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By Root 9080 0

al about people Charley hadn't ever heard of. He tried to break it up by tel ing about how he'd been taken for Charles Edward Holden in that saloon that time, but nobody listened, and he guessed it was just as wel anyway. They had just come to the salad when Holden got up and said, "My dear, my only morals con-sist in never being late to the theater, we must run." He and Eveline went out in a hurry leaving Charley and Paul to talk to a quarrelsome middleaged man and his wife that Charley had never been introduced to. It wasn't much use trying to talk to them because the man was too tight to listen to anything anybody said and the woman was set on some kind of a private row with him and couldn't be got off it. When they staggered out Charley and Paul were left alone. They went out to a movingpicture house for a while but the film was lousy so Charley went uptown glum and tumbled into bed.

Next day Charley went by early for Andy Merritt and sat with him in the big antisepticlooking diningroom at the Yale Club while he ate his breakfast. "Wil it be bumpy?" was the first thing he asked. "Weather report was fine yesterday.""What does Joe say?""He said for us to keep our goddam traps shut an' let the other guys do the talkin'."

Merritt was drinking his last cup of coffee in little sips.

"You know Joe's a little overcautious sometimes. . . . He wants to have a jerkwater plant to run himself and hand down to his grandchildren. Now that was al very wel in

-209-upstate New York in the old days . . . but now if a busi-ness isn't expanding it's on the shelf.""Oh, we're ex-pandin' al right," said Charley, getting to his feet to fol-low Merritt's broadshouldered tweed suit to the door of the diningroom. "If we weren't expandin', we wouldn't be at al ."

While they were washing their hands in the lavatory Merritt asked Charley what he was taking along for

clothes. Charley laughed and said he probably had a clean shirt and a toothbrush somewhere. Merritt turned a square serious face to him: "But we might have to go out. . .

. I've engaged a smal suite for us at the Waldman Park. You know in Washington those things count a great deal."

"Wel , if the worst comes to the worst I can rent me a soup an' fish." As the porter was putting Merritt's big pigskin suitcase and his hatbox into the rumbleseat of the car, Merritt asked with a worried frown if Charley thought it would be too much weight. "Hel , no, we could carry a dozen like that," said Charley, putting his foot on the starter. They drove fast through the empty streets and out across the bridge and along the wide avenues bordered by low gimcrack houses out towards Jamaica. Bil Cermak had the ship out of the hangar and al tuned up.

Charley put his hand on the back of Bil 's greasy leather jerkin. "Always on the dot, Bil ," he said. "Meet Mr. Merritt. . . . Say, Andy . . . Bil 's comin' with us, if you don't mind . . . he can rebuild this motor out of old hairpins and chewin'gum if anythin' goes wrong." Bil was already hoisting Merritt's suitcase into the tail. Merritt was putting on a big leather coat and goggles like Charley had seen in the windows of Abercrombie and

Fitch. "Do you think it wil be bumpy?" Merritt was ask-ing again. Charley gave him a boost. "May be a little bumpy over Pennsylvania . . . but we ought to be there in time for a good lunch. . . . Wel , gents, this is the first

-210-time I've ever been in the Nation's Capital." "Me neither,'

said Bil . "Bil ain't never been outside of Brooklyn," said Charley, laughing. He felt good as he climbed up to the controls. He put on his goggles and yel ed back at Merritt, "You're in the observer's seat, Andy."

The Askew-Merritt starter worked like a dream. The

motor sounded smooth and quiet as a sewingmachine.

"What do you think of that, Bil ?" Charley kept yel ing at the mechanic behind him. She taxied smoothly across the soft field in the early spring sunshine, bounced a couple of times, took the air and banked as he turned out across the slatecolored squares of Brooklyn. The light northwest wind made a mil ion furrows