold him, but what for? Murder! Cripes a’mighty!”

  “There it is,” Morris Binder announced as he slumped back in his chair. “Beatrice Westfield had this two-bit Chester Gates poison her hubby. Better have the L.A. cops pick her up.”

  The chief inspector leaned forward. “Do you think, Mr. Binder, that she’ll talk?”

  “Of course not!” Binder snapped. “But Chester Gates out in Illinois will. All you got to do is prove she played him for a sucker. Now to do that all you have to show Chester is that the fair Beatrice went west to shack up with Tom Barnley.”

  “Did she?” the inspector asked.

  “Sure she did.” Then Carey from the World called back. The huge editor snarled at him, as if the day had been too long, “Sure it’s safe! You say yourself that Tom Barnley and Chester Gates were in the same show. Sure Beatrice Westfield kidded them both along. Sure Chester’ll yap his head off when he finds out he was just the stooge for Barnley.”

  Morris Binder banged the phone down on the desk and took a deep breath. The inspector started to ask additional questions but the gigantic editor brushed them aside. “Wrap it up,” he advised. “Pour the full heat on little Chester. I’d arrest Tom Barnley, too. He’s innocent, but it’ll get your face in all the papers. Play this case for all it’s worth, Inspector, and you’ll be chief one of these days.”

  Slowly the office emptied. The ticker was turned off and Tremont Clay asked, “How do you do these things, Morris?”

  The fat man grinned at his employer. “I never forget anything,” he said.

  Miss Adams whispered to David, “It’s about the sixth case I’ve seen him solve. Sits right in that chair and figures them out!”

  “Why does he stay on a two-bit job like this?” David inquired.

  Miss Adams became ashen gray. “Don’t you know?” she asked.

  But before she could speak Morris Binder rose from his chair and indicated that she should go home. “Thank you very much,” he said quietly, and David again had the sensation that these ill-matched people were lovers. The immense man smiled down at the sparrowy woman and said, “Good night.”

  When Miss Adams had left, David began turning out the lights. Behind him he heard his huge boss puffing heavily, as if the day’s exertions had been great. “How did you guess about Chester Gates?” David asked.

  “Murder’s my hobby,” Morris Binder replied, wearily slamming down the lid on his chaotic desk. Breathing heavily, he slumped back in his chair for a moment and droned. “There’s one rule to go by. If a wife is murdered, work on the assumption that it was her husband. If a man is murdered, always assume it was his wife. That’s a safe bet, because no two people can live together for long without having a hundred reasons for murder. And then,” he added with a chuckle, “if the wife happens to be in L.A. when the murder is done in New York, don’t be a bit worried. Just figure out who she got to do it for her. It’s really very simple.”

  “But how did you hit on Chester Gates?” David persisted.

  The last light was turned out, and from the hallway shone the dismal glow of a single small bulb. Tediously, Morris Binder snapped on a desk lamp and protestingly pushed up the top of his desk. His fat hands fumbled for a batch of pictures. The top one showed Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Banks Westfield at a lawn party. They happened to be staring at each other in boredom. Behind them stood several actors from a New York hit. With his fat forefinger Morris Binder pointed at Mr. Westfield. “That’s the look of murder,” he said. “That bored look.”

  “But he’s the one th
at got killed!” David argued.

  “What does it matter?” Slowly the tired editor closed his desk and turned out the light. Then he coughed a couple of times. “Ugggh. Ugggh. I want you to believe, Harper, that two years ago I saw that picture in the paper and thought, ‘There’s a shot I can use some day in Great Crimes.’ But I couldn’t have told you which one was going to be done in.” He closed the door of the office and mused, “I hope to heaven one of those men in the background turns out to be Chester Gates. I have a hunch it will.”

  On the narrow stairs David was inspired to say, “You ought to be on the police force, Mr. Binder.”

  The huge man chuckled. “Yes, I should. I suppose they’ve told you why I’m not.”

