Prigozi appeared crestfallen. “There’s no sense in going on if that’s the way you feel. I’ll draw it up on paper and submit it to you....”
“Don’t submit it to me,” said Moloch caustically. “Take it up to Twilliger. Maybe he’ll make room for you on his staff.”
“Rub a little insect powder on it first,” jeered Matt. “By the way,” he added maliciously, “what’s that white stuff on your coat collar?”
Without giving Prigozi a chance to explode, Moloch declared: “I’m serious about that suggestion. I think your plan’s cockeyed, but that doesn’t make any difference. Go ahead and show it to Twilliger! Tell him I sent you....”
“Raspberries! You want him to give me a kick in the slats.”
Moloch suavely assured the latter that this was a highly fantastic idea. Twilliger had never been known to kick anybody downstairs. “On the contrary,” he said, “Twilliger may even consider the plan brilliant. You go ahead and present it. Anyway, I believe in letting every man be his own Jesus.”
“G’wan, you bastards! G’wan!” Prigozi was recovering his verve.
At this moment the telephone rang. Matt answered it gruffly, but changed his tone immediately. With his hand on the mouthpiece, he handed the instrument to Moloch, whispering as he did so: “It’s the old man—Houghton himself. There’s a strike brewing.”
Moloch listened respectfully but with a growing irritation. He punctuated his silences with a subdued, resentful “Yes, sir. Yes sir!” Toward the end, realizing that his protests were ineffectual, he grew red and stammered a bit. He was trying desperately to control his anger. “Very well,” he said finally, “if you insist. But I think it’s a great mistake.” He slammed the receiver down with a growl.
“What’s the trouble?” asked Prigozi immediately.
Moloch looked perplexed, harassed.
“A fine muddle we’re in now,” he said gloomily. At which Prigozi became positively morose.
“What’s up?” piped Matt. Everytime Houghton rang up he thought it meant his job. Moloch was too damned stiff-necked to get along with a gang of polite crooks. He didn’t know how to play the game, that was Matt’s idea. They’d both be out in the street before long.
“We’ve got to fire the niggers—that’s what!” said Moloch.
“Niggers?” Matt repeated.
“Oh, the Hindus… the Egyptians, the whole flock of Oriental students we put on lately.”
Matt gave a long low whistle and screwed his face up like a gargoyle.
“I’d like to take Twilliger and hack his guts out!”
“Easy, Mister Moloch, easy now!” cried Prigozi, no longer alarmed over the situation, now that it proved to be nothing more than the dismissal of a few Hindus … “black buggers,” as he called them.
“What started the rumpus?” said Matt.
“It was that long-haired gazook in Chinatown. Seems he muffed a couple of death messages. Twilliger must have raised hell with the old man. He was screeching mad. ‘I want every one of them out,’ he says. ‘Every damned shine you’ve got on the force.’ There was no telling him anything. Twilliger’s got the Indian sign on him. God, though, if I were in Houghton’s place I’d show a little fight. It’s indecent to back down that way.... The worst of it is, the old man’s in such a fury he won’t let me do a thing for the poor dubs. I haven’t got the heart to let them out like a lot of cattle.”
“I wouldn’t weep about it, if I were you,” Prigozi spoke up. “They won’t starve to death. Let Providence take care of ‘em. These black bastards are a lot of crybabies—that’s what I think.”
There was more than a grain of truth in Prigozi’s indictment. The only ones who showed any guts were the Chinese students. The others were merely children for whom Moloch acted as a wet nurse.
Matt broke in suddenly. “Didn’t old man Houghton say something about a strike?”
“Christ, yes! I almost forgot about the strike. Grab your hat, Matt, and rush uptown to Carducci’s office—that’s where the trouble lies.”
Matt bolted to the door in a jiffy.
“Hold on a minute,” shouted Moloch. “The old man says …”
“Says what?” yelled Matt.
“You’re not to talk too much—get that?”
“Tell the old man to go crucify himself!” Matt dashed out.
“There’s a loyal servant,” sneered Prigozi. “He acts first and thinks about it later.”
At this juncture, the squat little figure at the switchboard got up and approached Moloch with mingled deference and humility.
“I’m going home now,” he said. He had been saying this every day for the last ten years at five o’clock sharp. His tone never varied. It was like a servant announcing “Dinner is ready, sir!”
“Did you take your cathartic pill?” asked Moloch.
Dave’s face lit up like a Halloween pumpkin. He enjoyed this five-o’clock raillery. For the best part of the day he was glued to the switchboard, calling up the hundred or more offices in the city, throwing out reserve messengers which he called “waybills” after an old custom, and raising hell in general with the clerks and managers for their tardiness in telephoning the absentee and vacancy reports. Dave always kept a worksheet before him, on which he practiced the art of calligraphy. These sheets formed a chronological register of the daily happenings in the messenger department. In the upper right-hand corner of the worksheet he ruled off a little box wherein he made a faithful report of the weather. The inclusion of this meteorological report was no mere idiosyncrasy of Dave’s. It was the grand alibi of the messenger department Dave preserved these sheets with the same fervor that a lama cherishes his prayer wheel.
