Worcester Democrat and the ledger-enterprise. (Pocomoke City, Md.) 1921-1953, 1935-04-26
CHAPTER III

facing a woman whose neck was
choked by wisp of fur so ratty and
frayed that it was like the material
moose of poverty, Belinda shuddered.
If she could only think things out she
could know exactly why, she had found
it impossible in the space of week
to marry John Morton Parkes. If she
could only think things out-but the
actuality of needing job crowded out
speculative thought. She knew one
thing though: Johnny had, in way,
been robbing her for years of her self
reliance, her own identity. He was
always there through the past-thru
the tinkling, soft, safe years; even be-
fore he was twenty-five was only
twenty-five now-Johnny had been on
hand with facile, ebullient solutions
for every problem, every grief.
Why when he was seventeen, she
remembered, he informed her: give
picked you, Belinda, for my girl. We're
going to have a grand time from now
on" Dimly her own half-hearted pro-
test at such high-handedness came
back with clear and sharp, his laugh
ing rejoinder-"Oh, dry up Belinda!
You know you're my girl. 1 haven't
got time for trashy arguments about
it. I've got-I'm following a star!
I'm going to be worth hundred mil
lion dollars. Why, those people"-he
made wide, inclusive gesture to the
world-"don't know anything!" His
eyes shone. She accepted his state
ment of her status-and his own.
Then amazingly soon after the pa
pers began to blossom with stories
about Johnny Parkes-his string of
restaurants in lower Manhattan, his
greyhound kennels on Long Island,
his various impossible but somehow
profitable enterprises when such
newsprints dubbed him the Gold Brick
kid-in those months there had been
no opportunity to examine her tacit
engagement to him. There had been
no time.
Her father had died in mid-winter
and left her the governess who had
mothered her for fourteen years and
hundred and fifty dollars market
value in stocks after debts had been
paid.
Eating two-dollar frappe in the
oval room of the Ritz one noon she
had looked across the table at Johnny
and discovered, with cool rigidity of
fright, how desperately important it
was that she marry him.
simultaneously she had discovered
she could not, therefore, marry him
at all.
Now she pressed her elbows close
to her sides and drew her chin into her
fur collar. The ruthless clangor of
the car reminded her of the terror
ahead. She probably had burned her
bridge called Johnny. But fragrance
of youth and busting powder rose
family from her body; she closed her
eyes and remembered the ended, frag-
rant years. She'd get job and ev-
erything would be all right.
Jake Fuhrman's face displayed a
sort of bland certainty that he could
happen nowhere else but in New
York. He was perhaps forty-a billi-
kin man with side hair combed uncon-
vincingly across pink pate and eyes
that were round splashes of sad
amazement. He had been a clothier.
a press agent for Park Avenue per-
fumer, the editor of a Greenwich Viii
lage magazine which lasted one issue,
ticket-taker in a dance hall, broker
in Long Island beer garden leases and,
now, owner of the j. G. Thurman Ser
vice, Dinner Companions.
His office, on the thirty-fourth floor
of the Gotham Building, was neat,
bright and mystifying. There was a
desk with two telephones; a large
black book labeled Descriptions: a |
rectangular goldfish aquarium on a
stand by the window. This block of
water, held, at first glance, no fish.
Today Jake Thurman paced his Of
flee unhappily. Only when he paus-