The Ultimate Egoist (14 page)

His voice turned suddenly low, intense. “Now you want me to beg you to keep me. Here—” he flung a card on the table. “That address will always find me. And now allow me
my
gesture.” He took out his wallet, leafed carefully through it and slipped a five out. He looked at it closely, then laid it on the card.

“When you want me back, Margot, wire me. Use that particular bill—call it sentiment or a dose of your own whimsy, but use that bill and
no other
. When you send that wire—oh, you will, Margot, you will!—you’ll know what you’ve done. To both of us. Remember that, Margot.”

He had stalked to the door, turned to look at her standing there wearing her best half tender, half amused smile, said, “I wish I could brand your forehead, Margot, as a warning to the next poor devil.” And suddenly he was gone.

At first she had laughed delightedly. It was just such a scene as she reveled in, and he had done it so beautifully! She had laughed delightedly, crossed the room with a swift, approving glance at the mirror as she passed, carefully put the card and money away in a separate pigeonhole in her desk.

But she had not laughed delightedly the next morning when she
awoke, when the full realization that he was gone struck her, when she began to regret. At first she thought that it was because her toy had been taken away from her, but when days went by and she caught herself shaping a new way in which to torment him, and when weeks went by and every time she closed her grey eyes and saw, so startlingly clear, the fire deep in his blue ones, she felt a new loneliness; and when months went by and she could think of nothing but his dear, dark face, then she knew that he was more to her than a trained animal. And now she had learned her lesson, and she and Ace would—what was the man at the desk saying?

“I’m sorry, lady. This bill is counterfeit.”

I
WAS TAKING
No. 14 back to the base when it happened. The figures painted on her gray fuselage didn’t mean that we had fourteen planes. It was one of four crates—and I mean crates—that comprised our charter service. In the six years we had been operating, we had bought and rebuilt seventeen wrecks and seen the end of thirteen of them. One more just at this time would finish us. We couldn’t stay in business with less than four planes, what with the sudden influx of mining machinery into the north and the competition of two more airlines on our lake. And here I was about to wash out the biplane.

I smelled smoke. Try it for a thrill sometime. Sit in an old plane, closed in by a homemade cellulose cowling, with 8,000 feet between you and an uninhabited stretch of tangled forest called northern Quebec. Yeah, and with pontoons on your ship, and not a lake within miles.

Not much at first: just a little curl of it poking its filmy head up in between me and the crash pad, and bringing with it the unforgettable smell of smoldering fabric. Old 14 was built like a kitchen match, so far as inflammability goes.

A flier, according to Hollywood, is a man of steel quite impervious to nerves and hysteria. Hogwash. Flying is a job just like any other, and the men who fly are human. Speaking for myself, I can say that in that moment and those that followed I was in what the jolly old Limies call a blue funk. It was then I peered down through the floor ports and saw the tarpaper shacks that were called, collectively, Pont-aux-Trois-Rivières. (“Privvers” to you.)

There was my chance. The pit was rapidly filling with smoke, the fire was somewhere in there with me and I didn’t dare open the cowl for fear of starting a draft. But if I circled toward the base, the odds
were that I’d crash miles from nowhere in the middle of the woods. Reason told me to jump. Everything else, from instinct to sentiment, told me to sit tight. That was foolish, too, because there wasn’t one chance in a thousand that I’d be able to save the ship. That’s the point I want to make: that it wasn’t bravery made me do what I did—just out and out foolishness. So I held my course, with the straps of my parachute hanging on their pullaway hooks at my shoulders.

The smoke was filtering around my legs now. I figured it came from somewhere back in the fuselage. I took down my extinguisher, held the stick steady with my knees, poked the nozzle of the gun as far back as it would go and wet down the whole inside of the empennage.

Then I began to cough. My eyes filled with tears, and what with tearing my throat out with explosive, racking wheezes and trying to see the instruments through tear-filled eyes and the thickening cloud of smoke, it was no wonder I went so far off course.

That’s what happened. On a hunch, I bent close to the floor port and peered through. In the second between one watery blink and the next, I saw Corkscrew Point. Which placed me about 67 miles off course and speeding merrily in the wrong direction. Nice work.

