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"Don't you know it's dog eat dog here, Ben?"
Was he a fool to have been so trusting?
EASY VICTIM
By LENORA MATTINGLY WEBER
Illustrated by S. Andrea
On a late afternoon Peggy Weeden waited in the car and watched her husband go from house to house, selling-no, trying to sell-sets of world-literature books.
A wolf-pack wind snarled through the street, and she tugged at her coat, which was scarcely ample enough to cover her bulky pregnancy. She couldn't bear to watch Ben-to see all those doors open only a crack to him and then close, to see his shoulders slumping more and more in defeat. So she kept her eyes on the old graystone mansion on the corner, sitting like a proud aristocrat in this seedy street of the city.
Here was Ben approaching the last house in the block-the corner mansion.
He stopped at the car, and his grin was worn and frayed. "It's no use, Peg. Wasn't I the dope to leave a nice little burg and think I could sell these books while I got a degree at the U?"
With the wind whipping his dark hair that needed cutting, with his leather coat short in the sleeves and his chapped hands gripping his cheap briefcase, he seemed suddenly even younger than nineteen, and she, in a fierce maternal ache, felt older than eighteen-older than he. Her smile, too, was wobbly.
He started toward the house, turned back to add, "This is it. One more banged door-and we might as well pack up and go back to my filling-station job in Markley. I'm just small-town stuff."
She watched his halting progress up the stone steps between the stone lions, and she hated the city for what it had done to him. She watched him lift the knocker on the wide door. She saw it open wide and admit him.
In a few minutes a glowing Ben was leaping down the steps and opening the car door. "He wants you to come in. He said you shouldn't be sitting out here in the cold. The swellest old guy-his name is Felix Brown. He says his father built this house, and he's lived here since he was ten. He knows all about books-and he's going to buy a set. Come on."
Old Felix Brown matched the house. Though his hair was like white floss silk and he walked with a cane, he ushered the Ben Weedens into a high-ceilinged room off the hall as though they were honored guests. He bowed the unwieldy Peggy to a leather chair beside the grate fire.
He listened to Ben's sales talk as though Ben were doing him a favor. His thin hands unfolded the dummy set and he scanned the titles with benign, twinkling eyes. "My doctor has sentenced me to confinement this winter, but it won't be 'solitary' with these old friends. Tolstoi, Saint Augustine and Dickens. Have you read them, son?"
"Not all of them. I'm going to get a set for myself when-well, later on."
Peggy, warm and relaxed, said, "Sometimes when Ben gets the books for a customer, he reads all night before he has to deliver them."
"When you deliver my set, we'll share them and then talk them over."
"I'd like that," Ben said.
Felix Brown was not only a customer but a genial host. He pulled an old-fashioned bell cord, and when a bulky, aproned woman appeared, he said, "Miss Mary, these are my friends, Peggy and Ben Weeden. And they're chilled through by the wind. Isn't it about coffee time?"
Peggy felt an uneasy stirring. Miss Mary's sharp eyes searched over Ben, and lingered on Ben's wife. . . . I know, I know how back alley I look in this old shirt of Ben's hanging loose. But it takes money to buy a pretty lady-in-waiting dress. . . . It was a relief when Miss Mary left.
Upstairs someone was playing the organ. Peggy hummed under her breath to the theme song from Gigi. A man in a gray topcoat and carrying a bulging and beautiful briefcase came in the front door. Felix Brown called to him, "Eddie, I want you to meet Peggy and Ben Weeden, and look at the set of books I'm buying."
Eddie shook hands with Ben and Peggy-and stayed on to have coffee when Miss Mary brought in a tray. . . .
But why was Miss Mary so nosy, lingering on, watchful and listening? What business was it of hers if her employer bought a set of books from Ben Weeden?
The organ music ceased. A pretty girl in a red dress came pelting down the stairs, wrapping a fur stole around her. She paused in the doorway to smile at them. "How'd you all like the concert?" No, she hadn't time for coffee. Her ride had come for her.
Peggy planned, I've got a red dress. I'll bet I could let it out-or maybe set in a gathered panel. I shouldn't go around so sloppy.
It was dark when the Ben Weedens left 600 Charter Street with an order for the de luxe edition. In all of Ben's spasmodic sales this was his first order for the limp-leather set. Ben had explained to Felix Brown that it cost twice as much as the regular one.
Again that benign twinkle. "And is your commission twice as much?"
Ben nodded and said, "And we have to ask for twice the ordinary deposit."
"Of course . . . . Miss Mary, can you find my First National checkbook?"
