U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [559]
. . . Perhaps we might, my friend, keep the story of our afternoon under our hats." He gave Dick's knee a tremendous slap. "It's great to play hookey." At the conference Bingham Products signed on the
dotted line. Mr. Bingham agreed to anything and paid no attention to what went on. Halfway through he said he was tired and was going home to bed and left yawning, leaving Mr. Goldmark and a representative of the J. Win-throp Hudson Company that did the advertising for Bing-ham Products to go over the details of the project. Dick couldn't help admiring the quiet domineering way J. W. had with them. After the conference Dick got drunk and tried to make a girl he knew in a taxicab but nothing came of it and he went home to the empty apartment feeling frightful.
The next morning Dick overslept. The telephone woke him. It was Miss Wil iams cal ing from the office. Would Mr. Savage get himself a bag packed and have it sent down to the station so as to be ready to accompany Mr. Moorehouse to Washington on the Congressional. "And,
-502-Mr. Savage," she added, "excuse me for saying so, but we al feel at the office that you were responsible for nailing the Bingham account. Mr. Moorehouse was saying you must have hypnotized them." "That's very nice of you, Miss Wil iams," said Dick in his sweetest voice. Dick and J. W. took a drawingroom on the train. Miss Wil iams came too and they worked al the way down. Dick was crazy for a drink al afternoon, but he didn't dare take one, although he had a bottle of scotch in his bag, be-cause Miss Wil iams would be sure to spot him getting out the bottle and say something about it in that vague acid apologetic way she had, and he knew J. W. felt he drank too much. He felt so nervous he smoked cigarettes until his tongue began to dry up in his mouth and then took to chewing chiclets.
Dick kept J. W. busy with new slants until J. W. lay down to take a nap saying he felt a little seedy; then Dick took Miss Wil iams to the diner to have a cup of tea and told her funny stories that kept her in a gale. By the time they reached the smoky Baltimore tunnels he felt about ready for a padded cel . He'd have been tel ing people he was Napoleon before he got to Washington if he hadn't been able to get a good gulp of scotch while Miss Wil iams was in the ladies' room and J. W. was deep in a bundle of letters E. R. Bingham had given, him between Bingham Products and their Washington lobbyist Colonel Judson on the threat of pure food legislation.
When Dick final y escaped to his room in the corner suite J. W. always took at the Shoreham, he poured out a good drink to take quietly by himself, with soda and ice, while he prepared a comic telegram to send the girl he had a date for dinner with that night at the Colony Club. Held barely sipped the drink when the phone rang. It was E. R. Bingham's secretary cal ing up from the Wil ard to see if Dick would dine with Mr. and Mrs. Bingham and the Misses Bingham. "By al means go," said J. W. when
-503-Dick inquired if he'd need him. "First thing you know I'l be completing the transaction by marrying you off to one of the lovely Bingham girls." The Bingham girls were three strapping young women
named Hygeia, Althea and