Another curious habit of Dave’s was his custom upon arriving in the morning of sharpening his lead pencils. No matter how many calls came in over the wire, Dave had to sharpen his pencils first. His contention was that if he were to postpone this important task the pencils would never be sharpened. And in Dave’s mind it was a matter of the utmost importance to inscribe his characters in a delicate, legible, ornate hand. That was his proud contribution to the messenger service, the record which would remain after he had gone and testify in golden symbols to his industry and thoroughness.
But in every other respect Dave was a rogue, a scalawag. Almost as unprepossessing as Prigozi, though infinitely more humorous, his one ambition was to parade as a Don Juan. There was never any telling on whom his fancy might fall. In his messenger days he had been known to consort with charwomen, burlesque stars, midwives—any woman, in fact, who was sufficiently declassee and repulsive to attract him. On one occasion his appetite had led him right up to the Vice-President’s sanctuary. He had been on the trail of a big Senegambian whose bust bewildered him. Such temerity can only be faintly apprehended when one realizes with what trepidation Dave usually listened to the Vice-President’s voice.
But of this, later. Now he was about to close shop, as he expressed it, and in accordance with time-honored tradition had brought over the “slate” for Moloch to glance at.
“You know there’s a strike brewing, Dave?”
“I should worry,” he replied, grinning from ear to ear.
“But that means you won’t be able to take your wife to the hospital tomorrow morning, old man.”
“Just as you say, Mister Moloch. She can have it done next week.” He spoke as though it were a plumbing job and not an ovarian operation.
Prigozi’s professional ardor was aroused.
“What’s ailing your missus, Dave?”
Dave blushed, hemmed and hawed, looked confusedly at the two, and finally stuttered:
”You tell him, Mister Moloch. I can’t use those big words like you can. What did you call those tubes again?”
“You mean the Fallopian tubes?” snapped Prigozi.
“Yeah, that’s it. How do you spell that?”
“What do you want to know that for? You’d think your old woman was going to a spelling match instead
of a hospital.”
“Aw, I know,” said Dave, grinning and blushing some more, “but I want to spring that word on Navarro.” He turned to Moloch. “You know how Navarro looks at you when you pull a jawbreaker on him?”
The three of them laughed heartily. The operation was a success in advance....
“You’d better be running along,” Moloch advised. He looked up at the clock with sly humor.
“That’s right,” said Dave. “I’m working overtime.”
He laughed uproariously at this feeble crack.
“Look here, Dave,” said Prigozi, collaring him forcefully, and shaking him as though he were a dead rat, “you go straight home tonight, understand? No chippy-chasing in the subway or I’ll break your neck. That wife of yours needs attention. Having your ovaries removed is no joke.”
Dave summoned a tragic air. “You said it!” he observed.
Dave was about to go.
“Oh, Dave… before you go!” Moloch made a few mysterious
passes. Dave sidled up to him with a sheepish expression.
“How many?” he said.
“Oh, five will do.”
“Here, take ten,” said Dave, hauling out a wad of filthy greenbacks.
“Don’t spoil the boss!” exclaimed Prigozi. “You’ll never get it back, you know.”
Concluding this ceremony, Dave paused and bowed his head. It was Dave’s way of registering profound thought. “I want to say something before I forget it,” he announced sententiously. “Between you and me, I think messenger 785 has an ‘effective’ mind.”
“What makes you think he’s defective,” said Moloch. He understood quite well that this was Dave’s method of showing his appreciation for the privilege of lending his boss a few dollars.
Dave never noticed the grammatical correction, but sailed on blithely; there was more than a hint of braggadocio in his comments.
“Why, I noticed he always carries a book under his arm. It’s written in Italian. He says it’s a classic.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong in that, Dave.”
“Maybe not, but when I asked him if he understood Italian he said, ‘No, but I like to read it just the same—it makes me feel better.’”
“What was the name of the book?”
“I think he said Inferno … is that right? Is there such a book?” He laughed apologetically, showing all the yellow stumps in his mouth.
Prigozi nabbed him by the sleeve and pointed to some red lettering on a narrow cardboard strip which Moloch had tacked on the railing for the applicants to study while they waited to be interviewed:
DO NOT ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE
“Do you know what that means?” he asked. “No,” said Dave, “do you?”
“Well, read the Inferno and find out. Damn it, Dave, you want to get wised up. You can’t go on being an ignoramus all your life.”
“Aw hell!” grunted Dave, with a deprecating air, and trundled off like Florizel the Fat.
