Ghost Money

Shaking his Feathery gray head over my old whipcord trousers, suppressing a sigh in the manner of a family doctor at the deathbed of a difficult but time-honored patient, Mr. Vara, the Demon Tailor of Columbus Avenue, said, "We must face it." He was kind but firm. "I should be the last man in the world to belittle first-rate stuff somewhat the worse for wear---"Here, he pushed up his spectacles and looked at his reflection in the fly-speckled mirror. "But if I draw any more thread out of the waistband to invisibly darn the bottoms, and vice versa, there will be nothing left of this garment but a G string and a pair of spats. I am sorry." He shrugged.

"I've had those trousers 20 years," I said.

"An old coat is an old friend, as the saying goes; but old pants are mere hangers-on," said Mr. Vara.

"Perhaps you could just try?" I begged.

"Well, get into the cubicle and let me press your suit while I think."

"It doesn't need pressing," I said.

Mr. Vara gave me one of his incredulous, pitying looks. "Everything needs pressing, all the time," he said. "Especially trousers. This is the 20th Century. Up to 1900, trousers were round, like sleeves. Then one day my old teacher, Schultz, of Savile Row in London, said to King Edward the Seventh, 'As from now on all trousers are to have a knifeedge crease. Is this clear?' The king said 'Yes, Mr. Schultz' -- and so it was, even after Schultz threw the king out of his shop for criticizing the hang of a sleeve. Schultz even insisted that officers of the Brigade of Guards have their bootlaces pressed every morning. And you presume to argue the point?

"That is where I should be today, in Savile Row, (continued on page 132) Ghost Money (continued from page 85) laying down the law to heads of state. But Fate, or Mrs. Vara -- same thing -- decrees that I waste myself in this rat hole of a shop. Rat hole? Not even that. Rats desert a sinking shop. I joke so as not to weep. And you imply by your attitude that I solicit your business!"

I said, "I didn't mean to imply anything, Mr. Vara."

He went right on, "I could be a rich man if I were a chaser of customers. But I have always given a little more than I have got -- and proud of it! My temperament has driven me from pillar to post. It is my nature to do things for nothing, to advise, assist. That is why children like me -- they can recognize a sucker on sight. So I cannot help being poor.

"And yet, if it were not for my peculiar character, I should go hungry. This is not a paradox -- I mean to say that a lot of people who have come to Vara when they were in trouble remember him, you'd be surprised how many years later. Actually, I don't believe anybody forgets you, ever -- I am talking about people who enjoy remembering me, who would cross a busy street to shake hands with me. Others don't count. To this very day I have as customers people who used to call me Papa Vara 25 years ago, when they were children, and I had a shop like this on Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. They were always coming to me to mend their torn clothes free of charge -- many is the beating I saved some of them by means of a few well-placed stitches. I was also a surgeon for ruptured golliwoggs, ripped Teddy bears and mutilated rag dolls.

"There must have been three or four hundred children, all calling me Papa -- you should have heard Mrs. Vara on this subject! ... Did you ever hear of Gerda Grühn, the actress?"

Mr. Vara paused. I nodded. Who had not heard of Gerda Grühn? She played Bibi in Claude Willy's Mad Apples of Sodom, and swept the world; failed in motion pictures, but came away from Hollywood several million dollars richer -- or so the Sunday supplements said -- and even scored a succès d'estime with a volume of poetry entitled Insights. "Don't tell me you mended her rag doll," I said, laughing.

Mr. Vara said, "No. I made her one, with a fur hat. She still keeps it as a mascot. But her name was Gertie Green than, and she was the poorest of the poor. Also, she was the ugliest of the ugly and the awkwardest of the awkward. Her complexion was mud, her hair was string, and she was so shy as to seem almost an idiot. Her father had run away. Her mother worked sometimes late in the evening, running a sewing machine in a Seventh Avenue dressmaker's loft, so the poor child was lonely -- so pitiful, with her latchkey tied on a string around her scraggy little neck! I made her welcome in my warm shop -- a dump, but cozy to her -- and told her stories, and gave her things to eat; and I showed her how to hold her head so that people could see her eyes, which were amber flecked with gold like Danziger liqueur. I told her how beauty is something better than peach Melba -- that it is of nerve and spirit and intelligence, not stacked sugar and whipped cream -- and I made her read to me, to bring out her voice, which was soft but powerful.