  David was about to ask why, but at the foot of the stairs he saw thin Miss Adams, waiting in the shadows. She looked particularly drab in a gray tweed jacket, but there was a great light in her eyes as she almost pleaded. “Come, Mr. Binder. We’d better hurry.”

  The city of New York captivated David, as it should any young man with imagination. Mom Beckett’s was only nine blocks from where he worked, so each morning he walked along Third Street and watched Italian families haggling over business details. He grew to enjoy the fat women shouting at their little men, and for the first time in his life he realized that he was a fairly big man.

  At Lafayette Street there was always a bustle of cargo and men moving it. At Tremont Clay’s, huge trucks delivered round cores of cheap pulp paper for the insatiable presses and took away the same paper fouled up with stories of crime and passion. Idle policemen watched the traffic, and old men with beards gathered at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. There was vigorous life on all the streets.

  But David had eyes for only one thing when he reached Lafayette Street in the morning. He would turn and look south to the skyscrapers. They were beautiful in the morning, like an etching by Piranesi. Pinnacles leaped into the air, superbly high and secure, forming mysterious shapes. And whenever David saw this congregation of leaping beauty he thought: “They’re talking over my day for me.” At such moments he fancied himself to be Balzac watching the roofs of Paris, for those skyscrapers, whispering together, were the gossips of the city, relishing the scandals of the previous night.

  At night David walked back to Mom Beckett’s by way of Fourth Street. It was not so interesting as Third, but it invariably yielded one moment of sheer physical joy, for it broadened out into Washington Square, and David never grew satiated with that beautiful enclave within the great city. The Square was well proportioned and seemed always to be filled with people: students from the university, bums sitting along the fountains, boys playing ball, poets dozing on benches, pretty girls, scrawny maids with other women’s children, vendors of this and that, young girls and old prostitutes engaged in the same business of waiting, bored policemen, Fifth Avenue bus drivers arguing the politics of their harried company, worried professors, and elderly women living upon niggardly incomes. The Square was the city, and no matter how tired he was at night, the sight of this tree-filled open space with its trivial humanity made him feel good. The Square was of deep significance to him: he could never fool himself that the petty business of Lafayette Street or the frigid skyscrapers of Wall Street were the end of man; they were mechanical and nothing; but the sprawling people at rest and dreaming and arguing and loving in the Square, they were the end of life, the meaning of the universe.

  So there was always a moment of joy for David as he burst, like a lover, into the Square. Like a million other visitors to the city, he felt that the Square was in some peculiar way his own; but immediately he came upon it at night he experienced also a pang of hunger, for just off the Square, at Mom Beckett’s, Alison Webster would be waiting.

  She would have little to do with him. She was working, she always said. She put in long hours at Fashion and was becoming one of the “women to be watched” in that organization. At night she stayed in her room and wrote: stories, articles, novelettes, anything. And she became steadily slimmer and more desirable. A friend at Fashion had shown her a new hair-wash which brought out the golden flashes of her red hair. Another friend had sought out heavy brocaded cummerbunds with embroidered designs which accentuated Alison’s attractive figure. She no longer put her arms through her coat sleeves, and she spent much of her salary on expensive woolen dresses that had both a tailored and a casual air.

  Like an affectionate pup, David insisted on tagging after Alison. In spite of rebuffs, he asked her to dinner. “You can’t afford it,” she usually replied, but once in a great while she would assent. “Now don’t take me to some ritzy place,” she commanded, but David was so pleased to know a handsome girl in New York, so happy to be with her, that he spent most of his meager salary on their dinners together. This both flattered and dismayed Alison. Finally, in fairness to David she said bluntly, “Dave, I don’t want to go out with you any more. You’re spending your money and … well … frankly, you’re not going to get anything for it.”

  “Being along with you is plenty,” David persisted. Then he added a foolish explanation of his behavior: “Besides, I don’t know anyone else in New York.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Alison laughed. “If you continue to waste your money on me, you’ll never meet any girls. Dave, it’s no fun for a girl to say this, but I’m never going to fall in love with you. I’m not even going to let you kiss me. Not because I’m mean. I like you, but we’re going in two different ways. Rather, I’m going up. I’m going to be a great writer. I don’t know where you’re going.”

