Alice Adams - Booth Tarkington (chrome ebook reader .TXT) 📗

here would be something I could probably get hold of pretty cheap. They’d want a lot of money for a lease on that big building over the way⁠—but this, why, I should think it’d be practically nothing at all.”

Then, by chance, meeting an agent he knew, he made inquiries⁠—merely to satisfy a casual curiosity, he thought⁠—and he found matters much as he had supposed, except that the owners of the big building did not wish to let, but to sell it, and this at a price so exorbitant that Adams laughed. But the long brick shed in the great muddy lot was for sale or to let, or “pretty near to be given away,” he learned, if anybody would take it.

Adams took it now, though without seeing that he had been destined to take it, and that some dreary wizard in the back of his head had foreseen all along that he would take it, and planned to be ready. He drove in his taxicab to look the place over again, then downtown to arrange for a lease; and came home to lunch with his wife and daughter. Things were “moving,” he told them.

He boasted a little of having acted so decisively, and said that since the dang thing had to be done, it was “going to be done right!” He was almost cheerful, in a feverish way, and when the cab came for him again, soon after lunch, he explained that he intended not only to get things done right, but also to “get ’em done quick!” Alice, following him to the front door, looked at him anxiously and asked if she couldn’t help. He laughed at her grimly.

“Then let me go along with you in the cab,” she begged. “You don’t look able to start in so hard, papa, just when you’re barely beginning to get your strength back. Do let me go with you and see if I can’t help⁠—or at least take care of you if you should get to feeling badly.”

He declined, but upon pressure let her put a tiny bottle of spirits of ammonia in his pocket, and promised to make use of it if he “felt faint or anything.” Then he was off again; and the next morning had men at work in his sheds, though the wages he had to pay frightened him.

He directed the workmen in every detail, hurrying them by example and exhortations, and receiving, in consequence, several declarations of independence, as well as one resignation, which took effect immediately. “Yous capitalusts seem to think a man’s got nothin’ to do but break his back p’doosin’ wealth fer yous to squander,” the resigning person loudly complained. “You look out: the toiler’s day is a-comin’, and it ain’t so fur off, neither!” But the capitalist was already out of hearing, gone to find a man to take this orator’s place.

By the end of the week, Adams felt that he had moved satisfactorily forward in his preparations for the simple equipment he needed; but he hated the pause of Sunday. He didn’t want any rest, he told Alice impatiently, when she suggested that the idle day might be good for him.

Late that afternoon he walked over to the apartment house where old Charley Lohr lived, and gave his friend the letter he wanted the head of Lamb and Company to receive “personally.” “I’ll take it as a mighty great favour in you to hand it to him personally, Charley,” he said, in parting. “And you won’t forget, in case he says anything about it⁠—and remember if you ever do get a chance to put in a good word for me later, you know⁠—”

Old Charley promised to remember, and, when Mrs. Lohr came out of the kitchenette, after the door closed, he said thoughtfully, “Just skin and bones.”

“You mean Mr. Adams is?” Mrs. Lohr inquired.

“Who’d you think I meant?” he returned. “One o’ these partridges in the wallpaper?”

“Did he look so badly?”

“Looked kind of distracted to me,” her husband replied. “These little thin fellers can stand a heap sometimes, though. He’ll be over here again Monday.”

“Did he say he would?”

“No,” said Lohr. “But he will. You’ll see. He’ll be over to find out what the big boss says when I give him this letter. Expect I’d be kind of anxious, myself, if I was him.”

“Why would you? What’s Mr. Adams doing to be so anxious about?”

Lohr’s expression became one of reserve, the look of a man who has found that when he speaks his inner thoughts his wife jumps too far to conclusions. “Oh, nothing,” he said. “Of course any man starting up a new business is bound to be pretty nervous a while. He’ll be over here tomorrow evening, all right; you’ll see.”

The prediction was fulfilled: Adams arrived just after Mrs. Lohr had removed the dinner dishes to her kitchenette; but Lohr had little information to give his caller.

“He didn’t say a word, Virgil; nary a word. I took it into his office and handed it to him, and he just sat and read it; that’s all. I kind of stood around as long as I could, but he was sittin’ at his desk with his side to me, and he never turned around full toward me, as it were, so I couldn’t hardly even tell anything. All I know: he just read it.”

“Well, but see here,” Adams began, nervously. “Well⁠—”

“Well what, Virg?”

“Well, but what did he say when he did speak?”

“He didn’t speak. Not so long I was in there, anyhow. He just sat there and read it. Read kind of slow. Then, when he came to the end, he turned back and started to read it all over again. By that time there was three or four other men standin’ around in the office waitin’ to speak to him, and I had to go.”

Adams sighed, and stared at the floor, irresolute. “Well, I’ll be getting along back home then, I guess, Charley. So you’re sure you couldn’t tell anything what he might have thought about