Root of His Evil (20 page)

Next thing I knew the phone was ringing and it was the middle of the morning. “New York calling.”

“Put them on.”

It was Mr. Hunt and the moment he spoke my name I could hear the excitement in his voice. “Carrie!”

“Yes, Bernie?”

“Baby, you’ve cleaned up. The stock opened at 102, ran up to 105 in the first half-hour, it’s still climbing—and what do I do now?”

“Let me think. Give me a minute to think.”

I thought and thought and then came to the conclusion it was a market question entirely and that I had better leave it to him. “Bernie?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know how high it’s going to go. Can’t you watch it for me and then—”

“You bet I can, Carrie. I’ll let it zoom and when it slacks a little I’ll close you out.”

“But today, Bernie. Don’t wait.”

“Trust me, Carrie.”

I got up, went in the bedroom and ran the water into the tub. I had just got in when the phone rang again and I answered. I was all dripping with water and had only a towel around me, but it was Mr. Hunt back on the line. “I’ve closed you out, baby. It staggered a little and I didn’t like the look of it. You can never tell how high they’ll bounce on a rally like that. So I went after it while it was still good. You’re out at 108 to 110, average about 109. I’ll give you the exact figures by wire.”

“Thanks. Many thanks.”

“And
thanks. I was on the bandwagon, baby. I cleaned up, hanging right onto your skirts.”

“Oh. I’m glad of that.”

“Some skirts.”

I got back in the bathtub and tried to figure. As well as I could make out, I had made something more than $20,000 on the deal. Counting what I had made before, it left me over $40,000 for my stay in Detroit. When I had finished bathing I went to the phone and rang Mr. Holden. “If you feel like some lunch, now I think we’ll celebrate.”

“You bet we’ll celebrate. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

The rest of that winter was one mad jumble of trains, hotels, strikes, meetings and worry. On account of his success with Geerlock Mr. Holden was made a sort of general supervisor and moved about from one place to another as he was needed. After we left Detroit he concentrated on steel mills and we went first to Chicago, then into Indiana and finally to Pittsburgh, where the plan was to move in on Penn-Duquesne, one of the large independents. I made about $10,000 during these hectic days but I was curtailing my operations more and more. For one thing, the nervous strain was becoming so great I wasn’t sure I could stand it, and for another thing, some instinct told me I had ridden a great run of luck and was about due for a fall. I dreaded that. I had made enough money to pay back Mrs. Harris every cent I had taken from her, and still have enough to live on for years. Or I could even travel, something I had always secretly hoped I would be able to do, in order to broaden myself. So I determined to return to New York. My decision was hastened, perhaps, by the increasing difficulty of my relations with Mr. Holden. Almost nightly now he was making love to me and insisting that we get married. Then, also, he was becoming more and more puzzled at my attitude, and hurt by it, for which I could hardly blame him, considering everything. But I wished above everything else to avoid a big farewell scene with him and so pretended that I wasn’t saying goodbye at all. I merely said I had been called to New York to wind up some details of my financial settlement with the Harrises and told him I would call him by long distance every night. This, I am a little ashamed to say, I fully intended to do, for I had made a little $1,000 commitment against Penn-Duquesne, on the short side, I mean, and I wanted to keep track of things so I would know how to handle it. He suspected nothing. He rode with me to the airport, for by this time I went everywhere by plane, and was very affectionate and urged me to get back as soon as I could. “I’ve a hard nut to crack this time, Carrie. I need you.”

“I’ll call you—every night.”

“I’ll be standing by—every night at twelve sharp.”

I reached Newark at one o’clock. I took a taxi at once to the hotel where I had reserved a suite. Then I rushed down to my bank, which I hadn’t visited in more than three months, and went over both my balances there, the checking and the savings. Most of my money was on deposit with Mr. Hunt, but I still had several thousand here from the original $25,000 I had deposited before I left New York. As soon as I had checked over my books with them I drew $5,000 cash and took a taxi over to Fifth Avenue. The rest of the afternoon I spent buying clothes, for I wanted to look quite smart when I made my appearance at Harris, Hunt and Harris the next morning. I looked up Miss Eubanks, the lady who had been so helpful to me before, and she outfitted me again.

