第 35 页

he’s outwitting me, but I can see through him. That’s a good one on Guy." He

giggled softly.

"I don’t think you understood me. Do you understand this?" Keating pushed the

letter into Heyer’s half-closed fingers.

He watched the thin sheet trembling as Heyer held it. Then it dropped to the

table and Heyer’s left hand with the paralyzed fingers jabbed at it blindly,

purposelessly, like a hook. He said, gulping:

"You can’t send this to the A.G.A. They’ll have my license taken away."

"Certainly," said Keating, "they will."

"And it will be in the papers."

"In all of them."

"You can’t do that."

"I’m going to--unless you retire."

Heyer’s shoulders drew down to the edge of the table. His head remained above

the edge, timidly, as if he were ready to draw it also out of sight.

"You won’t do that please you won’t," Heyer mumbled in one long whine without

pauses. "You’re a nice boy you’re a very nice boy you won’t do it will you?"

The yellow square of paper lay on the table. Heyer’s useless left hand reached

for it, crawling slowly over the edge. Keating leaned forward and snatched the

letter from under his hand.

Heyer looked at him, his head bent to one side, his mouth open. He looked as if

he expected Keating to strike him; with a sickening, pleading glance that said

he would allow Keating to strike him.

"Please," whispered Heyer, "you won’t do that, will you? I don’t feel very well.

I’ve never hurt you. I seem to remember, I did something very nice for you

once."

"What?" snapped Keating. "What did you do for me?"

"Your name’s Peter Keating...Peter Keating...I remember...I did something nice

for you....You’re the boy Guy has so much faith in. Don’t trust Guy. I don’t

trust him. But I like you. We’ll make you a designer one of these days." His

mouth remained hanging open on the word. A thin strand of saliva trickled down

from the corner of his mouth. "Please...don’t..."

Keating’s eyes were bright with disgust; aversion goaded him on; he had to make

it worse because he couldn’t stand it.

"You’ll be exposed publicly," said Keating, the sounds of his voice glittering.

"You’ll be denounced as a grafter. People will point at you. They’ll print your

picture in the papers. The owners of that building will sue you. They’ll throw

you in jail."

Heyer said nothing. He did not move. Keating heard the cups on the table

tinkling suddenly. He could not see the shaking of Heyer’s body. He heard a

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thin, glassy ringing in the silence of the room, as if the cups were trembling

of themselves.

"Get out!" said Keating, raising his voice, not to hear that sound. "Get out of

the firm! What do you want to stay for? You’re no good. You’ve never been any

good."

The yellow face at the edge of the table opened its mouth and made a wet,

gurgling sound like a moan.

Keating sat easily, leaning forward, his knees spread apart, one elbow resting

on his knee, the hand hanging down, swinging the letter.

"I..." Heyer choked. "I..."

"Shut up! You’ve got nothing to say, except yes or no. Think fast now. I’m not

here to argue with you."

Heyer stopped trembling. A shadow cut diagonally across his face. Keating saw

one eye that did not blink, and half a mouth, open, the darkness flowing in

through the hole, into the face, as if it were drowning.

"Answer me!" Keating screamed, frightened suddenly. "Why don’t you answer me?"

The half-face swayed and he saw the head lurch forward; it fell down on the

table, and went on, and rolled to the floor, as it cut off; two of the cups fell

after it, cracking softly to pieces on the carpet. The first thing Keating felt

was relief to see that the body had followed the head and lay crumpled in a heap

on the floor, intact. There had been no sound; only the muffled, musical

bursting of porcelain.

He’ll be furious, thought Keating, looking down at the cups. He had jumped to

his feet, he was kneeling, gathering the pieces pointlessly; he saw that they

were broken beyond repair. He knew he was thinking also, at the same time, that

it had come, that second stroke they had been expecting, and that he would have

to do something about it in a moment, but that it was all right, because Heyer

would have to retire now.

Then he moved on his knees closer to Heyer’s body. He wondered why he did not

want to touch it. "Mr. Heyer," he called. His voice was soft, almost respectful.

