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Rat Race

<h2>CHAPTER 3</h2> "Winnie!" The voice that crackled at me over the wire had all the implacable tenderness of a woman who has you in the wrong. "Yes, dear!" I answered automatically, with a passing thought for my own lost Dorothy, marooned in Washington with a job in the O.S.S. "What is the matter?" the voice continued, in its litany of angry possessiveness. "What on earth happened to you? I've been waiting for you since three o'clock." "Where have you been waiting?" "Here—of course. In our place. In New York. Winnie, what's wrong?" Not a pleasant spot to be in, even if it was only part of a trial-run in purgatory. "It's a bit too hard to explain, Virginia," I said, "but something came up and I don't think I can go through with it. In fact, I know I can't go through with it." There was one of those pauses which make a whole life-time seem like a split-second. "Something came up!" The voice, now a pantherish contralto, purred dangerously. "Something went down, you mean. You see, Winnie, I've been talking to your friends. Johnny Walker, Black Label, that's what went down. At the Pond Club. Tommy Morgan told me all about it. You went to the Pond, had too much to drink, woke up about four o'clock—one whole hour after you had promised to meet me—and woke up talking wildly and then staggered out. Now I find you're back in Bedford Hills, and it—it's my birthday—" The voice ended in a choke which might have been a sob or a paroxysm of feminine fury. I summoned the old voice of authority, as inculcated at Quonset, into the well-tanned vocal chords of Winfred Tompkins. "Virginia," I commanded, "just stop making a fool of yourself. I'm sorry I stood you up but things have been happening. I just can't go through with it. I'll explain when I see you." "You'd better!" And the slam of the receiver left my ears ringing. When I turned around, my wife was smiling, with a glint in her eye which was far from sympathetic. "Poor Winnie!" she observed. "You'd better stick to your office stenographers and not go picking up red-headed married women in Westchester. You haven't got a chance." I refilled my glass and hers, in that order—a husbandly gesture which put me, I felt, on a solid married basis for the moment. "Jimmie," I announced. "I don't need to tell you that I'm an awful heel. Now that we've got the wraps off I wish you'd tell me what you really think of me and Virginia." Mrs. Tompkins' nostrils flickered slightly. "I never cared for bulging red-heads myself," she said. "When she was at Miss Spence's we called her Virgin for short, but not for long. There never was a thing in pants, up to and including scarecrows, that she wouldn't carry the torch for. When she married Jerry Rutherford it was a great relief to her relatives. She had no friends." "A very succinct summary, for all that it should be written in letters of fire," I remarked. "And now what do you think of me?" She took a long sip of her drink and leaned forward. "You're fat, soft and spoiled, Winnie, physically, mentally and morally," she began, "and you know it. If you weren't so stinking rich you'd—well, I don't know. There's something about you that's—Well, after you bought me from my parents, I wanted to kill myself and then I sized you up. There's no real harm in you, Winnie, it's not hard to like you, but you never were love's young dream." "What you say is absolutely on the beam," I admitted. "But while we're on the subject I wouldn't call Jerry Rutherford the answer to a maiden's prayer. That Hollywood doctor type with the swank suburban practice and the soft bedroom manner gets me down. He has only three ideas in the world and all of them begin with 'I'. After the first antiseptic raptures you'd have nothing in common but your appendix and he'd want to get away with that—for a consideration." Jimmie giggled. "You forget that he already has it," she said. "That's how I was first attracted to him, under the ether cone. I was sick as a dog and he held my hand and told me I was being very brave." "And sent the hell of a bill to me," I added. "Well," she asked, after a pause. "What do you really think of me?" "I think, Jimmie, that you're lonely, bored and unhappy. All three are my fault but they are driving you to make a fool of yourself. Nobody has tried to understand you"—which is catnip for any person of either sex, once you get them talking about themselves—"least of all your husband. You need what other women need—children, a home...." "If this is a build-up for obstetrics, the answer is 'No!'" she snapped angrily. "Skip it!" I urged. "I'm telling you the truth, not making a pass at you. We can talk some more about you in the morning. In the meantime, I think I'll turn in. I'm very tired, a little tight and I've had a lousy day." She flashed me a curious look. "Go on up, Winnie," she said. "I'll put these things away. You'll need your strength for the morning, if I know Virginia Rutherford." Guided by luck and the smell of pipe tobacco, I found what was obviously the Master's Room—with a weird amalgam of etchings of ducks and nude girls, including one Zorn, and all the gadgets for making sleep as complicated as driving an automobile. I was awakened in the morning by a hand on my shoulder. It was Mary-Myrtle. "You'd better get up and put on your pyjamas and dressing gown," she remarked conversationally. "Dr. Rutherford is downstairs and Mrs. Rutherford is talking with Mrs. Tompkins in her bedroom." "Stormy weather?" "I'll say so—and see here—" she began. "Sit down, Mary!" I ordered. She subsided on the edge of the bed and looked at me rebelliously. "From now on, Mary," I announced, "things are going to be different around here. I won't refer to what is past, because you're old enough to know what you're doing and so am I. If you want to stay on and really help me through a hard time, I'll double your wages. If you'd rather go—and I wouldn't blame you—I'll pay you six months wages in advance and you can clear out. But I can't be worried about you and your feelings when I have a big problem to clean up here. Will you go or stay?" The girl thought for a moment, then rose, straightened her apron and gave me the first friendly smile I had received, since my arrival from the Aleutians. "I'll stay, Mr. Tompkins," she said. "And here's a pick-me-up I mixed for you. Better drink it before you see the Rutherfords." "Okay!" And