"So, with what was born in her, she became the great actress you know; Gerda Grühn. And she is still like a daughter to me. And there are still times -- --"

Perversely, Mr. Vara stopped. One deals diplomatically with the Demon Tailor. If I had said "Well, go on," or something of that sort, he would have finished pressing my suit and dismissed me unceremoniously. So I said, "I hate to interrupt, Mr. Vara, but I have an appointment with my publisher." That did it.

"Let him wait!" said Mr. Vara. He continued...

• • •

... There are still times when my urchins of Tremont Avenue come to their Papa Vara to be spared a spanking. Now some of them wear $300 suits and $1000 watches; only the zippers of discretion get jammed, and the seams of pride come undone. I am not being poetical -- your everyday self is a kind of suit of clothes you have stitched yourself into. So you speak of catching somebody with his pants down, etcetera. The fact is, I am also handy at invisibly darning affairs as well as garments; anybody's but my own -- tailors always go shabby.

Now my little Gertie Green, as I was saying, always remembered me with affection, and for this I have always been grateful. That she came to me in the days of her glory was good; but I liked her best for coming to me when she was in trouble -- that was a proof of love. I was happy for her sake when she came singing into this shop and wanted to set me up on Fifth Avenue; but I was happy for both our sakes when she crept in, struck with that dark night of the soul which sometimes comes down over artists, and cried for comfort, and I could give it to her. She was happy when she fell in love with a nice young man named Cheyney Wood, but miserable when she thought that although he loved her too, his love was a kind of unearthly adoration inspired by his reading a little poetry book she had published. I don't know if you ever read it. She wouldn't give me a copy -- she said she was ashamed of that book -- so I bought one for $1.85. A nickel a poem, and not worth it. I mean to say --In ecstasy of osmosis bite, bite, through twilight membranes of Being,each into each ---- how come? I remember these lines because I forgetfully took the book home, and Mrs. Vara got hold of it. "What sort of talk is osmosis?" she wanted to know. She thought it was a bone disease. Talked herself into it and went for a week to an osteopath.

I said to Gertie, "I dare say when you read it, this stuff sounds good -- you could make an audience encore an income-tax demand. I don't understand it myself. But if your young man likes it, good luck to him!"

She said, "Papa Vara, I don't ever want to talk about those awful poems again."

"We'll forget them, the same as everybody else will," I said. "If this Mr. Cheyney Wood loves you for this alone -- --"

"-- No, no, he loves me for myself. I've told him all about you. He wants to meet you."

"Any time, sweetheart," I said. And so I met him. Gertie must have spoken well of me -- he seemed surprised that it was only a hand I offered him, and not a wing. A well-bred young fellow, Cheyney Wood, very fair and delicate, high-strung, sensitive. It was easy to see that this pair were in love. Well, if it was my blessing they wanted, they had it. They were nicely suited. Not only did he worship the ground Gertie walked on; he, also, lived for Art, and owned one of these galleries on East 57th Street where they have in the window sculpture made of iron wire and pictures of triangles. Luckily, he had plenty of money of his own, Gertie told me; he was not a businessman, she said. They were going to live in that fine apartment house that Stanford White built near the park in the West 70s... and please, wasn't there anything they could do for me?

"Since we are practically neighbors, you could give me your pressing," I said.

So, as you may have read in the newspapers, Gerda Grühn and Cheyney Wood were married, and there seemed no reason why they should not live happily ever afterward -- give a little, take a little -- as a surprising number of couples often manage to do. I saw one or the other of them every week or so. There is a distinct limit to the number of ways you can say, in everyday speech, that you are steeped in marital bliss. I was beginning to find Gertie's and Cheyney's happiness just a little bit repetitive. Then one afternoon, when Gertie came to pay a trifling bill -- she always liked to keep such matters on an intimate footing, turning them into little social occasions, and bringing a sweet cake -- it suddenly occurred to me that she was looking strained and nervous.

One feels a delicacy in mentioning such things -- you know? So I said nothing. I tried to make light conversation, but she didn't want to stay and chat. She kept looking at her watch. So -- we all have our off days, I thought to myself, and tried to put her at her ease by pretending to be busy. It was her custom to enclose whatever she happened to owe me in an envelope with a comic greeting card. Opening her purse, now, to take it out, she fumbled so badly that the purse slipped and emptied itself onto the counter. There was a shower of compacts, lipstick, keys and so forth -- and a fat manila envelope which, being unsealed, spilled out in its turn a mass of money, neat packets of five-and ten-dollar bills, all wrinkled and used.

