he said carefully, “I may want to get in touch with you later today. You going to be in your office?”
“Yes, until traintime. I’m taking the Century.”
“Mm. Ah . . . got a pretty busy day ahead?”
“No,” said Stanton. “I’m going to answer my mail, if there is any, and then polish my speech a bit—oh, and practice looking at audiences, slowly, left to right,” he added with a smile. Hazen did not smile in return. “I don’t think I could keep my mind on any work today.”
“Well, as I say, I may call you toward the end of the morning. In fact, I might want to drop around to see you. Be all right?”
“Why, certainly.” Stanton’s expression was bewildered. “But . . . I wish you’d give me some idea of what this is all about?”
Hazen again shook his head. “No, not now. It’s just—something. Perhaps nothing. I’ll know later. Mind if I look at part of your paper?”
They read in silence until the train paused briefly at 125th Street, then rolled through the jungle of Harlem tenements. From the elevated tracks it was possible to peer down into the bleak, uncurtained windows and glimpse the most intimate and sordid vignettes. Stanton never saw these mean, barren little rooms and the stark, crumbling ugliness of the tenements without a sense of inner protest. What conceivable reason or excuse was there for people living that way, in Manhattan, in 1947? Yet he knew that these buildings along upper Park Avenue were veritable palaces compared with the tenements he had seen in some other slum sections.
“Ah . . . by the way, Stanton—” Hazen’s voice startled him—“seen that actor fellow lately?”
“You mean Billy Paige?”
“That’s the one.”
The train rocketed into the long tunnel leading to Grand Central. Some of the more impetuous commuters stood up and started putting on their coats and hats, moving toward the vestibules.
“Why—” Stanton considered—“I saw him a little while last Sunday. He came out for tennis and stayed for the cocktail party afterward at the club. What makes you ask about him?”
“Just happened to think of him,” Hazen replied. “What do you think of that chap, anyway?”
“Well, I don’t know. I never thought much about him, one way or the other.” Paige was a little too deft, a little too facile, a little too well-dressed, a little too aggressively handsome for Stanton’s taste, but he was pleasant enough and seemed to know a lot of funny stories. He was about thirty and had rather suddenly become a prominent Broadway figure on the strength of the leading part in the first big hit of the season.
“These theatrical people—I don’t seem to have much in common with them,” Stanton said. “They live in a world of their own and they don’t have much interest in anything else. At least, I find it hard to talk to them. But Betsy—Mrs. Wylie—gets along with them pretty well. She’s interested in the theater.”
He reflected that her interest of late had become almost irritating. Betsy pretended a superior knowledge of all phases of stagecraft from playwriting to baby spots, had dragged Stanton to any number of bad plays he didn’t want to see, and at times referred to people like the Lunts as “Lynn and Alfred” although she never had met them.
“Paige is sort of a lightweight, if you know what I mean,” Stanton went on. “But he’s all right; I like him well enough. He’s a very good dancer, too—at least, that’s what Betsy says. You know, she’s very keen on dancing, and I’m much too tall for her. She likes dancing with him.”
Hazen’s eyes were half closed, and his expression was inscrutable.
“Grand Central!” a conductor bawled from the end of the car. The train slid to a stop alongside the gray concrete platform. Stanton and the lawyer edged into the line of passengers and were propelled through the vestibule.
As they were climbing the ramp to the marble floor of the terminal, Hazen said: “Where’d you meet this Paige fellow, Stanton?”
Stanton had almost forgotten about Billy Paige. He glanced quickly at the lawyer, but Hazen was looking at the floor of the ramp. Stanton said, “Mr. Hazen, why are you so interested in Paige?”
“Oh, just wondered about him—seen him around,” Hazen said. “Where’d you meet him?”
“Well—” Stanton had to think about just when he had met Billy Paige—“in Westport, early in the summer. They opened the Playhouse with a revival of Private Lives, and Paige had the lead—the ex-husband of what’s-her-name, Anna? Something like that.”
“Amanda,” Hazen said. “Very amusing part.”
“Yes. He was good in it, very good. Afterward——”
They passed through the gates above the ramp and emerged in the vast stir and turmoil of the station. They stood there, making a little eddy in the stream of people issuing from the trains.
“Afterward, somebody—I think it was the McRaes—gave a party for the cast. We were invited, and that’s how we met Paige. Why, Mr. Hazen?”
The lawyer seemed to be pondering the animated signs on the station walls. On the near side these urged the smoking of Chesterfields and the drinking of Four Roses; on the far side, Alka-Seltzer was recommended for that headachy feeling. Against the tall eastern windows the New Haven had erected a photo-mural glorifying an autumn vacation in the Berkshires. Overhead, golden gods sprawled on the blue vault of the ceiling and tossed casual golden stars back and forth.
Hazen tapped the marble floor with his cane and said, “Ah . . . you will be in your office all morning? Definitely?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you may hear from me. Nice to see you anyway, Stanton. I’ll get a cab out here. Too old for these subways, you know.”
“Mr. Hazen——”
But the old man only nodded, and stepped spryly into the moving crowd. Stanton stared after him for several seconds, frowning. He was conscious of a vague feeling of disquiet, even apprehension, as he walked slowly toward the Lexington Avenue doors and crossed the street to the Chrysler Building. Why should Chester Hazen even be aware of the existence of Billy Paige, let alone have so many questions to ask about him?
CHAPTER 3
STANTON’S secretary, Miss Rice, was in a fine flutter when he arrived at his office. She was a small, pert, birdlike girl who generated an almost incandescent enthusiasm.
“Oh, Mr. Wylie! So many exciting things are happening to us!” she greeted him. “You should see the morning mail!”
Stanton grinned at her. “You know, Helen, I wish I got as much fun out of this business as you seem to,” he said. He tossed his coat and hat onto the sofa and went over to his desk. “Well, what’s the score?”
“All sorts of wonderful things!” she gushed. “Here’s one from the Civic Improvement League of Omaha. They want you to make a speech out there the first week in November. This one’s from the Royal Canadian Society of Engineers,