With Dave’s departure the two were left alone. The rest of the staff had disappeared. Moloch had formed the habit of remaining in the office for an hour or two after closing time, waiting for something to happen. His adventures usually began after five o’clock. Generally, one of his cronies dropped in for a chat. Sometimes a gang appeared and swept him out of the office like a cyclone. Frequently this period was taken up by the eccentrics whom he put to work and watched over with a cruel interest. With these he held long consultations in which he dipped freely and morbidly into their private life, gave hygienic advice, regulated their marital conduct, interpreted their dreams, allayed their discontent, studied their phobias and obsessions. Occasionally he borrowed money of them, which he repaid with interest. Or, he might accept their invitation to dine, or go to a show. If he thought there was an opportunity of philandering, he made it his business to call on their wives.... Some of the messengers were females. These he subjected to a rigid scrutiny when they made application for work. The addresses of the good-looking ones he kept in a memorandum book. When things got dull, he looked through these addresses and began calling them up— those with a star after their names first. Usually he was rewarded for his thoroughness.
The results of these observations and experiences he recorded with elaborate, painstaking efforts in a loose-leaf journal which he kept at the office. This journal also contained typewritten excerpts from the works of those authors whom he admired with an almost idolatrous fervor. The job of transcribing this material he entrusted to his secretary. It could hardly be said that he was unaware of the effect which these disclosures produced upon the mind of the clever, prurient virgin who acted as his secretary. She accepted the task with the serenity of a censor. Moloch awarded her the interest that a breeder might spend on a prize heifer.
Anticipations arose of utilizing the notebook as a springboard from which to plunge into a sea of more satisfying vicissitudes.
Meanwhile the loose, heavy yoke of marriage chafed. This fever of activity which consumed him, and drove him from one escapade to another, offering him knowledge, excitement, sexual gratification—what was it but a partially recognized rebellion against the stagnating influences of wedlock? He was unhappy with the woman he had chosen. She too was unhappy. They lacked something (was it vigor or understanding?) to repair the prosaic damages of erosion.
Moloch got out the battered-looking journal and began to scribble in it. Prigozi amused himself by snooping about—examining applications, mulling over the office correspondence— maintaining, as he did so, a running fire of sardonic comments concerning the slipshod practices employed.
Moloch’s grim concentration disturbed him. It was an affront to his ego.
“Humpfh!” he grunted. “What’s the item tonight—Luther?’
“No!” said Moloch, hoping to thwart any further inquiries by the inflection of his voice.
“When are you going to write that book? You have sufficient notes there to write The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.... Hullo!” he chirped, looking up. “Here’s the reason for the decline now.”
Hari Das entered. He was in civilian clothes, and hatless. His glossy jet-black hair rested with luxuriant ease upon his slender shoulders. There was a serene, jubilant air about him. His manner verged on boldness, though it contained no vestige of the brash, aggressive qualities peculiar to Prigozi. Neither was it born of secret arrogance. A lofty indifference to the world—that more nearly approximated it.
This, then, was the “nigger” that Twilliger took exception to … old man Houghton’s “shine” … the self-appointed Redeemer of Mankind in the twentieth century!
Hari Das was lighter in color than most of his Indian confreres, and by all odds the most attractive. Women, who are better judges in these matters than men, declared him to be astonishingly handsome. Almost unanimously their first exclamation of rapture proclaimed the charm of his perfect, gleaming white teeth. Perhaps that was why he laughed so frequently and so easily. It was a pity that he had ever condescended to don the hideous uniform of our Western garb. In his own regalia, as a member of the warrior caste, he presented a quite different front. One might easily visualize him in the role of member of Parliament, parrying suavely with the constipated intellects of the upper House- -juggling them like so many billiard balls. … In a cheap, ready-made suit a forlorn element creeps into this picture, for which he is not responsible, and which has as little to do with his personality as the frames one sometimes sees about a masterpiece.
“I came to tell you,” he began, and lapsed therewith into an amusing and wholly spontaneous account of his trials in Chinatown. The spotty, errant emphases he employed, in conjunction with his simple gestures, imparted a peculiar and altogether charming note to his utterances.
It was noticeable that although he had been introduced to Prigozi two days previously, when he first stopped into the employment office (Prigozi having introduced himself), he seemed to be only slightly aware now of the other’s exist
ence. He observed the amenities by a grandiloquent wave of the hand. Whereupon he proceeded to ignore Prigozi completely. Whether this was a sign of contempt, or in line with his royal indifference, it was difficult to tell. Prigozi, of course, was irritated by this jeweled disregard. His blatant self-assurance, his flamboyant insolence, all the muddy arrogance of the fellow was swept off the board, as it were. To his extreme surprise, he eventually found himself listening respectfully and, as the tale proceeded, growing more and more overawed.
Hari Das had dropped in, as he explained to Moloch, simply to pay his respects before going off. He had no apologies to make for his conduct. He saw nothing reprehensible in his tardiness.
Moloch said nothing about the color line. In his most affable manner he alluded to the importance that was attached to death messages.