I had a fair-sized puddle underneath me now, if I could stay conscious long enough to sit down. The lake was deep enough, I remembered from studying the maps of the area, but it was long and narrow, with a flirtatious twist in the middle.

I circled down, trying to do the thing right, trying to ignore the fact that it was getting insufferably hot in the pit. And I was praying at the top of my cracked voice that the wind would be right.

It wasn’t. It blew straight across the lake, not along it. I’d have to crab, fishtail and pancake at practically the same time, to sit down in that little cupful of water.

Those last 200 feet are a blur to me now. The only thing that stands out clearly is the coldly logical fact that came to me then: that I should have bailed out over Privvers, saving the chute and my stupid hide, and leaving the plane and the business to end themselves without my cooperation. I’d have been a hero in Privvers, dropping down out of the sky that way. I knew a swell little French girl there, too. And still I hadn’t jumped. What a dope!

I skimmed over the trees that lined the south end of the lake and threw her nose up, gunning down. As she lost speed and height I shoveled on all the coal she would take so she wouldn’t wing over, and when I had flying speed again, started crabbing. With about ten feet of altitude I straightened out, threw her nose up, cut the gun and waited. She settled to the water like a tired duck, and every strut and stay in her groaned. Almost before she had her scallops under I had thrown the cowl back, leaped out on the step and dragged a now flaming mass out from the pit. And as I dropped it into the quenching drink, I breathed 10,000,000 thanks to the Providence that watches over fools. Know what had been burning, probably from some airport bum’s cigarette?

My parachute.

N
OW THIS GUY
Drew—that’s the kind of man I mean when I say that any number of perfectly O.K. people have a funny twist. Well-to-do, happy, has a swell wife and two swell kids. A man that’ll go out of his way any time to help out someone else. You’d never think that he spent twelve years of his life planning revenge for a little thing like the theft of a pair of cuff links, would you?

Sure, they were good cuff links. Solid platinum, with a big diamond in each. A woman had given them to him, and that woman meant everything in the world to him. She’d thrown him over, and it hit him pretty hard.

O.K. So all he had to show for it was this pair of links. He made a sort of symbol of them. Carried them with him all the time. He traveled a lot on business, and he used to keep ’em under his pillow wherever he slept. In the daytime they were in his side pocket, underneath his wallet.

Well, he took a trip to Philly one time. Had to see a wholesaler down on the waterfront. He was coming down 2nd Street in his honey of a car—six grand, they say it cost him—and he got into a right-of-way argument with a coal truck. Nothing serious: crumpled a fender and broke one of his windows. But it was quite a jolt. Shook him up a little. He climbed out and went over to the truck driver, who looked a little green. Drew walked up to him, pulled out his wallet, made the guy take down his number and make out a report, and then said, “Don’t worry about this, buddy. We’ll say it was my fault. I’ll settle with the company.” The driver all but cried on his shoulder. Yeah, it might have been Drew’s fault. But more likely it was the other guy’s. One of those things: a tossup.

So he got back into that jeweled wagon of his and went on about his business. The links? You guessed it. Dropped them when he
hauled his wallet out. There was a crowd around, naturally. Waterfront bums. So when he went back to look for them, of course they weren’t there.

Maybe you still think that was a little thing? Well, it wasn’t to him. I tell you, they’d taken the place of something in his life. Having those links for his own was the next best thing to having the girl who gave them to him. For two years they had been to him what the girl was before that. It was like losing her all over again.

That’s when he began planning what to do to the guy who’d lifted them. Sure, it was swipe. Whoever picked those up had seen him drop them and waited until he was out of the way. Drew, after he spent so many sleepless nights over them that he almost dropped, used to dream about it. Always the same dream—sometimes twice a night. He’d see the links in his hand. Then they’d drop. Then someone would come and pick them up, and he’d stand there without moving because he’d be paralyzed. Then suddenly he’d be able to move and he’d take after the crook and whip the daylights out of him and search him. But he’d never find the links, not even in the dream. Then he’d look up, and he’d see the girl standing there, crying. Then he’d wake up in a cold sweat.