He lifted Heyer’s head, cautiously. He let it drop. He heard no sound of its

falling. He heard the hiccough in his own throat. Heyer was dead.

He sat beside the body, his buttocks against his heels, his hands spread on his

knees. He looked straight ahead; his glance stopped on the folds of the hangings

by the door; he wondered whether the gray sheen was dust or the nap of velvet

and was it velvet and how old-fashioned it was to have hangings by a door. Then

he felt himself shaking. He wanted to vomit. He rose, walked across the room and

threw the door open, because he remembered that there was the rest of the

apartment somewhere and a valet in it, and he called, trying to scream for help.

#

Keating came to the office as usual. He answered questions, he explained that

Heyer had asked him, that day, to come to his house after dinner; Heyer had

wanted to discuss the matter of his retirement. No one doubted the story and

Keating knew that no one ever would. Heyer’s end had come as everybody had

expected it to come. Francon felt nothing but relief. "We knew he would, sooner

or later," said Francon. "Why regret that he spared himself and all of us a

prolonged agony?"

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Keating’s manner was calmer than it had been for weeks. It was the calm of blank

stupor. The thought followed him, gentle, unstressed, monotonous, at his work,

at home, at night: he was a murderer...no, but almost a murderer...almost a

murderer...He knew that it had not been an accident; he knew he had counted on

the shock and the terror; he had counted on that second stroke which would send

Heyer to the hospital for the rest of his days. But was that all he had

expected? Hadn’t he known what else a second stroke could mean? Had he counted

on that? He tried to remember. He tried, wringing his mind dry. He felt nothing.

He expected to feel nothing, one way or another. Only he wanted to know. He did

not notice what went on in the office around him. He forgot that he had but a

short time left to close the deal with Francon about the partnership.

A few days after Heyer’s death Francon called him to his office.

"Sit down, Peter," he said with a brighter smile than usual. "Well, I have some

good news for you, kid. They read Lucius’s will this morning. He had no

relatives left, you know. Well, I was surprised, I didn’t give him enough

credit, I guess, but it seems he could make a nice gesture on occasion. He’s

left everything to you....Pretty grand, isn’t it? Now you won’t have to worry

about investment when we make arrangements for...What’s the matter,

Peter?...Peter, my boy, are you sick?"

Keating’s face fell upon his arm on the corner of the desk. He could not let

Francon see his face. He was going to be sick; sick, because through the horror,

he had caught himself wondering how much Heyer had actually left....

The will had been made out five years ago; perhaps in a senseless spurt of

affection for the only person who had shown Heyer consideration in the office;

perhaps as a gesture against his partner; it had been made and forgotten. The

estate amounted to two hundred thousand dollars, plus Heyer’s interest in the

firm and his porcelain collection.

Keating left the office early, that day, not hearing the congratulations. He

went home, told the news to his mother, left her gasping in the middle of the

living room, and locked himself in his bedroom. He went out, saying nothing,

before dinner. He had no dinner that night, but he drank himself into a

ferocious lucidity, at his favorite speak-easy. And in that heightened state of

luminous vision, his head nodding over a glass but his mind steady, he told

himself that he had nothing to regret; he had done what anyone would have done;

Catherine had said it, he was selfish; everybody was selfish; it was not a

pretty thing, to be selfish, but he was not alone in it; he had merely been

luckier than most; he had been, because he was better than most; he felt fine;

he hoped the useless questions would never come back to him again; every man for

himself, he muttered, falling asleep on the table.

The useless questions never came back to him again. He had no time for them in

the days that followed. He had won the Cosmo-Slotnick competition.

#

Peter Keating had known it would be a triumph, but he had not expected the thing

that happened. He had dreamed of a sound of trumpets; he had not foreseen a

symphonic explosion.

