“I don’t know.”
“What are you going to do in New York?” he asked curiously.
“I’m sure I don’t know. There’ll be plenty to do, I suppose.”
“You bet,” he said, blinking rapidly, “there’s always something doing in that little old town.” He slapped his knee: “Palla,” he said, “I’m thinking of going into the movie business.”
“Really?”
“Yes, I’m considering it. Slovaks and bum farms are played out. There’s no money in Shadow Hill–or if there is, it’s locked up–or the income tax has paralysed it. No, I’m through. There’s nothing doing in land; no commissions. And I’m considering a quick getaway.”
“Where do you expect to go?”
“Say, Palla, when you kiss your old home good-bye, there’s only one place to go. Get me?”
“New York?” she inquired, amused.
“That’s me! There’s a guy down there I used to correspond with–a feller named Puma–Angelo Puma–not a regular wop, as you might say, but there’s some wop in him, judging by his map–or Mex–or kike, maybe–or something. Anyway, he’s in the moving picture business–The Ultra-Fillum Company. I guess there’s a mint o’ money in fillums.”
She nodded, a trifle bored.
“I got a chance to go in with Angelo Puma,” he said, snapping his eyes.
“Really?”
“You know, Palla, I’ve made a little money, too, since you been over there living with the Queen of Russia.”
“I’m very glad, Blinky.”
“Oh, it ain’t much. And,” he added shrewdly, “it ain’t so paltry, neither. Thank the Lord, I made hay while the Slovaks lasted… So,” he added, getting up from his chair, “maybe I’ll see you down there in New York, some day–”
He hesitated, his blinking eyes redly intent on her as she rose to her slim height.
“Say, Palla.”
She looked at him inquiringly.
“Ever thought of the movies?”
“As an investment?”
“Well–that, too. There’s big money in it. But I meant–I mean–it strikes me you’d make a bird of a movie queen.”
The suggestion mildly amused her.
“I mean it,” he insisted. “Grab it from me, Palla, you’ve got the shape, and you got the looks and you got the walk and the ways and the education. You got something peculiar–like you had been born a rich swell–I mean you kinda naturally act that way–kinda cocksure of yourself. Maybe you got it living with that Queen–”
Palla laughed outright.
“So you think because I’ve seen a queen I ought to know how to act like a movie queen?”
“Well,” he said, picking up his hat, “maybe if I go in with Angelo Puma some day I’ll see you again and we’ll talk it over.”
She shook hands with him.
“Be good,” he called back as she closed the front door behind him.
The early winter night had fallen over Shadow Hill. Palla turned on the electric light, stood for a while looking sombrely at the framed photographs of her father and mother, then, feeling lonely, went into the kitchen where Martha was busy with preparations for dinner.
“Martha,” she said, “I’m going to New York.”
“Well, for the land’s sake–”
“Yes, and I’m going day after to-morrow.”
“What on earth makes you act like a gypsy, Palla?” she demanded querulously, seasoning the soup and tasting it. “Your pa and ma wasn’t like that. They was satisfied to set and rest a mite after being away. But you’ve been gone four years ’n more, and now you’re up and off again, hippity-skip! clippity-clip!–”
“I’m just going to run down to New York and look about. I want to look around and see what–”
“That’s you, Palla! That’s what you allus was doing as a child–allus looking about you with your wide brown eyes, to see what you could see in the world!.. You know what curiosity did to the cat?”
“What?”
“Pinched her paw in the mouse-trap.”
“I’ll be careful,” said the girl, laughing.
CHAPTER V
In touch with his unexciting business again, after many months of glorious absence, and seated once more at his abhorred yellow-oak desk, young Shotwell discovered it was anything except agreeable for him to gather up the ravelled thrums of civilian life after the thrilling taste of service over seas.
For him, so long accustomed to excitement, the zest of living seemed to die with the signing of the armistice.
In fact, since the Argonne drive, all luck seemed to have deserted him; for in the very middle of operations he had been sent back to the United States as instructor; and there the armistice had now caught him. Furthermore, then, before he realised what dreadful thing was happening to him, he had been politely assigned to that vague limbo supposedly inhabited by a mythical organisation known as The Officers’ Reserve Corps, and had been given indefinite leave of absence preliminary to being mustered out of the service of the United States.
To part from his uniform was agonising, and he berated the fate that pried him loose from tunic and puttees. So disgusted was he that, although the Government allowed three months longer before discarding uniforms, he shed his in disgust for “cits.”
But James Shotwell, Jr., was not the only man bewildered and annoyed by the rapidity of events which followed the first days of demobilisation. Half a dozen other young fellows in the big real estate offices of Clarence Sharrow & Co. found themselves yanked out of uniform and seated once more at their familiar, uninviting desks of yellow oak–very young men, mostly, assigned to various camps of special three-month instruction; and now cruelly interrupted while scrambling frantically after commissions in machine-gun companies, field artillery, flying units, and tank corps.
And there they were, back again at the old grind before they could realise their horrid predicament–the majority already glum and restless under the reaction, and hating Shotwell, who, among them all, had been the only man to cross the sea.
This war-worn and envied veteran of a few months, perfectly aware that his military career had ended, was now trying to accept the situation and habituate himself to the loathly technique of commerce.
Out of uniform, out of humour, out of touch with the arts of peace; still, at times, all a-quiver with the nervous shock of his experience, it was very hard for him to speak respectfully to Mr. Sharrow.
As instructor to rookie aspirants he would have been somebody: he had already been somebody as a lieutenant of infantry in the thunderous scheme of things in the Argonne.
But in the offices of Clarence Sharrow & Co. he was merely a rather nice-looking civilian subordinate, whose duties were to aid clients in the selection and purchase of residences, advise them, consult with them, make appointments to show them dwelling houses, vacant or still tenanted, and in every stage of repair or decrepitude.
On the wall beside his desk hung a tinted map of the metropolis. Upon a table at his elbow were piled ponderous tomes depicting the Bronx in all its beauty, and giving details of suburban sewers. Other volumes contained maps of the fashionable residential district, showing every consecrated block and the exact location as well as the linear dimensions of every awesome residence and back yard from Washington Square to Yorkville.
By referring to a note-book which he carried in his breast pocket, young