Free Evening of the Good Samaritan by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page A

it.
    “I’m not a family man, Mike, for one thing,” he said in tentative protest.
    “You’re a bachelor! Sure, the men will envy you and the women covet you. That’s an asset in these times. Many’s the poor gob who’s wished himself without a family having to put them and himself on relief.”
    “And I wouldn’t want the muckrakers poking around in my private affairs,” Winthrop said, coming as close to putting the fact before Mike as he intended to.
    “Isn’t that the beauty of being a bachelor?” Mike cried. “The people make allowances. I tell you, whether or not allowances are needed, the people make them. The man you don’t have to allow anything to just isn’t human.” Mike gave himself a thump on the chest. “My own heart is a Pandora’s Box.”
    Winthrop tilted his chair back and laughed heartily; it was a great, booming laugh that seemed to bounce off the ceiling. He put his hands in his pockets. “Let me think about it for a day or so, Mike. I’ll let you know.”
    “You’ll have to file before the end of the week.”
    “If I file at all.”
    Mike studied the nub of cigar that had gone dead in his fingers. “You might find, Alex, that a good man to have in your corner—he might even run things for you, and I’d say he’s a comer himself, having got his start with the New Deal in Washington—young George Bergner. You know him, don’t you? Sure, you must, he lives in Lakewood. And you must know his father?”
    Winthrop nodded. The elder Bergner was one of the top surgeons in Traders City and a friend. Young Bergner was a lawyer … which, Winthrop supposed,—but with no great bitterness—could happen when father was a gentleman.
    “That’s up to you, of course,” Mike said. He put out his hand across the table. “I’m glad we had this little talk, Alex. I know you’re a busy man, but I’m glad you thought of old Mike at a time like this.”
    Winthrop grinned and gave a good squeeze to the bag of bones which seemed to collapse in his grasp.
    Mike massaged his knuckles. “You’ll get over that handshake after a few thousand rounds.” He looked up then and puckered his face. “If you don’t mind, Alex, I’m going to stay and talk a while with Patsy. I’m thinking of getting a storage locker, and I’d like to buy my steaks where he does—if I can get his price.”
    Winthrop took his coat from the old-fashioned stand. He did not wear a hat if he could help it. His foot trod against a brass spittoon, tucked under the stand. Patsy’s was equipped for all comers. He glanced for an instant at the pictures around the walls—signed, in one case, up the dancer’s leg, the signature scratched among the mesh of the stocking—“Texas”—all the nightclub entertainers of the twenties had left their love with Patsy, who in those days called himself “The Dago Kid” and had managed to scratch his own name on the fat underbelly of Traders City.
    “So long, Mike.” Winthrop saluted him from the door.
    “Alex.” The old man beckoned him back, and waited until he had his full attention. “As we used to say at home … Mind, I said nothing.”

8
    W INTHROP, INSTEAD OF RETURNING directly to his office, turned up his overcoat collar and began to walk; apple pie was not the best solace for a nervous stomach. But with the food before him, he ate as some men smoked, to ease the tensions. He belched, wind into the wind. Inhaling then, he got the taste of soot in his mouth. They were poisoning the city with their smokestacks and their steam engines. To burn hard coal, they said, would mean economic ruin. He wondered. The city was ringed with elevated steel rails on which ran electric trains—power generated, of course, by coal. But the plants could be moved out of the city … and with them a population of voters. And downstate the only industry was coal—soft coal. He stood a moment at the foot of Marquette, the Wall Street of Traders City. The skyscrapers were fewer—and