  “Oh … I …”

  “If you had any guts, Dave, you’d quit Tremont Clay’s. They’ve taught you all you need to know. I can get you a job uptown. Maybe if we worked together, if we had the same ambitions … Look, Dave! I’m sure that Miss Clint will commission you to do a series of smart stories on your hoboing around the United States.” Again the girl’s bright vision conjured up whole lay-outs for stories. “You could do one on Santa Fe, with Indians and pueblos. San Francisco with the funny little cable cars and a smashing view of the bridge they’re putting up.”

  David leaned back in the expensive restaurant chair and waited while the busboy placed fresh pats of butter on the silver plates. “None for me,” Alison said. When the man left, David watched the retreating white coat, cut in a flashy way so as to resemble a footman at the court of Louis XIV.

  He said, firmly, “I don’t want to write like that, Alison.”

  She dropped the subject completely and said, “Dave, you ought to pay more for your suits. You’re in New York now. I’ll bet this skirt I’m wearing cost more than your whole suit.”

  “Alison!” David protested. “That’s a shocking thing to say! If you want to know, I paid $22.50. Down on Delancey Street.”

  “It looks it.”

  The coldness of her observation bewildered David. “Why do you say things like that?” he pleaded, more in protection of her than of himself. “Why do you boast about the way you made a fool of Miss Clint at the office? Why do you make yourself more important than you are?”

  She pursed her lips and studied David, wondering how far she could goad him. “I wouldn’t say I gloated over success, because I haven’t had any yet. Not compared with what’s ahead. But I do mourn over your failure.”

  “My failure!” David cried. “I’m only twenty-four!”

  “Joe Wismer’s twenty-four and he’s sold stories already.”

  “From what I’ve heard you say about Joe Wismer I don’t want to be like him.”

  “He’s doing what you say you want to do.”

  “Alison! I’d never measure myself against Joe Wismer. When I write, it won’t be like him.”

  “What you mean is that Joe and I write tripe.”

  “I didn’t say that!” David protested. The waiter brought rolls to the table and David nervously began to pick at one. As soon as the waiter disappeared Alison snapped, “But you mean it’s tripe, don’t you?”

&n
bsp; “Alison!” David pleaded. “We have nothing to fight about! Your writing is very clever.”

  “You say clever very distastefully.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” David apologized. “I wish I could write as well.”

  “You’re a moody snob,” Alison replied, ignoring the apology. “All you do is sit and dream. You loaf in the restaurant and talk with that damned fool Claude. And all the time you’re doing that I’m upstairs working. When I’ve written a best seller, you’ll be sitting in some place like this you can’t afford, pontificating to some girl who thinks you’re wonderful because you want to write. You’ll lean back and say, ‘Alison’s story really isn’t much good. You know, she just bats them out. Now Dostoevsky …’ ” She tossed her red hair provokingly. “Isn’t that what you’ll be saying, David?”

  David’s face hardened into a hurt mask. “Why don’t you go home?” he asked harshly. “You want to fight with me to build yourself up. Get out!”

  Slowly Alison rose from the table and with a beautiful, flashing smile looked down upon the bewildered young man. “I’ve told you a dozen times, Dave, there’s no point in your taking me to dinner. Now do you believe me?” She turned abruptly and left the restaurant.

  At this moment the footman-waiter appeared with two plates of soup. David looked up at him beseechingly and half-laughed. “She walked out!” he said.

  The waiter carefully placed the soup on the table. “You’d be surprised how often that happens in a joint like this,” he whispered.

  David felt less a fool. “Really?” he asked.

  “Sure!” the waiter confided. “Prices are so high here people are under a strain. I saw one young fellow pour a cup of cold consomme on a girl’s head.”

  “What shall I do?” David asked. “I’m not hungry.”

  The waiter took a furtive glance about the gilded room and whispered, “To hell with the management! Walk out! I’ll say you canceled the order.”

  “Could I do that?” David asked, imploringly.