Free The Trespassers by Laura Z. Hobson Page B

so many years, that it’s sizable, that they think highly of her financial responsibility.”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you have to dig out income-tax vouchers. All of them paid during 1937.”
    “Just Federal?” Vera asked.
    “Federal and state. There’ll be seven altogether—that is if you paid in installments.” Miss Benson nodded. “Four Federal and three state. Then you paste those upon a big sheet and get two sets of photostats made. Got that?”
    Miss Benson nodded again.
    “Then you send one photostat of the seven checks, the letter from the bank, the affidavit original—send all that to Dr. Vederle.”
    “Oh, thanks; that seems simple, even yet,” Vera said. She smiled at him confidently, and the secretary left the room.
    “Just a couple of things more,” Meany said. “How long have you been here?”
    “Since 1930—that’s eight years.”
    “I’ll have to be rather specific about your exact position here. Can you tell me something about what your work is?”
    In her years at Ralsey’s, Vera Marriner had developed as the store had grown. She was still responsible for the accessory departments, though each one had its own head buyer now, and she served more as head stylist or merchandise manager for the staff of buyers in the group. She planned special “promotions” of a new color or fabric or style, and often set trends by following some instinctive sense of what new fashion would appeal to most women. She was also charged with management duties as well; many matters of store policy on labor relations had become a special domain for her, because Mr. Ralsey felt that the employees liked and trusted her.
    Meany’s question was not easy to answer, but she did it as rapidly and simply as she could. This time he listened to her without showing any reaction to what she said.
    “Right, I think I get it,” he remarked when she ended. “And you’d be willing to support the Vederle family for three years. I mean, you’d be willing to sign an affidavit that you would? I’m sure it will be a nominal pledge—”
    “That’s what Mrs. Willis kept pointing out,” Vera said, her voice tinged with heat. “Nominal? I’d really be glad to. People who could shut up and stay there—I think they must be terrific people—”
    She broke off suddenly.
    “I didn’t mean to make a speech,” she added, and looked at him, as if asking him not to smile at her naïve ardor. He wasn’t smiling. He was looking at her as if she and the office and the income and the things she had just said simply did not belong together.
    “You’re swell,” he said, and rose to go. “I’ll get this stuff ready for you, as soon as possible. They’re always worried on the other side, no matter how you hurry over here.”
    He was gone, and Vera walked to one of the windows looking over New York to the south. The sun was beginning to go down and the long, slanting light shone behind and between all the reaching, thrusting buildings. To the right, the Hudson gleamed its way to the Battery and the open sea beyond. Soon the four Vederles would be on a liner coming toward this city, this lovely, silly, mixed-up city, with its thousand devious moods and values.
    She felt like the city itself for a moment. She too had a thousand shifting moods and values, overlaid, intermeshed. But now one mood stood apart from all the others, clear and independent and unshakable. There was something good about coming to the side of a human being who was fighting evil—coming freely and voluntarily and gladly to his side and helping him to fight. It sent a warm, alive surge of happiness through you. It oriented you better to the world you lived in and would have to, before the next decade was done, fight for. Yes, there was something good in all this, something deeply and primitively good in recognizing an ally and helping him.
    Four days later, at breakfast, Vee read the morning papers with their load of nervous, crisis-laden news. Her eyes fell on a