I picked up one packet of fives which had fallen to the floor. You know how one notices trivial things in a moment of surprise? I saw that some joker had penciled a mustache on the face of Abraham Lincoln, on the topmost bill. "Here's a lot of money to be carrying loose in this neighborhood," I said. "What, are you paying ransom money to a kidnaper?"

She laughed, and said, "You always think the best of me, Papa Vara. How do you know I haven't kidnaped somebody, and this is ransom money I've just collected?" And then she was her confident, vital self again; and if I had been sitting in an auditorium instead of standing face to face with her, even I should never have guessed what hard work went into her assumption of that attitude.

So I was worried. It showed in my face. I told Mrs. Vara that I was working out a problem, and not to bother me. She called me everything she could think of -- Charlie Chan, Perry Mason, Sherlock Holmes, Einstein, The Thin Man, Nero Wolf -- but I kept wondering about Gerda Grühn, my little Gertie. She was a goodhearted girl: perhaps that bundle of money was to help a friend? Then why not a check, or a draft? Was she playing the horses? Again, why pay a bookie in old bills of small denomination, which are harder to get than new money -- if you can afford either? Was it possible that she was enslaved by a drug habit? I tried everything, but nothing fitted. "Eat!" Mrs. Vara told me, "eat!" I said, "This is the nicest meat loaf you've ever made, but I've got no appetite." She said, "It happens to be codfish patties," and left the table in high dudgeon.

I went to the shop early next morning, not having been able to sleep. My first customer was a young-old man who looked as if he, too, had not passed a quiet night; only his had been a voluntary insomnia. He must have been a good-looking fellow in a shoddy way, before he contracted a dry-martini eye and a bloody-mary complexion. He had a smile like opening a piano and sharpcut clothes -- good fabric that had been in bad company -- Italian shoes, French tie, and on his curly great head one of those stingy-brim hats. He put down a dinner suit, limp but still warm, and said, "I ripped it a bit under the arm, and somebody upset some champagne in my lap. Could you fix it for this evening?"

"It will be $4.75," I tell him.

"I'd better pay you now," says he, and pulls out some loose money. You know how, if you have several bills in your hand, the first you will break will be the oldest and dirtiest? Well, he drops a very crumpled fiver on the counter. I smooth it out. And what do I see? The head of Abraham Lincoln with a mustache penciled in!

I thought fast. "I may have to leave the shop early," I said, "and I do not employ a messenger. Better let me deliver this suit to your house a little later, eh?"

"Sure," said this type, "the name is Hamish Lafferty, and the address is 15-A Aldgate Arms, West 74th. Right?"

"Right."

When he was gone I examined the five-dollar bill very carefully. No doubt about it -- it was the same one I had noticed the day before. My blood ran faster. The mystery, such as it was, had got darker and the plot was thickening. This Hamish Lafferty, evidently, must be somehow dangerous, in that he was not in the least reluctant to tell his name and address. Everything about him indicated a low Broadway type sitting pretty on safe ground: somebody with an ace in the hole or a writ of habeas corpus up his sleeve, playing "heads I win, tails you lose."

I repaired his repulsive suit. It was a degenerate kind of garment, too snug at the waist, too narrow in the sleeves, and just a shade too blue; the buttonhole in the lapel was flabby and dead from too many carnations; and over it all hung a vague smell of somebody else's wife and somebody else's wine. So I steamed some of the hangover out of it, and hung up the Return Immediately sign, and walked over to Aldgate Arms, West 74th Street.

This was a good house before it went to the dogs. Such buildings pass from hand to hand, and each successive proprietor abuses them a little more and a little more to squeeze the last penny of revenue from them, giving them no rest, painting and patching them to the last. There was no porter. A melancholy janitor was spraying the building's throat with perfumed disinfectant -- I mean, cleaning the lobby. I said to him, "Party of the name of Hamish Lafferty?"

"15-A."

"Isn't he Lafferty the bookie?" I asked.

"He ain't Lafferty the nobody, far as I know," the man said. He was one of those shrugging, loose-mouthed, world-weary, underprivileged creatures that are paid to haunt the cellars of old houses in Manhattan.

"What does he do for a living?" I asked.

"He don't do nothing for a living, far as I know."

"Married?"