When I told her what I wanted she at once advised black. This I agreed to, as I had never had a black dress, and I was quite excited to know how I would look in it. She picked out a model made of sheer wool and I loved it. It made me look slim, but it was very severe and I wanted something to relieve it a little. But when I mentioned this Miss Eubanks became quite upset and said the whole point of the dress would be lost if I added anything to it whatever. She then lectured me on the need for simplicity, which was something I always tried to remember but sometimes forgot. So I took it as it was, and she helped me pick hat, shoes and stockings to go with it, as well as a smart black handbag. Then we picked out two evening dresses, one light blue, the other cream white, and again they were completely simple and unadorned.

When we got through picking the shoes and stockings to go with these it was nearly five o’clock and then I got to the main thing that was on my mind. I wanted her to go with me to pick out a fur coat, and as I already spent so much money with her store I thought they might let her off. So she spoke to the head of her department and he said all right and she called one of the leading furriers to make sure they would be open when we got there. So then we took a taxi and went down there. But next door to the furrier’s was a perfume place, and before we proceeded to buy the coat I dashed in and bought some perfume I had always loved and had never been able to afford. It cost $25 for a little bottle, and I would have taken it if it had cost $50.

At the furrier’s they brought us into a private room and paraded models in front of me. Finally I decided on a mink coat, so dark and so beautifully made that it looked like sable. Miss Eubanks advised the three-quarter length, as she said it was smarter and more becoming to me. It cost $2,500 and I paid cash and took it with me. I asked Miss Eubanks to come around to the hotel with me for dinner and when we got there the package from her store had been delivered and we spent the next two hours trying on my things and even after she had gone home that night, which was around ten o’clock, I tried them on all over again and finally stood in front of the long mirror in the bathroom door in my new black street dress, big black hat and beautiful mink coat for more than an hour. I hated to go to bed.

Harris, Hunt and Harris were in a gigantic office building on Broad Street, one of the places I had gone into at the time I was considering a restaurant business of my own downtown. They occupied one whole floor. I had not phoned Mr. Hunt I was coming, as I could not quite resist the temptation to burst in on him as a big surprise. But when I stepped out of the elevator and gave my name to the girl at the window she looked up quickly and reached for her telephone. I had barely sat down when a gentleman appeared who said he was Mr. Hunt’s secretary and invited me inside. “Mr. Hunt stepped out, Mrs. Harris, but he’s in the building and I’ll have him located at once.”

He opened a door and began leading me through a very large room with bright lights and rows and rows of desks where people were busily working. A stir went over the place as soon as I appeared. Nobody stared but I could feel that I was an object of great curiosity and that they were all aware of me, from the girls, who started talking to each other with an elaborate appearance of casualness, to the men, who kept shooting little glances at me over papers they pretended to examine.

That is, all except one. Behind a desk at the far end of the room where I would have to pass him, sat Grant, and I could tell that he hadn’t seen me or noticed any of the commotion I had caused. My heart stood still when I saw him and I almost turned around and ran out. However, I kept following the secretary, and then suddenly I wanted to cry. Because he looked so insignificant there, with a green shade over his eyes and a pipe in his mouth, writing something on a piece of paper. Most of the sunburn was gone and he looked sallow and seedy. It flashed through my mind what he had once said about being a slave, and I wished he would at least take off the green eyeshade, which depressed me most of all.

But I kept sailing bravely along, and then I remembered my perfume. As I passed his desk I opened my coat quickly so he would get a good whiff of it as I went by. He looked up and our eyes met. “Oh, hello!” I said, just as gaily as though nothing had ever happened between us at all. Then I zipped through a glass door marked “Mr. Hunt,” and the secretary was bowing me into a big leather chair. But all I could think of was the amazed look on Grant’s face, and I began fumbling in my handbag so I wouldn’t show how much I wanted to cry.