I drank it and it worked its beneficent will upon me. "Now I'll go and kill Dr. Rutherford, if you'll toss me my flit-gun and, thanks!" Dr. Rutherford was pacing, with surgical precision, up and down my den. He looked slightly more self-possessed than the day before and seemed to be in excellent physical condition. I guessed at the contour beneath my wadded black silk dressing gown and re-considered my original plan to throw him bodily out of the house for having come without my invitation. "See here, Tompkins," he said briskly. "We're both men of the world, I hope. Things can't go on like this. I was up all night with Virginia. You're not behaving at all well, you know, old man." I sat down in the corner of the leather lounge and looked up at him—a move which gave me a slight advantage of position in dealing with the higher emotions. "Let's not mince words, Jerry," I said. "Suppose you just state frankly what you think we should do." "Germaine loves me and does not love you," Rutherford stated crisply. "You love Virginia and she loves you. None of us wish a divorce. Hang it all, Winnie, we're civilized. These things happen, you know, and we might just as well face them. We agreed that the four of us should do as we liked, and no hard feelings." I sighed. "Jerry," I said. "What you say was true as of yesterday noon but if these things can happen, they can also un-happen. Whatever you and my wife decide to do is your own affair but I'm damned if I intend to allow her to use my home as a place of assignation and I'm damned if I'll let her become the subject of gossip. So far as Virginia is concerned, whether or not she is in love with me, I'm no longer in love with her and I'm damned if I'll play gigolo to spare the feelings of a bulging red-head who carries the torch for anything in trousers, up to and including scarecrows—myself included." "I can't allow you to talk that way about my wife, Tompkins. It's rotten bad form and anyhow we both know that people are the way their glands make them and nothing can be done about it." "Here, have a drink!" I suggested. "This is all under the seal of a confessional. I'm not quarreling with you. I'm consulting you. I don't love Virginia and I don't believe I ever did. If you wish to wriggle out of your marriage, that's your affair." "And it's yours, too, ever since that night at the War Bond Ball," he said. "Don't forget that I caught you—" "Rutherford," I replied. "As a medical man you have surely seen far worse than that. You can't sue me for alienation of affections, because all Bedford Hills is aware of Virginia's glands and because it wouldn't help your practice. For the rest, I'm willing to listen to anything as a way out of this mess." He paused in his precise pacing. "The four of us will have to talk it over," he said, "as soon as I have that drink you offered me." "Okay," I agreed. "The girls are in Jimmie's bedroom. Perhaps you know the way better than I do. I'll follow your lead." Germaine was propped up in a frilly four-poster bed amid a wallow of small satin cushions. I barely had time to notice that she was wearing a rather filmy night gown, when I turned to reap the whirl-wind in the form of five foot six of red-haired determination and curves. "Now, Winnie," she commanded. "What's all this nonsense?" I caught a tell-tale glimpse of uncharitable diamonds at my wife's breast and hastily averted my eyes from the monogram. "Virginia," I replied, "There's nothing wrong. Nothing at all. It was just that yesterday I realized that I couldn't go through with it. I don't pretend to be moral but I won't go in for mixed-doubles at my age. It's undignified." "What!" Mrs. Rutherford's mouth hung open in amazement. "Only this, Virginia. Whatever I have been in the past, I'm going to try to be different in the future. I know it's hard on you but—" The red-head laughed like tumbrils rolling to the guillotine. "Nothing to what a breach of promise suit would be to you, Winnie dear. Don't forget I have your letters." "Now we're getting somewhere," I remarked. "How much?" "Winnie!" my wife gasped. "It's blackmail!" "Of course it's blackmail," I agreed, "and there are times when it's wiser to pay than to fight. This is not one of them. Virginia, I'm not interested in buying back those letters. Save them for a rainy day. I'm going to settle with your husband. How about it, Jerry?" "You swine!" Mrs. Rutherford was going definitely Grade-B in the pinches. "Do you think that you can drive a wedge between me and my husband?" "No, my wife has already done that for me. He loves her and he tells me that she loves him. I've told him that they're welcome to a divorce but I won't have my house used for any hanky-panky and won't have people gossip about Germaine. They can make up their minds what they want to do about it." "You were saying downstairs, Tompkins," the doctor hastily interrupted, "that you would listen to any reasonable offer." "Check! What's your price?" "I want out," said Dr. Rutherford. "Lend me the value of a year's practice—fifteen thousand would cover it—and I'll get in a substitute and take a crack at the Army Medical Corps. They've been after me for a couple of years." "Done!" I said, "and if you like I'll have the bank dole it out to Virginia while you're gone, so she won't use it up too fast." "What about me?" asked my wife. "I thought Jerry said he loved me." "What's your price?" I asked. Germaine yawned and the shoulder strap of her gown slipped indiscreetly. "Since nobody seems to want me," she declared, "I'm going to stick around and see the fun. I wouldn't miss the sight of Winnie Tompkins trying to lead a changed life for all the doctors in the Medical Corps." "Me too!" spat out Mrs. Rutherford. "There's something pretty mysterious going on here and I'm going to stay until I learn all the answers." There was a tap at the bedroom door and Myrtle appeared, pulling two neatly set breakfast trays on a rubber-tired mahogany tea-wagon. "I thought you would rather have your breakfast upstairs with the Master, mam," she remarked primly, in a far too English country-house manner. "Breakfast is waiting for Dr. and Mrs. Rutherford in the dining-room," she added. And as she bent over the table and began to straighten out the breakfast things, the girl had the impudence to slip me a wink. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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