It began with the thin ringing of a telephone, announcing the names of the

winners. Then every phone in the office joined in, screaming, bursting from

under the fingers of the operator who could barely control the switchboard;

calls from every paper in town, from famous architects, questions, demands for

interviews, congratulations. Then the flood rushed out of the elevators, poured

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through the office doors, the messages, the telegrams, the people Keating knew,

the people he had never seen before, the reception clerk losing all sense, not

knowing whom to admit or refuse, and Keating shaking hands, an endless stream of

hands like a wheel with soft moist cogs flapping against his fingers. He did not

know what he said at that first interview, with Francon’s office full of people

and cameras; Francon had thrown the doors of his liquor cabinet wide-open.

Francon gulped to all these people that the Cosmo-Slotnick building had been

created by Peter Keating alone; Francon did not care; he was magnanimous in a

spurt of enthusiasm; besides, it made a good story.

It made a better story than Francon had expected. From the pages of newspapers

the face of Peter Keating looked upon the country, the handsome, wholesome,

smiling face with the brilliant eyes and the dark curls; it headed columns of

print about poverty, struggle, aspiration and unremitting toil that had won

their reward; about the faith of a mother who had sacrificed everything to her

boy’s success; about the "Cinderella of Architecture."

Cosmo-Slotnick were pleased; they had not thought that prize-winning architects

could also be young, handsome and poor--well, so recently poor. They had

discovered a boy genius; Cosmo-Slotnick adored boy geniuses; Mr. Slotnick was

one himself, being only forty-three.

Keating’s drawings of the "most beautiful skyscraper on earth" were reproduced

in the papers, with the words of the award underneath: "...for the brilliant

skill and simplicity of its plan...for its clean, ruthless efficiency...for its

ingenious economy of space...for the masterful blending of the modern with the

traditional in Art...to Francon & Heyer and Peter Keating..."

Keating appeared in newsreels, shaking hands with Mr. Shupe and Mr. Slotnick,

and the subtitle announced what these two gentlemen thought of his building.

Keating appeared in newsreels, shaking hands with Miss Dimples Williams, and the

subtitle announced what he thought of her current picture. He appeared at

architectural banquets and at film banquets, in the place of honor, and he had

to make speeches, forgetting whether he was to speak of buildings or of movies.

He appeared at architectural clubs and at fan clubs. Cosmo-Slotnick put out a

composite picture of Keating and of his building, which could be had for a

self-addressed, stamped envelope, and two bits. He made a personal appearance

each evening, for a week, on the stage of the Cosmo Theater, with the first run

of the latest Cosmo-Slotnick special; he bowed over the footlights, slim and

graceful in a black tuxedo, and he spoke for two minutes on the significance of

architecture. He presided as judge at a beauty contest in Atlantic City, the

winner to be awarded a screen test by Cosmo-Slotnick. He was photographed with a

famous prize-fighter, under the caption: "Champions." A scale model of his

building was made and sent on tour, together with the photographs of the best

among the other entries, to be exhibited in the foyers of Cosmo-Slotnick

theaters throughout the country.

Mrs. Keating had sobbed at first, clasped Peter in her arms and gulped that she

could not believe it. She had stammered, answering questions about Petey, and

she had posed for pictures, embarrassed, eager to please. Then she became used

to it. She told Peter, shrugging, that of course he had won, it was nothing to

gape at, no one else could have won. She acquired a brisk little tone of

condescension for the reporters. She was distinctly annoyed when she was not

included in the photographs taken of Petey. She acquired a mink coat.

Keating let himself be carried by the torrent. He needed the people and the

clamor around him. There were no questions and no doubts when he stood on a

platform over a sea of faces; the air was heavy, compact, saturated with a

single solvent--admiration; there was no room for anything else. He was great;

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great as the number of people who told him so. He was right; right at the number

of people who believed it. He looked at the faces, at the eyes; he saw himself

born in them, he saw himself being granted the gift of life. That was Peter

Keating, that, the reflection in those staring pupils, and his body was only its

reflection.

He found time to spend two hours with Catherine, one evening. He held her in his

arms and she whispered radiant plans for their future; he glanced at her with

contentment; he did not hear her words; he was thinking of how it would look if