Well, he went on about the same. Worked harder, though, and made plenty. Still the same guy, a prince all around. Helping everybody, hating no one—except the guy who swiped the links. Anyhow, he got one break. He met the girl again and they’re married now. That’s the swell wife I mentioned. But she cried when she heard about the links. And he kept on dreaming.

One night last year he stopped at a roadside diner for a snack and got talking to the kid who ran the joint. It was a swell place, clean as a whistle, all chromium and black marble. Drew asked about it. The kid said he owned it and two others like it. Drew slapped him on the back. He always admired people who could build from scratch. So the guy told Drew that years ago, when he was in his early teens, he was broke and hungry and cold. One day there was a smashup—a truck and a car—and the driver of the car dropped a pair of links. He never even looked at the man, just stared at those links. He grabbed them when he got the chance, faded out and hocked
them for twelve bucks. Bought a basketful of candy and laces, saved his pennies, got in on a restaurant proposition—worked hard, and here he was.

Old Drew froze up like an iceberg. Suddenly he got up and went out. Left his car and hurried down the highway, walking that poison out of his heart. He hoofed it twelve miles like a blind man … well, he had gone out feeling a murderer. But he came back a big man, the only kind of a man he could be. Told the guy this story.

So that’s how he came to back me in this outfit—these restaurants all over the country. And that’s why we call the chain the Diamond Link system. Yeah, I’m the guy that stole a pair of cuff links.

C
HIN ON HAND
, Joye leaned on the rail, her eyes fixed on the horizon. It was one of those nights when one should be glad that there is a sea, so that there may be nights like this. There was a full moon, and smooth little waves yearned weakly toward it, bearing their bright black shadows behind them. An impulsive breeze smelling of Florida and clean salt snatched now and then at the fine hair that rebelled against Joye’s confining bandanna. They went well together, the night and Joye. Both were lovely in their soft, warm way, and both hid their untold strength in a moonlight mood.

A porpoise leaped near the ship’s side, almost below her, and startled her with its wheeze and its great splash.

“Beat it, son,” she told the porpoise softly. “This hulk may be a plaything to you, but it’s a jail to me. Why anyone would want to be around a dirty old tanker when there is an out, is beyond me. Beat it, boy.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said a quiet voice at her side. “If you’d been soaking in salt water for nineteen years you’d be pretty crusty yourself.”

She started violently and gasped, “How—who—what do you mean by sneaking up on me like that?”

“What do you mean by monopolizing my wailing wall?”

“For your information, shellback,” she said to the seaman, “I was taking advantage of a much needed solitude, which seems to have been rudely snatched from me.” She looked him over coolly. He had the face of a slender man and the arms of a wrestler. The rest of him was lithe and tall, and not the least bit bulky. “Satisfied?”

“Not at all,” he said politely. “This is not a passenger ship, and never will be. She’s a gasoline carrier. Yet every time someone pulls a few gold-plated wires and ships a Jonah aboard us, said Jonah
immediately assumes all privileges formerly reserved for licensed men and the crew off watch.”

“And you are—?”

“The 12 to 4 ordinary seaman, at your service within limits.”

“Do tell me all about it,” she said in the gentle voice that meant she was losing her temper.

“With pleasure,” he said, and added modestly, “the pleasure, you understand, lasts as long as I am the subject of the conversation.”

“I quite understand,” she said through tight lips. Little flecks of fire danced in her dark eyes, and she trembled slightly with the effort of keeping herself under control. That violent temper of hers had done her no good; wasn’t it responsible for her being here with this insufferable person, on this disreputable old ship?

“At twenty minutes to twelve every night,” the insufferable person went on suavely, “my friend the 8 to 12 A.B. wakes me with the words, ‘One bell, lug.’ I slide into my dungarees, grab my watch cap and come up ’midships, up here on the boat deck, where for fifteen minutes I smell the wind and say to myself, ‘Charming—’ ”

“Charming?”

“Yes, aren’t I? Charming, my dear lady—” he clicked the heels of his fabric-soled tanker man’s shoes—“is my humble name. ‘Charming,’ I say to myself, ‘it will rain tonight.’ Or, ‘It will not rain tonight.’ I am always right, and I say to myself, ‘Charming, you are an admirable fellow.’ Then I review my past and find it satisfactory.”