By warmly taking Purdy's part, Babbitt persuaded the benevolent Mr. Lyte to reduce his price to twenty-one thousand dollars. At the right moment Babbitt snatched from a drawer the agreement he had had Miss McGoun type out a week ago and thrust it into Purdy's hands. He genially shook his fountain pen to make certain that it was flowing, handed it to Purdy, and approvingly watched him sign.
The work of the world was being done. Lyte had made something over nine thousand dollars, Babbitt had made a four-hundred-and-fifty dollar commission, Purdy had, by the sensitive mechanism of modern finance, been provided with a business-building, and soon the happy inhabitants of Linton would have meat lavished upon them at prices only a little higher than those down-town.
It had been a manly battle, but after it Babbitt drooped. This was the only really amusing contest he had been planning. There was nothing ahead save details of leases, appraisals, mortgages.
He muttered, “Makes me sick to think of Lyte carrying off most of the profit when I did all the work, the old skinflint! And — What else have I got to do to-day?... Like to take a good long vacation. Motor trip. Something.” He sprang up, rekindled by the thought of lunching with Paul Riesling.
CHAPTER V
I
BABBITT'S preparations for leaving the office to its feeble self during the hour and a half of his lunch-period were somewhat less elaborate than the plans for a general European war.
He fretted to Miss McGoun, “What time you going to lunch? Well, make sure Miss Bannigan is in then. Explain to her that if Wiedenfeldt calls up, she's to tell him I'm already having the title traced. And oh, b' the way, remind me to-morrow to have Penniman trace it. Now if anybody comes in looking for a cheap house, remember we got to shove that Bangor Road place off onto somebody. If you need me, I'll be at the Athletic Club. And — uh — And — uh — I'll be back by two.”
He dusted the cigar-ashes off his vest. He placed a difficult unanswered letter on the pile of unfinished work, that he might not fail to attend to it that afternoon. (For three noons, now, he had placed the same letter on the unfinished pile.) He scrawled on a sheet of yellow backing-paper the memorandum: “See abt apt h drs,” which gave him an agreeable feeling of having already seen about the apartment-house doors.
He discovered that he was smoking another cigar. He threw it away, protesting, “Darn it, I thought you'd quit this darn smoking!” He courageously returned the cigar-box to the correspondence-file, locked it up, hid the key in a more difficult place, and raged, “Ought to take care of myself. And need more exercise — walk to the club, every single noon — just what I'll do — every noon — cut out this motoring all the time.”
The resolution made him feel exemplary. Immediately after it he decided that this noon it was too late to walk.
It took but little more time to start his car and edge it into the traffic than it would have taken to walk the three and a half blocks to the club.
II
As he drove he glanced with the fondness of familiarity at the buildings.
A stranger suddenly dropped into the business-center of Zenith could not have told whether he was in a city of Oregon or Georgia, Ohio or Maine, Oklahoma or Manitoba. But to Babbitt every inch was individual and stirring. As always he noted that the California Building across the way was three stories lower, therefore three stories less beautiful, than his own Reeves Building. As always when he passed the Parthenon Shoe Shine Parlor, a one-story hut which beside the granite and red-brick ponderousness of the old California Building resembled a bath-house under a cliff, he commented, “Gosh, ought to get my shoes shined this afternoon. Keep forgetting it.” At the Simplex Office Furniture Shop, the National Cash Register Agency, he yearned for a dictaphone, for a typewriter which would add and multiply, as a poet yearns for quartos or a physician for radium.
At the Nobby Men's Wear Shop he took his left hand off the steering-wheel to touch his scarf, and thought well of himself as one who bought expensive ties “and could pay cash for 'em, too, by golly;” and at the United Cigar Store, with its crimson and gold alertness, he reflected, “Wonder if I need some cigars — idiot — plumb forgot — going t' cut down my fool smoking.” He looked at his bank, the Miners' and Drovers' National, and considered how clever and solid he was to bank with so marbled an establishment. His high moment came in the clash of traffic when he was halted at the corner beneath the lofty Second National Tower. His car was banked with four others in a line of steel restless as cavalry, while the cross town traffic, limousines and enormous moving-vans and insistent motor-cycles, poured by; on the farther corner, pneumatic riveters rang on the sun-plated skeleton of a new building; and out of this tornado flashed the inspiration of a familiar face, and a fellow Booster shouted, “H' are you, George!” Babbitt waved in neighborly affection, and slid on with the traffic as the policeman lifted his hand. He noted how quickly his car picked up. He felt superior and powerful, like a shuttle of polished steel darting in a vast machine.
As always he ignored the next two blocks, decayed blocks not yet reclaimed from the grime and shabbiness of the Zenith of 1885. While he was passing the five-and-ten-cent store, the Dakota Lodging House, Concordia Hall with its lodge-rooms and the offices of fortune-tellers and chiropractors, he thought of how much money he made, and he boasted a little and worried a little and did old familiar sums:
“Four hundred fifty plunks this morning from the Lyte deal. But taxes due. Let's see: I ought to pull out eight thousand net this year, and save fifteen hundred of that — no, not if I put up garage and — Let's see: six hundred and forty clear last month, and twelve times six-forty makes — makes — let see: six times twelve is seventy-two hundred and — Oh rats, anyway, I'll make eight thousand — gee now, that's not so bad; mighty few fellows pulling down eight thousand dollars a year — eight thousand good hard iron dollars — bet there isn't more than five per cent. of the people in the whole United States that make more than Uncle George does, by golly! Right up at the top of the heap! But — Way expenses are — Family wasting gasoline, and always dressed like millionaires, and sending that eighty a month to Mother — And all these stenographers and salesmen gouging me for every cent they can get — ”
The effect of his scientific budget-planning was that he felt at once triumphantly wealthy and perilously poor, and in the midst of these dissertations he stopped his car, rushed into a small news-and-miscellany shop, and bought the electric cigar-lighter which he had coveted for a week. He dodged his conscience by being jerky and noisy, and by shouting at the clerk, “Guess this will prett' near pay for itself in matches, eh?”
It was a pretty thing, a nickeled cylinder with an almost silvery socket, to be attached to the dashboard of his car. It was not only, as the placard on the counter observed, “a dandy little refinement, lending the last touch of class to a gentleman's auto,” but a priceless time-saver. By freeing him from halting the car to light a match, it would in a month or two easily save ten minutes.
As he drove on he glanced at it. “Pretty nice. Always wanted one,” he said wistfully. “The one thing a smoker needs, too.”
Then he remembered that he had given up smoking.
“Darn it!” he mourned. “Oh well, I suppose I'll hit a cigar once in a while. And — Be a great convenience for other folks. Might make just the difference in getting chummy with some fellow that would put over a sale. And — Certainly looks nice there. Certainly is a mighty clever little jigger. Gives the last touch of refinement and class. I — By golly, I guess I can afford it if I want to! Not going to be the only member of this family that never has a single doggone luxury!”
Thus, laden with treasure, after three and a half blocks of romantic adventure, he drove up to the club.
III
The Zenith Athletic Club is not athletic and it isn't exactly a club, but it is Zenith in perfection. It has an active