U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [344]
"Wel , I had a couple of hundred bucks saved up, I guess it'l have to go . . . try to hold her off until we can get a good exchange . . . and Henry, the next time you play poker, for goodness' sake watch yourself." The day before the first plenary session of the Peace Conference Dick was running into the Cril on to go up to see Mr. Moorehouse who had promised to get cards for him and Colonel Edgecombe, when he saw a familiar face in a French uniform. It was Ripley, just discharged from the French artil ery school at Fontainebleau. He said he was in there trying to find an old friend of his father's to see if he could get a job connected with the peace dele-gations. He was broke and Marianne the Third Republic wasn't keeping him any more unless he enlisted in the foreign legion and that was the last thing he wanted to do. After Dick had phoned Major Edgecombe that Mr.
Moorehouse had been unable to get them cards and that they must try again through military channels they went and had a drink together at the Ritz bar.
"Big time stuff," said Ripley, looking around at the decorations on the uniforms and the jewels on the women,
"How are you goin' to keep 'em down on the farm . . . After they've seen Paree?" Dick grunted. "I wish to hel I knew what I was going to do after I got out of this manys army.""Ask me something easy . . . oh, I guess I can get a job somewhere . . . if the worst comes to the worst I'l have to go back and finish Columbia . . . I wish the revolution ud come. I don't want to go back to the States . . . hel , I dunno what I want to do." This kind of talk made Dick feel uneasy: "Mefiez vous," he
-382-quoted. "Les oreil es enemies vous écoutent.""And that's not the half of it."
"Say, have you heard anything from Steve Warner?" Dick asked in a low voice. "I got a letter from Boston . . . I think he got a year's sentence for refusing to register
. . . He's lucky . . . A lot of those poor devils got twenty years.""Wel , that comes of monkeying with the buzzsaw," said Dick outloud. Ripley looked at him hard with narrowed eyes for a second; then they went on talk-ing about other things. That afternoon Dick took Miss Stoddard to tea at Rum-pelmeyers, and afterwards walked up to the Cril on with her to cal on Mr. Moorehouse. The corridors of the Cril-lon were lively as an anthil with scuttling khaki uni-forms, marine yeomen, messenger boys, civilians; a gust of typewriter clicking came out from every open door. At every landing groups of civilian experts stood talking in low voices, exchanging glances with passersby, scribbling notes on scratchpads. Miss Stoddard grabbed Dick's arm with her sharp white fingers. "Listen
. . . it's like a dy-namo . . . what do you think it means?""Not peace," said Dick. In the vestibule of Mr. Moorehouse's suite, she intro-duced him to Miss Wil iams, the tiredlooking sharpfaced blonde who was his secretary. "She's a treasure," Miss Stoddard whispered as they went through into the draw-ingroom, "does more work than anybody in the whole place."
There were a great many people standing around in the blue light that filtered in through the long windows. A waiter was making his way among the groups with a tray of glasses and a valetlooking person was tiptoeing around with a bottle of port. Some people had teacups and others had glasses in their hands but nobody was paying much attention to them. Dick noticed at once from the way Miss Stoddard walked into the room and the way Mr. Moore--383-house came forward a little to meet her, that she was used to running the show in that room. He was introduced to various people and stood around for a while with his mouth shut and his ears open. Mr. Moorehouse spoke to him and remembered his name, but at that moment a mes-sage came that Colonel House was on the phone and Dick had no further chance to talk to him. As he was leaving Miss Wil iams,