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“Whenever I try that I get nothing but a dirty ear,” I said.

“Who knows, I may get to interview Chiang Kai-shek before he kicks off.”

“I can’t imagine that he has anything to tell you.”

“Oh, I can take care of that,” said Thaxter.

“How about getting out of this office?” I said.

“Why don’t you, for once, go along with me and do the thing my style. Not to overprotect. Let the interesting thing happen. How bad can it be? We can talk just as well here as anywhere. Tell me what’s going on personally, what’s with you?”

Whenever Thaxter and I met we had at least one intimate conversation. I spoke freely to him and let myself go. In spite of his eccentric nonsense, and my own, there was a bond between us. I was able to talk to Thaxter. At times I told myself that talking to him was as good for me as psychoanalysis. Over the years, the cost had been about the same. Thaxter could elicit what I was really thinking. A more serious learned friend like Richard Durnwald would not listen when I tried to discuss the ideas of Rudolf Steiner. “Nonsense!” he said. “Simply nonsense! I’ve looked into that.” In the learned world anthroposophy was not respectable. Durnwald dismissed the subject sharply because he wished to protect his esteem for me. But Thaxter said, “What is this Consciousness Soul, and how do you explain the theory that our bones are crystallized out of the cosmos itself?”

“I’m glad you asked me that,” I said. But before I could begin I saw Cantabile approaching. No, he didn’t approach, he descended on us in a peculiar way, as if he weren’t using the floor with its carpeting but had found some other material basis.

“Let me borrow this,” he said, and took up the black dude hat with the swerving brim. “All right,” he said, promotional and tense. “Get up, Charlie. Let’s go and visit the man.” He gave my body a rough lift. Thaxter also rose from the orange loveseat but Cantabile pushed him down again and said, “Not you. One at a time.” He took me with him to the presidential door. There, he paused. “Look,” he said, “you let me do the talking. It’s a special situation.”

“This is one more of your original productions, I see. But no money is going to change hands.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t really have done that to you. Who else but a guy in bad trouble would give you three for two? You saw the item in the paper, hey?”

“I certainly did,” I said. “And what if I hadn’t?”

“I wouldn’t let you get hurt. You passed my test. We’re friends. Come meet the guy anyway. I figure it’s like your duty to examine American society from White House to Skid Row. Now all I want you to do is stand still while I say a few words. You were a terrific straight man yesterday. There was no harm in that, was there?” He belted my coat tightly as he spoke and put Thaxter’s hat on my head. The door to Stronson’s office opened before I could get away.

The financier was standing beside his desk, one of those deep executive desks of the Mussolini type. The picture in the paper was misleading in one respect only—I had expected a bigger man. Stronson was a fat boy, his hair light brown and his face sallow. In build he resembled Billy Srole. Brown curls covered his short neck. The impression he made was not agreeable. There was something buttocky about his cheeks. He wore a tur-tleneck shirt, and swinging ornaments, chains, charms hung on his chest. The pageboy bob gave him a pig-in-a-wig appearance. Platform shoes increased his height.

Cantabile had brought me here to threaten this man. “Take a good look at my associate, Stronson,” he said. “He’s the one I told you about. Study him. You’ll see him again. He’ll catch up with you. In a restaurant, in a garage, in a movie, in an elevator.” To me he said, “That’s all. Go wait outside.” He faced me toward the door.

I had turned to ice. Then I was horrified. Even to be a dummy impersonating a murderer was dreadful. But before I could indignantly deny, remove the hat, stop Cantabile’s bluff, the voice of Stronson’s receptionist came, enormously amplified and room-filling, from the slotted box on