But the bossy Miss Mary turned to Ben. "Wouldn't it be all right if he paid in full when the books came?"
Oh, sure, Ben had said. Fine.
The Ben Weedens went down the stone steps between the stone lions refreshed and fortified. The bite was gone from the wolf-pack wind. The lighted houses seemed friendly now. In the car an exultant Ben pulled Peggy close to him. "Meeting a real old codger like that is just the shot in the arm I needed. You see, hon, people are the same here as they are back home." They sang the Gigi song driving home.
Always before Ben had cringed when the owner of the bungalow descended the steps to their two rooms in the basement, and Ben asked for more time on the rent. But not tonight. Confidently he told about their visit with Felix Brown, owner of the old mansion at Sixth and Charter. His set of books would arrive in ten days, and then Ben could pay the rent.
"Didn't your Felix Brown make the usual down payment?"
"He'll pay in full on delivery. He's good for it."
Peggy couldn't say when doubt first lodged under her ribs. Maybe it was that very evening when she watched Ben fold his own check in the order he sent air mail to Chicago. Their balance was $3.87. Only a package of lamb necks, a wisp of lettuce and a half tomato sat in lonely state in their icebox. Ben needed a slide rule for his math class. And she did want to buy a yard of new material to widen her red dress. If only it didn't say right on the order that the limp-leather edition was positively not returnable to the company because it took special binding.
She left her doubts unvoiced. But she was the only one who did. Ben alternated weeks of driving his car to the university with Jonesy, a fellow student and book salesman. (Jonesy had never sold a de luxe edition either.) Ben had spilled over to him about his sale to Felix Brown and, pressing for details, Jonesy found out about the no down payment.
"Holy Moses, man! You've been took to the tune of nearly three hundred smackers. "
Ben only laughed. 'Tm not worried. Felix Brown is no fourflusher."
That was the beginning of a veritable barrage of gibing at Ben. Besides Jonesy, three or four other book salesmen often stopped in the Weeden basement kitchen to swap stories and gripes. They gave Ben no peace about Felix Brown and the real-leather edition and the no deposit.
"Ben, you pitiful, small-town innocent. Don't you know you're not back in your peach-growing valley?"
"The people are the same here," Ben answered.
"Oh, yeah! Here it's dog eat dog."
Jonesy would nag on, "And just why, if the old boy had an account at the First National, didn't you pry the down payment out of him ?"
"His word is good. He'll pay."
"You'll pay through the nose, pet. Your Felix Brown has all the earmarks of a senile old coot with delusions of grandeur."
Peggy listened to the doubting Thomases, and her own doubts clawed at her. She ached protectingly over Ben. . . . But you're wrong, Ben, about people being the same in a big city. They aren't. They're out to get the best of you. And I'm so hungry for friends-and neighboring.
Ben, bulwarked by Felix Brown's enthusiasm for the books, was doing better-oddly enough, better than his fellow salesmen. He quoted the old scholar when he called on customers. He had sold three sets; he had promises from others to buy after the first of the month.
One evening the landlord knocked on their basement door and asked for Ben. Ben was out, following up a lead. The landlord, who worked at City Hall, said, "I went over to the tax department today and looked up that property at six hundred Charter. Felix Brown don't own it. The title is in Mary Grossman's name. It's a rooming house." He added dourly, "So you tell Ben. You tell him if there's any way to stop that fancy order the old fellow gave him, to do it. Looks to me like Ben is going to get stuck."
Peggy was sewing on the red dress. She couldn't go on after the landlord left-her hands were too shaky.
The title in Mary Grossman's name! So that watchful old, mastiff of a Miss Mary owned the big graystone mansion. And kept roomers. So Felix Brown was only a kindly, senile old roomer with ideas of grandeur, as Jonesy said.
She couldn't tell Ben. Besides, there was no stopping the order. Chicago had already written that the books were being shipped to Ben L. Weeden for delivery to Felix Brown. Chicago would expect payment, or arrangements for same, promptly. . . . But Felix Brown had offered to write a check. Even a roomer could have an account at the First National Bank, couldn't he?
Four days later, on a snowy afternoon, the books were delivered. Her heart roily within her, Peggy opened the carton. Yes, here were the beautiful, soft-bound, un-returnable books. She was holding one, sniffing its luxury smell of leather when the phone rang in the hall upstairs, and she ran to answer it.
She didn't catch the name of the caller-only that he was an in-law of Jonesy. He was a teller at the First National, and Jonesy had told him to check on a Felix Brown and call the Weedens. "We've got Browns down here from hell to breakfast. But no Felix. No checking, no savings account, no nothing."