"Not far as I know. He's smart. Why buy milk if you're friendly with the cow?" He winked. "You be surprised what a nice class of dames goes for fellas like ---" He stopped, and stared at me suspiciously.

I gave him some of my cards, and a dollar, and said, "Any business you send my way, there's a little commission for you. OK?"

"OK."

I said, "I dare say you've seen one or two of my customers here ..." At this, I gave him a horrid wink. "There's a big redhead comes to see Lafferty, I know for a fact -- she was here yesterday."

He said, "Nah, not far as I know. You mean a brunette."

"No, she was a redhead."

"A brunette, in a veil. She had class! I like a dame to wear a veil," said he.

My heart sank, but I said, "I would have bet she was a big redhead in a green suit."

"You'd lose. Far as I know, she was a slim brunette in a black coat."

"No skin off my nose," I said, getting into the elevator. Lafferty answered the door in a brocade robe. I caught a glimpse of a dim room at the end of a tiny passage -- half a dozen slices of moldy sunlight slipping through the slats of Venetian blinds and lying half in and half out of an overflowing ashtray on the arm of an overstuffed chair -- and a whiff of gin mixed with shaving lotion and stale cigarette smoke. "Gertie, Gertie -- how could you so betray yourself and me?" I cried, in my heart. Then Lafferty took his suit and shut me out in the peeling corridor.

Sick and bewildered, I went back to the shop. I tried to reason with myself: Gertie Green, the last of the least of the urchins of Tremont Avenue, is dead and buried; here is Gerda Grühn, a grown woman who has made good the hard way. She is 34 years old. Somewhere in her past there was this person Lafferty -- personable, possibly charming once upon a time. And so now, out of kindness and for old times' sake, she gives him some money.

To which, a nasty, knowing little voice at the back of my head said, That's right -- in small used bills! Meanwhile, Common sense told me to mind my own business; and I answered Common sense right back, No sir! When my mind sees for a fact something my instinct says is false, one or the other wants examining!

So I made a parcel of some pressing that was to be delivered to the Woods', and carried it over to their place. I said to Gertie, "My child, you know that in me you see somebody who, if he is a friend, is a friend to the bitter end?"

"Why, yes. What's the matter, Papa Vara?"

"This is the matter. I am sick to the heart. You have the right not to answer me, but I have no right not to ask you -- Why are you giving money to Hamish Lafferty?"

Her self-control was something magnificent. She said, "Because he is blackmailing me. It is not any ordinary matter, Papa Vara. It's almost impossible to explain ---"

"-- You insult my understanding, child. I was not an impossible man to explain to 20-odd years ago when you were all in pieces like a broken puzzle, and alone in the dark," I said.

That got to her. She said, "You will laugh at me. You would be right to laugh at me -- it seems so absurd."

I said, "Very likely it is absurd. But children are never to be laughed at. Come..."

She went off at a tangent, "I love Cheyney, and Cheyney loves me. I think I told you once before, I'm almost afraid of the way he worships me, as a kind of embodiment of artistic integrity. He has created a goddess-image of me."

"So what then? Mrs. Vara has created a shrimp-image of me. Image!... What have you done wrong, or indiscreet, to pay blackmail to that souse in the stingy-brim hat?"

"If it were the usual kind of foolishness," she said, "I could tell Cheyney all about it. But it's nothing like that at all. Do you remember my book of poems. Insights? You remember that I wouldn't give you a copy?"

"You said you were ashamed of it. It was bad, but not all that bad," I said.

"I was ashamed to give you a copy, Papa Vara, because I didn't write those poems," said Gertie.

"Personally, I should be proud not to have written all that business about osmosis," I said.

"Yes, yes. But Cheyney thinks I did write Insights. We first met on account of that wretched book. And I've autographed hundreds of copies, and accepted congratulations from all over the world -- all under false pretenses -- and some of the poems are in an anthology, The Living End. A publicity man wrote them for me, for a stunt; and I allowed it, like a fool."

"This man Lafferty has evidence of this?" I asked.

"Lafferty wrote them," she said. "Unless I pay him, he'll expose me."

"Let him," I said. "A nine-day wonder. In a fortnight, the world has forgotten."

"Yes, but Cheyney would never see me in the same light again."

Extraordinary, you may think? Farfetched? Not so. A financial genius like Kreuger, like Insull, will go on digging one hole to fill another, knowing that he must collapse in the end -- yet refusing to know. A crooked actuary will try to outwit his own arithmetic. And an actress will make a romance out of selling her self-esteem to keep hopped up on unearned praise. "Be ashamed, Gertie Green, be ashamed!" I said.

