The Rat Race by Jay Franklin (classic books to read .txt) 📗

was expected to die any minute. Well, now, the vet says he will recover. The second call, sir, was from Mrs. Tompkins. She asked if you had left for your home."

"What did you tell her, Tammy?" I asked.

"Why, what you told me, sir, of course, when you came in, sir. I said that you hadn't been in all day, but that I would deliver any messages."

Wait a minute, Jacklin, I said to myself. Let's figure this one out. We were blown up on the Alaska, off the westernmost Aleutians, and now we find ourselves at the Pond Club, in New York City, masquerading in the flabby body of Winnie Tompkins. This must be Purgatory, since nobody who has ever been there would call the Pond—or, as the initiates prefer, the Puddle—either Heaven or Hell. This is one of those damned puzzles designed to test our intelligence. My cue is to turn in the best and most convincing performance as Winnie Tompkins, who has undoubtedly been sent to Hell. If we pass, we'll be like the rats the scientists send racing through mazes: we'll get the cheese and move on up. If we flunk, we'll be sent down, as the English say. Ingenious deity, the Manager!

"Tammy," I said, "will you get me the latest Social Register?"

"Certainly, sir."

I sat down by the door and thumbed through the testament of social acceptability as measured in Manhattan. There I was: Winfred S. (Sturgis) Tompkins. Born, New York City, April 27, 1898. St. Mark's School, Southboro, Mass., 1916. Harvard, A. B. 1920. Married: Miss Germaine Lewis Schuyler, of New York City, 1936. Clubs: Porcellian, Pond, Racquet, Harvard, Westchester Country. Residence: "Pook's Hill," Bedford Hills, N.Y. Office: No. 1 Wall Street, N.Y.C.

"Thanks, Tammy," I said and returned the register to him.

Then I reached inside my coat and pulled out the well-stuffed pocket-book I found inside the suave tweeds. It was of ostrich-hide with W.S.T. in gold letters on it, and contained—in addition to some junk which I didn't bother to examine—sixty-one dollars in small bills and a new commutation-ticket between New York City and Bedford Hills, N.Y.

So far, so good. My sense of identity was building up rapidly. I felt in my trousers' pocket and found a bunch of keys and about a dollar and a half in silver. I peeled a five-dollar bill from the roll in the pocket-book and handed it to the club steward.

"This is for you, Tammy, and a happy Easter Monday to you. If anyone calls, you haven't seen me all day."

"Thank you very much, sir, I'm sure," he said, pocketing the five spot with the effortless ease of a prestidigitator or head-waiter.

I strolled out to the street—dusk was beginning to darken the city and already there were lights burning in the office windows—and walked across to the corner of Park Avenue. To my surprise, remembering New York, there were few taxis and those were already occupied. After about five minutes of vain waiting, I remembered reading somewhere of the cab shortage in the United States, and walked south to Grand Central. As I turned down Vanderbilt Avenue, I noticed something fairly bulky in the pocket of my overcoat. I stopped and dragged out two expensively tidy packages, with the Tiffany label on them. One was inscribed "For Jimmie" and the other "For Virginia."

This represented a new puzzle—perhaps a trap—so I paid a dime for the use of one of the pay-toilets in the Terminal and unwrapped my find. The one marked for "Jimmie"—who might be, I guessed, my wife Germaine—was a neat little solid gold bracelet, the sort of thing you give your eldest niece on graduation day. The one marked "Virginia" contained a diamond-brooch of the kind all too rarely given to a girl for any good reason.

"Uh-uh!" I shook my head. Whoever "Virginia" might be, she was obviously not my wife and the Social Register had not mentioned any children, ex-wives or such appertaining to Winnie Tompkins. And you don't give diamonds to your aged aunt or your mother-in-law. We can't have Winnie start off his new life by palming off mere gold on his wedded wife and diamonds on the Other Woman, I decided. So I switched the labels on the packages and returned to circulation in time to catch the 4:45 Westchester Express.

Here, I resorted to a low subterfuge. Instead of the broker's bible, "The New York Sun," with its dim view of all that had happened to the commuting public since 1932, I was coward enough to disguise myself by buying a copy of "P.M." in order to lessen the risk of being recognized by fellow-passengers whom I certainly would not know by sight. I buried my face in that spirited journal, with its dim view of all that had ever happened outside the Soviet Union, as I slunk past the Club Car, and did not fully emerge from its gallant defense of the Negro and the Jew until I was in the smoker, directly behind the baggage compartment. The train was fairly crowded but I was able to find a seat far forward where few passengers could see my face. I decided that my strategy had been sound when the conductor, on punching my ticket, remarked: "See you're not using the Club Car today, Mr. Tompkins. Shall I tell Mr. Snyder not to wait for you for gin rummy?"

"Don't tell him a thing, please," I begged. "I'm feeling done in—a friend of mine was just killed in the Pacific—and I don't want to be bothered."

He clucked consolingly and passed on. I was lucky enough to reach Bedford Hills without other encounters and walked along the darkened platform until I spied a taxicab.

"Can you drive me out to my place?" I asked the driver.

"Sure, Mr. Tompkins. Glad to," he replied. "Goin' to leave your coop down here?"

I nodded. "Yep. I'm too damned tired to drive home. Got any other passengers?"

"Only a couple of maids from the Milgrim place," he said, "but we can drop you first and let them off afterwards if you're feelin' low."

"Hell, no!" I insisted. "This is a free country—first come first served. You can drive me on to Pook's Hill after you've left them at the Milgrim's. Perhaps they'd get in trouble if they were delayed."

The driver looked surprised and rather relieved.

"Haven't heard of any employers firin' maids in these parts since Wilkie was a candidate," he said.