"Well-thanks."
She walked shakily back to the basement. One glance at the clock and she was startled into action. Ben would be here any minute-and Jonesy would be with him, because this was his week to drive. Ben's car was parked at the curb.
She must deliver. the books herself, receive the blow herself-and somehow shield Ben. It was more than the money. More even than saving Ben face with the I-told-you-so deriders. It was saving Ben's faith. She had only to picture his going up those stone steps, slumped and beaten; and his descending them, sure that the city was full of friends and neighbors.
It was all right for her to be soured and skeptical-but not Ben. Her thoughts scurried frantically. Maybe she could pawn her wrist watch-and pretend she had lost it. Maybe her sister would buy the piano Peggy had left at home. And that dab of money her mother had sent for "something for the baby." . . .
The carton of books was too heavy for her to load into the car. She took out half the volumes and made many panting trips up the basement steps and through the snow. If it hadn't been for that -
For just as she pulled out from the curb, a car horn honked peremptorily- and there was Ben in Jonesy's car. There was Ben, hurrying over and seeing the books piled in the seat beside her.
"They came! Felix Brown's books."
She tried to put him off by telling him to stay home and study while she delivered them. "Like crazy you will. This is an occasion. Scoot in and put on your red dress. He'll want to have coffee and visit with us."
In her made-over red dress-Ben had even made her put on her lipstick-she sat beside him in the car, feeling trapped and sick. They walked up the steps of the graystone mansion, Ben balancing the carton of books on his shoulder, and Peggy reached for the door knocker.
Before she could clang it, the door was opened by the formidable Miss Mary. Again her eyes raked over them, resting on Ben's burden. "Sh-h-h" she cautioned. "He's asleep, and I'd rather not wake him-yet. Set the books down here in the hall and come out in the kitchen."
They tiptoed after her into the old-fashioned kitchen. She went to the back stairs and called in a hushed voice, "Lisa, they brought the books."
The organ-playing girl hurriedly joined them. She was not in her red party dress, but in a housecoat with her hair in pin curls, and looking tense and anxious. This is it, Peggy thought. Miss Mary wants reinforcements when she tells Ben that the old fellow was just talking through his hat when he ordered the set.
But the woman reached for a canister in the cupboard and took out a roll of bills. Lisa, in a swift movement, added to it. Miss Mary said rather formally to Ben, "I'll just pay you in cash, and then Mr. Brown can settle with me-"
"There's no hurry," Ben said. "I trust him. I can come back -"
"No! No-no! He can give me his check-that will be better." She counted out the money to him. She said then, "Mr. Weeden, you take the books out of the carton. And pick out-was it Thomas Aquinas, Lisa, he wanted him to read first ?"
Lisa nodded. "And Montaigne."
The three women in the kitchen listened silently to the soft slap of leather books as Ben sorted them in the hall. Peggy looked wonderingly at Miss Mary and whispered, "Felix Brown will give you a check, but it won't be any good, will it?"
Miss Mary stared back at her a long minute before her face softened into a sheepish smile. "No, he hasn't had money in the bank for almost a year. He would have if he hadn't been so generous. I've been his housekeeper for thirty years. Nothing would do but that he put this place in my name so there'd be no legal trouble after he died."
The girl pushed confidingly close to Peggy. "We all chipped in on the books all ten of us in the house. Because he's done for us. He turned his piano in on an organ so I could practice and get this job at The Gardenia. And Eddie-he mightn't have passed the bar exams if he hadn't given him his law books and coached him. And so when Felix saw you two and wanted to help- I mean, buy the books from your husband-well, we all know what it is to need a boost."
Peggy didn't know she was crying until she felt the salt on her lips. She cried out of wondrous kinship with a sharp-eyed woman in sensible shoes, and a pretty girl with a fur stole-even Eddie, with his law-office manner and exquisite brief- case. The generous, helpful neighbors.
Miss Mary was saying softly, "Maybe it'd be better if your Ben didn't know. His' coming and going will mean a lot to the old gentleman. And you come with him-we'll want to see the baby."
No, Ben didn't need to know. Men protected their women, and women protected the men they loved. Besides, it was Peggy herself whose faith was restored by being part of this loving conspiracy. Plans tumbled through her. She would make her filled cookies and bring them when they came again. She would ask Miss Mary how many diapers you really needed-
A bell tinkled in the kitchen, and Miss Mary said, "There! He's awake now. He'll be so glad the books have come. Take off your coat, Peggy, and we'll all have coffee."
She was glad she had worn the red dress.
THE END
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