She replied, quietly, "I am ashamed. And desperate."

"How much are you paying this Lafferty?"

"He asked for $5000 the first time. I gave it to him. Now he wants $1000 a month," she said.

I said, "Tax-free, of course. Do you realize how much you must earn, to pay somebody $12,000 a year?"

"I know what taxation is, Papa Vara. I'm not a 20th part as rich as I'm supposed to be."

"But Cheyney Wood has money?"

"Yes, but our incomes are kept separate. We don't mix our financial affairs. Our relationship ---"

"-- All right, all right, enough of your relationship."

"He won't even take commission for the sale of a picture," said she, tenderly.

"Well," I said, sighing -- with relief, I think, because I didn't want Gertie to be messed up in a sordid romance; although this was far more complicated -- and patting her on the head, "well, let Papa Vara think a day or two. Who knows? I am only a little man, but a mouse can stop a power station. Wait."

"My heart is a lot lighter now," she said, "just for having talked to you, Papa Vara. There's a sort of magic about you. How could you possibly have found out about all this?"

This was all very fine; but what was I going to do about it all? In a storybook I would no doubt lure Lafferty into the shop, offer to press his suit free of charge, get him undressed in a cubicle, and then threaten to brand him with a hot pressing iron unless, etcetera, etcetera. But I am not Hopalong Cassidy. I was thinking fruitlessly late that afternoon when Cheyney Wood came in.

"You look a little tired," I said.

"Art is a hard mistress," said he. "I wonder if you'd do me a favor, Papa Vara? I've got to get home and dress, and take Gerda to a party, and I'm late. I was supposed to leave this with a man just around the corner ---" He held up one of those attaché cases with a combination lock, like executives carry. "Do you mind if I leave it with you and have the man call for it?"

"So long as it isn't full of cocaine," I said.

He laughed, and said, "Only some papers and stuff. May I use your phone?" I told him to go ahead, and he quickly dialed a number and said, "Oh hello, Cheyney Wood here. Yes, I know I'm a little overdue, but I have it here. You know Vara's tailor shop on Columbus? I'm leaving it with Mr. Vara. No, I must run now. Yes, yes, it'll be right here I tell you! No. Yes. Goodbye."

He was sweating when he hung up. He said, "Somebody'll come and get my case, Papa Vara. It's ... rather important, so you will be here, won't you? He'll be here within the hour."

I asked, "Do I give it to just anybody who comes in and asks for it?"

Gertie's husband said, "Well, no. It will be a person of the name of Lafferty." I could only nod. He shook my hand. "Bless you, Papa Vara!" he cried, and was gone.

I looked at the attaché case. It was a costly thing, of fine pigskin. The combination lock had three numbers. Now you know, I suppose, that a man never buys a pigskin attaché case for himself -- a thing of such limited usefulness always comes to him as a gift. And the person who buys it, when the shopman asks what number she wants for the combination -- I say "she" because most attaché cases are bought by women -- almost invariably gives the birthday of the man she intends to give the case to. Cheyney Wood's birthday, I happened to know, was the same as George Washington's, February 22nd. I turned the little wheels to 2-2-2. It worked. The case opened. Just one little peep, I thought.

Not such a little peep -- a shriek! There lay the head of a kind of gorilla, a diseased gorilla, with bloodshot eyes; and also a pair of scaly hands with curved claws, horribly realistic. I had to look twice before I realized that these objects were made of some kind of soft rubber. Then I noticed that they bore a stamp, Lottalaffs. Sole Dist. Lullyfun Inc. And there was an envelope, fastened with those little metal tags that bend. I opened it. It was crammed with money -- used bills of small denomination!

I closed the case and scrambled the combination. It is a natural law that, when things become just a little too queer your imagination switches itself off. You banish conjecture and start counting on your fingers. Or beads. You crave something familiar, something simple.

Now, to begin with I had the fact that Lafferty was a blackmailer. Poor Gertie was paying him $1000 a month not to tell the world that she didn't write Insights. But Cheyney, also, was paying money to Lafferty. What for? And where was the significance of the rubber gorilla face and the claws?

William of Occam says (more or less) that when two guesses lead to the same conclusion, the simpler of the two is the true one.