The secretary went and in a moment there came a rap on the door. I tried to look casual and said, “Come in.” Grant was standing there, the green shade still over his eyes, acting terribly nervous and not quite looking me in the eye. I struggled for control so I could act naturally, and yet it was a second or so before I heard myself say: “Well! How have you been?”

“Very well, thank you.”

But he sounded shaky and queer. I held out my hand and he took it. “And how have you been?”

“Quite well, thank you.”

“You’re looking well.”

“Thank you.”

“And you’re certainly a success.”

“Oh, am I?”

“A Wall Street celebrity, I should say. The whole place has practically suspended activity trying to find out what you’re going to do next.”

“I didn’t know I was that important.”

“Oh, you’re pretty important...You’ve become prominent in the labor movement, Bernie tells me.”

“Oh—I keep in touch.”

“I got interested in it myself once.”

“Oh, yes. I seem to remember, now you speak of it.”

“I guess I’m not cut out for large affairs, though. It never occurred to me it could be used as a basis for market speculation.”

He sounded a little bitter as he said this, and I replied: “I’m afraid you disapprove of my career in the market.”

“Oh, no. I’m merely learning things. What’s your part in the movement?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t any just at present. I was a sort of traveling secretary.”

“Oh.”

He licked his lips once or twice as though they were dry, and I knew he was dying to ask about Mr. Holden, but I volunteered nothing. There was a long uncomfortable pause and then he said suddenly: “What name are you using now, Carrie?”

This caught me wholly by surprise. I had been half enjoying the foolish talk we had been carrying on but now the same icy feeling began to creep around my heart that I had had in the last days before he left me. “...Why—that’s something I hadn’t quite got around to. The court gave me permission to resume my maiden name, and traveling around that’s what I use. But on my bank accounts and in my business transactions I’m still using yours. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. I just wanted to know.”

“Nothing was said about it in the agreement that was drawn up.”

“No, I saw to that.”

“If my use of your name bothers you—”

“Not at all. In fact, it’s not on my account I raised the question. But mother—”

“Oh, ‘mother’ again!”

“...I guess I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“So after the way you treated me, after you let that woman wrap you around her finger like some kind of worm—”

“We don’t have to go into that.”

“Oh, yes, we do! After all that, all you can think of to say to me now is that you don’t want me to use your name because that simpleton finds it a little inconvenient to have a second Mrs. Harris around to spoil her solitary eminence! Well, I’m
going
to use your name!”

“It’s quite all right, Carrie.”

“But for a reason you don’t know anything about yet.
I don’t know my own name!”

“You—? What did you say?”

“That’s something the newspapers didn’t find out about me, with
all
their snooping around. I don’t
know
my name! And while I was perfectly welcome to use my foster-parents’ name, yours is the first name that was ever legally mine. And I’m going to use it! The court didn’t say I
had
to use my former name. It only said I could if I chose. I choose. I’m going to use your name. Not that I like it. But it’ll do until I get another which, praise God, may not be long now.”

This last slipped out on me, for I truly hadn’t given Mr. Holden a thought all morning. But I was so bitter over the whole discussion that I couldn’t help saying it. He wheeled around, his eyes blazing, caught my hand and tried to jerk me up so that I would be standing, facing him. “What do you mean by that?”

I sat where I was and slowly twisted my hand out of his grasp before I answered. “What I mean by it is none of your business. You left me, you let your mother pay me to get a divorce, and now I’m free. This was your choice, not mine. Isn’t that true?”

I looked at him when I said this and his eyes dropped. He walked around the office two or three times, picking up things and putting them down, and then abruptly turned and walked out.

A
MINUTE OR TWO
after that Mr. Hunt breezed in, kissed me and was perfectly lovely, but the meeting with Grant had taken all the fun out of my nice surprise. I explained briefly the reason for my strained manner, and switched at once to what I had come there about. I told him I was ready to pay back Mrs. Harris what I had taken from her, shut him up when he began to protest, and said I wanted him to have her at my hotel promptly at eleven o’clock the next morning, to have the money with him in cash, and then I would wash my hands of everything called