I climbed into the cab, across the rather shapely legs and domestic laps of two attractive-looking girls who murmured vaguely at me and then resumed a discussion of the awful cost of hair-do's. I felt rather pleased with myself. I seemed to have won at least one man's approval in the opening stages of my celestial rat-race. Now for my first meeting with the woman whom I had married nearly ten years ago, according to the Social Register. Surely she would recognize that there was something radically wrong with her husband before I had been five minutes at Pook's Hill. Why! I wouldn't know where the lavatory was, let alone her bedroom, and what should I call the maid who answered the door, assuming we had a maid?

CHAPTER 2

A pretty, dark-haired maid opened the door of "Pook's Hill" with a twitch of the hip that was wasted on Bedford Hills.

"Oh, it's you!" She remarked conversationally. "Shall I tell Mrs. Tompkins you are here?"

"And why not?" I asked.

She looked at me slant-eyed. "Why not, sir? She must have forgotten to eat an apple this morning. That's why."

"Where shall I dump my hat and coat, Mary?" I asked guessing wildly at her name. Suburban maids were named Mary as often as not.

"The name is Myrtle, Mr. Tompkins," she replied, and did not bother to add the "as well you know" she implied.

"From now on, Myrtle, you shall be Mary so far as I am concerned. And where, Mary, shall I leave my hat and coat?"

"In the den, sir, of course. Come, I'll lend a hand. You've been drinking again."

The girl moved quite close to me, in helping me off with my things and it was only by a distinct effort of will that I refrained from giving that provocative hip the tweak it so openly invited.

"This way, Mr. Tompkins," she said sarcastically, so I rewarded her with a half-hearted smack which brought the requisite "Oh!"—you never can tell when you will need a friend below stairs and it was obvious that Winnie, the dog! had been trifling with her young buttocks if not her affections. That sort of thing must stop, if I was going to get anywhere in my run through the maze. Too abrupt a change in the manners and morals of Winfred Tompkins, however, might arouse suspicion.

"Any news today, Mary?" I asked.

"Nothing, sir. The kennels telephoned to say that Ponto had made a miraculous recovery and could come home tomorrow. I had them send word to the Club to tell you. And Mrs. Tompkins, as I said, forgot to eat her apple."

I looked at her. This was a cue. I mustn't miss it.

"And the doctor didn't keep away?" I asked.

"Him? I should say not! Mrs. Tompkins felt quite unsettled right after lunch and phoned Dr. Rutherford to come over. He's with her now, upstairs, giving her an examination." She rolled her eyes significantly in the direction of the second story.

"Wait a few minutes till I catch my breath and get my bearings, Mary," I said, "and then tell Mrs. Tompkins most discreetly, if you know what I mean, that I have returned and am waiting in my—" I waved vaguely at the room.

"In your den, sir," she agreed. "The name is Myrtle."

The den was one of those things I have never attained, perhaps because I never wanted to. There was a field-stone fireplace, over which the antlered head of a small stag presided with four upturned feet—like a calf in a butcher shop—that held two well dusted shotguns. The walls were lined with books up to a dado—books in sets, with red morocco and gilt bindings: Dickens, Thackeray, Surtees, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dumas, Balzac and similar standard authors—all highly respectable and mostly unread. On the table, beside a humidor and cigarette cases, was a formidable array of unused pipes. Above the shelves, the walls were adorned with etchings of ducks: ducks sitting, ducks swimming, ducks nesting, ducks flying and ducks hanging dead. It was as though Winnie's conscience or attorney had advised him: "You can't go wrong on ducks, old boy!" Instead, he had gone wild.

In one corner of the den my unregenerate Navy eye discerned a small portable bar, with gleaming glasses, decanters and syphons. Further investigation was rewarded by the makings of a very fair Scotch-and-soda. To my annoyance, the cigarette box contained only de luxe Benson & Hedges—it would!—while I am a sucker for Tareytons. Still, any cigarette is better than no cigarette. A little mooching around the fireplace revealed the switch which turned on an electric fire, ingeniously contrived to represent an expensive Manhattan architect's idea of smouldering peat. The whole effect was very cosy in the "Town and Country" sense—a gentleman's gun-room—and I had settled down most comfortably on the broad leather divan in front of this synthetic blaze when I was interrupted by an angry, tenor voice.

"I say, Tompkins," soared the voice. "I thought we had agreed to be civilized about this thing."

I raised my head to see a lean, dark-haired, dapper little man, with a dinky little British Raj mustache and a faint odor of antiseptics, glaring at me from the doorway.

"Dr. Rutherford, I presume!" I remarked.

"Yes, Winnie," came a pleasant but irritated womanly voice from somewhere behind the doctor, "and I too would like to know what this means."

"Is that you, Jimmie?" I guessed.

"Of course it's me! Who else did you expect? One of those flashy blondes from your office?"

"Sh!" shushed the doctor reprovingly. "What about Virginia? What have you done with her?"

This required serious thought. The glass of Scotch was a good alibi for amnesia. "To whom do you refer?" I asked, putting a slight thickness into my voice.

"To Virginia, my wife!" he snapped. "We agreed—it was understood between the four of us—"

I shook my head virtuously. "I haven't set eyes on her all day," I said. "I don't know where she is and I refuse to be held responsible for her in any particular. She's your look-out, not mine."

"Why, you!—" The doctor started forward, menacing me with his surgical little fists.

"Wait a minute, Jerry," the contralto voice ordered. "Let me handle this!"

Germaine Tompkins stepped forward into the room and stood in the flickering light of the electric peat. "Tell me, Winnie," she asked, "has anything gone wrong?"

My wife was a tall, slim girl, with dark eyes, dark hair parted sleekly in the 1860 style, and a cool, slender neck. She was wearing something low-cut in black velvet, with