So. First guess: Cheyney Wood lived a double life. His amiable, artistic, sensitive exterior masked a monster; a creature of the shadowy bushes, who crept out into Central Park in the evening and frightened women and children. Hamish Lafferty had discovered his secret, and was extorting money from him by threat of exposure.

Second guess: Cheyney Wood lived a double life. He ---

-- I snatched up the telephone directory, looked up Lullyfun Inc., and dialed their number. A girl answered. I said, "Please put me through to Mr. Cheyney Wood."

She replied, "I'm sorry, Mr. Wood has gone for the day. Will you leave a message?"

A sigh of pure relief almost lifted me from the floor. That was it -- Gertie's Cheyney got his living selling Halloween masks, Itchy-Koo Powders, cushions that gave out disgusting noises when sat on, explosive cigars, stench bombs, nude figurines that lit up, and apparatus for squirting water in your eyes and puffing pepper into your nostrils. Worshiping Gerda Grühn as "an embodiment of pure Art" -- or whatever it was -- how could he admit to such a trade? So he had an art gallery. And Hamish Lafferty had discovered his secret and was extorting money from him by threat of exposure.

I had not quite planned my line of procedure when Lafferty came in, sloppy in flannels, and said, "Hi there! Mr. Wood left something to be picked up, I think. The name you know -- Hamish Lafferty."

"Written any good poems lately?" I asked.

"Eh?" he said. Then, "Oh!"

I said, "Enough is enough, Lafferty. It's all up."

To my surprise he merely shrugged, and said, "Damn silly game. Couldn't last, of course."

"I suppose you know what I'm talking about," I said. "You have been taking money, with menaces, from both Mr. and Mrs. Wood. Do you deny this?"

"It's a hell of a good story, if I had the wit to write it," he said, and began to laugh. "But obvious. One or the other was bound to get wise, and then -- Boingg! Likewise, Pow!" He sat on the edge of the counter. "Here's your situation: Beautiful actress, talented performer but not very literate, signs her name to a book of verse by a publicity man literate but not very talented. Get it? Now, stink-bomb and sneeze-powder jockey, in love with actress, shyly approaches her through her poetry. And cut off my ear and call me Van Gogh, he opens an art gallery to win her respect! See? Publicity man knows 'em both, slightly. Both boy and girl have got to keep up appearances, but neither is anything like as well to do as the other thinks he is. Got me? Now all the time he knows that she never wrote that poetry, and she knows the real nature of his extremely vulgar business -- but neither thinks the other knows.

"It's not as complicated as it sounds, really. One day, things getting a bit tight, one of them blackmails the other for five thousand down and a thousand a month, as a price for keeping up the illusion. To get this money, the blackmailed party has to blackmail the blackmailer. And as it happens, they both use the same go-between -- myself -- paying a small monthly commission for his services. A curious state of affairs, eh?"

I heard myself asking, "How much did they pay you?"

"Gerda paid me a hundred, and Cheyney the same."

I opened the case again, took $200 out of the envelope and gave this sum to Lafferty. "This is the last you get," I said. "The game is over. You must never speak to either Mr. or Mrs. Wood again."

"Thanks," said he, sticking the bills in a side pocket. "I haven't any desire to. I'm not really cut out for talking tough."

I said, "You are sure that both Gerda and Cheyney came to you each of his own free will?"

"Quite certain. They both got the same idea, one after the other."

"Which of them started it?" I asked.

He looked at me closely -- shrewdly, but not with ill nature -- and then said, smiling, "Give me another hundred and I promise not to tell you!"

I blinked at him. For the moment I was too astonished to move. Then -- the way you do in a dream -- I opened the envelope in slow motion, and gave him another hundred dollars.

I said, "Oddly enough I rather like your company, so I am sorry to say 'Go away and stay away.'"

And so he did, and that was all ...

• • •

... Mr. Vara handed me my suit. "After all," he said, angrily, "who hasn't a little something to conceal? And sometimes, between high-strung people, a little bit of guilt can bring out a whole lot of tender feeling, can't it? They're in Rome now, they have two children, they're happy, aren't they? What I don't know I can't talk about, can I?"

"All right," I said. "I didn't say anything. What did you do with the other $700, or however much it was?"

"I thought about it for weeks. I couldn't give it to one or the other without upsetting a very fine balance of things. So I decided to abolish it. I gave it to Mrs. Vara."

So saying, he waved me out of the shop.